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Dragon Age II |OT| The Revenge of Shit Mountain

M

mik

mik is unbeatable
My Hawke's name is gonna be

hudson_l.jpg
 
D

dekjo

Member
Only played the PC version of Origins, so am disappointed when I watch the PC stream on justintv that the combat seems so different. But the fighting does remind me a little of KOTOR, which I liked back in the day. Maybe at some point I can get over the fact that it isn't Origins combat style and enjoy it for being KOTORish.
 
GraveRobberX

GraveRobberX

Platinum Trophy: Learned to Shit While Upright Again.
Hawkey Hawke and the Funky Bunch

Hawke in white boxers + sword, his 3 crew members all decked out in Black (Oakland/LA) Raiders gear =D

Edit: Hawkesaw Jim Duggan...Hoooooooooooooooooooo!!!! DA2 DA2 DA2 (USA x3)....Tough Guy!

He's already Mo-Capped BioWare's face features, who knew?:

HacksawJimDuggan.jpg
 
Riposte

Riposte

Member
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
I can't take it! That Escapist review is so goddamn bad! I mean, not even considering the quality of the game itself, it is such a trite piece of shit. Goddamn! It is like I am reading a 14 year old writing pretending to be a shitty videogame critic. Someone who feels the need to explain every little bit about the game without really giving any criticism other than weaving in "I like it!" in the descriptions. So uninspired. I know people probably talked about it, but I can't help myself. I need to get this stuff out of my system. (This is a perfect example of why game critics are garbage.)

Like many people, I moved to a new place after college. I didn't know a soul in New York City or how to get around, and just buying groceries was an impossible task. By the time I left ten years later, I knew that town like nobody's business. I wasn't anyone special, but if you dropped me anywhere in the five boroughs, I could tell you a memory, which corner to avoid, and where to get a slice - the kind of familiarity you only get after exploring a location until it feels like home. That's what Kirkwall will feel like after playing Dragon Age II.
Click to expand...

This whole paragraph is so goddamn pretentious! Like "knowing where things are at" really means anything! Like people don't encounter this same phenomenon in every single hub-based game. For example: in ANY MMO! Why do I need to know about your history in New York? Why are even comparing your 10 year history in New York to a couple of hours in a videogame to begin with!?

After the bombastic location-hopping in Origins, it's refreshing to experience such a personal story and become emotionally connected to the struggles of a single community.
Click to expand...

What! What exactly was "bombastic" about location hopping in Origins? Given the nature of videogames, what does that even mean? Moreover, is it really refreshing to stay in one hub? Did you REALLY get emotionally connected to the struggles of your quest-givers? It is not like the rest of the paragraph really said anything incredible about the game.

In fact, like Uncharted 2 and Empire Strikes Back, Dragon Age II is the rare sequel that improves upon its already excellent predecessor.
Click to expand...

GAH! Like you picked two extremely popular sequels you like(from two different mediums, even) and said yeah this is a good sequel too! To what end?! Also is it really rare, in videogames, for the sequel to not improve upon the (already excellent) predecessor? No thought went into this, but the random ass name-dropping of Empires Strikes Back should tell you that.

The dialogue options inspired by BioWare's work on Mass Effect allow you to roleplay the voiced character of Hawke however you want. Thanks to handy symbols in the radial menu, you can be a snippy prig, a righteous hero, or a wiseass depending on your mood and the situation presented to you.
Click to expand...

...any color you want as long as it's black (and two other shades of black).

(I know this sounds more like a diss against the game, but the dude is seriously dumb for basically phrasing it this way.)

I love this system, because it encourages you to make solid roleplaying decisions early. If you waffle and try to make nice when you actually can't stand Anders and his heavy-handed "Mages rock!" political stance, then you get no benefit at all. If I've learned anything from a lifetime of RPGs, mechanics that support storytelling and vice versa are the goal of all good game design and Dragon Age II manages this perfectly.
Click to expand...

But... wha? How is restricting strategic rewards helping storytelling? It reduces the importance of RP.

BioWare is one of the few companies that uses the advanced computing power available to modern game designers to let you actually play a role.
Click to expand...

What does this meannnnnn?!


After reading all that, I still don't really understand why he likes the game. I don't know why DA2 has a better dialogue system than most games. I don't really understand why I should think the combat is good. I just know he likes everything about it and every change made from Dragon Age Origins. I also know he is an idiot, so that doesn't help me either.

