Quick Look: Dragon Age II

And so, Deep Mushroom joined the pantheon of Giant Bomb memes.

I had to force myself through DA:O for many of the reasons people have mentioned in these comments. It seems to take itself so very seriously but the overarching plot is an incredibly diluted little snapshot of LotR - and the subplots that pad it all out are the sort of things one may make up on the spur of the moment as an example of a clichéd fantasy plot. It has so many off-putting elements. Things like how everyone gets covered in blood from pretty much anything they do - and notably (a) it looks like it was raining blood rather than that they got sprayed with geysers of blood as they sliced their enemies and (b) if you then take their armour off, their underclothes are also identically covered in blood - and the truly god-awful and distracting facial and body animations.

Thing is, I then replayed through it again - don't ask - and ended up really loving it. The exact same thing happened with FFXII. It's like you need to shit out all the venom you feel towards such an obviously flawed game, drain all the disappointment and anger away, and then you can actually thoroughly enjoy what it does do right. Well a whole load of the things that I thought royally sucked with DA:O (apart from the laughable blood thing - but then you can turn that off in the options) seem to have been Bioware's main focus as they corrected things for the sequel - and that's pleasantly surprising since most reviews seemed like they'd suck off DA:O if only they could find its penis under all the obviously fake blood.

'So what's a year?' 

" @AllanIceman said:

"Double Dragon Age! "

 HA!  I see what you did there!  "

If you prefer the pld style of rpgs, you play it on hard or higher, you pause a lot, change the Tactics, etc.
 
I would get so bored playing it Ryan's way.

" Maybe it's just me, but does the movement seem a little too fast to anyone else? Just something about the speed everyone moves seems a little unnatural, especially in combat. "

That's a big, long goddamn quick-look.  Gonna take me a little time to get through it.

it seems as if they dont even notice all the blood all over their faces

Viscount = Vie-count.   The S is silent!

" "it moves fast" = lost all interest "making stuff look cool" = Making stuff look really lame "

That UI looks perfectly functional, but absolutely bland.
 
It would appear that Dragon Age 1's UI is the only thing that has more character than Dragon Age 2.
 
But then I kind of hated how hard it was to see your health and mana in Dragon Age 1, sooooo

Dwarf swearing is pretty great.

Why are the weapons still stuck to everyone's back by magic?  That looked stupid and shitty in the last game and it continues to look stupid and shitty in this one. 

" Why are the weapons still stuck to everyone's back by magic?  That looked stupid and shitty in the last game and it continues to look stupid and shitty in this one.  "

The depth on that v-neck, my god. 

" @HerbieBug said:

" Why are the weapons still stuck to everyone's back by magic?  That looked stupid and shitty in the last game and it continues to look stupid and shitty in this one.  "

Agreed. When it happened in Too Human, I chalked it up to some technological magic. Electromagnetic holding, whatever.  I don't see any techno-vikings here. "

I love how it took Vinny and Ryan no more than 30 seconds to regret their visual arrangement

wait..so the Dalish are welsh? Does that mean Tom Jones is going to be making a cameo? 

Anyway, that....makes no sense. Shouldn't they, if anything, be Irish? The Welsh are hardly known for being Elfin. That's like making a Scottish pixie. It's just..odd. 
 
Perhaps i'm over thinking this.

Female Hawke looks surprisingly badass.

" Turned it off after Vinny said she had poop on her face. I'm fucking sick of his shit jokes.  "

" @HandsomeDevil said:

" Turned it off after Vinny said she had poop on her face. I'm fucking sick of his shit jokes.  "

you smell like dragon ass. "

Please tell me that on higher difficulties I will need a tank, a healer and maybe some crowd control. 
The combat I have seen here, just looks really really bad.

" Turned it off after Vinny said she had poop on her face. I'm fucking sick of his shit jokes.  "

" @HandsomeDevil said:

" Turned it off after Vinny said she had poop on her face. I'm fucking sick of his shit jokes.  "

CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES THIS IS MY LAST RESORT "

Is this Fist of the North Star, whats the deal with exploding bad guys?

