Dragons age 2 demo out

[Niall]

http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/demo

My download keeps failing at varying download stages. 10mb & 14mb so far. Currently downloading at 84Kb/s which is a 5 hour download. 1.9gb. I think that when a download speed gets so low, Firefox thinks it's stopped so you have to download it again. Oddly though, when you do it picks up from where it left off, but as a new download. I currently have 3 files 

[.Griff.]

Gamershell have some alternative mirrors -

http://www.gamershell.com/download_70000.shtml

[Niall]

Sweet! 1.1mb download speed. Cheers matey! 

[.Griff.]

You're welcome!

[Niall]

Ha, damn it. I've got to about 900mb on the link you provided and I noticed the torrent from gamers hell that wasn't working before has at some point connected to a high bandwidth peer. I now have 900mb of one copy and 853mb of another. ARGH!

[esh]

It's pretty much a combat showcase, one fight after another for 30-40 minutes or so. Pretty weird. Hard to tell if it's really good or just OK. I had to pause the game in the last quarter because one of the character was leaping around the room like crazy and I was laughing too much! The best part is a quick cameo from a returning DAO character.

[Niall]

Yeah, I played about 20 minutes of it. It seems from the demo, that it's a dumbed down version of Dragons Age, and very arcadey. I just sat here, clicking on the mob, then selecting one of two spells. It looks really smooth, but apparently the low res texture look is only rectified by using a direct X 11 card. The set up dialogue only had dx9 and dx11 listed in it, which was very odd I thought. Maybe they haven't got the bugs sorted out for all the dx10 stuff in time for the demo to be released.

I also noticed that they'd locked the inventory which seemed a very strange thing to do. If you're releasing a demo of an RPG then don't lock the one thing that makes an RPG! Another thing I was wondering about was the fact that due to the inventory being locked the heal/mana potion buttons were on the right. I can't help wondering if that will be removed when they allow access to the inventory as you normally create a quick slot for these. Although probably not as that sort of adds to the arcadey console feel. I really think it's a step in the wrong direction for an RPG game to make it arcade style so it fits for a console. I'm assuming EA are heavily involved in that decision as they're all about making more money at the cost of the PC gamer.

Still, the dialogues seem polished, the game seemed smooth (other than the occasional lag in an unfinished, buggy demo) and as long as the gore doesn't get too silly in it then it should be okay. I have to say though, I prefer the more adult feel of the first two. This seems like a version you'd make for a 12 certificate rather than the 18 cert the first one felt like.

As for the bugs, I don't know if anyone else had this problem as I can't be bothered checking their forums, but on launching the demo it constantly tries to look for a disk when you log in to the EA servers (if you log in to them, it registers the demo d/l towards their goal of 1000000 demo downloads to unlock items in the game when it's released). Obviously there is no disk so you have to cancel out of that over and over and then ctrl-alt-del to pull you out of the game, which then allows you to see the main menu and launch the game. It's really cr*p! I hate the fact that EA are partnered with Bioware now for these games, as it's getting ever more clear where they are involved. Basically anything that doesn't work, EA has a hand in. For example the website that allows you to upload from the previous two games so your character and stats, achievements, etc. My old mage shows as level 10 or 15 when I'd completed the game and absolutely everything in it, so it was 10 levels out! If they're going to have these things, then they should support them properly. Another annoyance was when I lost my mage when I installed Win7. While not an issue with the website thing, it would be really nice if the game supported either that site recording your character and progress when you logged in from the game, or possibly a cloud type scenario like other games, so you have your saves and then the cloud has it too so you'll never lose it. When I lost my mage, that was over 92 hours of gameplay lost

[esh]

I think most of DX11's features are DX10 compatible bar tessellation. However, DX11 is bugged in the demo. My demo won't even start if I pick DX11 so I had to leave it on DX9.

I wouldn't be surprised if the inventory is almost irrelevant... they removed it from Mass Effect 2 to its detriment. It is supposedly "streamlining".

I didn't log into EA whatever so I didn't experience that problem. Apparently alt-tabbing is a bad idea too.

[Niall]

Hmm, the launching problem may well be due to me selecting DX11 then. I'll try it again at some point with it set to dx9.

The inventory can't possibly be irrelevant. If they remove that then the game isn't worth playing at all as an RPG. That is THE RPG element that makes a game like Dragons Age. The whole point is to collect items, sell them, upgrade them, trade them and have story items collected towards your goal, or even side missions, and then there are the group character side quests too that you need to collect items for.

Mass Effect 2 is a great game, but it's not really something I'd class as an RPG, I think the action/RPG tag it got is more accurate, even though not quite fitting. I think a more accurate description would be story driven 3rd person action game (catchy eh? ). If you remove the more complex items of an RPG you are quite simply destroying the RPG element. Take a look at Fable and you'll see what I mean. That's a good game (I've got 2 & 3), but it's dumbed down to the extent that you can pick it up and put it down when ever and not have any vested interest in the game that makes you want to sit there and spend vast amounts of time playing it.

An RPG is so much more than the simple running around completing quests that Fable and Mass Effect 2 are. Well, less so with Mass Effect 2 as that has slightly different things to do than your standard RPG, with the space travel/planet mining/weapon development and still has, to some extent the dialogues with characters for story-lines, although small.

This is what worries me with EA being involved. You know that they have said, "look, we're the publisher, we want you to do it this way to sell more copies. The easier the game, the larger the market. Sod pure RPG gaming fans, we want money". They're on the verge of slipping into the totally dumbed down area of World of Warcraft, which unless you have the MMORPG element, you realise that it's just an empty and pointless game. They may well be trying to find a happy medium between the two, to make more money off two types of gamers. Personally I think they should get a new game to do that with and leave a proven series alone.

[esh]

Well, you know what they say, try to make everyone happy and everyone will be disappointed instead.

It's really hard to tell if DA2 is dumbed down DAO or just a more ridiculous looking DAO. I've never been a fan of the dialogue-wheel-thing, but I endured it for ME1 because it was such a good game. I do fear DA2 is going to be a series of one fights after the other (almost like ME2 is) as opposed to a exploration and adventure of vast scope like ME1 or DAO. While I don't think "inventory is a key aspect of RPGs" is wrong, I think it's more fundamental than that. The key element of RPGs is choice, be it in the equipment given to your party, the route you take, the decisions, and the dialogue. In ME2 compared to ME1, the route was pretty much fixed, the decisions had negligible effect, and you could not choose any equipment. Both ME1 and ME2 had a very poor dialogue system compared to DAO, which had conversations that were sensible and meaningful, and weren't a crapshoot as to figuring out what the character was actually going to say when you clicked on them.

Bioware games have often suffered from having an inventory full of old useless plot items, but that's no reason to remove the inventory altogether. It also seems developers/publishers are so paranoid about people finding ways to break the game these days so they make it linear and fixed. So what? It's a game. Sometimes people break it. Sometimes people have fun doing so. I never was the biggest fan of Morrowind, but you could follow the plotline straight as a die or just meander around at will. That's an optional power to the player, and it made the game, not destroyed it. It adds longevity and replayability, as does the ability to equip your squad - you can try different tactics, different builds, different set-ups. ME2 removed all that. It was pointless. I kind of want to replay it, but I know a subsequent playthrough is going to be exactly the same, and it being one combat arena after another means that I quickly tire of it.

Overall, I will probably wait for the package deal of DA2 with all the inevitable DLC.