Dragon Age 2 - Preview Roundup

The first wave of Dragon Age 2 previews from that Edmonton junket are finally here.  First, The Escapist, and Mike Laidlaw who won't win any points here:

The tactical side of combat returns, allowing you to pause the game and form a cohesive plan based on your current party, but the quick pace of fights has been ramped up for those favoring a more action-oriented combat style. Combat in Origins often got bogged down by fighting animations - rather than actually throwing a spell or shooting an arrow, a character would go through a big windup and then, eventually, get around to actually doing whatever it was you they were commanded to do. According to Laidlaw, BioWare wanted the fighting in DA2 to feel more immediate and less like "some invisible person rolling D20s behind the scenes." [...]

The conversation in DA2 plays out much like that in Mass Effect, with players selecting a paraphrase of a dialog option from various points on a wheel. Hoping to avoid those situations where you think you're being flirty but end up sounding like a jerk, the wheel in DA2 adds an icon in the center to give you a better idea of the vibe you're about to convey. A heart is flirty, angel's wings indicate your goody-goody nature, and so on. There's still a bit of wiggle room, but you should always end up saying pretty much exactly what you meant to say. (During my playthrough, I wanted to just tell someone I thought they were cute and ended up inviting them to bed, but flirting is open to all manner of interpretation, I suppose.)

RPG Fan:

Second only to story in the hierarchy of fan concerns, gameplay has undergone a somewhat less significant change, but one that I found refreshing. Battles are quicker, requiring consistent button pressing to fight. Characters move more fluidly, more quickly, and more realistically, with mages fighting more like staff-weilding Shaolin monks at close range, and archers getting away from enemies instead of shooting arrows point-blank. Even the rogues act more like rogues, employing tactics such as disappearing, poisoning, and hopping around like rabid ninjas.

...and Destructoid:

You'll notice, perhaps, that the fundamentals of combat in Dragon Age 2 haven't changed much vis-a-vis their Origins counterparts. Mark Darrah's go-to comment on the combat has been that, "When you push a button, something awesome happens." But Darrah needs clarification: the presentation layer has changed, but the mechanics haven't. Dragon Age 2 is still a stat-driven, Dungeons and Dragons-based game -- replete with inventory screens, if-then tactical Rube Goldberg machines, and little numbers coming out of heads.

Standard melee attacks trigger a little bit faster -- thanks in large part to smoother animations -- and while it looks like a kind of combo, there's nothing mathematically different than four straight melee attacks from Origins. However, the combat has changed somewhat: BioWare has added a layer of spatial awareness to each character's skillset, which the team call "closing attacks.