During the short one hour that press had during PAX was the time that I took to view all the super popular games that I could. One that I had the pleasure of seeing and playing was Dragon Age II from EA and BioWare. This follow up has seen some changes, but if you are a fan of the original, there is nothing to be worried about. We also got a ten minute presentation from one of the game’s producers, where he reassured fans and quelled any qualms we may have had with the quick turnaround.
He stated that about 90 percent of the team is working on the sequel and the 10 percent that are new have brought fresh ideas. He also talked about three main things they are working on for the sequel. The first is graphical parity and improvement on all three platforms. Second was the story and dialogue. They have improved the dialogue and conversation flow, very similar to the improvements from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2.
Also in Dragon Age II, you will be playing a framed narrative that is being remembered through other characters. A story of a champion, Hawke, as he or she rises to Champion status in the world. Lastly, they listened to the fans and changes the way the actions on screen are performed. Basically, now if you hit a button, something with happen on screen. He even told us one story that a forum poster explained on their official site. He would pause the game, queue up all the actions for certain characters then leave the room, the producer obviously new that this was a problem.
After finishing up with the epic director’s cut of the trailer BioWare showed at Gamescom, we moved onto another room that had about twenty stations running either the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 version of the game. I was blown away by the 20 minute demo. Those three main focuses that the producer spoke about were evident. The conversations are now fully voiced by either your female or male version of Hawke. I chose a Rogue because it was something that they had never shown off. The action was just plain fun. I was duel wielding short swords and doing some amazingly quick combos on the enemies.
I was able to complete a couple quick quests, but the new framed narrative allowed me to play through similar sequences as remembered by the main characters. Once I was a supremely powerful character with many skills and the second time, I started leveling normally. I found this refreshing instead of the very straight forward story of the original game. As we all were told that we had finished the demo, I did not want to leave, I just wanted more and cannot wait for the March 8th, 2011 release date.
BioWare has listened to all the complaints we all had for the first Dragon Age and have created a sequel in a short amount of time that surpasses the original in many ways. Stay tuned for more information as we receive it because if you are a fan of the first, Dragon Age II will blow you away.
