DA2 has leaked

[Clockwork Knight]

You don't successfully argue with VD, you merely survive it.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

I don't know why I still bother

Arguing with VD is the Codexian equivalent of building a sand mandala, a ritual exercise in futility. You know your reading comprehension will be challenged, you know you will be quoted selectively and out of context, you are fully aware that by the end of it all, VD will not have backed down an inch. It is not done not for some empty sense of achievement, but to make peace with the ultimate insignificance of your actions. Kshanti.

Fuckingt newfags. There have been PLENTY of people that have been able to succesflly argue with VD very well. You guys just fail.

For every one of those people 10 other lie awake on a room with padded floor and walls screaming "WHY MUST YOU QUOTE ME SO"

 

[Jaesun]

You don't successfully argue with VD, you merely survive it.

This is quite true. Consider VD as the "Tutorial Level" of the Codex.

For every one of those people 10 other lie awake on a room with padded floor and walls screaming "WHY MUST YOU QUOTE ME SO"

Indeed. None of them post here anymore. :conspiracy:

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

I don't know why I still bother

Arguing with VD is the Codexian equivalent of building a sand mandala, a ritual exercise in futility. You know your reading comprehension will be challenged, you know you will be quoted selectively and out of context, you are fully aware that by the end of it all, VD will not have backed down an inch. It is not done not for some empty sense of achievement, but to make peace with the ultimate insignificance of your actions. Kshanti.

Fuckingt newfags. There have been PLENTY of people that have been able to succesflly argue with VD very well. You guys just fail.

Well, if you define "arguing successfully" as enduring the debate for 10+ pages, and, in enduring, grow strong, it's precisely the kind of enlightenment I had in mind.

 

[Jaesun]

I don't know why I still bother

Arguing with VD is the Codexian equivalent of building a sand mandala, a ritual exercise in futility. You know your reading comprehension will be challenged, you know you will be quoted selectively and out of context, you are fully aware that by the end of it all, VD will not have backed down an inch. It is not done not for some empty sense of achievement, but to make peace with the ultimate insignificance of your actions. Kshanti.

Fuckingt newfags. There have been PLENTY of people that have been able to succesflly argue with VD very well. You guys just fail.

Well, if you define "arguing successfully" as enduring the debate for 10+ pages, and, in enduring, grow strong, it's precisely the kind of enlightenment I had in mind.

To be honest, I have been in AWE of VD's apparent ability to make people get so fucking worked up and start foaming at the mouth inducing rage. It fucking cracks me up. Every time. Saint and Rosh could do this equally as well, but alas they are no more (RIP Saint). FFS people make alt's just to argue with him when we have a news post about AoD. It's godamn Comedy Gold™.

I have had over SEVEN FUCKING YEARS of hearing VD argue stuff, and you know what? VD still is and will forever be a BRO (NO HOMO) to me. Period. He at least posts better than 3/4 of all the fucking shit posters we have now. I do not always agree with him, I have not however felt compelled yet to argue with him over anything yet in a long while.

Now, shut the fuck up newfags.

 

[Vault Dweller]

VD will not have backed down an inch.

I do not want him to back down. I don't get into internet arguments to "win". What I do NOT want to see, however, is this:

You can include the statements to make a point that the makers are lying weasels who shouldn't be trusted in the future, but that's as far as it should go.

Hell I'm not asking that these be the only criteria that be used. I am simply asking that they not be ignored and that we not pretend as if they didn't exist. They do exist, and they are important, whether you like it or not.

Great. Got it. Now explain why. Why these things should matter to a reader?

Bolding mine. Rest is unedited. This is exactly how it appears in VD's post. Scroll up if you don't believe me.

I give up.

I apologize if somewhere I lost track of what we were talking about, so let me clarify my position.

I was arguing against positions like:

"Yeah, we are so stupid to expect RPG as a sequel to RPG. You are taking "it's good for what it is" thing way too far."

