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[Darklord]

So I have the options of no, no and no. Wow, fucking great choices there. What if I WANT to hear it?

 

[Nirolak]

So, 1UP put up a six page interview with Mike Laidlaw that's essentially a Dragon Age 2 postmortem.

This would probably make a good new thread, but I have to head out for a while and can't distill all the details into something more quickly readable so I will just drop it here for now.

If someone else wants to make the thread though, by all means feel free.

Note, it does have spoilers: http://www.1up.com/features/dragon-age-2-afterthoughts?pager.offset=0

I should probably put this on this page actually since I didn't realize it was post 100.

 

[Enduin]

http://i53.tinypic.com/2vv40v9.jpg[IMG]

So I have the options of no, no and no. Wow, fucking great choices there. What if I WANT to hear it?[/QUOTE]

Is that Aveline? Cause if so Im almost positive those werent the options I had when talking to her and I was able to hear about her father and how he [spoiler]made her turn the pages when he read to her as a child and did it again when he was dying and crap[/spoiler]. The choices you have are likely available cause of how youve played the game thus far and possibly treating Aveline and others in a sarcastic or rude fashion has removed the option to be kind and supportive cause thats not the type of character youve been, it would be against your nature.

 

[Johnlenham]

This game is pretty meh compared to the first. No idea how far I am as I keep running off doing side-quests because the combat is pretty fun.

 

[Darklord]

Is that Aveline? Cause if so Im almost positive those werent the options I had when talking to her and I was able to hear about her father and how he

Spoiler

made her turn the pages when he read to her as a child and did it again when he was dying and crap

. The choices you have are likely available cause of how youve played the game thus far and possibly treating Aveline and others in a sarcastic or rude fashion has removed the option to be kind and supportive cause thats not the type of character youve been, it would be against your nature.

Still should give me the option. I've been friendly with her and take the good choice most times when given it. :|


Edit: Act 2 spoilers

Spoiler

And did I just kill Sten? As in Sten from Origins? WTF. Not even any dialog? That's horse shit. I liked him.

Edit2:

Spoiler

Or...not? Is Sten just a title now?

 

[DodgyGeezerFella]

Edit: Act 2 spoilers

Spoiler

And did I just kill Sten? As in Sten from Origins? WTF. Not even any dialog? That's horse shit. I liked him.

Spoiler

No, Sten is just a rank. I thought the same thing, then i killed multiple Sten

 

[Xilium]

So I have the options of no, no and no. Wow, fucking great choices there. What if I WANT to hear it?

Bioware does that rather frequently which is why they were called hypocrites when the president came out complaining about the exact same thing in JRPGs. I remember when I had read that comment, I had just finished the

Spoiler

Saren

fight in ME1 where I was just "why even give me a choice when I'm forced to say no?"

Others on here will claim it adds personality to the character but I just think in needlessly breaks the flow of the conversation. In DAII especially, since it's already keeping track of your dominate personality, it should really just automate the tone of responses when all the choices are the same.

 

[Lostconfused]

I should probably put this on this page actually since I didn't realize it was post 100.

I'll make a thread if no one minds that I will cherry pick quotes.

 

[X-Frame]

Love my red-headed Rogue:

All thanks to @mik for PM'img me his sliders.

 

[CrazyDude]

Bioware does that rather frequently which is why they were called hypocrites when the president came out complaining about the exact same thing in JRPGs. I remember when I had read that comment, I had just finished the

Spoiler

Saren

fight in ME1 where I was just "why even give me a choice when I'm forced to say no?"

Others on here will claim it adds personality to the character but I just think in needlessly breaks the flow of the conversation. In DAII especially, since it's already keeping track of your dominate personality, it should really just automate the tone of responses when all the choices are the same.

Well that is why there seems to be less dialogue options ME2, because they made all the repeated dialogue automatic.

 

[Darklord]

So I came across

Spoiler

Alistair in battle. The game couldn't figure if my grey warden died or not(he did) so it played both lines of dialog...at the same time. Sigh. This game is just falling apart the further I get into it. Just bug after bug.

 

[Roscoe]

So I came across

Spoiler

Alistair in battle. The game couldn't figure if my grey warden died or not(he did) so it played both lines of dialog...at the same time. Sigh. This game is just falling apart the further I get into it. Just bug after bug.

