(no subject)
I have the Dragon Age II demo sitting on my XBox 360 hard drive. I am about to open it up. I intend to write about my reactions here for a) posterity and b) the ease of talking about specific things later, instead of just saying "!!!!!!!!" or "!??!?!?!" or whatever punctuation-filled reaction this demo engenders in me.
I actually really like the stylized people-art on the menus; and, look, Our Lady of Soundtrack Woe is back to make us all apprehensive and dramatic-feeling before we "Press Start". Okay, I'll bite, Start.
Alright, so, awesome, I can choose the class and gender I play this demo as! I like the work they've done on giving every class armor, but different armor -- no more cloth robes for my mages and, thankfully, not a single chainmaille bikini in sight.
Yet, at least.
My first time through, I'm going to go as a Rogue; I have always enjoyed playing Dragon Age as the rogue/mage classes, and found less interest in being a Warrior--I don't like tanking, okay, that's just an Alice thing. And combat as a rogue in DA2 is… fast. Way faster than Origins; I am not even entirely sure what's going on, but I am leaping and teleporting all over like a little spinny two-sword ninja. (I didn't get the option to pick between Archery and Dual Wield, which are supposed to be the two Rogue paths, but I'm thinking this is more a function of the tutorial than anything else.) I also can't control Bethany, who is in my party at the moment. I do like the voice actresses, though--Lady Hawke is so charmingly British.
There was an Orge fight -- it is Dragon Age, you have to have an Orge Fight, guys. I was not expecting the clever turnaround of being able to customize my Hawke (and give her a naaaaaame), all of a sudden, now, but the scenes between Cassandra and Varik have been exceptionally satisfying to watch. ~Dramatic~ and foreshadowing-filled and okay, I just like Cassandra.
Then the game trolled me and took away all the high-level skills, regenerating health, and ridiculous bad-ass weapons and armor, and suddenly the characters actually look and act like refugees running the hell away from the encroaching Darkspawn horde. And I say, unto myself, "lol".
During the "fight like a refugee" section, I discovered two things: one, I like playing as Bethany, the mage-sister, more than the rogue Hawke, and two, that the game froze on me! So I am restarting, and I'm going to mage it up in here, and see if it feels sufficiently different this time.
While it loads: I love how things from DA:O are getting referenced, even things that aren't in the "in case you weren't playing, here's the infodump about what the fuck is happening"--things like Cassandra Pentaghast and your knight-lady being named Aveline, and if you are as much of a Thedas nerd as I am you will be quietly going "eeeeee" along with me.
Now, it's Mage Girl o'clock. Which means I get to watch all the Varic and Cassandra cutscenes again, with the pretty neat smoke effects on the opening titles; Bioware, you guys have shot and animated this sequence well in regards to light and dark, I like it.
More to come as I go!
Updates: yeah, playing as a mage is more fun, and the game seems to be adhering to things like "squishy wizard" and "linear warrior/quadratic mage" but also it has frozen on me three times now, and thus I am far, far far from pleased.
In which I played it all on Justin's account--that helped with the freezing. Odd bug, that.
Observations: Interesting take on fridging, Bioware. This maybe what persuades me to play rogue, and not mage after all.
Also, remember the controversy regarding Bethany's almost cartoonishly gigantic breasts? Yes, well, I fucking love Bioware, because they're cartoonishly huge in Varic's ~ree-fucking-diculous~ telling of the story, and when Cassandra tells him to cut out the bullshit, the inflated, um, attributes of female characters also become far more normal and believable. Bioware, did you troll us? You trolled us.
I actually really like the stylized people-art on the menus; and, look, Our Lady of Soundtrack Woe is back to make us all apprehensive and dramatic-feeling before we "Press Start". Okay, I'll bite, Start.
Alright, so, awesome, I can choose the class and gender I play this demo as! I like the work they've done on giving every class armor, but different armor -- no more cloth robes for my mages and, thankfully, not a single chainmaille bikini in sight.
Yet, at least.
My first time through, I'm going to go as a Rogue; I have always enjoyed playing Dragon Age as the rogue/mage classes, and found less interest in being a Warrior--I don't like tanking, okay, that's just an Alice thing. And combat as a rogue in DA2 is… fast. Way faster than Origins; I am not even entirely sure what's going on, but I am leaping and teleporting all over like a little spinny two-sword ninja. (I didn't get the option to pick between Archery and Dual Wield, which are supposed to be the two Rogue paths, but I'm thinking this is more a function of the tutorial than anything else.) I also can't control Bethany, who is in my party at the moment. I do like the voice actresses, though--Lady Hawke is so charmingly British.
There was an Orge fight -- it is Dragon Age, you have to have an Orge Fight, guys. I was not expecting the clever turnaround of being able to customize my Hawke (and give her a naaaaaame), all of a sudden, now, but the scenes between Cassandra and Varik have been exceptionally satisfying to watch. ~Dramatic~ and foreshadowing-filled and okay, I just like Cassandra.
Then the game trolled me and took away all the high-level skills, regenerating health, and ridiculous bad-ass weapons and armor, and suddenly the characters actually look and act like refugees running the hell away from the encroaching Darkspawn horde. And I say, unto myself, "lol".
During the "fight like a refugee" section, I discovered two things: one, I like playing as Bethany, the mage-sister, more than the rogue Hawke, and two, that the game froze on me! So I am restarting, and I'm going to mage it up in here, and see if it feels sufficiently different this time.
While it loads: I love how things from DA:O are getting referenced, even things that aren't in the "in case you weren't playing, here's the infodump about what the fuck is happening"--things like Cassandra Pentaghast and your knight-lady being named Aveline, and if you are as much of a Thedas nerd as I am you will be quietly going "eeeeee" along with me.
Now, it's Mage Girl o'clock. Which means I get to watch all the Varic and Cassandra cutscenes again, with the pretty neat smoke effects on the opening titles; Bioware, you guys have shot and animated this sequence well in regards to light and dark, I like it.
More to come as I go!
Updates: yeah, playing as a mage is more fun, and the game seems to be adhering to things like "squishy wizard" and "linear warrior/quadratic mage" but also it has frozen on me three times now, and thus I am far, far far from pleased.
In which I played it all on Justin's account--that helped with the freezing. Odd bug, that.
Observations: Interesting take on fridging, Bioware. This maybe what persuades me to play rogue, and not mage after all.
Also, remember the controversy regarding Bethany's almost cartoonishly gigantic breasts? Yes, well, I fucking love Bioware, because they're cartoonishly huge in Varic's ~ree-fucking-diculous~ telling of the story, and when Cassandra tells him to cut out the bullshit, the inflated, um, attributes of female characters also become far more normal and believable. Bioware, did you troll us? You trolled us.
