Dragon Age 2 - PAX Hands-on @ VG247, Filefront

[Dhruin]

Some PAX impressions of Dragon Age 2 from a couple of sites - as seems to be usual, it's the console versions on display. From VG247:

So, when this “framed narrative” popped up, my fight with the demon monsters zoomed out a bit, and you could see an older looking couple chatting to one another in the cutscene.
The man was telling the story about me fighting the demon I saw before the scene pulled me out. The lady told the guy his version of the story was “bullshit,” as he was telling it completely wrong. Thus ensued a light argument over my origins, who I was, where I was going, and so on, before zooming back into my character’s story.

...and from Filefront:

What’s different? Well, it basically just feels like you’re kicking way more ass when you fight. Dragon Age 2 has been given a dose of God of War, so to speak. You can manually attack with “A,” which is much more visceral.

More information.

 

[Grandor Dragon]

At Gamescom, DA2 was also shown on a couple of PCs.

 

[Anderson]

Can't believe we've got hands-on impressions of this game already. That's really quick.

Makes sense to me that they're showing the console version. That's where most of the complaints and problems were last time, and they need to show the improvements.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

So, when this “framed narrative” popped up, my fight with the demon monsters zoomed out a bit, and you could see an older looking couple chatting to one another in the cutscene.
The man was telling the story about me fighting the demon I saw before the scene pulled me out. The lady told the guy his version of the story was “bullshit,” as he was telling it completely wrong. Thus ensued a light argument over my origins, who I was, where I was going, and so on, before zooming back into my character’s story.

I wrote basically the same, although in other words and quickly hacked down late an evening here.

 

[DeepO]

My only complaint is the wait. March is quite a few months away.

It’s just sad we have to wait until March 2011 for the game to hit store shelves.

If anything, the supposed release date rather reeks of a half-cooked product.
And judging by my experience with Awakening and what I´ve heard about some DLCs, Bioware hasn´t been into polishing lately either.

 

[JDR13]

Dragon Age 2 has been given a dose of God of War, so to speak. You can manually attack with “A,” which is much more visceral.

This is not something I wanted to hear...

 

[DPB]

This is not something I wanted to hear…

That's for the consoles, the PC version is still auto-attack only.

 

[JemyM]

If anything, the supposed release date rather reeks of a half-cooked product.
And judging by my experience with Awakening and what I´ve heard about some DLCs, Bioware hasn´t been into polishing lately either.

Overlord and Lair of the Shadow Broker are polished. The Dragon Age DLC's have been polished and Ruins of Amgarrak was actually a thought through module with new content and gameplay (just not as fun and immersive that the game could have been).

 

[DeepO]

Overlord and Lair of the Shadow Broker are polished. The Dragon Age DLC's have been polished and Ruins of Amgarrak was actually a thought through module with new content and gameplay (just not as fun and immersive that the game could have been).

Yeah, the DLC part of my comment was a disaster . I was having only DA DLCs and their heavy reliance on reused assets in mind.
I´ve played through all ME2 ones and they were pretty good and quite bug-free.

Development of DA2 definitely seems to be affected by limited time and budget and not enough resources allocated to gameplay improvements.
There´s this (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/4715441/1) QA thread by DA2 lead gameplay designer and a lot of changes sound arbitrary/silly/etc.