WONDER OF WONDERS!

Can you give me a rough estimate on how many bugs you've encountered? I'm on the fence about buying this.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Edit2:

Spoiler

Or...not? Is Sten just a title now?

Sten was always just a title, he never gave you his real name because names aren't that big a deal to the Qunari.

 

[Darklord]

WONDER OF WONDERS!

Can you give me a rough estimate on how many bugs you've encountered? I'm on the fence about buying this.

Not tons but the few I have are really annoying. Things like companions not reacting in battles, quests not prompting properly forcing me to reload and voices not working when dialog comes up.

Also, near the end of Act 2 the auto-save just stops or someone forgot to put it in or something. Normally it happened after every eventso it's pretty good but in the battle it never did it. I died and went back like 10 waves of enemies right back to the start of the area and at the boss battle(which fucking enraged me because of my guy either not responding to moving and getting hit or refusing to attack) if you die you have to go all the way back, redo the dialog, redo the first attack, more dialog then the boss. Why the fuck can't it save at the start of the boss battle? UUUUGH.

I'd still say buy it but god damn this game is starting to piss me off because of how rushed and lazy some of it feels.

 

[RPGCrazied]

Heres my Hawke.





The game does look better with the hi-res pack and playing at 1920x1080P, max settings.

 

[branny]

So I came across

Spoiler

Alistair in battle. The game couldn't figure if my grey warden died or not(he did) so it played both lines of dialog...at the same time. Sigh. This game is just falling apart the further I get into it. Just bug after bug.

Spoiler

Mine did that, too. It's sad that it had to bug there--seeing him alive (as a direct result of me choosing to die in order to save him in Origins despite his pleas to slay the Archdemon) was one of most rewarding parts of DA2 for me.

 

[EternalGamer]

So I have the options of no, no and no. Wow, fucking great choices there. What if I WANT to hear it?

You should have been nicer to her. I got an option that said "yes" in the top right hand corner.

As far as the game goes, I'm about 15 hours in in Chapter 2 and I love it so far. I guess I can understand some of the complaints about the smaller/recycled environment but I think it helps establish a real personal feel with the places and characters, so I don't really mind it.

What I don't understand is the complaints about the narrative/dialog. It seems like people are upset that it isn't the same cliche "Great hero, go yonder and quest to kill big evil bad buy" story. This is good writing. It is subtle and the politics between the different factions and personal relationships is nuanced. Perhaps people are just too used to cliche bad writing to know something good when they encounter it.

 

[whatevermort]

You should have been nicer to her. I got an option that said "yes" in the top right hand corner.

Me too. I did enough work and got the dialogue options. Not sure why something so simple was kept away from you, though.

 

[Lostconfused]

There is a bug with regards to attack speed and damage reduction in DA2. Players will often times find themselves attacking much, much slower, or end up having Damage Reduction in the negatives.

This is related to Isabela's and Sebastian's 'friendship' talents, which give Hawke +5% attack speed and +5% damage reduction, respectively.

It seems that every time these talents are removed, they end up stripping attack speed and damage reduction off of Hawke.

In short, once you reach Friendship with Isabela and Sebastian, each time you remove them from your party, use a Maker's Sigh, or are revived after falling, you take a penalty to the respective stat. Because there is no value shown, players will not notice these effects until Hawke is attacking in slow motion or notices the negative damage reduction in the character profile.

As of now, there is no way to fix this. The only work-around is to simply not build up the friendship bar to the point where the talents activate.

Buggy as fuck.

There is a schism forming in my mind where I kind of like the idea of the game as I like all bioware RPGs. But where in reality I loathe everything about it. From how much of a broken mess it is, how rushed and unfinished and all the re used locations. I like thinking about the characters and their stories but actually playing the game is a torture that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

 

[X-Frame]

Buggy as fuck.

There is a schism forming in my mind where I kind of like the idea of the game as I like all bioware RPGs. But where in reality I loathe everything about it. From how much of a broken mess it is, how rushed and unfinished and all the re used locations. I like thinking about the characters and their stories but actually playing the game is a torture that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

That's weird because I had full Friendship with Isabela for like the whole 2nd half of my game and my Warrior Hawke was attacking in super-speed. And I was ReSpec'ing Isabela a lot, removing her, etc.

