Dragon Age 2 - Interview with Fernando Melo @ RPS

[aries100]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun interviewed Fernando Melo from Bioware about the upcoming Legacy DLC. A few samples, the first being about what the Legacy DLC can and can't do:

We really had to go back to the storyboard after the launch of Dragon Age II, to take in the feedback and figure out, how do make our content better?” Melo says. He warns that the scope of what the studio can achieve in a single DLC installment is limited, but “hopefully, people see this not as everything we’re doing [to respond to feedback], but rather as a first step toward addressing some of their points.

A quote then about the combat:

One of the main points Legacy is designed to address: “People wanted to feel they had more tactically challenging combat, where they had to draw on their abilities a lot more and use their parties more effectively,” Melo says. To that end, the darkspawn and other creatues that populate Legacy won’t just materialize in front of the party or “pop out of walls”, but are set up to give the player more taxing combat situations, including ambushes.

Finally a bit about what Legacy reveals:

For players who enjoy the lore of Dragon Age, they’re going to have a very rich treat here, not just in terms of the main arc of the quest, but a lot of other side content regarding Malcolm Hawke, as well as being able to tap into some of the other things that we had revealed so far through Origins and some of the other DLCs,” Melo adds. “It reveals a lot more of some of the central pillars of what Dragon Age is all about.”

Thanks to My Member is Long on the Bioware DA2 forums for finding this.
More information.

 

[Grandor Dragon]

I am playing Awakening for the first time. I got it in a Steam Dragon Age bundle, together with the whole DA1 package and DA2. I only played about 8 hours of DA2 before starting Awakening, and it's amazing to see how much better Awakening is compared to the sequel. I feel like I am in full control of the Warden and her actions. In DA2, whenever I click a dialogue choice I have little idea of how Hawke will react. You can surely blame the dialogue system, but somehow DA2 feels a lot worse than Mass Effect, where it generally worked.

I don't need to mention how superior combat and the loot system is to DA2. Despite the system being flawed, Awakening has better loot than the main campaign, and is much more interesting than DA2. Damn it Bioware.

 

[Thrasher]

I just bought Awakening on Amazon - boxed for about $10. Looking forward to playing it soon!

 

[Prelapsarian]

I hope this load of crap dies with this post.
(Please, please...)

 

[Grandor Dragon]

Finished Awakening and consider it to be a very enjoyable experience.

 

[JemyM]

I thought Awakening was pretty good, even if it had a couple of major gamebreaking bugs such as annihilating my inventory. Also there were several NPC's who acted like they didn't know me when they should have.

I haven't bought Dragon Age II yet. In past, I preordered Bioware titles when possible. I have no intention of even bothering, I will probably not deal with it until perhaps next summer or if DA3 is coming with a return of the stuff they removed from DA1 (proper dialogue, focus on tactical gameplay).