Monday, 21 March 2011

Dragon Age 2

The game centres around the story of Hawke who has survived the Darkspawns destruction of Lothering (For those of you not familiar with Dragon Age Origins Lothering was a village from the aforementioned title) and will ultimately rise to be the Champion of Kirkwall. Told in the same story format as the previous offerings from Bioware, Varric, one of Hawke's companions, tells Hawke's story to Cassandra Pentaghast, a Chantry Seeker and decisions made in the game by the player determine the story for a decade of game time promising to change Thedas forever. One of the factors I am looking forward to is that the choices that the player made in the previous two games (Origins and Awakenings) will reflect in the world of Dragon Age 2 should you decide to import them that is.

The story is non-linear and is mainly based on the players choices throughout the game. We can expect the same romances to play a part of the game as with the previous titles and there are new spells for you to play with. One of the biggest changes (or not) is to the combat system. if you liked the way the previous games played you can still apparently still play the game with this control method. This was not apparent in the demo, however as you now have the chance to "fight like a spartan" which actually means pressing the A (Xbox 360) over and over or occasionally using the X, Y or B depending on the special attacks or spells you wish to cast. Having only played the demo I can say that I like some of the changes, but the combat method in the demo was not for me. I couldn't figure out how to implement the old control method and I really hope they do include it.

There is a new dialogue wheel, a la Mass Effect 1 and 2 which really works, it makes for a great feel of fluidity when taking part in the cut scenes and you know how the response will go down based on an icon next to the comment.

The game itself is set in a new area of of the Dragon Age world known as Free Marches, an area mentioned in Dragon Age: Awakenings although you never saw it. This time your character has a voice which is one of the reasons your character is human.