Is it for all systems? Because I have the PS3.

 

[Lostconfused]

Is it for all systems? Because I have the PS3.

I would think so. Didn't test it my self but it seems a lot of people ran into this bug.

 

[Kinspiracy]

Just a heads-up for anyone that bought the 360 or PS3 version at amazon. They're now offering a 15 dollar off your next purchase deal if you buy it. I emailed them and asked why this wasn't available to pre-order buyers as well and received an email back stating he was crediting my CC 15 dollars.

 

[subversus]

Buggy as fuck.

There is a schism forming in my mind where I kind of like the idea of the game as I like all bioware RPGs. But where in reality I loathe everything about it. From how much of a broken mess it is, how rushed and unfinished and all the re used locations. I like thinking about the characters and their stories but actually playing the game is a torture that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

yes, I feel the same. Well, it's not a torture really, but a pretty dull experience. I keep thinking: "Damn, if they still have had this, if they did this, if they went a little bit further on this and if they fixed that... argh".

 

[jackdoe]

Bioware does that rather frequently which is why they were called hypocrites when the president came out complaining about the exact same thing in JRPGs. I remember when I had read that comment, I had just finished the

Spoiler

Saren

fight in ME1 where I was just "why even give me a choice when I'm forced to say no?"

Others on here will claim it adds personality to the character but I just think in needlessly breaks the flow of the conversation. In DAII especially, since it's already keeping track of your dominate personality, it should really just automate the tone of responses when all the choices are the same.

I completely agree. On the topic of ME1, one other thing that I hated was the fact that Renegade meant xenophobic. I wanted to be a badass open minded Shepard, but Bioware really limited my choices. And it feels like I'm being limited with Dragon Age II as well.

 

[lastplayed]

DEMON HAWKE

 

[Rufus]

DEMON HAWKE

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5097/5541280538_e45fe9e475_z.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]
That happened to my companions at the end of Act 2, [spoiler]when they're looking down on Hawke as he's cradling what's left of his mother.[/spoiler] Creepy.

 

[Kritz]

So after about 30 hours I finally beat this stupid game. I did absolutely everything in Act 1, all but one collect quest in Act 2, and all the companion quests and very few other non-critical quests in Act 3.

This game is a piece of shit and I fucking hated it.

The wave based combat was terrible and reeked of filler. The boss fights were long and boring and seemed to exist only to add even more fucking filler to this game. For all the people complaining about this game being too short, holy shit, I don't think those guys know what pacing is. At the least, this game sure as fuck doesn't know when to quit. [END SPOILERS]

Spoiler

The boss battles during the end game, all like fucking eight of them, dragged on for so fucking long. Like, were they so proud of each individual boss fight they decided to just make you fight every single possible boss regardless of your decisions? And it's like, oh great I've now finished this game because this stupid fucking mage died. Oh, wait, there's another boss. And once I get her healthbar down? Well you get to fight another boss. And then another. And then it throws a bunch of little mini-bosses at you. And then you FINALLY fucking kill her - the lady who had more hitpoints than all the dragons in this game put together what the fuck

.

The dialogue options, the dialogue in and of itself - a mix of pretty terrible voice acting and script, and pretty much all the speech seemed completely fucked. It didn't help that everything was regressed into a stupid dialogue wheel, but I felt that so many times in this game when I was interacting with a character, none of the things I wanted to say would appear. In Dragon Age: Origins, I could always pick at least ONE of the several choices to fit my character. In Dragon Age 2, my character is perpetually clueless and out of mind, and can never work out super obvious plot points before they happen. I felt that absolutely every single dealing with any Qunari was made worse simply because I was given no proper choices to interact with them.

I did like most of the companions, even JRPG boy, so I'm glad there was at least something here to keep me going through the game. I felt that it kinda sucked that I saw every single one of them on my first playthrough (with the exception of the locked out DLC one), but knowing how tedious Dragon Age 2 is, I guess in the end I'm glad. By the end absolutely everyone was a friend with me, with the exception of Fenris, though [ALSO END SPOILERS]

Spoiler

by the end of the game I sided with him and the Templars, for reasons I'll get into next paragraph

. I felt that, with the exception of Fenris, every single companion could be made a friend simply by picking the top right dialogue option. That isn't any fucking fun, and in DA:O I at least felt like I had to know the character in order to manipulate them. In this game it seems all these assholes want is for me to be nice and peaceful and they'll love me.