"Comparing the game to other installments in the series is important part of judging the game. Not the only part, but an important one. "

"If you judge it only on what it is, why not adopt a frame of reference that matches the marketing press release"

"This would also be a good time to mention I do agree that judging the game ENTIRELY on blablabla serves no purpose, but I also find completely ignoring EVERYTHING, including the fucking TITLE OF THE GAME ITSELF to be pushing it a little too far. "

"And when people react to DA2, I'm fairly certain they should be allowed to use a metric such as the first Dragon Age. - Why? - Maybe because, it's called, you know, DRAGON AGE 2?"

i.e. against judging based on criteria unrelated to the game's qualities. I obviously don't care about mentioning anything you wish to mention. You can even add a corporate history - there was a time when Bioware used to make awesome games like BG and NWN, but now they make games DA2!!!

Overall, I feel that my position is very simple. Clockwork Knight had no difficulties understanding it but maybe he is some kinda genius:

VD's point is that judging the game based on what it should be (a better Dragon Age 1) isn't very useful compared to judging the game based on the game itself. The former is good for forum wanking, but most people only give a fuck about the game itself being playable. How it was marketed, etc. is another matter.

Using the Fallout 2 example, the game itself was pretty fun despite introducing "a lot of silly shit that didn't fit the setting like ghosts, yakuza, gangsters in casinos, etc".

Then again, maybe the problem is that I've interrupted the aforementioned forum wanking, so, as you were, gentlemen.

 

[Vault Dweller]

To be honest, I have been in AWE of VD's apparent ability to make people get so fucking worked up and start foaming at the mouth inducing rage.

It's a gift that keeps on giving. Remember Exitium's wiki?

I have had over SEVEN FUCKING YEARS of hearing VD argue stuff, and you know what? VD still is and will forever be a BRO (NO HOMO) to me.

 

[Raghar]

I have one of those i7 octocore thingies with 2x gtx 480 and 12 gig ram. As far as I'm concerned this machine should be able to run several instances of this game, but no. Frames per second is a joke. I'm on Win7 x64.

There are no i7 with 8 cores. However they are preparing CPU with 6 cores.

I meant 4 cores but 8 threads, which show up as 8 processors if you look it up in windows device manager. Happy now?

No.

You'd go to BIOS disable hyperthereading, reboot and tell us if this is one of these games which are allergic to hyperthreading.

BTW if that CPU is non overclocked i7-920, then my 3 years old C2D can run circles around it.

 

[Hegel]

I don't know why I still bother

Arguing with VD is the Codexian equivalent of building a sand mandala, a ritual exercise in futility. You know your reading comprehension will be challenged, you know you will be quoted selectively and out of context, you are fully aware that by the end of it all, VD will not have backed down an inch. It is not done not for some empty sense of achievement, but to make peace with the ultimate insignificance of your actions. Kshanti.

Fuckingt newfags. There have been PLENTY of people that have been able to succesflly argue with VD very well. You guys just fail.

Well, if you define "arguing successfully" as enduring the debate for 10+ pages, and, in enduring, grow strong, it's precisely the kind of enlightenment I had in mind.

To be honest, I have been in AWE of VD's apparent ability to make people get so fucking worked up and start foaming at the mouth inducing rage. It fucking cracks me up. Every time. Saint and Rosh could do this equally as well, but alas they are no more (RIP Saint). FFS people make alt's just to argue with him when we have a news post about AoD. It's godamn Comedy Gold™.

I have had over SEVEN FUCKING YEARS of hearing VD argue stuff, and you know what? VD still is and will forever be a BRO (NO HOMO) to me. Period. He at least posts better than 3/4 of all the fucking shit posters we have now. I do not always agree with him, I have not however felt compelled yet to argue with him over anything yet in a long while.

Now, shut the fuck up newfags.

Honestly I find my opinion and VD's to be the most detailed so far. It's not a bad game, it's a 6-6.5/10 game. It's enjoyable for what it does. The flaws are so many but there are also some great touches of style. Ie: your sister's boobs being bigger in the prologue cause the narrator wanted to exaggerate the tale.
Not only that, there are some minor choices and consequences, like your romance with Isabela affecting her storyline. Or the fact you could lose your sister if you took a particular choice instead of another.
Could have been a 8/10 game if only they had 9 months to finish and polish it.

