Dragon Age 2 - Changes to the Tactical View

A massive thread has erupted on the Dragon Age 2 official forums after a poster questioned an answer from designer Mike Laidlaw in a French magazine interview. It's important to note translation issues might be at play but the snip sees Mike acknowledging the tactical/overhead view has been dropped from the PC version because of budgetary constraints. Here's the (translated!) part from the September issue of Joystick:

[Joystick] Why did you leave/forsake the "a la Baldur's gate" view on PC of the first Dragon Age?
[Mike Laidlaw]For budgetary reasons, we focused our work on a 3rd person view, that asks for very detailed and nice textures so that the player can admire the game with a close-up view. With an aerial view [isometric] we should cover much more ground and so create other textures. Now, the game mainly sold on console, so we're going the way of the audience"

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Eventually Mike responds and while it seems the Joystick quote is not entirely accurate and there will be some sort of tactical view, it has been changed:

Hey folks,

Victor managed to hunt me down, and I wanted to clear up a few things with regards to what I'm seeing as the two major concerns on this thread.

First off, let's talk about the toolset issue. Obviously in this community there's going to be some concern that we wouldn't release a toolset, so let me clear the air a little: The tools we're using to make Dragon Age 2 are very, very close to the tools you guys have used to make your mods for DA:O. They're not identical, as we've made a few in-house improvements, but they're almost identical. As such, there isn't a new toolset to release, per se.

While we won't be releasing a toolset update in tandem with Dragon Age 2, we ARE investigating what it would take to update the community toolset to match ours, along with providing DA2 content in the future.

As to the subject of tactical view, I can confirm that we will not be doing a tactical view on consoles, though we are looking into some expanded party control that I think will make console players quite happy.

On the PC, however, we are still working with the camera to keep the key elements of the tactical experience there. I was actually playtesting some new camera code when Victor found me, in fact, so I can give you the latest news on that front.

While we likely won't pull as far up as we did in DA:O, I have always felt that the key to tactical play was actually freeing your camera from the character you're controlling to issue precise orders, which is what we're tuning now. So, this means you can still maneuver the camera around the battlefield and issue orders from a remote location, just as you could in Origins.

As you can probably tell from my phrasing, all of this is a bit in-flux right now, so things may change between now and ship, but I wanted to update you guys on the current direction of things.

Mike..

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Emphasis added.
More information.

Developers can be such double-talkers sometimes. "In flux" just reads like a euphemism for, "we're gonna dumb it down, but hopefully you won't notice."

Could someone here tell me what was wrong with DA's tactical combat on the PC? If I want an action RPG experience, I'll go play Torchlight, Risen or one of the Gothics. Maybe Bioware, talented as they are, will make their combat fun and tactical, but if Mass Effect 2 is any indication, it'll become a snappy, slick action experience with mild tactical planning. Snore.

Surely someone in the world of game design believes they can make an RPG that actually has some deep combat. Knights of the Chalice, as much as I love it, can't be the only smartly designed combat RPG left standing in 2011. The indies need to step up and show people how a game can be tactical and still loads of fun .

Also, could someone please try to implement the WEGO simlutaneous turns in an RPG, pleease?

::shakes head::

I never used the tactical view. Always preferred to zoom out the third person as far as I could before it hit tactical - gave me a much better view of the world and allowed for far more tactical planning.

Only reason PC rpg gamers bought DAO in such big numbers was because it was reminiscent of Baldurs Gate. Which made DAO tactical view its major selling point.

Now they are removing that.

Is there anyone that thinks DA2 will not equal to ME2 ?

Removing more features from Dragon Effect 2? No surprises there then.

I wonder if anyone can doubt what Bioware is about, at this point

Just in case it got lost, they are working to keep "the key elements" of the tactical view...whatever that means, exactly. I thoroughly enjoyed the overhead view, so this is disappointing.

This sounds like "less tactical, more action" to me. Which is no surprise, since it is long known that DA2 will contain at least a bit more "action".

A bit disappointing, though I won't be too upset as long we're still able to scroll the camera freely from the selected character like they're saying.

I am.. not sure what exactly Mike Laidlaw was trying to say. That was just damn ambiguous. Not thrilled about this. At all.

WorstUsernameEver said:

I am.. not sure what exactly Mike Laidlaw was trying to say. That was just damn ambiguous. Not thrilled about this. At all.

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He means that you won't be able to zoom out as far, but you'll still be able to scroll the camera, as opposed to having it always locked on the selected character.

Bad news, since the isometric combat was the only real enjoyment for me, all other aspects of the game were (below) average. It's frightening, that even a half-assed PC->console port sells better on consoles, than the definitive version on PC.
On the other hand, I cannot find any logic in the reasoning of the designer. Since when is it a bloody hard task to create lower resolution textures (which is required for bigger distances) when you already have detailed ones?

kalniel said:

I never used the tactical view. Always preferred to zoom out the third person as far as I could before it hit tactical - gave me a much better view of the world and allowed for far more tactical planning.