[PRETTY MUCH SPOILER TOWN OUT THE ASS]

Spoiler

And one more thing I have to get off my back. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING MAGE IN THIS GAME IS A BLOOD MAGE WHO WANTS TO KILL ME EVEN THOUGH I SPENT THE ENTIRE FUCKING GAME HELPING THEM. I realise this is probably intentional, but holy fucking shit, every single encounter with any fucking mage resulted in these stupid fucking abomination / shade fights and nobody seemed to ever accept that I didn't want to kill them. You know what? Fuck the mages. Fuck them. They're a whole group of one dimensional assholes that do nothing more than whine and complain about everything. In Dragon Age: Origins, I felt like I at least had some control over which factions became aggressive to me. In this, fucking everyone hates me. Making my entire character's journey pointless.

I hated this game. It was terrible. It was long and boring and tedious and nothing about it was fun. Even if they turned the entire game into a cutscene with a dialogue wheel, the dialogue is so completely fucking stupid I wouldn't even care then.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to games where I shoot people. Because if I'm going to have mindless waves of enemies and shitty dialogue, I might as well have some fun combat instead of clicking on a guy, going through my hotkeys with 20 second cooldowns, and watching a massive healthbar slowly trickle down.

 

[Reluctant-Hero]

Just a heads-up for anyone that bought the 360 or PS3 version at amazon. They're now offering a 15 dollar off your next purchase deal if you buy it. I emailed them and asked why this wasn't available to pre-order buyers as well and received an email back stating he was crediting my CC 15 dollars.

What's the email address you contacted them at? I'm kind of peeved they didn't offer a credit for the "Signature Edition" I originally order last December.

 

[Gvaz]

Buggy as fuck.

There is a schism forming in my mind where I kind of like the idea of the game as I like all bioware RPGs. But where in reality I loathe everything about it. From how much of a broken mess it is, how rushed and unfinished and all the re used locations. I like thinking about the characters and their stories but actually playing the game is a torture that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

My experience with Bioware games (excluding KOTOR) is:

Playing it: Oh golly gee <3

A few days later: Man that was pretty good

A few days after that: I wish that part was better, and this part and that part...

A month or two later: God damnit Bioware, why can't you ever do these simple things...

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

My experience with Bioware games (excluding KOTOR) is:

Playing it: Oh golly gee <3

A few days later: Man that was pretty good

A few days after that: I wish that part was better, and this part and that part...

A month or two later: God damnit Bioware, why can't you ever do these simple things...

You are not alone sir.

That is the classic GAF cycle for all big games.

 

[Confidence Man]

http://www.killerbetties.com/killer_women_jennifer_hepler?page=0,3

If you could tell developers of games to make sure to put one thing in games to appeal to a broader audience which includes women, what would that one thing be?

A fast-forward button. Games almost always include a way to "button through" dialogue without paying attention, because they understand that some players don't enjoy listening to dialogue and they don't want to stop their fun. Yet they persist in practically coming into your living room and forcing you to play through the combats even if you're a player who only enjoys the dialogue. In a game with sufficient story to be interesting without the fighting, there is no reason on earth that you can't have a little button at the corner of the screen that you can click to skip to the end of the fighting.

Companies have a lot of objections, such as how to calculate loot and experience points for a player who doesn't actually play the combats, but these could be easily addressed by simply figuring out an average or minimum amount of experience for every fight and awarding that.

The biggest objection is usually that skipping the fight scenes would make the game so much shorter, but to me, that's the biggest perk. If you're a woman, especially a mother, with dinner to prepare, kids' homework to help with, and a lot of other demands on your time, you don't need a game to be 100 hours long to hold your interest -- especially if those 100 hours are primarily doing things you don't enjoy. A fast forward button would give all players -- not just women -- the same options that we have with books or DVDs -- to skim past the parts we don't like and savor the ones we do. Over and over, women complain that they don't like violence, or they don't enjoy difficult and vertigo-inducing gameplay, yet this simple feature hasn't been tried on any game I know of.

