For example it seems to count different time of day / weather as different stages. The TVC has a dark / night version of The Evil Tower stage that isn't in that image.
Playable offline, not playable online. Easy solution.
However since Goro and Kintaro have endings in the demo files but SK does not, I'd tend to think they will be playable in some form. Especially since Kintaro is now DLC... are they expecting you to pay for a DLC boss you can't play as?
Origins was in development for 5 years. Near the end, I'm sure they had invested so much in it that they just wanted to release it. PC/console gaming had changed a lot in those 5 years. They thought the market had changed too much in 5 years to properly appreciate Origins. They were wrong. "
Fair call. I suppose the reception to Dragon Age II just goes to show that Bioware / EA should have let the dust settle before deciding on a direction for the sequel.
They started working and planning on DA2 before Origins was released, and they didn't expect it to be any kind of success, let alone as popular as it was. They started designing Dragon Age II with no idea what the response to any aspects of Origins would be. Basically, they predicted what people would like about the game incorrectly. "
Why would they bet against what they had just made though?
It's like saying we just made Dragon Age: Origins, we know it isn't that great, so we'll be sure to change as much as we can in the sequel just to be safe.
Let me just nip it in the bud right now, and tell you that signing my posts personally is a habit I've developed from internet discussions dating all the way back to Usenet, and that I'm not going to worry about it now simply because we live in an age where people on the internet love to seize on and criticize any stupid, inconsequential thing they can. This is about the billionth time I've had someone glibly suggest I stop signing my posts, despite the fact that it's of no consequence to anyone reading my posts. - Scott
" That's the point of a cinematic trailer. They are rarely ever representative of the final gameplay of a game, but rather they are to get you excited for the game. For example this, or this, or this, or this. This is nothing even remotely new or unique to dragon age 2's advertising. "
Gameplay aside, what about content? What about the stuff in the trailer that was just flat not in the final game?
Oh and I never suggested trailers had be accurate to the release product - you didn't link up the first Borderlands trailer which is a great example. But this trailer seemed pretty conscious about what would happen throughout the breadth of Dragon Age 2. Therefore I'd like to think the differences in this case have something more too them than just the marketing team going wild with artistic license.
Watching the 'Destiny' trailer from last August got me thinking about how much it matched up to the finished game. There are a lot of interesting things about it after playing through Dragon Age 2 once and I just thought I'd list some of them down - nothing major. Most are in the flashback (flashforward?) that Hawke sees when activating Blood Magic toward the end so you might want to go HD and do it frame by frame.
Fighting the Arishok The fight in the real game takes place in the Viscount's keep, not here. Hawke is also wearing the Champion armour set which he can't very well get until Act 3. Finally, the way in which Hawke finishes the Arishok is not possible in game. The only time anything similar happens is during the game's prologue - Hawke tears apart an Ogre with Spirit Magic hands (not Blood Magic). This is also at a time where Varric is deliberately exaggerating in his retelling- Hawke is wearing the Champion armour in this version too.
If the trailer is presenting an 'exaggerated' version of the Arishok fight, could it have been possible that originally there were going to be more 'exaggerated' segments in game? There currently is the prologue and the personal quest where Varric slaughters dozens single-handedly... could there have been more at one point in development? It certainly would have been interesting if they weaved in more spots where Varric goes off track in an overly dramatic fashion.
The Bosses Pretty much all the game's bosses make an appearance in the flashback sequence. There's the Rock Wraith Demon, the 'Strider', the High Dragon, Orsino's abomination form and the living statues that Meredith animates during the final boss fight. It's a little worrying that they chose to, and hell that they even could, squash all those plot points into a short flashback sequence.
However this trailer was rendered and released in August. Was all that content even locked and modelled 6 months before release? Even though the game was reportedly knocked up in 9 months? Could it be that this was just what was locked at that point, and that things subsequent were either cut or held back for DLC?
Isabela's Arrival / Departure There's a scene where Isabela seems to hold Hawke at knifepoint and leave down the pier, although it does look like it's being played backwards so maybe she's just arriving? Either way I don't recall this scene playing out- it's neither how you first meet Isabela and nor does it occur during a personal quest or, as far as I know, how any of the permutations of her leaving with the Tome of Koslund play out. Could this have been a dramatised version of any of those events that got cut?
Black Army There are a number of shots of fully armoured creatures with staves similar to those wielded by Flemeth in the same trailer. But who are they? Darkspawn? I can't line them up in my mind with any of the factions met in the game.
Abomination? In the Deep Roads shots there's one from a first-person perspective where the viewer's hands seem to be a bit demonic... unless that's jus the Blood Magic again could there have been a segment where Hawke had to wrestle with being possessed?
Just some thoughts on this. Overall my comment would just be that, unless it was a very deliberately misleading version of events (Varric-style) there were a lot of things in the Destiny trailer that weren't that representative of the final game. It's also a bit odd that most of the game's content was scrunched into a 10sec flashback sequence, both for its own sake and given when the trailer was released.
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