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Dragon Age 2 Announced
Today BioWare announced a sequel to Dragon Age: Origins, titled Dragon Age 2. They've opened an official site for the game, which shares some vague details and concept art, and promises a trailer in mid-August. The story will apparently span an entire decade and involve a new hero, but it will be located in the same world as the original game. The site says there will be "dynamic new combat mechanics," though the same three basic classes will be available. More information should be forthcoming in this month's issue of Game Informer.
Given how much the BioWare games are turning into Japanese "dating" sims.
I call bullshit. The relationship aspect of BioWare games is an entirely option part of the experience, and involves no more strategy than picking the "nice" sounding conversational lines.
Hardly the same thing as a dating sim.
Living With a Nerd
I'm not a huge RPG kind of gamer but every now and then I get the itch to battle dragons and cast magic so I got Dragon Age. It's really a pretty good game. Long, not terribly repetitive, plot twists to keep it interesting, interesting characters, etc.
But one thing that really gets to me about these RPGs is all the damned talking. Talk to the bartender, ask him 20 questions, 15 of which are getting at the same thing only worded slightly differently. Interview the bar patron, ask 20 questions, 15 of which rehash what the bartender said. Interview the barmaid, ask 20 questions.... interview the angry drunkard.... move to the next building and interview 5 more people....
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed DA, but what happened to the ability to do whatever the hell you want (i.e. kill guards, rob houses, etc.) from BG? And what about the awesome multi-player support from NWN? It was the perfect multi-player RPG experience -- you could play with friends, but you didn't have to deal with a bunch of MMO douchebags.
According to Steam's playtime count, I clocked up 106 hours on Dragon Age. Upon hearing the mixed reviews for its expansion (Awakening) I refrained from getting it. As it was informally billed as a successor to the classic Baldur's Gate series I was pretty enthusiastic like a lot of folks who had experience with Shadows of Amn.
The fact remains that it has only been 9 months since DA released, and the expansion was out 5 months; having not played it I can only echo the commenest gripes of other players which was the relatively short length compared to Dragon Age vanilla (circa 10-15 hours), coupled with a somewhat stilted villain and overall plotline. The characters, most of which are new, haven't endeared themselves as much as the original set featured in DA. My experience with DA was good...but I never saw a villain with the depth or intensity of Irenicus, instead having a faceless entity of orc-like creatures named Darkspawn, with a corrupted Dragon at the helm. The motives of the evil horde were not touched upon much at all in DA...and whilst the characters were a varied bunch I never felt all that engaged thanks to the cropping up of cliches.
It was a surprise to me when I came across a much less promoted and much more obscure title in the Steam summer sales just a week or so ago. The Witcher expanded edition pulled me in much faster than Dragon Age, with its unusual story steeped in Polish myths - it sure beat DA's rather Lord of the Rings feel that has been done to death not just on the silver screen but to a great extent in gaming too. Despite being inferior in graphics terms to Dragon Age, I found the protagonist pretty refreshing in the same way I liked Clint Eastwood in his most iconic westerns; the medieval world is darker and so suspends disbelief better than the gleaming spires of fantasy I saw in DA. It was less than $10 in the sale too, and offers a very large amount of gameplay. It's even further from Baldur's Gate than DA was, but for what it was it felt much more impressive.
So after Bioware's content-light expansion, the announcement of a sequel so soon makes me more skeptical than excited. DA was good, but not ground-breaking as most of the perenially bribed gaming press were saying.
Like any other gamer geek I hope it turns out brilliant, but just like every experienced gamer I've been let down by hyped franchise so many times. With smaller development houses bringing out quality, I start to wonder if there's much point paying all that much attention to the bigger ones with massive capital behind them.