Granted, many games would have very little left if you removed the combat, but for a game like Deus Ex or Bioware's RPGs, you could take out every shred of combat and still have an entertainment experience that rivals anything you'd see in the theater or on TV.

Do you have an opinion about the current state of the industry with regard to females and gaming? If so, what is it?

I think that the biggest detriment to more varieties of games being made which appeal to women and casual gamers, is simply the fact that people who don't love games don't become game designers. A game company tends to be filled with people whose best memories come from the games they played, who spend all their time swapping war stories with other gamers, and it's not too surprising that they end up wanting to make games that recaptures those experiences. A lot of ground has been broken in other media when someone who is dissatisfied with his existing choices decides to try something new (Samuel Beckett comes to mind, as the self-professed playwright who hated drama).

I think as games become more mainstream, more people of more varied tastes will join the field, and that will include women. I think right now, though, the biggest hurdle from the point of view of the companies is how to reach women once you have a product they would like. Most women, certainly all women who aren't active gamers, can't be targeted by the typical ads in game magazines or on gaming websites. It's much, much harder to tell someone who doesn't yet know that they want your product to go out and buy it, than to convince someone who is already looking for his next gaming fix that yours will be the best.

Again, I really believe Bioware's Jade Empire would be a fantastic first RPG experience for most women, but I doubt many even saw it who weren't already fans. And because of this, Bioware is unlikely to produce any games that streamlined again, since their more hardcore audience didn't like the lack of inventory, easy combat and other features which made it so newcomer-friendly. I really believe that there is a large group of women who enjoy other genre products (from fantasy romance novels, to anime, to the Lord of the Rings movies), who would enjoy an interactive RPG story with some of the more logistical challenges removed, but I honestly don't know how to let them know it's out there.

If you can talk about it, can you tell us some about the project you are currently working on?

I am currently the Managing Editor of Dragon Age, which is Bioware's "next-generation Baldur's Gate in an evolving world."

I don't even know what to say. Old interview but someone mentioned skipping the combat and just playing through the dialogue.

 

[K.Sabot]

What the fuck ending, what the fuck.

 

[Vamphuntr]

What the fuck ending, what the fuck.

Achievement unlocked : Realized that next to nothing happened and the game is only an epilogue for part III.

 

[K.Sabot]

Achievement unlocked : Realized that next to nothing happened and the game is only an epilogue for part III.

Achievement Unlocked: Worst Bioware game in history. Yes, worse than Sonic.

 

[GillianSeed79]

You know one small thing that really bugs me is the inability to equip companions with armor. It makes about 80 percent of the loot pointless. I've got all this great armor stockpiled and no one to equip it. One of the little fun parts of Origins was stumbling upon an awesome piece of gear or getting item set bonuses for full sets of armor.

 

[Jerk]

So after about 30 hours I finally beat this stupid game. I did absolutely everything in Act 1, all but one collect quest in Act 2, and all the companion quests and very few other non-critical quests in Act 3.

This game is a piece of shit and I fucking hated it.

The wave based combat was terrible and reeked of filler. The boss fights were long and boring and seemed to exist only to add even more fucking filler to this game. For all the people complaining about this game being too short, holy shit, I don't think those guys know what pacing is. At the least, this game sure as fuck doesn't know when to quit. [END SPOILERS]

Spoiler

The boss battles during the end game, all like fucking eight of them, dragged on for so fucking long. Like, were they so proud of each individual boss fight they decided to just make you fight every single possible boss regardless of your decisions? And it's like, oh great I've now finished this game because this stupid fucking mage died. Oh, wait, there's another boss. And once I get her healthbar down? Well you get to fight another boss. And then another. And then it throws a bunch of little mini-bosses at you. And then you FINALLY fucking kill her - the lady who had more hitpoints than all the dragons in this game put together what the fuck

.