This 5/5 means absolutely nothing. I need to check out the other review...
 
R

RyanDG

Member
Riposte said:
After reading all that, I still don't really understand why he likes the game. I don't know why DA2 has a better dialogue system than most games. I don't really understand why I should think the combat is good. I just know he likes everything about it and every change made from Dragon Age Origins. I also know he is an idiot, so that doesn't help me either.

This 5/5 means absolutely nothing. I need to check out the other review...
Click to expand...

And this is part of the reason why I really feel the review was written off of Bioware's PR checklist of things to put in the review.
 
M

MechaX

Member
I'm not too worried about that Escapist review. If the game is really bad, then Yahtzee will rip it a new one in Zero Punctuation.
 
Riposte

Riposte

Member
The T in T.Hawk doesn't mean Thomas...

Note: When developers pay strict attention to stuff like metacritic average, they paying attention to reviews which give out 100s and 50s which are written as poorly as the one I just raged at.
 
R

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
This is one of the funniest OPs I've ever read. Great job, Evilore. The minimum requirements and the PR quotes caught me totally off guard.
 
Z

Zeal

Banned
Like many people, I moved to a new place after college. I didn't know a soul in New York City or how to get around, and just buying groceries was an impossible task. By the time I left ten years later, I knew that town like nobody's business. I wasn't anyone special, but if you dropped me anywhere in the five boroughs, I could tell you a memory, which corner to avoid, and where to get a slice - the kind of familiarity you only get after exploring a location until it feels like home. That's what Kirkwall will feel like after playing Dragon Age II.
Click to expand...

that right there.

that's about the dumbest shit i have ever read, anywhere. the reviewer of this game has never left his grandmother's basement, and he is 46.

edit: just to keep up the luls, i'll ask this: when you're in new york, does every building or coffee shop you walk into have the same repeatable textures on every wall? for example, do you see three or four of the same paintings repeated and spaced out to create a sense of deja-vu ? moreover, is every building a recycled cut and paste job of the one you just visited, albeit flipped around to create the illusion of diversity?

seriously, what is he even saying? comparing a poorly designed, fantasyland videogame location like Kirkwall to NY? what does this even mean.
 
-tetsuo-

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
Kinspiracy said:
And they gave Origins an 80.
Click to expand...

They gave the PC version a 9.

Like many people, I moved to a new place after college. I didn't know a soul in New York City or how to get around, and just buying groceries was an impossible task. By the time I left ten years later, I knew that town like nobody's business. I wasn't anyone special, but if you dropped me anywhere in the five boroughs, I could tell you a memory, which corner to avoid, and where to get a slice - the kind of familiarity you only get after exploring a location until it feels like home. That's what Kirkwall will feel like after playing Dragon Age II.
Click to expand...

This is the kind of familiarity you get after playing any area for like 30 minutes.
 
L

Lasthope106

Member
DiatribeEQ said:
I'm sure all the PC owners have already downloaded the high rez texture pack that Bioware put out today? Yes?
Click to expand...

Why isn't anyone discussing the requirements for the higher resolution textures? A 1GB DX11 card to experience slightly better textures - ha - you have to be kidding me!
 
L

Lostconfused

Member
Nope, I got nothing.

Guess I am just a dull and boring person since I can't come up with some kind of clever and original name that in combination with the last name of Hawke would make some kind of a joke so everyone would know that I am enjoying this game ironically.
Lasthope106 said:
Why isn't anyone discussing the requirements for the higher resolution textures? A 1GB DX11 card to experience slightly better textures - ha - you have to be kidding me!
Click to expand...
But most cards on the market are DX10 capable now and DX11 is backwards compatible. So you can just launch the game in DX11 renderer and still have access to all the high res textures you want.
 
K

Kinspiracy

Banned
Zeal said:
that right there.

that's about the dumbest shit i have ever read, anywhere. the reviewer of this game has never left his grandmother's basement, and he is 46.

edit: just to keep up the luls, i'll ask this: when you're in new york, does every building or coffee shop you walk into have the same repeatable textures on every wall? for example, do you see three or four of the same paintings repeated and spaced out to create a sense of deja-vu ? moreover, is every building a recycled cut and paste job of the one you just visited, albeit flipped around to create the illusion of diversity?

seriously, what is he even saying? comparing a poorly designed, fantasyland videogame location like Kirkwall to NY? what does this even mean.
Click to expand...

