Dragon Age II Preview

The guys at CVG have conjured up a quick preview of BioWare’s Dragon Age II, which apparently borrows its text from a recent issue of Xbox World 360 magazine. Have we seen a DA2 preview yet that doesn’t draw comparisons to Mass Effect or use the terms “simplified” and “streamlined”? I didn’t think so:

The whole story is yours to invent as you please – by making moral choices along the way – but you know how it’s going to end. To support this fresh approach to storytelling, Bioware have adapted the Mass Effect dialogue engine to work with Dragon Age 2.

So, you’ll have multiple conversation options, with aggressive or friendly options denoted by symbols in the corner of the screen.

Outside of the chatting, the combat is being simplified too. Bioware has chucked out the ‘queued action’ system – where you’d press a button and wait until your character attacked – with more direct control.

If you press the stab button, your on-screen warrior will stab. Nice to know. This makes fights feel faster, even if they are actually running at the same pace as they did in the first outing.