 

[circ]

I have one of those i7 octocore thingies with 2x gtx 480 and 12 gig ram. As far as I'm concerned this machine should be able to run several instances of this game, but no. Frames per second is a joke. I'm on Win7 x64.

There are no i7 with 8 cores. However they are preparing CPU with 6 cores.

I meant 4 cores but 8 threads, which show up as 8 processors if you look it up in windows device manager. Happy now?

No.

You'd go to BIOS disable hyperthereading, reboot and tell us if this is one of these games which are allergic to hyperthreading.

BTW if that CPU is non overclocked i7-920, then my 3 years old C2D can run circles around it.

C2D doesn't even approach i5 in any benchmarks, and you're saying it runs circles around i7? Oh please, it's an archaic piece of shit, still loved by Apple because it's cheap and raises their profit margins.

Also, VoD's problem is NVIDIA, or BioWare simply sucking at coding. If you drop by NVIDIA forums, there's thread after thread of users calling NVIDIA shit shit shit because their DA2 experience is horrible. They're asking for a patch right NAO, instead of bugging BioWare to hire competent coders.

I mean shit, DoW 2: Retribution, running on an old engine and dx9, looks a shit load better than DA2, running on fucking dx11. That's with glitz and jizz flying everywhere and everything.

 

[Hamster]

Mass Effect 2 treatment - instead of fixing the flaws, simplify everything and throw away as many RPG elements as you can because somewhere there is a dumb kid who can't into Mass Effect.

Mass Effect's RPG elements were it's flaws, and while fixing them would be preferable to removing them, it's still flawed elemets that were removed. In DA we see RPG elements that had nothing to do with game's flaws removed or simplified, while main problem, encounter design, remained. ME2 threw away flawed elements and fixed the flaws, DA2 threw away good elements and by accounts of people far into the game, not only haven't fixed existing problems, but added new ones. It's clearly not the same treatment.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Minor update: I installed latest nvidia drivers, toned down to *high* quality and the problems went away.
Now I just needed ~ 2hours to defeat the final battle at the tutorial level (with the Ogre before Flemeth appears) - on nightmare - which involved expending all resources and fleeing all over the map to get the healing cooldown to expire. Whoa Whoa Laidlaw, I hardly got the darkspawn to explode. And I had help from my marbari bro Barkspawn. Brutal indeed difficulty-wise. Such things always make me smile. :D

BTW if that CPU is non overclocked i7-920, then my 3 years old C2D can run circles around it.

i7 950

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Overall, I feel that my position is very simple. Clockwork Knight had no difficulties understanding it but maybe he is some kinda genius

Well, I also own some consoles, so "idiot savant" seems like a better description

 

[Freelance Henchman]

Found on /v/, not sure if 'shooped. Does this really look like that ingame?

http://i.imgur.com/LBlah.png

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Ahhh thanks for the info. : salute:

Also, I too am slightly worried about the state of Mass Effect 3.

I follow one of the ME3 dev blogs, and I have not seen anything that has caused me to worry (yet). Keep in mind that (thank gawd) the ME and DA teams are completely separate.

Yeah, but can never know for sure. Didn't say they're going to make ME3 more RPGish like the first one or something? If Dragon Age 2 is anything to go by that could spell trouble for Mass Effect 3 even if the teams are separated. I just don't trust Bioware that much.

Looking at that particular sentence in a more sober manner I could have phrased it a lot better. Or just not at all.

Let's just keep our fingers crossed.

Yeah.

In more majestic horse-related news, my legal copy of Dragon Age 2 just arrived in the mail. I have thus thrown "da2-rld.iso" in the trash can and I am now officially part of the problem as well as a consumer whore.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

my legal copy of Dragon Age 2 just arrived in the mail

WHY... WHAT... HOW...

