Stainless Veteran said:
Some interesting quotes from
Escapist's DA2 preview:
The combat in Origins had many failings, beginning with its unbalanced difficulty. "Was the default setting, especially on PC, too hard? Yeah," admits Laidlaw. "'Normal' felt more like 'Hard' to me."
I guess we were wrong when we said Game devs no longer make games that they want to play, and instead focus on popamole for the Lowest common Denominator. The Devs are the lowest common denominator. Fancy that!
The design team also decided to inject a bit of common sense into the combat. "If you're a mage, and you're carrying around this big stick, why can't you hit someone with it?" asks Laidlaw, pointing out that ranged combatants, like mages and archers, had little recourse when the fighting got up close and personal.
Yes, you carry a big stick as your focus of Magic, and hitting things with this big stick and potentially breaking it, thus rending your ability to focus your magic moot, is sensible. Oh, wait, you dont need the staff to cast? Why have staff then? Why not have a shield and sword? A bow? As for archers, shortsword.
Also, why is your range getting hit? Oh, right, Failed tactical gameplay due to button mash playsytle. We are rewarded with INNOVASHUN because the fucktards that want all action cannot into keeping their lines straight and protecting their weaker assets.
The linear progression of the skill trees in Origins meant that you frequently had to spend valuable points on talents you never had any intention of using so that you could get to the one you actually wanted. It was a well-established and accepted system, but it oftentimes sapped a lot of the enjoyment out of leveling up. The skill trees in DA2 are actually webs, more circular in nature and offering more than one path to the really Hot Stuff skills
More streamlining, not so horrible though.
Kirkwall is awash in color and composed like artwork. Matt Goldman took inspiration from sources as diverse as Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood and Pieter Breugel's "Triumph of Death." The aim is to not only make players "excited about what they're seeing," says Laidlaw, but also to "make sure that the story being told is about the character, and that the scenery is drawing focus to the people."
Wait, those low res backgrounds are there to make people look at the characters?
In Origins, you were a nameless, voiceless hero, but in DA2, you are the silky-toned Hawke, a change that may be jarring to those who favored Origins's old school approach to characterization. Which, as Laidlaw tells it, is not that many players. "People generally hated the silent protagonist," he says, but that wasn't the only reason to adopt a main character who could speak for themselves; Having the hero stand stoically while drama erupted all around them "seemed to be doing a disservice to the storytelling."
Read: Mass Effect Players love Shepherpderp and we decided to make it more like Mass Effect.
The conversation in DA2 plays out much like that in Mass Effect, with players selecting a paraphrase of a dialog option from various points on a wheel. Hoping to avoid those situations where you think you're being flirty but end up sounding like a jerk, the wheel in DA2 adds an icon in the center to give you a better idea of the vibe you're about to convey. A heart is flirty, angel's wings indicate your goody-goody nature, and so on. There's still a bit of wiggle room, but you should always end up saying pretty much exactly what you meant to say. (During my playthrough, I wanted to just tell someone I thought they were cute and ended up inviting them to bed, but flirting is open to all manner of interpretation, I suppose.)
Failure in accurately displaying dialogue choices from one game imported to another game.
Because it needs saying again
The combat in Origins had many failings, beginning with its unbalanced difficulty. "Was the default setting, especially on PC, too hard? Yeah," admits Laidlaw. "'Normal' felt more like 'Hard' to me."
"'Normal' felt more like 'Hard' to me."
"'Normal' felt more like 'Hard' to me."
