Game News Dragon Age 2 Jettisons Ballast [Unconfirmed]

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age 2

<p>... like an isometric view for example. At least <a href="http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/4376174" target="_blank">according to a forum post</a> concerning an interview with BioWare's Mike Laidlaw.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>More info, what Mike said precisely in this interview is this (I quote and translate) "For budgetary reasons, we focused our work on a 3rd person view, that asks for very detailed and nice textures so that the player can admire the game with a close-up view. With an aerial view [isometric] we should cover much more ground and so create other textures. Now, the game mainly sold on console, so we're going the way of the audience"</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Also, there won't be a toolset.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To be short, DAO 2 will not have a toolset. I think that DAO I toolset is very powerful but very complicated" [Then they speak of the fan made campaigns possibility for DAO 1 (too little time since last November to create full campaigns, it usually takes years (so only "simple" mods have been produced so far, but this is about DAO I and not DAO II). Once again, Mike Laidlaw does not give any detail on the reasons of this decision.]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Personally, I blame Volourn.</p>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/99100-unconfirmed-no-aerial-viewpoint-or-toolset-for-dragon-age-ii.html">GB</a></p>

 

[JarlFrank]

Now, the game mainly sold on console, so we're going the way of the audience

This fits to about 99% of the modern game industy.

 

[racofer]

With an aerial view [isometric] we should cover much more ground and so create other textures

LOL QUE?!

Since when is it required to redo textures by simply raising the fucking camera's viewpoint? If anything, putting the camera at a longer distance should make any low resolution textures less apparent!

 

[Sceptic]

If anything, putting the camera at a longer distance should make any low resolution textures less apparent!

That was the only reason to use DAO's horrible, horrible isometric view. The textures were just eye-searingly ugly in TP.

 

[Silellak]

 

[Tramboi]

Re: Dragon Age 2 Jettisons Ballast

With an aerial view [isometric]

aerial vew != isometric projection

 

[Rhalle]

Yawn.

Many years ago, when they posted a $600M loss, EA looked into exactly what BW had in its stables, and when they saw Dragon Age they said, "What the fuck is this shit?" So they proceeeded to whore it nine ways from Sunday, and told BW never to do that again.

DA2 has probably been going to be Mass Effect: Swords: Consoletard Edition for a very long time.

And Bioware is dead, of course. Dead as a motherfucker.

And that, despite Mr. Gaiders snivelling and sardonic little rejection of that notion, which he knows damn good and well is a pitiful, pitiful lie.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I can't wait to see Biwhore die. For all that they have done to the cRPG genre ...

 

[Twinkle]

The textures were just eye-searingly ugly in TP.

Their crappy engine doesn't even have proper LOD support: every LOD setting uses separate meshes and textures instead of scaling high-quality texture and geometry detail down depending on distance from camera and user settings like all normal games do. The excuse for their lazy coding is laughable.

 

[chzr]

Re: Dragon Age 2 Jettisons Ballast

"To be short, DAO 2 will not have a toolset. I think that DAO I toolset is very powerful but very complicated"

= Why should we release toolset for console kiddies that wouldn't understand it anyway.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

The textures were just eye-searingly ugly in TP.

Their crappy engine doesn't even have proper LOD support: every LOD setting uses separate meshes and textures instead of scaling high-quality texture and geometry detail down depending on distance from camera and user settings like all normal games do. The excuse for their lazy coding is laughable.

wow

That kind of defeats the purpose of having them.

 

[made]

Re: Dragon Age 2 Jettisons Ballast

DAO 2 will not have a toolset.

Then who's going to fix all the bugs, broken mechanics, and retarded design decisions?

 

[Antihero]

Re: Dragon Age 2 Jettisons Ballast

DAO 2 will not have a toolset.

Then who's going to fix all the bugs, broken mechanics, and retarded design decisions?

Don't fret, folks. It probably won't stop all the nude mods and whatnot that doesn't require a toolset. But seriously, I'd heard the rumour and now have absolutely zero motivation to bother with this game, since I primarily picked up DA:O for the toolset which was pretty lacking in support to begin with and was still more fun to tinker around with than to play the game itself.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Going through the thread a bit, it sounds like it was probably a mistake and the dumbass who was being interviewed knew absolutely nothing about DA2 outside of the consoletard version. Which is a failure of a completely different magnitude

 

[Antihero]

Going through the thread a bit, it sounds like it was probably a mistake and the dumbass who was being interviewed knew absolutely nothing about DA2 outside of the consoletard version. Which is a failure of a completely different magnitude

Mike Laidlaw? I kinda doubt it, and it doesn't contradict some (hastily retracted) rumour that Chris Priestly already said as much about the fate of the toolset at Comic-Con, among other sources which are more reliable (to me anyway, but I can't prove anything).