I can't tell if you're truly serious. His point was a simple one. And yet it appears to have flown right on over your head. Kirkwall = big city, often confusing to find your way around at first. Kirkwall = extremely familiar and feels like home after spending the game playing in it. His intent was to convey the point that the game takes place mainly in one large city and by the end of the game you feel like you know it like the back of your hand. Yeah, I get that people who want(ed) to hate the game are going to hate every positive word said about it, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with what he wrote in that paragraph.
 
N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Lasthope106 said:
Why isn't anyone discussing the requirements for the higher resolution textures? A 1GB DX11 card to experience slightly better textures - ha - you have to be kidding me!
Click to expand...
Actually, apparently you don't.

BioWare said:
Just to clarify that you do NOT need to have a DX11 capable GPU to use the high resolution textures. To get the full benefit you need to run the game using the DirectX 11 renderer, which is backwards compatible with DX10. So even if you have a DX10 GPU (and Windows Vista SP2 or Windows 7) you'll still be able to run the game using the DirectX 11 renderer.

If you can only play using the DirectX 9 renderer you'll still get a small benefit out of the texture pack. In particular certain character textures will look nicer, but most of the benefits on the environments don't apply to DX9. The reason for this is technical, and it has to do with the maximum texture sizes allowed by the DX9 vs DX11 APIs.

----

Even if you have less than 1 gig of vram, by all means go ahead and experiment with the download. At worst case the game will run very slowly when hi-res textures are enabled, but if that happens it's easy to turn the hi-res textures off from the video options menu. The amount of the slowdown could vary depending on where you are in the game and how much memory exactly you have.

We've added the 1GB as a guideline so people know what kind of hardware will support this glitch free, but if you're willing to get some performance impact you should still download the texture pack and experiment with it.
Click to expand...
Source: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6393065&lf=8
 
J

JambiBum

Member
Lostconfused said:
Nope, I got nothing.

Guess I am just a dull and boring person since I can't come up with some kind of clever and original name that in combination with the last name of Hawke would make some kind of a joke so everyone would know that I am enjoying this game ironically.

But most cards on the market are DX10 capable now and DX11 is backwards compatible. So you can just launch the game in DX11 renderer and still have access to all the high res textures you want.
Click to expand...

Lost Hawke////Confused Hawke...
 
Riposte

Riposte

Member
Kinspiracy said:
I can't tell if you're truly serious. His point was a simple one. And yet it appears to have flown right on over your head. Kirkwall = big city, often confusing to find your way around at first. Kirkwall = extremely familiar and feels like home after spending the game playing in it. His intent was to convey the point that the game takes place mainly in one large city and by the end of the game you feel like you know it like the back of your hand. Yeah, I get that people who want(ed) to hate the game are going to hate every positive word said about it, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with what he wrote in that paragraph.
Click to expand...

lol. Dude, the writer's entire paragraph is a waste of brain power. You could start up dozens upon dozens reviews the very same way. Why is he even making a big deal out of a city hub? Bringing New York makes it sound even more pretentious.
 
M

MechaX

Member
I've been watching the stream and that was probably the worst side quest I have ever seen.

"Hey, let's go kill these outcasts for like 30 minutes so I can be in a bargaining position to sell my product."
"Okay king horn guy, we've killed the outcasts. Can we barter now?"
"No. Get out."
*QUEST COMPLETED*
 
Diatribe1974

Diatribe1974

Member
Lasthope106 said:
Why isn't anyone discussing the requirements for the higher resolution textures? A 1GB DX11 card to experience slightly better textures - ha - you have to be kidding me!
Click to expand...

Dude, I might not have a DX11 card (DX10 here), but at least my card has had 1gig of ram on it for the last 3-4 years. Folks who don't have at least 1gig of ram these days have no excuse to be honest. New cards these days (here's how they rank)

512 meg cards: Budget cards
768 meg cards: Similar to their 512meg siblings, but the price increase is a slap to the face
1 gig cards: Same cards as their 768 brothers, but only slightly more expensive, but the price/performance vs. their 512 meg cousins in games with heavy texture work is worth the purchase every time.

Prices for example:

Cheap DX11 1gig card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125353
Price: $179
Are there better cards out there? Yup. Sure are. What does a card like this give you? Everything you just scoffed at: DX11 graphics & 1gig of ram on a single card. Double it up for another 180bucks and go Crossfire for even more performance.
 
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