Ya I have to agree with you, I will miss the old camera from DAO. I'm not too bugged about the wheel but, I did like to knowing what exactly I was going to say.
I don't like how the darkspawn look... well the swordsmen, archers and ogres ie their faces... Also I don't like how in some environments or the backrounds are very empty. In the demo if you look out in the wastelands there aint much too see... These are just minor things to me though...
Oh ya you suck Raven... I got class at 830am but Im already loaded and ready to unlock in the morning.
Agreed. Definitely agreed about the new Darkspawn look as well. To me it feels like they took the Darkspawn, which are only supposed to be out in force during a blight, and turned them into generic "Orc" type monsters. Now, I understand that the beginning of the game (the part you play through in the demo) is actually taking place at the same time as the events in DA:O. Flemeth comes to your rescue while on her way to help the Warden from DA:O escape the top of the tower where you light the beacon. That could explain why there are so many Darkspawn at that point. If they're around en mass later in the game though it will seem out of place to me.
Why wait until tomorrow to unlock? You should be able to unlock tonight at midnight. I do understand the need for sleep though so I guess I'll let you off with that excuse....this time.
Raven, I agree with both #1 and #2 in the OP, but I'll add one more thing I didn't like: the combat control scheme. Having locked camera that follows your character, combined with the same one-click RMB to move and attack is bad. Accidentally right clicking on empty ground when a creature moves out of the way can cause your whole camera to spin around and then you have to figure out where the heck everyone went to try and go back to the fight. Also, the demo visuals did not impress me at all. The "fire" effects in the demo looked like utter crap compared to DA:O. Will have to judge on the full game, though, after going through the config ini because the ingame options are terribly incomplete.
I completely agree. Switching from one character to another jumps the camera around which is pretty damn annoying and I can see how that can be disconcerning or even flat out confusing in a large battle where your party is spread out. I read that the reason they didn't put in the iso cam was because of the environments. In DA:O every environment had to be "sliced off" at the top to achieve the iso view. They said that was limiting what they could do with the environments so they ditched it in favor of the standard console view to be able to make better looking environments. Well, I'm calling Bull Sh!t on that excuse. I think they really did it so that the console people wouldn't complain that the PC version was so much "better" this time around. They could have easily enabled the iso cam and restricted it from hitting the ceiling or made the top of the environments "see-through". Hopefully we'll be able to change the camera distances in a ".ini" file somewhere. If not then maybe it would be helpful to start a massive request thread on the official forums asking for the iso cam to be enabled in a patch (not that I think they'd listen honestly).
The reason they gave for adding the conversation wheel was supposedly they had too many complaints that having to do all that reading in DA:O sucked the player out of the game and ruined immersion....WTF!?!?! Who ever had that complaint is a f'kin moron. If anything, having to read the replies sucked the player into the game and storyline MORE and HELPED with immersion, not detracted from it.
On a side note, from a learning perspective, the whole reason I scored a college level reading skill while I was in Middle School was from reading all the text in games like "Dragon Warrior" and "Ultima Exodus". Kids today are stupid and lazy and it's really starting to show in trends in pop culture.
When it comes to those two things I fear "consolization" has indeed taken it's toll on that part of the game. That's just my opinion though. At least the tactical feeling is still there in the battles.
It sounds like the UI may have been pushed to a Mass Effect 2 style - Minimalized with skills perhaps appearing with a menu that you can get to when you pause the game with a hotkey?
I wasn't even thinking about it coming out. I haven't even bought it. I was a Dragon Age Collector Edition purchaser, but i didn't buy Awakening or anything beyond that first one. The game was decent and I didn't trust the DLC's. But then when Witch Hunt came out, I couldn't help myself because I thought it'd answer those questions.
I'll never trust a Bioware DLC again until after I've waited for reviews. Even then, with the rave reviews Overlord got on Mass Effect 2 I think I'll still pass.
So I'll be waiting for reviews and gameplay footage to pop up on Youtube before I get this one.
Tydorius, if you liked DA:O at all, and if you liked ME2 at all, I think you'll greatly enjoy DA2. There's plenty of game-play footage out there already on a bunch of different sites. Some of the gaming sites have "exclusive footage" as well that you can't find on YouTube. Look around and you should be able to find plenty. I hope that helps in your decision my friend. Also, I agree with you assessment of the DLC's. Awakening was great, a full on expansion, but the other DLC's were kind of a let down.
http://social.bioware.com/page/da2-patches
High res texture pack (mostly for DX11 users.)
Unknown if Steam will start including it or not, but obviously not in the preload.
Thanks for the heads up there, Savyg. It's now downloaded and waiting for the install of the full game when I get home tonight . Good looking out bro.
Even though I don't have a DX11 card, should still see an improvement I imagine.
I wouldn't be too sure on that. I'd guess that if you can at least do DX10 you "should" see some improvement. With just DX9 though I'm not sure the high res textures will show up or not nor if you'll be able to enable them. Notice the page on that link with the download says:
Requirements:
Using high-resolution textures requires a graphics card with at least 1024MB video memory.
Most of the benefits from the Hi-resolution textures will only be seen if you are able to run the game in DirectX 11.
If you meet the memory requirement you should see some kind of improvement I would think. I'm not %100 sure though. I guess we'll find out tonight.
