Dragon Age II Interview

Dragon Age II lead designer Mike Laidlaw addresses some more questions about the action/adventure sequel in a brief interview on Games On Net. An excerpt:

games.on.net: Do you plan to support Dragon Age II with the same level of content that followed the launch of Origins? Or is the focus going to be on Dragon Age III, (presumably) the last piece in the trilogy?

We will be continuing to release content for Dragon Age II after launch, and I feel that we’ve learned some valuable lessons about what resonates with the players. For instance, we intend to keep the focus on Hawke this time around; keeping your character consistent and progressing was a pretty key request we received from our player base, so we’re happy to deliver!

games.on.net: At least in our experiences, mages in Origins were monstrously powerful compared to the other classes. How are they stacking up for Dragon Age II?

Mike: Oh, they’re still very powerful, but we’ve taken steps to bring warriors and rogues more into line with the mage experience. The key, for us, was to give each class its own role on the battlefield.

Warriors are very good at taking damage and dishing it out; even their basic melee attacks hit arcs in front of them, letting them keep the attention of multiple foes. Rogues use either daggers or bows to obliterate single targets, and have numerous abilities that control the battlefield, stunning groups of foes and controlling aggro. Mages, of course, own the ranged area-of-effect space with fireballs, tempests and so on. They are also the premier class for buffing others through spell trees like creation and arcane.

In short, to be most effective in Dragon Age II, you’ll need to think like you’re running a team.