Dragon Age II Preview

The evening brings us another hands-on preview of BioWare’s Dragon Age sequel to pore through, though this particular article on Bitmob is based on the game’s showing at PAX Prime in early September. Better late than never, I suppose:

I also didn’t feel the need to command any other member of my party around. They all held their own well enough and I was having too much fun spinning around as a Darkspawn-killing-tornado. Despite not wanting to use these features, I discovered that they still work very well. This is because Bioware wants gamers to be able to (still think like a general, but fight like a Spartan or ninja,) this time around. Things became very tactile when I used my radial menu to position each member of my party in a perimeter, before slowly pulling that perimeter closer around the Darkspawn-crowd.

The last thing Bioware wanted to emphasize with the demo was the change in the Dragon Age story. I enjoyed DAO’s story so I wasn’t excited to hear this until Bioware cleared up that (it wasn’t the story that was the problem, it was how we told it.) DA2 will use what is called a framed narrative: (It’s a story within a story.) Things will unfold as an outside character attempts to learn just what went wrong in the kingdom. She decides to track down the tale of the one hero who was there for all of the down fall. You play during these story fragments. For an example of framed narrative, think Arabian Nights (very old famous book) or The Name of the Wind (very good and recent book).