The dialogue options, the dialogue in and of itself - a mix of pretty terrible voice acting and script, and pretty much all the speech seemed completely fucked. It didn't help that everything was regressed into a stupid dialogue wheel, but I felt that so many times in this game when I was interacting with a character, none of the things I wanted to say would appear. In Dragon Age: Origins, I could always pick at least ONE of the several choices to fit my character. In Dragon Age 2, my character is perpetually clueless and out of mind, and can never work out super obvious plot points before they happen. I felt that absolutely every single dealing with any Qunari was made worse simply because I was given no proper choices to interact with them.

I did like most of the companions, even JRPG boy, so I'm glad there was at least something here to keep me going through the game. I felt that it kinda sucked that I saw every single one of them on my first playthrough (with the exception of the locked out DLC one), but knowing how tedious Dragon Age 2 is, I guess in the end I'm glad. By the end absolutely everyone was a friend with me, with the exception of Fenris, though [ALSO END SPOILERS]

Spoiler

by the end of the game I sided with him and the Templars, for reasons I'll get into next paragraph

. I felt that, with the exception of Fenris, every single companion could be made a friend simply by picking the top right dialogue option. That isn't any fucking fun, and in DA:O I at least felt like I had to know the character in order to manipulate them. In this game it seems all these assholes want is for me to be nice and peaceful and they'll love me.

[PRETTY MUCH SPOILER TOWN OUT THE ASS]

Spoiler

And one more thing I have to get off my back. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING MAGE IN THIS GAME IS A BLOOD MAGE WHO WANTS TO KILL ME EVEN THOUGH I SPENT THE ENTIRE FUCKING GAME HELPING THEM. I realise this is probably intentional, but holy fucking shit, every single encounter with any fucking mage resulted in these stupid fucking abomination / shade fights and nobody seemed to ever accept that I didn't want to kill them. You know what? Fuck the mages. Fuck them. They're a whole group of one dimensional assholes that do nothing more than whine and complain about everything. In Dragon Age: Origins, I felt like I at least had some control over which factions became aggressive to me. In this, fucking everyone hates me. Making my entire character's journey pointless.

I hated this game. It was terrible. It was long and boring and tedious and nothing about it was fun. Even if they turned the entire game into a cutscene with a dialogue wheel, the dialogue is so completely fucking stupid I wouldn't even care then.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to games where I shoot people. Because if I'm going to have mindless waves of enemies and shitty dialogue, I might as well have some fun combat instead of clicking on a guy, going through my hotkeys with 20 second cooldowns, and watching a massive healthbar slowly trickle down.

I sense much rage in you.

I like.

 

[Kinspiracy]

What's the email address you contacted them at? I'm kind of peeved they didn't offer a credit for the "Signature Edition" I originally order last December.

Go here and click on Contact Us under General Support. Then choose the order you made, follow the questions and finally choose email. Just tell them what your concern is and they'll respond pretty quickly.

 

[Infinity]

You know one small thing that really bugs me is the inability to equip companions with armor. It makes about 80 percent of the loot pointless. I've got all this great armor stockpiled and no one to equip it. One of the little fun parts of Origins was stumbling upon an awesome piece of gear or getting item set bonuses for full sets of armor.

Okay that's just retarded. I'm on my second play-through of DA:O, enjoying a slew of mods, and can't imagine what it would be like to not be able to hand gear off to other party members.

I mean, WTF were they thinking?

 

[Rufus]

I mean, WTF were they thinking?

1UP: For companions, while people tend to like their banter, I'm noticing a common sentiment: That people are a bit sad that they can't outfit their companion's armor anymore -- they can only upgrade it -- and it'd doubly odd that you can configure weapons and accessories, but not armor. What's behind that decision?

ML: Well, really, what we were looking for was the idea of stronger and more iconic appearances for the followers. Ones that could change over time, like Aveline, serve as a great example of story-driven progression; her role in the world is, in a lot of ways, influencing her look. It also seemed something that would address a concern that we had coming out of Origins, where the vast majority of screenshots would have the party members looking almost identical. And so, you would lose the distinctiveness of stuff like the Chantry robes that Leliana wore when you first met her; or seeing Morrigan in any kind of Chantry robe just felt wrong to us. Or worse was seeing Wynne in any of those "of the Witch" outfits.

