(Update) PAX Prime – MMOMFG Dragon Age II Impressions

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

On Saturday, when media was allowed early access to the show floor, I took advantage of that by going straight to Dragon Age II. There was no line; it was nice to finally not have to cut in front of people too. I didn’t care about the inflatable swords they were handing out, I just wanted to be able to bask in the glory of Dragon Age II. After a brief trailer with an introduction from one of the developers, we were allowed a few minutes of hands-on time and immediately everyone went running into the next room. Who isn’t excited for this game?

We weren’t allowed to take any photos or video, therefore I will do my best to be as detailed as I can. The main plot involves you playing the Champion, as his story is told out between friends with extreme exaggeration. To start the demo, you are in god mode, killing all darkspawn in one hit. Once the friend catches on that the story is full of hyperbole, you go back and play out the same section of story as a level 1 fledgling character with no skills and you certainly can’t kill things in one hit, just like how it really happened. You, the player, gets to control the real outcome of how this famed Champion rose to power. It will be in your hands to decide if it was through evil ways or if the Champion was pure.

The developer explained to us that they had three main goals for Dragon Age II to improve upon from Dragon Age: Origins; graphics, combat, and storytelling. Not only did they want a complete improvement in graphics, but they wanted to maintain a common motif and style throughout all the artwork during gameplay. Combat is now intended to make you actually feel like you are swinging a giant two handed sword. It is much faster and will require your hands on the controller or keyboard at all times. While Dragon Age: Origins had a great story, the developers feel they can still improve upon it. By using a framed narrative (I’ll explain below), it allows them to tell a fuller and richer story.

Return of the Staff – About 90% of the original staff that worked on Dragon Age: Origins is returning for the next installment. That’s good news, because if you enjoyed the first one, you will be glad that almost all the original staff is returning. If you hated it, then rejoice that 10% of the staff is new. That was pretty much how Dave, one of the developers, put it at the beginning of the trailer.

Much Improved Graphics – If you played Dragon Age: Origins on the Xbox 360/PS3 like I did, you will be able to quickly notice that the overall level of graphics has been vastly improved. For the PC users, don’t fret, your graphics have also been improved upon, but I was able to notice a bigger increase in overall graphics on the consoles. In addition to the improved pixels, the staff felt that that game’s artwork was missing a motif and because of that, the artwork didn’t flow as freely as it should. In Dragon Age II, they have defined an exact style to keep throughout all of the zones.

Feel the two-hander, be the two-hander – Combat will be much quicker, if you choose so; you can still queue up attacks and play as a field general using the skill/inventory wheel. But you don’t have to. This time, however, you won’t be able to just get up and go grab a soda or run to the bathroom as the combat plays out automatically.

New and improved story – The plot for Dragon Age II will span over a decade compared to the year and a half that was covered in Dragon Age: Origins. New to the story is the addition of using a framed narrative. A framed narrative is a story told within another story. For example, think back to the Princess Bride. The main story was that a grandfather was reading a book to his sick grandson. The story that he was reading happened to be all about Princess Buttercup.

The other important tidbits that I discovered were that you won’t be able to load in your character from Dragon Age: Origins, nor would you be able to access any of Origins’ quests. Dragon Age II is all about playing as the Champion who barely survives fleeing from Lothering before the Darkspawn wiped out the town. You should remember it, it happened early on in Dragon Age: Origins.

UPDATE: While we weren’t able to snag any video or photos of gameplay we wanted to slide two recently released screens of Dragon Age II your way courtesy of joystiq.