Dragon Age II Preview

PC Gamer has treated us to a preview of Dragon Age II this weekend, the contents of which look to be based on the build shown at GamesCom last month. Lots of commentary from lead designer Mike Laidlaw, executive producer Mark Darrah (they incorrectly call him Mike Darreth), and art director Matt Goldman is included:

An upgraded, lightning-fast combat engine drives home the changes. The player character going by the name of Hawk and referred to as ‘˜Champion of Kirkwall’ moves faster than anything in the first Dragon Age, his attacks thunking into flesh with visceral force. BioWare’s mantra is ‘˜when I press something, awesome happens’. It’s proven as I witness the sword-wielding player-hero flitting between mano-amano scuffles. Special abilities are deployed liberally, twatting hurlocks and genlocks in the air, into the ground, rending bone and flesh exactly as you’d expect an angry man with a humongous sword would.

Nothing highlights Dragon Age 2’s refocus as much as the moment the Champion turns to his companion and starts to speak. Up pops a conversation wheel, peppered with choices of dialogue. Selecting one sets Hawk talking. Gritty of tone and fluffy of facial hair, he’s an obvious badass in a way Origins’ user-defined specimens could never be. This is Dragon Age as viewed through Mass Effect glasses, and Hawk is your Commander Shepard.

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Mike Laidlaw: (There’s still lots of opportunity to meet and talk to your characters and things like that. I want to play through the most important moments in this one character’s life. That gives us a nice filter to hold each event and plot up against. ‘˜Is this significant? Does this advance the themes of the game in some way?’)

Matt Goldman nails down the issue: (It’s not like one little level: ‘˜here’s where he punched a guy in the face.’ It’s: ‘˜this is his escape from his blightravaged home town’. The entire escape and the emotion, the side stuff around that event, not just the actual running. I guess the danger of focusing down on key moments is that you might think that we’re focusing down super-tightly, and that’s actually not the case.)

Mike Laidlaw again: (The framed narrative only limits choice if the narrators say ‘˜the Champion was a man who decided the following things.’ Instead what we’re doing is have the narrators come in, and even though they lived in the future and they know the kind of things the Champion decided, it doesn’t mean that they have to lock that down until the player has made those decisions. They’re the perfect reaction, like our epilogues in Origins. What we’ve done is to move that to a pair of narrators who know the future, but as you make your decisions they then talk about the significance of them.) He smiles, slightly breathless from the quickfire explanation. (I still wanted to keep that element of RPG, that sense of exploration, progression, sidequests, looting, all that stuff is key, and losing that would be a shame. To me, this is really exciting because we can get even less linear, and less predetermined.)