 

[Andyman Messiah]

If it makes you feel better I myself didn't pay for it. Somebody probably did but my wallet certainly never opened up. The only obligation I have is to play the damn thing at least twice.

 

[Shannow]

I don't know why I still bother, but here goes.

Great. Have you argued Volly yet? If not, do so right now. A single post were you catch him being factually full of shit is enough (shouldn't be too hard). And then you're only one hidden challenger away from being admitted into the ranks of the bitter older fags. That hidden challenger might be tough though. He doesn't post much anymore, and you need an exchange of at least 3 walls of text... The alternative is "train tickets, bitch" with a mod. You might want to go with that.

Fuckingt newfags. There have been PLENTY of people that have been able to succesflly argue with VD very well. You guys just fail.

No. VD has backed down and/or accepted arguments/opinions in the past, even if he didn't agree, but it's completely dependant on what mood he's in. Quality of arguments, staying power, eristic dialectic, none matter. As here, he often excels at putting on the blinders and bulling through. And I'm usually for the one using the better arguments, which is as often as not VD's "opponent" until VD gets him so out of context that he doesn't even know what they're arguing about anymore. Doesn't crack me up at all, just makes me a little sad

Oh, Daatoo, yaddaddaddaadda. Nobody claim I make nonsense OT posts

 

[Jaesun]

If it makes you feel better I myself didn't pay for it. Somebody probably did but my wallet certainly never opened up. The only obligation I have is to play the damn thing at least twice.

Did Mrs. Majestic Horse pay for it? If so, I can understand the obligation to (unfortunately) play it one time.

Otherwise.......

Also Shannow, why are you god damn bitter today?

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Otherwise.......

 

[Black]

Found on /v/, not sure if 'shooped. Does this really look like that ingame?

http://i.imgur.com/LBlah.png

From what I've seen, DA2 doesn't require shooping to look... shooped.

VD's point is that judging the game based on what it should be (a better Dragon Age 1) isn't very useful compared to judging the game based on the game itself. The former is good for forum wanking, but most people only give a fuck about the game itself being playable. How it was marketed, etc. is another matter.

Using the Fallout 2 example, the game itself was pretty fun despite introducing "a lot of silly shit that didn't fit the setting like ghosts, yakuza, gangsters in casinos, etc"

I'm getting that.
What I don't get is how far does it go? Let's say FO2 ditched everything and became a post-apocalyptic racing game, one of the best racing games ever in general, is it still okay?
Should people have no expectations when it comes to sequel? When I think of a good sequel words like "more of the same, but better" come to my mind. Not "somewhat tied to that previous game but everything is different".
Of course it's not about DA1 -> DA2, since DA2 basically is more of the same but only through it people start to see what DA1 really was.

 

[racofer]

Found on /v/, not sure if 'shooped. Does this really look like that ingame?

http://i.imgur.com/LBlah.png

It's definitely shoped.

In game it looks much worse.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Rushed the main quest, liked it enough to later on give it a real playthrough.

Combat is the worst part, overall worse than DA:O's, having the console's combat system as an option on the pc might've made melee more enjoyable.

Something I hadn't seen done before: if you stick to a certain dialogue tone, eventually Hawke adopts that tone for regular dialog where you don't even pick what he says.

The vaunted time-skip narrative does absolutely nothing, 10 year time span could just as well have been months, weeks, days.

 

[Jaesun]

To be honest, I have been in AWE of VD's apparent ability to make people get so fucking worked up and start foaming at the mouth inducing rage.

It's a gift that keeps on giving. Remember Exitium's wiki?

Oh yes, dear god that was epic times. I *think* Pooper might even have a full back up of it. He does wacky stuff like that.

Mr. Horsey!

 

[circ]

Found on /v/, not sure if 'shooped. Does this really look like that ingame?

http://i.imgur.com/LBlah.png

It's definitely shoped.

In game it looks much worse.

I wish they had shopped her neck. NIGHTMARES? HELLO!