So we looked that and asked ourselves if there's a way to give our companions a more distinct silhouette, or more distinct body shape or stance or pose or equipment so they stood out. So yes, I do think customization is really important to characters and followers. So we explored options like upgrading them or being able to increase their runeslots so that you can still interact with them to alter things like fire resistance and so on -- in a way, you can change, and you still had the amulets and the gems and so forth. Is it something we've seen a lot of feedback on? Absolutely. Is it something we're going to look at in the future? Sure -- nothing is set in stone. But what I do think was the success of it was, when you think of Isabela, you don't think of "girl in generic leather armor." When you think of Aveline, you think of her in her Captain's Plate, and I think that gives the characters a bit more of an imprint in the space they occupy mentally. But I don't think it's something we'll definitely pursue in the future -- it's something we're going to evaluate and see if there's a way we can get the best of both worlds. I certainly understand the urge to outfit your characters. And we'd also have to look at the way it can impact the looting mechanics.

http://www.1up.com/features/dragon-age-2-afterthoughts?pager.offset=3

 

[Kritz]

You know one small thing that really bugs me is the inability to equip companions with armor. It makes about 80 percent of the loot pointless. I've got all this great armor stockpiled and no one to equip it. One of the little fun parts of Origins was stumbling upon an awesome piece of gear or getting item set bonuses for full sets of armor.

HEY DO YOU LIKE PLAYING ROUGE? WE HOPE SO.

OH HERE'S A BUNCH OF ARMOUR THAT ONLY WARRIORS CAN EQUIP.

HAVE FUN!

 

[Songbird]

So I've completed Origins and want to do as much as possible before importing into II, but I've hit a brick wall with Awakening. It's just me (mage), Anders and Oghren and I'm having no fun whatsoever... Does anything interesting in the story actually get imported from Awakening, Golems too? I'm wanting to just jump straight to Witch Hunt and get to playing the sequel like I want to.

 

[Edgeward]

HEY DO YOU LIKE PLAYING ROUGE? WE HOPE SO.

OH HERE'S A BUNCH OF ARMOUR THAT ONLY WARRIORS CAN EQUIP.

HAVE FUN!

Seriously why even allow the game to sell me or reward me shit I can't ever equip? And I swear I've only seen like 5 different kinds of rogue armor.

 

[Mideon]

Looks like I'm the only one that likes not having to mess around with equipment for my group. I pretty much only care about Hawke I auto level everyone else so it works for me.

 

[HadesGigas]

Seriously why even allow the game to sell me or reward me shit I can't ever equip? And I swear I've only seen like 5 different kinds of rogue armor.

There doesn't really seem to be more of one kind of armor than the other to me. It just feels so bad because you get armor for all three and only 1/3 is usable.

One thing that was really disappointing though was that the various bonus DLC armors didn't change depending on your class. Would that have been so hard to do? You don't access them until you get to Kirkwall, so surely the game could have checked that and put gear you can actually equip in that chest.

 

[impirius]

Just completed the game. I really wish this game had a few extra months of bug testing and map creation. I experienced double-digit freezes (PS3 version), and at least three quests were impossible to complete. Merrill's romance just popped up out of nowhere, and her Act III quest was a TIME PARADOX.

Spoiler

Despite the whole "choose a side" direction the story took, it seemed like everyone just wanted to kill my party anyway.

 

[Somtaaw]

Question: the choices you make in DAO have some impact in DA2?

 

[Count of Monte Sawed-Off]

Question: the choices you make in DAO have some impact in DA2?

A couple of minor things, but nothing exciting.

 

[Krispy Killa v3]

Woa, talk about difficulty spike. That damn giant rock wraith is hard! I'm not sure I can beat him without a healer, and I refuse to go below Normal setting. He crushed me twice and I didn't even gave him past half way

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

Question: the choices you make in DAO have some impact in DA2?

If you sided with the werewolfs, there is a small quest in sundermount.

If you sided with a specific dwarven noble family, there will be another bigger, but still small quest.

Stuff like that. Maybe 1 or two more examples like that with some dialogue changes.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

Woa, talk about difficulty spike. That damn giant rock wraith is hard! I'm not sure I can beat him without a healer, and I refuse to go below Normal setting. He crushed me twice and I didn't even gave him past half way

Dude, let it go. i felt the same way, but the frustration of retrying it 20 times isnt worth it. There are no achievements tied to difficulty thank god.