Dragon Age II: Console or PC?

IGN has published a preview-like summary of the subtle differences we can expect between the PC and console editions of BioWare’s Dragon Age II, with added commentary from gameplay producer Dan Lazin. The article also covers some of the changes the team has made since Origins:

Pausing and zooming around the battlefield still plays a big role in Dragon Age II. Against multi-stage bosses and grunts alike I found freezing the action and issuing heal and special attack commands made a big different in effectiveness. Like Origins, you’re still limited to queuing one command at a time. That means you can’t order a heal, a fireball, and a frost arc blast all during the same pause. You have to wait for the first action to be executed before ordering a new one. The only reason I bring this up is because in BioWare’s past role-playing games, you could, in fact, queue multiple combat commands to multiple party members at once and then watch the automated fireworks. It was a cool feature because it let you plan ahead, anticipating enemy attack patterns and layering multiple buffs and debuffs.

Again, Lazin explains why that’s the case. “The number of enemies in [Knights of the Old Republic] is much lower than what we’ve got in [Dragon Age II]. Here you get very large parties of enemies who go down fairly easily individually. So consequently queuing up orders, a whole lot at once, isn’t particularly useful because that individual guy is going to be dead pretty soon and you’re going to need to reassess in two seconds and pick a different target.”