Dialogue wheel: I liked it - a lot. Clear and structured choices. And it was logical what I said. And no, I didn't feel disconnected with my character at all. Whether or not this has something to with me playing adventure games (like Syberia and Post Mortem), I don't know, but the thing is that in these game the main character (me) always speaks.
Agree overall but with a comment. The potential problem of this system are:
- First, not sure why but first time I played the demo I never seen the left dialog options but a single one. I think this organization is perverse. Yeah I'll get used to take care of left too but I bet in hurry to know fast something or to play a next fight or something, I'll go too fast and won't notice few left isolate dialog options.
- The second problem of the system is the challenge it is for dialog writers to successfully explain in very few word what the dialog option is. This system is a call for many little design flaws and players misunderstanding.
That said with the standard system with full sentences, first it won't be as good with main hero voice acting, second it also generates misunderstanding. Sometimes when you have plenty very long sentences to read it ends be not that clear and tedious to read all carefully, it becomes then a typical bad reading.
On another, yet related note:
One or two threads at the Bioware forums for this game (da2) has been made where people have stated they they didn't know they could level up in this game.
Bioware better start telling the Call of Duty etc. players that - or they will quit after maybe 1 hour or so.
Well after few minutes there's a panel that popup and say, "
hey player, one character has level up, press escape and choose level up option".
What you want more? That before the demo begins, a full screen panel with "WARNING WARNING THIS GAMES INCLUDES LEVEL UP"?
Let few COD players be tricked by their absurdity, after all they tricked me buy COD4 and I played it one hour.
The Rogue isn't a Rogue anymore, it seems. She (or he) is sort of a Ninja-character that now does backstabbing from 30 feet (10 m) away; I really don't know hat happened to the whole idea of moving silently and killing the enemy…
Correction the rogue isn't the rogue cliché anymore, but it's not really a ninja cliché either, there's multiple trees with the Rogue and I haven't tried them all, not to mention that some are blocked, perhaps there's a more sneaky talent?
They had a challenge because ton of complain was that Rogues was too much like warrior, and worse that 2W warriors was the same. They had to design something that feel very different without to have the full range of classical RPG through many general actions. The point is also many many players including me complained that some of necessary rogue skills was forcing to use a Rogue in your team. the burden of party with only 4 characters.
Clearly DAO wasn't a fully fledged RPG and DAO2 won't be better and perhaps a bit less with disappearance of skills even if it's with quite more talents, it's a focus increase on fights.
The combat (again):
Combat feels faster definetely. So fast actually that a dec. (stanley woo from the qa team) responded to maria caliban in a thread on the bsn forums about 2H combat. Here's the thread:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6182904&lf=8
Impressive that, from the short contents of the demo and with no difficulty setup, this fan can analyze so deeply 2H fights in DAO2 and with comparison with other classes.
I see that there's a Bioware QA that seems confirm, but for me in the demo 2H was the easiest. And in DAO1 I remember many comments quite similar about 2H but when you dig them, for example two 2H in a party was amazingly powerful and making the game quite easy.
While Woo is not directly addressing the quickness of the combat, he is talking about the QA testing of the combat. And it seems that Bioware slowed it down a bit and bu this I mean, they slowed the combat animations down a bit - or lot. This, however, remains, to bee seen in the full game.
After to have played all classes I agree, because of the Rogue class. The problem is many players complained in DAO2 about the 2H warrior being too slow. I totally disagree but slow down animations will be very cool for the Rogue, but for the 2H it will bring it back to DAO1 or break balances by making 2H almost as fast than Rogue.
I am afraid they didn't realized that a handful of players was playing with no tactics at all and full control of all members of the party with ton of pauses.
Alas the speed of Rogue could be the end of such gameplay choice, not sure as myself it's just impossible even in DAO1. But that also mean they don't have the clue to realize that the Rogue speed is a problem.
To make it clear, it's not really the has fast is a rogue attack, as soon as it's automatic or the time involved is as long, it's ok. The problem is few rogues skills have a very low cooldown putting an insane pressure on players that want control all with tactics help.
As for the difficulty:
I found the difficulty on normal setting hard and difficult. I died many times, especially when defeating the second Ogre. The problem was not the Ogre, but the darkspawn surrounding me. Another problem was that when I clicked on the icons to use healing, stamina or lyrium potions, it didn't work.
The problem is that there's only this fight that involved challenges. I hope increasing difficulty level and the full game will be more challenging more often.
