Dragon Age 2 - News Roundup #6

There's a good chance you've got some Dragon Age 2 fatigue, so skip over this collection if you've had enough. We've got a handful of miscellaneous items and then I'll list some additional reviews.

Archmage Silver writes my newsbit the other day about 19 in-game items was short a few - he has a list of 26 in a post at the Dragon Age 2 forums.

BioWare has released a launch trailer, which you can find at Blue's.

IGN has a bunch of stuff that I haven't  checked out because of the (lack of) quality in their articles lately. They have a Dragon Age 2 Girlfight Podcast that apparently has five girls discussing the game, a video on easy Achievements, an Inon Zur music video interview, and an article on Familiar Faces.

BioWare says you can now buy the soundtrack.

G4TV with another Felicia Day thing.

Gamasutra has a blog post on Dragon Age: Origins (yes, different game but I don't want a new post) about the lack of life in the gameworld:

With enemies, it was the same. My standard tactic of dungeon-crawling (most people’s, I suppose) is to put the rest of the party on hold, then have a rogue – my main character – sneak ahead to disarm any traps and scout for opposition. Enemies can be found standing alone or in groups, but they do not move or chat or do anything to suggest they are “real” people (or spiders, werewolves, whatever). They only react when the party comes close enough to trigger a reaction; a rogue may often sneak up behind a motionless enemy and kill him. But sometimes a strange thing happens: when the rogue crosses an invisible trigger, a nearby door will open and a group of enemies will pour forth; but they do not see my sneaky rogue, so they will just stand in a huddle in the middle of the corridor. They do not look around, they do not search for the source of the sound that presumably alerted them, nothing. Until I throw a bomb at them.

On to reviews. I'll start with a positive and more negative comparison.

The "original" 94% PC Gamer magazine review is online. The "best RPGcombat ever", apparently:

Dragon Age 2 does it right. It’s still an RPG epic, it still takes upwards of 50 hours to finish. It’s still got a deep, complex combat system, and it’s still got a well-defined supporting cast. But it’s also an RPG that wears its mythology proudly, confident in its goal of charting the rise of a complete and utter badass. You.

From a site called Idealo:

All this isn’t to say that DA2 doesn’t have it’s moments. Some of the characters, quests and enemies are just as epic as ever. Just that in comparison to Origins, Dragon Age 2 feels like a real step back. It’s still a good RPG, but those who were expecting Origins part 2, might be disappointed. Perhaps BioWare will deliver some DLC to improve things. However, we can’t help but feel that the production time for DA2 simply wasn’t long enough to make a truly worth sequel.

• Giant Bomb Quick Look
• Games On Net - 4/5
• Bit-tech - 7/10
• CNet - 4/5