Dragon Age II Preview

The editors at Everything 4 Gamers have put together a brief preview of Dragon Age II after spending some firsthand time with BioWare’s RPG sequel at the recent Eurogamer Expo. A couple of paragraphs:

Speaking of the Lord of the Rings the Darkspawn, the main orc-like enemies from Origins, return but this time look even less friendly and more like their Middle-Earth cousins with spiny, metal armour and a lighter green complexion. These sleeker looking Darkspawn account for almost the entirety of the foes you are to face with Hawke’s blade but luckily your hero of lore is more than up to the task of defeating such ugly enemies.

The combat and controls are much the same as they were for the console version of Origins (I was playing on the 360) with the left analogue stick handling movement, the A button for basic attacks/interacting and the other face buttons assigned to special combat moves. Thankfully the movement of the character you are controlling is a lot less clunky and because of this battles feel more fluid and fun. Part of this fun involves seeing a defeated Darkspawn explode in a shower of blood and body parts, though the death animations did become quite repetitious after a while.