Besides, the current toolset support is practically nil and they're obviously rushing this out the door, so toolset support probably won't be of any high priority.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Well, speaking of budget concerns for moving the view away is something completely console-specific. PC's don't have budgets, they have configurable quality levels. I could care less about the lack of mod support and its possible that is a true statement, but not including a different viewpoint? Ridiculous.

 

[Antihero]

Maybe they meant time or money instead of resource budgets? It's an interesting point, but I'm not sure what it really means for us.... although it being that significantly more expensive would seem strange, but I'm no modeler or texture artist. Maybe you need another handcrafted LOD and a new texture set that doesn't rely on mipmaps?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Going through the thread a bit, it sounds like it was probably a mistake and the dumbass who was being interviewed knew absolutely nothing about DA2 outside of the consoletard version. Which is a failure of a completely different magnitude

I never picked that up from the thread. I've seen speculation, wishful thinking, that this is what's going on, but nothing like proof. What specific posts are giving you that idea?

 

[Ruprekt]

I can't wait to fight like a spartan in close up fuck this shit fuck it fuck bioware to hell

 

[CrimsonAngel]

Well it would not surprise me if they cut some stuff away from the PC version.

Hell if they did it they only game me the pen ultimate reason not to buy this game.

 

[Twinkle]

Maybe they meant time or money instead of resource budgets?

Probably. They just will not bother with creating textures consoletards won't be able to see. Again, if they had a half decent engine, changing camera viewpoint wouldn't be such a mess.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Maybe they meant time or money instead of resource budgets?

Probably. They just will not bother with creating textures consoletards won't be able to see. Again, if they had a half decent engine, changing camera viewpoint wouldn't be such a mess.

Well creating high quality textures is the hard part, they are already doing that. Creating the low quality ones used for far away viewing should be completely automated, if it isn't then Bioware should hire me and I could cut their workload in half by plugging some some files through some programs. So I'm 95% sure that they are referring to a performance budget, unless Bioware is technically inept on a massive scale.

Going through the thread a bit, it sounds like it was probably a mistake and the dumbass who was being interviewed knew absolutely nothing about DA2 outside of the consoletard version. Which is a failure of a completely different magnitude

I never picked that up from the thread. I've seen speculation, wishful thinking, that this is what's going on, but nothing like proof. What specific posts are giving you that idea?

Well, I don't have proof. But quite a number of people said that someone at Bioware was specifically quoted as saying that the PC version would be about the same as DA1. Its the Console version that they are overhauling a lot of stuff on to make it 'extreme' and 'epic' and 'dumbed-down', so supposedly since that was the new version they are trying to sell thats the version that was illustrated. Frankly the main reason I think this is false is that changing a viewpoint is ridiculously easy. Thats why games run in 3D, to let your camera view the world from any angle you want. Bioware may make the same consoletard game over and over, but they aren't retarded themselves.

 

[Twinkle]

Who knows? Maybe they don't want PC version to offer more options while costing less to preserve "equal quality regardless of platform". Either way, this sounds like a total 180 compared to earlier Game Informer article which stated that PCs would retain top-down view.

 

[Antihero]

Well, here's their official word on it:

While we won't be releasing a toolset update in tandem with Dragon Age 2, we ARE investigating what it would take to update the community toolset to match ours, along with providing DA2 content in the future.

On the PC, however, we are still working with the camera to keep the key elements of the tactical experience there. I was actually playtesting some new camera code when Victor found me, in fact, so I can give you the latest news on that front.

While we likely won't pull as far up as we did in DA:O, I have always felt that the key to tactical play was actually freeing your camera from the character you're controlling to issue precise orders, which is what we're tuning now. So, this means you can still maneuver the camera around the battlefield and issue orders from a remote location, just as you could in Origins.

With the caveat that things aren't finalized yet.

 

[Volourn]

"Personally, I blame Volourn."

It's the Codex's fault, actually. This is what you get for prefering ME2 to DA. LMFAO

As for the toolset, DA's toolset sucked anyways so no great loss.