Sure, I would too. But the Bioware points system was okay with Valve until it wasn’t. Valve changed the rules that took EA games off Steam, not EA.
Valve can easily change their policy since EA DLC is hosted by Origin, not Steam and there’s no money lost from Valve to act as the merchant and take their usual store cut. Steam wasn’t hosting the DLC which was sort of the whole point of the conflict – Valve insists that if you sell a game through Steam, you have to sell any available DLC for it through Steam as well.
This sounds amazing! Maybe a little too ambitious. I suspect when dead lines start to loom, things will get cut (or will get shunted to DLC so you have to rebuy to get the features).
I loved DA:O and, unpopular I know, I liked DA 2. It had its faults but I enjoyed the game and actually appreciated the smaller scale as a change of pace. I had no idea this title was this far along so thanks!
I think if it wasn’t for the ludicrous re-use of areas and the narrative issues (mainly the frustratingly inevitable, threadbare ending, and the languid storytelling approach to the different chapter beat points) I think I would have liked DA2 a lot more.
My only other issue was the “anime-zation” of the combat. I don’t mind streamlining, so long it’s about improving your interaction with the mechanics, not dumbing them down. Making combat action more responsive is good. Making my guy disappear into thin air, re-appear 100 feet in the air behind the enemy, kick said enemy and then have said enemy explode into blobs of body parts… well, that’s just ridiculous. It’s almost like they were worried we were all suffering from ADD and they figured they better turn this into COD: medieval otherwise we might fall asleep.
DA2 wasn’t an MMO, having a few tactical options and abilities is fine because you are controlling a party, not just a single character.
You just walked in to a KKK meeting and said: “Am I the only one that likes black people?”
Only without the racist overtones, but with all the hate intact
So, continuing to watch the demo and reading interviews elsewhere, I’m back to being positive about the game.
Yeah, the combat they showed was atrocious, the whole “get over here” chain thing that pulls an enemy closer is something out of a crappy action button masher like Darksiders. It completely clashes with their stated intent to make the game more “Realistic”.
However, it seems like this is just something that is viable on consoles at normal difficulty. On PC, tactical view, strategic party based combat becomes more important, and on hard and higher difficulty, becomes mandatory in order to survive. If that’s true, I’m happy. I don’t care if there’s an option in there to keep the button mashers happy, so long as I can have my grand tactical RPG as well.
Everything else, not dealing with combat looked pretty damn good too. The dialogue wheel actually shows exactly what the character will say with a button press. It looks like choice and consequence continue to be important (DA2 not withstanding) and the massive open areas filled with nooks and crannies to explore have me very excited.
If DA2 came out when it did, was made by a mid-tier Dev like Cd Project Red, and was Called: “City of Slaves: The shadows of Kirkwalll”.
It would have been a great game, without too much to complain about, except, as you mentioned, the repetitive areas, and for me, at least, the issues with the narrative.
I would have called it a Bioware Clone.
However, it was called Dragon Age 2 and it was from friggin Bioware. The repetitive areas are inexcusable, the lack of choice and consequence in the end, was inexcusable, the utter lack of interesting side quests, and interesting loot, was inexcusable, the lack of customization for your main character and your companions, was inexcusable, the button mashing, shallow combat with endless waves of enemies being choppered in, was INEXCUSABLE.
It felt like a stab at the genre from a low/mid tier developer, not a work of the caliber we expected from the likes of the greatest crafters of Western RPG’s since, like, ever.
I’m hoping this title is return to form for these guys.
No, it wouldn’t have been a great game. DA2 was shit at just about every level. The story, the pacing, the dialog, the gameplay, the area design, it was all awful. That it was the successor to Dragon Age: Origins was just a dingleberry cherry on the shit sundae.
OK, so again, faith restored by new footage. This is another angle at the previous footage, but this part is actually not shown in the link above. IT’s combat using the tactical view.
