Dragon Age II demo

The sequel to the Dragon Age: Origins, except that we will now be playing as the Hawke instead of the Grey Warden. It makes sense especially if you played Dragon Age: Awakening & all the other DLCs. Gameplay & Storywise. The Grey Warden's adventure is at an end though I'm sure some would disagree with me.

Why does that reminds me so much of a Paragon choice..

Though I get a strange feeling that Bioware is trying to emulate the success of Mass Effect. Instead of being able to play as a dwarf or an elf. Like Shepard, Hawke is human by default. The only thing you can pick is the gender & class. Unlike Shepard, you can't pick the pre-service history & psych profile. That and the addition of the dialogue wheel & voice over for the main protagonist.

In just about 14 days Dragon Age II will be released to the public and the gameplay demo is now available for downloads. And if there are 1,000,000 downloads for the demo, two in-game items will be unlocked in the full release. Interesting marketing tactic.

Now onto the Demo itself.

The graphic looks much better and way more crisp than Dragon Age itself. Though I couldn't get the game to work after the initial opening scene. Fixed the Vsync and I was back in business!

I'm your elder sister & I'm telling you to put on more clothes!

Below is an in-game cutscene shot. I can't help but notice Bethany's massive cleavage and in a way it reminds me of Miranda, whose assets are always caught by the in-game camera. Good thing femhawke is appropriately dressed.

At the rate they fall apart so easily, either they are made of butter or I'm wielding a vorpal sword...

Gameplay wise. DA 2 feels completely different from DA: O. When the blow connects it actually feels like there is impact or that "OMPHHFF" to it. Kind of reminds me of COX. On the whole the combat system feels much less like a traditional CRPG and more towards arcade action game.

Scenes like this are very common in wuxia films or novels. My inner 'qi' is sooo strong it shakes the earth!

Another combat move in game. Sending all enemies around you flying back. Feels & looks pretty kickass.. Quite over-exaggerated though. I would not be the least bit surprised if this move gets toned down in final release. Maybe it scales to your level... hmmm.

This is SPARTA!! Er.. I mean for FeREldEnnn~~!!

With all the blood, gore & violent moves. The further I go into the game the more I feel like I'm watching a 300 movie. Minus the slo-mo of course... Now if I do indeed swing a shield that hard at someone I'm pretty sure I will break my arm instead of sending someone flying off... Thats assuming if I can lift the shield in the first place. Hah.

The last thing that strikes me is the 'default' Hawke. Like Mass Effect the default Shepard is always portrayed as a man in Mark Vanderloo's likeness.

Ah well.. what am I expecting... the main audience for Video games are mostly teenage / young adult males. So naturally it makes sense to portray a man as the default protagonist with female npcs relegated to a support role such as a LI or villainous bitch.

On the whole the demo showed mostly the combat mechanics & skill trees. If you came from WoW & you appreciate quick fast paced action. DA II might just work for you. If it gets too fast, theres always a pause button for you to strategize just like DA: O.

On the story.. there is not a whole lot I can gather from just the demo itself. I guess I will have to wait for someone to complete the game and review it. Or buy the game itself and actually play it. What is of interest to me is how DA: 2 is going to handle the save import from DA:O.

Lets hope if anything its not remotely like ME2 save imports. Lame emails, Conrad Verner & Sirta foundation import bug...