Dragon Age 2

[Elcura]

Awakening had a respec thing, and you could get mods to respec in origins. I hope DA2 has respec, since I like playing around with all the abilities to find what combos work good for me.

As for tanks in DA1, absolutely awesome by the end of the game. You can keep hate, buff allies, kill shit and you take barely any damage with the right armour. The only issues I had were stamina ones, keeping all those sustained abilities active left very little for things like Assault etc. I can't remember specifically, but you usually have some points left over for some cross skills, though you'll likely never use them. Between main skill tree, specialization and class tree, there isn't a lot for hybrids.

EDIT:

Just finished the demo, I'm liking it a lot. I can't wait for mods and expansions to start rolling out. Also, do mage AoEs not hurt allies? That's the one thing I hated about mages, but if that's not the case... then I might just roll mage for my first run.

[Tythera]

I can't say for certain but I imagine the lack of mage friendly fire was because of difficulty and or just for the demo. If it's gone for good that'll make mage that much easier I suppose.

[Elcura]

Yeah, friendly fire was the only thing stopping my mage from destroying everything. Though by the end of the game it didn't matter and I just spammed Blizzard, Fireball etc without a damn care lol.

I was pretty hesistant, because with the (seemingly) smaller skill trees, you don't get a lot of single enemy attacks to avoid killing your own team. Also, setting up tactics is weird, but I'll let that go for the demo. I hope that vanilla DA2 has more options than vanilla DA1 did with tactics. I remember some mods gave some interesting commands that really did some weight lifting.

[Atreides]

i think the idea of friendly fire is interesting in theory but really annoying in practice, although that could be because most gamers are just not used to it or too spoiled by virtually no other games having it. I guess I could get used to it again but I really don't want to lol

[Tomino]

I really hope they allow respec because without it some characters are simply cut out of your party. For ex, being myself a tank I really had no use at all for Alistair or Loghain.
Players should be able to grab those characters they like the most, not being spec-blocked

[Elcura]

i think the idea of friendly fire is interesting in theory but really annoying in practice, although that could be because most gamers are just not used to it or too spoiled by virtually no other games having it. I guess I could get used to it again but I really don't want to lol

Yeah, I started playing DA2 all paranoid about it. It really isn't a 'fun' mechanic at all...

I really hope they allow respec because without it some characters are simply cut out of your party. For ex, being myself a tank I really had no use at all for Alistair or Loghain.
Players should be able to grab those characters they like the most, not being spec-blocked

Yeah, which is why I like the respec mod. Alistair could be 2-handed or whatever and I could tank. Though I would hope they learned from DA1 and not shoe-horn characters in roles like that before you even get them.

[Souj]

gonna repeat this as it has apparently been lost.
I don't know if this has already been said anywhere, but is DA2 going to be more linear than 1, or is the choice of going to whatever town you want in whatever order still intact?
I was just wondering because of the framing device they're using to tell the story and the fact that it takes place in a span of 10 years.

[Odesseiron]

Here's scans of an early review from PC Gamer, well a link to them anyway.

http://imgur.com/a/cmLbm

From what it says, aside from exploring a couple of minor places, the majority of the story is in Kirkwall.

[Insanecyclone]

This guy is a fucking idiot


EA needs to get rid of him, fuck.

[Galkaeater]

what do marketing guys know about art direction lol

[Odesseiron]

I didn't watch from the start. I skipped right to like 2:10 and heard the guy saying something about the first not having any consistency. You'd run from a forest to here to here. I immediately shut it off. Fire that moron.

[Tyrath]

I didn't watch from the start. I skipped right to like 2:10 and heard the guy saying something about the first not having any consistency. You'd run from a forest to here to here. I immediately shut it off. Fire that moron.

But, forests and caves are obviously supposed to all look the same!!

[Kyo]

Yeah I get to work with that guy when I visit Edmington, he's a fucking idiot.

[Qalbert]

Reported.

[Mizango]

You stopped listening to him because he rightly likes the superior ME1 over ME2? Okay then. Not saying ME2 wasn't a great game because it was, but other than a nice graphical upgrade and a larger selection of characters, Mass Effect 1 it was not.

Brofist. Played and beat both several times, and people look at me like im crazy when I say this. ME2 is a wonderful game, but its not even on the same level as ME1 really. One is more dedicated to large groups and is a fun shoot em up. ME1 had far more exploration, discovery and delved more into story with Cerberus and other organizations than ME2 did.

On topic, I cant wait for my DA2 day to get here. Oddly enough I am off that day, so thats an ever greater plus.

[Isiolia]

i think the idea of friendly fire is interesting in theory but really annoying in practice, although that could be because most gamers are just not used to it or too spoiled by virtually no other games having it. I guess I could get used to it again but I really don't want to lol

Well, at least you don't destroy loot with it like you do in Neverwinter Nights games...

[Iono]

I just hope they let you save more chars this time.... Was pretty stupid of the first one to include Awakenings and all DLC's in amount of saves. I didn't have enough saves on DA:O, then I had to delete some for those things ._.a

Fucking retarded for a game that has so many options, to not be able to save em all....

Anyone seen anything regarding this for DA2?

[Odesseiron]

According to Bioware, there were over a million unique downloads of the DA2 demo, so the 2 dlc items were unlocked for those with EA/Bioware accounts.

Lothering's Lament - Gives you some gold when used
Far Cliffs of Kirkwall - Gives a XP boost when used

I'm guessing these are small items, but more free dlc is cool by me.

Now there is a new contest on Facebook. If every post on the DA2 Facebook page is shared and reaches 1,000,000 impressions by March 4th, the new tome is unlocked. Get spamming.

[Souj]

okay, they are seriously going overboard with the free items. (Oddest thing I have ever said)
Obviously it's our own choice whether to use them or not, but still.

[Elcura]

Well, it's good for creating awareness of the game. It's good marketing if nothing else.

In the end it doesn't really matter though, I doubt any of those items will be end-game great. And then... MODS! I seriously can't wait for the mods.