Awesome!!! Crap I really need to finish the first one.

" wait..so the Dalish are welsh? Does that mean Tom Jones is going to be making a cameo? Anyway, that....makes no sense. Shouldn't they, if anything, be Irish? The Welsh are hardly known for being Elfin. That's like making a Scottish pixie. It's just..odd.  Perhaps i'm over thinking this. "

I'm loving DA2 so far! It almost feels like a new Jade Empire, combat-wise, which makes me very happy:) Also, it reminds me a bit of Folklore, since you map skills to the face buttons. Visually, I love the touches they've added to give ONE of their games some style, and move it away from derivative/archetypal/offensively boring. Something that Mass Effect suffers from badly. But Dragon Age 2 has a lot of little touches that start to add up; the most noticeable one being the almost Final Fantasy level of attractiveness to "Lady Hawke's" model. 
 
The new combat, the style improvements, and the new story structure all add up to a win in my book. Couldn't give two sh**s about Dragon Age Origins, but I gave this one a shot after loving the demo and am glad I did. Great Quick Look for a fantastic game. I wish you guys would do this "VS format" more often!

Maybe I'm missing something, but what's with the BLOODY FACES? It looks kind of cool, but mostly weird.

Hahahahha...Vinny's a man after my own heart.  "A lot of people judge RPGs on how the characters look in their underwear"  And, Dave's on the ball with his respect for Farscape, and Ryan for Babylon 5.  I never got into Quantum Leap, though.  Like how the GB team referenced all the Dragon Age voice actors by previous sci-fi series. 

I thought this was the first whisky media 3d presentation hahah

I can't believe this is made by BioWare, the quality is so much lower than their usual pedigree. 
 
It's like the ginger stepchild of BioWare's recent games.

Why did Ryan put on the worse armor? Huh?

The weird thing about the Dalish is that some of them have Irish accents and some have South Wales accents. For example, Merrill sounds like she's from Swansea. And I'm speaking as someone who's a quarter Welsh myself.

" I can't believe this is made by BioWare, the quality is so much lower than their usual pedigree.  It's like the ginger stepchild of BioWare's recent games. "

There's some things I like about watching people play video games.  Like Ryan trying to figure out how to select Merrill, who is one button press to the right, and pressing left three times.  That's beautiful.

" Viscount = Vie-count.   The S is silent! "

"They impacted the colon."
 
"She put poo on her face, so you know she means business."
 
Thank you, Vinny. Take a bow.

" I can't believe this is made by BioWare, the quality is so much lower than their usual pedigree.  It's like the ginger stepchild of BioWare's recent games. "

I am late because I have been busy but... 
You guys did both PC and xbox in one quicklook??? 
 
Bravo! God dam you guys are making it hard for me to NOT give you money for a whiskey membership.... 
 
The fact that you actually did this is very impressive.

Graphics look SOOO much better then DAO.

It's probably totally crazy, but I thought the 360 version looked better. At least in this feed.

Endurance run please.

" @Jazz said:

" wait..so the Dalish are welsh? Does that mean Tom Jones is going to be making a cameo? Anyway, that....makes no sense. Shouldn't they, if anything, be Irish? The Welsh are hardly known for being Elfin. That's like making a Scottish pixie. It's just..odd.  Perhaps i'm over thinking this. "

Actually, if I remember correctly, the elven names and language in Middle Earth were all based on Welsh. Think of all the "th" and "w" sounds in there. Leprechauns are the famous Irish "elves" and they're nothing like the Tolkien take on elves that has become the standard in fantasy stuff ever since (before him, they were just little fairies that lives in toadstools etc). "

" I can't believe this is made by BioWare, the quality is so much lower than their usual pedigree.  It's like the ginger stepchild of BioWare's recent games. "

Love the first game (2nd is ok), but I still don't get how nobody comes up to you and asks "Would you like a towel?"