2. The combat is being refined.
The combat in Dragon Age Origins was very tactical, allowing you to issue orders to the folks in your party. For the sequel, BioWare is aiming to keep that tactical aspect but also make it more action packed, if players wish it to be. Today we got a taste of the new combat system with a mountaintop battle against an army of orcs. They might have been imps or goblins or demons, actually. We're not nerdy enough to know the difference.

Different attacks are mapped to the X, Y, and B buttons of your controller (we were playing on an Xbox 360). Hawk, the hero of the game, had a typical sword swipe mapped to X, a thrust mapped to Y, and a twirl that would take down all the enemies around him mapped to B. By holding the right trigger you can access a second set of attacks, so it seems you'll have six moves available to you at a time. Each move has a recharge time, so you can't just keep mashing the X button to chop through enemies.
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