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Yep, same here. Other than trying it out just to see what it was like, I don't think I ever used it a single time in DA:O or Awakenings.

Twotricks said:

Only reason PC rpg gamers bought DAO in such big numbers was because it was reminiscent of Baldurs Gate. Which made DAO tactical view its major selling point.

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I don't think DA was reminiscent of Baldur's Gate at all. For something that was originally supposed to be a "spiritual successor", it ended up being almost nothing like it whatsoever.

JDR13 said:

I don't think DA was reminiscent of Baldur's Gate at all. For something that was originally supposed to be a "spiritual successor", it ended up being almost nothing like it whatsoever.

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They're both party-based RPGs with real-time with pause combat set in a traditional fantasy setting. Or at least, that's what Bioware developers have always said when asked what 'spiritual successor' means to them.

EDIT: found the quote I was thinking of from David Gaider on dragonagecentral.com:

"We call it that because it retains the spirit that we feel distinguished the Baldur's Gate series from other games that we've done -- having a sizeable party, for one, and a focus on tactical combat and a traditional fantasy story. This hits a lot of the same notes, and I (as someone who worked on both games) have no trouble with the comparison whatsoever."

WOW just WOW.So many fans of BG were angry as I was about the lack of ability to zoom out further and they are actually moving camera further in?DAO sucked for me,I say for me since many enjoyed it.It started first in how you couldnt zoom further out.Why not go back to fog of war if the maps aren't made to zoom out far I ask?Then the second thing that got me was when I set up some fighters near a door to block any advance of enemy targeting my spellcasters and found that the enemy move right thru your characters so placement on map is mute point.Third was how everytthing was so vague in its explanation….we D&D fans love to read up on rules and how fleshed out the world is…DAO was not fleshed out at all instead having weird MMO type gameplay where you taunt enemies to attack you and they decide to not target the caster anymore since you called them a name.

Then I found a video of one of the doctor devs from Bioware,forgot his name,in where he looked like a gigalo dressed to pick up chicks.Fancy shirt with top 3 buttons open exposing smooth shaved chest with gold chain to accent.My point in this is this guy who was once a super nerd was now probably getting alot of hot chicks and has changed.So what does this do for RPG devs…well you need to be in love with RPG's IMO to make them good and if your mind is on Ferrari's and babes you will fail!!

You can produce games with shitty mechanics and zoomed in views at a silly fast rate compared to the years it takes to rpoduce a classic game.Do I blame these guys?No but I must say I am so dissapointed that one of my passions is now headed by companies out for fast cash.

Almost every aspect of this "new vision" for DA2 is disappointing in my opinion.

They've tossed out almost all the elements that made DAO a success!!!

It was stated in an interview that DAO was their highest selling game ever…so why follow that up with a ton of changes for little more than change's sake???

It makes zero sense to me.

As a game I would of pre-ordered and bought with not question or thought…I now will be waiting and reading reviews throughly before I pay a single cent.

Quite disappointed with the whole thing, from the new cartoony graphics to the changes to gameplay and the whole story structure that's now told by a questionable source, making it seem more like a fairy tale than an actual events occurring IN the game world.

All in all huge steps backwards to me across the board….

Sad to say.

DPB said:

They're both party-based RPGs with real-time with pause combat set in a traditional fantasy setting. Or at least, that's what Bioware developers have always said when asked what 'spiritual successor' means to them.

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It could just as easily been a successor to Icewind Dale then.

I guess their definition of 'spiritual successor' is a bit different than mine.

Roland said:

It was stated in an interview that DAO was their highest selling game ever…so why follow that up with a ton of changes for little more than change's sake???

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I can only speculate, but perhaps DAO went over budget and needed to sell even more than it did. I mean, the project had existed since 2003, I doubt it was cheap to produce.

I used the tactical view quite a lot during combat but favoured the 3rd person camera when it came to "exploration". (If you can call it that in DAO). I'd hate to see it go...

I haven't been excited about any of the changes so far. The story arc spanning over 10 years sounds mildly interesting but that's about it. It just seems like they are trying to streamline it more and cater less to RPG enthusiasts. Nothing new with that though.

Developers can be such double-talkers sometimes. "In flux" just reads like a euphemism for, "we're gonna dumb it down, but hopefully you won't notice."

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That's not double-talk on their part, that's double-think on your part. He didn't say something stupid so you changed what he said to something stupid. "In flux" means they are still dinking around with the system to see how it works.

Read what he said. They aren't going to let you pull up AS MUCH as in DA:O. So maybe you can only move the camera up 20ft instead of 50ft. If I get a real, free roaming camera in exchange then I'm all for it. Maybe we'll even be able to keep the ceilings and have battles on ground that isn't flat.