Dragon Effect 2.

[Hassat Hunter]

Basically, the player character is now going to be human (and only a human, no elf or dwarf) with the last name Hawke, he/she is refugee and he/she will be fully voiced.

Stringfellow?

Do I get my own super black helicopter? That would be nice. Who cares it doesn't fit the age...

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

Basically, the player character is now going to be human (and only a human, no elf or dwarf) with the last name Hawke, he/she is refugee and he/she will be fully voiced.

Stringfellow?

Do I get my own super black helicopter? That would be nice. Who cares it doesn't fit the age...

This gets the Lord British stamp of approval. The blacksmith will have it ready for you to now become a fighter ace and save the princess.

Everyone born after 1990 will not get this joke lol.

[Phasmatis]

Ok, a few more things - Dragon Age 2 will be using the same engine, which is good, as it *might, oh I hope so* mean a toolkit is planned and! It also means you can import your Dragon Age saves so your consequences carry over, I have no link to a dev saying this is the case but a lot of people are mentioning it as if it's fact, like a dev has revealed this titbit of info somewhere, I will like that if it's true.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

I would have doubted a new engine anyway given that the game is being released so soon.

[Phasmatis]

Yeah and they can work with the UI and core gameplay instead of having to rewrite it completely. I did want to make sure though since Jaedar mentioned the Unreal engine rumour.

[Dead-eye]

I played Dragon Age and I played Awakening. God help me if I buy into this game some more.

Edit: I hope SWTOR will be worth playing. Otherwise my faith in Bioware will completely die with it.

[Jaedar]

http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/ ... shots.aspx

Screenshots. The first one looks alright, the second is terrible.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

Those screenshots look terrible and the main character looks like a macho douchebag. The ground texture just looks putrid. Actually the game looks like if someone made Masters of the Universe into a game lol.

eg.


God damn it. What scares me even more is the female antagonist in the concept arts of both look very similar.

[DDL]

EARLY ALPHA SCREENIES LOOK UNFINISHED SHOCK HORROR

[Jaedar]

EARLY ALPHA SCREENIES LOOK UNFINISHED SHOCK HORROR

They're using the same engine as with the original. There is no excuse

Also, they're planning a march 2011 release... how early alpha can the screens seriously be?

[DDL]

Er..about *counts fingers* 8-9 months?

I mean, ffs: it barely even looks like they've got LIGHTING in those screenies. One sunlight actor, tops.

DA2 WILL HAEV NO LIGHTING OMG OMG

It just seems...dumb to prejudge to that extent.

Also, I guess I should state that I'm definitely the kind of person who would care ABSOLUTELY NOT ONE FUCKING BIT about a muddy looking floor texture, if I noticed it at all.

If I'm taking the time to actually pay attention to the floor in a game, it either means the floor is so good that it's worthy of attention, or the gameplay is so fucking atrocious that it's actually more fun to look at the floor. If the gameplay is engaging, then the floor could be a non-normal/bump-mapped tiled 128x128 8-bit texture for all I care.

So I'm more of a half-full glass person, when it comes to games.

[Phasmatis]

They don't look that bad to me, the background on the second shot is a bit sparse but other than that, I think it looks good.

[Jaedar]

Er..about *counts fingers* 8-9 months?

Yes but it doesn't make sense in my head.

They've been working on this for (*presumably) more than a year now... and all they've produced is something that looks much worse than what they started with? And considering they probably didn't show their most unfinished work(opposite is more likely), I'm starting to wonder about how polished the final game will be. After half your development time(at least when its this short) in shouldn't you have left early alpha behind you?

*About this, I figure development started for realz when they said DA:O was finished which was about 6 months before its release, which would mean the entire game has a full-scale development cycle of about 2 years. Is this reasonable?

If I'm taking the time to actually pay attention to the floor in a game, the gameplay is so fucking atrocious that it's actually more fun to look at the floor.

So you think its very important the floor looks good for DA:O then? :Troll:

My biggest problem is how bad the enemies look.

[DDL]

Well, I think the TNM team would probably laugh uproariously at the idea that alpha build time is circa. "half way through total development time", but possibly they're atypical.

And...does it really look worse? At the least charitable, I'd say it looks "the same, only with crappy stand-in lighting". Plus static image, no particle effects (and fuck me, did DA have a lot of those), no dark gloomy corridors, etc etc.

So cut it a little slack.

Not a fan of the Mass effectivisation, mind you, but I shall rant about that later.

[Jaedar]

And...does it really look worse?

Certainly has less detail. Did you look at the grass in the background? Or the faces of the enemies(darkspawn?) in the second picture?

I mean compare it to this: http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/drago ... _Group.jpg
Ridiculous I tell you, and not just the lighting stuff.

Not a fan of the Mass effectivisation, mind you, but I shall rant about that later.

The only masseffectisation is that you have a forced protagonist... Is that really so horrible? I think the new crappy art direction is just as big an issue.