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Preview Dragon Age 2 isn't a Hack n Slash Game

Jason

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Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age 2

<p><a href="http://comic-con.gamespot.com/story/6270917/dragon-age-ii-hands-on" target="_blank">Gamespot had a glimpse</a> of <strong>Dragon Age 2</strong> at the San Diego Comic-Con.</p>
<blockquote>Switching over to the mage resulted in a more tactical style of combat along the lines of the first game. With the mage, we preferred pulling up that radial menu and finding the best spell to cast in a given situation. Our favorite quickly became inferno, which lets you rain fire on a radius of enemies as though you'd just called a mortar strike from the heavens. According the Laidlaw, they've worked to make sure the mage has more "wow" moments in combat like the weapon-based classes. To demonstrate, he showed a mage finishing off an Ogre by lifting him up into the air, surrounding him with a dark energy, and then exploding him into nothingness.<br /><br />Overall, the combat didn't feel remarkably different from the first Dragon Age. It flowed a little more smoothly and moved at a quicker pace, but that was mostly because our talents and spells recharged quickly after using them. That could very easily have just been something BioWare tuned for this public demo--likely a lowered difficulty to help ease players back into the experience. After this admittedly brief demo, we're confident that BioWare knows what they're doing. This isn't going to be a hack-and-slash game.</blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
 

Admiral jimbob

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To demonstrate, he showed a mage finishing off an Ogre by lifting him up into the air, surrounding him with a dark energy, and then exploding him into nothingness.

Call me a whore, but that sounds cool. I like satisfying death animations, and it felt pretty lame in DA1 when warriors had 142 different animations for slaying ogres, dragons etc with all the different weapons, while mages had to settle for the boss gently falling over once it took enough damage.

Hopefully they did actually lower the cooldown. What fucking purpose did that even serve except to make the already drawn-out combat drag even more? Cooldown in a single-player game? Fucking stupid.
 

Twinkle

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warriors had 142 different animations for slaying ogres, dragons etc with all the different weapons

2-3 at best per weapon.

And mandatory slowmo during ogre-killing is a fucking annoyance especially when enemy archers are around.
 

pero

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I'm confused as to why they think the mage class had less "wow moments" than the melee classes.
 

Xor

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Sure, DA2 isn't hack & slash. And ME2 is an RPG.


Also, the slow motion death animations were fucking annoying time wasters that lead to my party wiping a few times as the person doing the animation would get raped by archers.
 

Admiral jimbob

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Twinkle said:
And mandatory slowmo during ogre-killing is a fucking annoyance especially when enemy archers are around.

By that point, my main was an arcane warrior, so every other party member was totally expendable. As a result, instead of getting annoyed, I just found it added a surreal humour value.

"Oh god, we're getting pinned down, where's Alistair"
"Not to worry he's just dramatically vaulting onto an ogre's head in slow motion again"
 

Antihero

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POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
Hopefully they did actually lower the cooldown. What fucking purpose did that even serve except to make the already drawn-out combat drag even more? Cooldown in a single-player game? Fucking stupid.
Supposedly it's so they can give you some more powerful spells without making them completely abusable. Still, it didn't stop me from spamming fireballs for the knockdown effect, or blood wound.

But it's sort of pointless on the lesser spells, except to force you into diversifying or making you use your staff more often.
 

Mangoose

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Antihero said:
POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
Hopefully they did actually lower the cooldown. What fucking purpose did that even serve except to make the already drawn-out combat drag even more? Cooldown in a single-player game? Fucking stupid.
Supposedly it's so they can give you some more powerful spells without making them completely abusable. Still, it didn't stop me from spamming fireballs for the knockdown effect, or blood wound..
I was gonna say that, but on the other hand, doesn't differing mana costs already deal with that problem in a less annoying way?
 

chzr

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It flowed a little more smoothly and moved at a quicker pace, but that was mostly because our talents and spells recharged quickly after using them. That could very easily have just been something BioWare tuned for this public demo--likely a lowered difficulty to help ease players back into the experience.

:rpgcodex:
 

Saios

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The only one time I enjoyed the death animation was fighting the dragon atop the mountain severely underleveled. Most other death animations of ogres and such were pretty shitty and inconvienent. Not to mention looked like shit if it was close enough. I really could care less about mage wow moments, DA2 is likely to suck donkey scrotum anyways.
 

SerratedBiz

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While the demo was mostly combat, we did get to run through a few dialogue options. The most immediate change you'll notice is that your character now speaks those words you choose for him or her. As a reason for making this change, Laidlaw cited the first game's hero as being caught in an epic battle for the survival of mankind and being able to show no more emotion than raising an eyebrow. You're still given the same diverse list of dialogue options, ranging from perfect gentleman to salty jerk, with a smattering of options in between. It feels a little more like Mass Effect in this way, but we weren't given any options to poke and prod someone's innermost psyche like Commander Shepard. Our conversational options were a little more action-oriented than that, like choosing whether to take on a small group of Darkspawn ourselves or letting our mage friend handle it for us.

whatthefuckisthisshit.
 

Antihero

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Mangoose said:
Antihero said:
POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
Hopefully they did actually lower the cooldown. What fucking purpose did that even serve except to make the already drawn-out combat drag even more? Cooldown in a single-player game? Fucking stupid.
Supposedly it's so they can give you some more powerful spells without making them completely abusable. Still, it didn't stop me from spamming fireballs for the knockdown effect, or blood wound..
I was gonna say that, but on the other hand, doesn't differing mana costs already deal with that problem in a less annoying way?
You could then just chug mana potions, but even without those a cooldown theoretically allows you to offer spells at a lower mana cost (or at a lower level): say medium mana cost, high cooldown, strong effect versus medium mana cost, medium cooldown, medium effect - where effect is whatever. Still it's MMO'ey and gimmicky feeling to have all these short-term cooldowns going.
 

Antihero

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Lesifoere said:
Radial menu? Really? That shit sucked back in NWN.
Pretty sure that'll be for the console, like DA:O already had some form of radial menu in it anyway on the consoles. Then again, who knows - they seem to care more about making their UI look fancy than usable; personally, I want to blame Flash for that. At least Scaleform includes a GUI library now (SC2 uses it), so there might be some standardization on that.
 

oneself

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It flowed a little more smoothly and moved at a quicker pace, but that was mostly because our talents and spells recharged quickly after using them.

Hopefully quicker pace means removal of redundancy, and not streamlining the oversimplified, just to accommodate the thriving ADHD populace.
 

Saios

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oneself said:
It flowed a little more smoothly and moved at a quicker pace, but that was mostly because our talents and spells recharged quickly after using them.

Hopefully quicker pace means removal of redundancy, and not streamlining the oversimplified, just to accommodate the thriving ADHD populace.

I resemble that remark, I have ADHD and I enjoy games with depth and reduced redundancy but they are most likely trying to sell more copies so you can expect face paced two button gaming.
 

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