[keg in kc]

Some more. The last couple have allayed some fears about the combat being changed too much towards action - apparently people didn't grasp the whole "unreliable narrator" aspect of the initial combat, or else didn't play the demo long enough to get to the real battle.

Dragon Age II - hands-on
PREVIEW: How BioWare is building a better Blight

Words: Tyler Nagata, GamesRadar US

When we like something, we usually don’t take too kindly to change, and if you read our review, you’ll know that we really liked Dragon Age: Origins. But now that BioWare has established its high fantasy world with Origins, it’s time to dive deeper into the stories and conflicts that await players in the sequel – and with that come some big changes.

BioWare wants to shake things up with Dragon Age II. They want to evolve the game’s art style and visual fidelity, making it look worlds better than Origins. They also want combat to feel more fluid, aggressive, and faster paced. But as with most BioWare titles, the quality of the story is the main focus – and the development team is exploring new directions for how to tell the tale of Dragon Age II’s new protagonist, Hawke.

“This time around we wanted to mix up how we were telling the story. We wanted to tell the story of the life of a man who is at the most pivotal moment in the history of Dragon Age, so far. So, the story then becomes about the rise to power of one character, Hawke,” explains lead designer Mike Laidlaw.

Hawke hails from the town of Lothering. You may remember that it was ravaged by darkspawn in the middle of Origins. Hawke was one of one of the few people to survive that attack. He’s travelled north to Kirkwall, a city in Free Marches. “There, Hawke becomes involved in events that essentially bring the world to the brink of war. Now what those events are, we don’t know at the beginning. All we know is that there are two who are digging into Hawke’s past, trying to find out more about him, to learn more,” teases Laidlaw.

Although, you won’t be creating your own custom Grey Warden as you did in Origins, Dragon Age II still lets you customize everything else so that your Hawke is as unique as you want him or her to be. The opening warrior, rogue, and mage classes return along with the ability to tweak your gender and appearance as you see fit.

We leave our Hawke as he is and opt for the warrior class. We quickly find ourselves in the Blight Lands with a powerful mage for a companion. The area is bleak and barren. In the distance, giant plumes of smoke from a nearby town cloud the sky. The ashes from the flames of battle we’ve narrowly escaped float across the screen as we step into our first battle.

The first thing we noticed is that the camera has been pulled back from the console versions of Origins, making combat feel much more graceful. With our skills mapped to our face buttons, we were able to tear through a few weak waves of darkspawn with little difficulty, using a whirlwind and knock back attack to keep enemies at bay. Then the ogres came.

These giant beasts were quite fearsome in Origins. Even though some battles felt frustrating in the original game, we loved the unforgiving difficulty level. So we were actually a little disappointed to see Hawke tear through the towering titans without breaking a sweat. Dragon Age shouldn’t feel like God of War!


But just when we were ready to bemoan the loss of the tough fights we loved from the original, the game cut to a mysterious man and woman bickering over the details of the scene we just played through. What we played through was a tall tale, rife with exaggerations that explain why Hawke felt so overpowered in our first encounter.

These are the strangers Laidlaw hinted at earlier. They’re the ones trying to piece together the real history of the Champion of Kirkwall (aka you). “And this takes us to the structure we’re using, which is called a framed narrative. Now, The Usual Suspects and The Princess Bride and Frankenstein are all good examples of a framed narrative,” says executive producer Mark Darrah before laying out the scope of Dragon Age II’s epic story.

“And what I see as one of the coolest elements of it, is that we have characters telling the story of your character – and you’re advancing across a decade of history, which is how much time we’re covering in Dragon Age II. It’s the longest period BioWare has ever tackled in a single game. You can actually see, not only the story they’re telling, but the world change as you make your decisions. Origins had this awesome epilogue system. But I wanted to see that in a game, rather than read it. So the end result is very reactive, and I think it might be the most reactive game [BioWare] has ever done, in terms of your choice, and what effect it has on the world,” continues Darrah.

We return to a more down-to-earth version of Hawke’s story. He’s weak and the darkspawn are strong. The battles that follow as Hawke presses north feel like they should, requiring us to pause, switch characters, and queue commands as we did in Origins. Everything feels right. “Think like a general, fight like a Spartan,” says executive producer Mark Darrah. That’s the mantra for Dragon Age II’s development team. “This effects the animation and the action speed. Overall, the game is much more punchy and much more responsive,” adds Darrah. We see less shuffling and more action, especially when casting spells. It seems like casting time has been reduced, possibly at the expense of longer cool down, times. But regardless of the math behind the combat system, the battles we experienced do feel more aggressive while retaining the strategic elements of the original.

But as the game cuts away from battles, we noticed that the cinematic dialogue scenes have a lot more flair to them. It’s another way that BioWare is aiming to up the ante with Dragon Age II. “From the art direction perspective, what we want to make sure is that when you see a screenshot for Dragon Age II, you can say ‘Okay. This is Dragon Age II. It’s not Lord of the Rings. It’s not generic fantasy game number 63,” explains Laidlaw.

But even when talking about Dragon Age II’s art style and graphics, everything still comes back to the importance of the story and its cast of characters. “I think that games are going through a sort of Baroque period right now,” says Darrah. “They’re focusing their attention on really highly detailed environments. But at the end of the day, environments don’t tell story. Characters tell story. So what we’re doing with Dragon Age II is focusing on the characters, making sure that they can convey emotion and that they can convey story – and that they are the strongest thing in the game,” continues Darrah.

You’ll notice the difference whenever the game cuts to dialogue. Each shot is framed like a photograph and looks balanced with lots of soft focus on background characters and environments to draw your attention towards the person speaking in the foreground.

“It’s like a Kurosawa film. What you see in those films are very established and carefully structured shots that are about something. And we want to make sure that when you pause the game and look at the game, you can see that it’s about something… it’s about these characters struggling for their lives in the foreground. So part of doing that - and you see it in Kurosawa films - is about stripping some of the background away, making it about something. It’s not about the background. It’s about the foreground.”

The dialogue system also feels more like Mass Effect this time around. There’s an icon next to each response, representing Hawke’s tone, along with a brief hint at what he’s about to say. You see a jester mask for the sarcastic responses, an olive branch for a more chivalrous approach, and a clenched fist for hardened action hero one liners.

Dragon Age II will also track your responses. So if you tend to opt for more humorous responses to situations, future cutscenes will find Hawke making light of the situations with more punchy one liners. Choose more chivalrous responses and Hawke will take note and take the high road, choosing his words with care, like the noble warrior you want him to be.

PC vs Console

In our opinion, the PC version of Dragon Age: Origins was by far, the better version, mostly because of its combat camera system. We loved the freedom offered by the camera system in the PC version, which allowed you to zoom out for a bird’s eye view of the battlefield. But you could also zoom in for extreme close-ups of your character planting a battleaxe in a darkspawn’s forehead, for example. The tactical camera system made combat so much fun, allowing you to pan around the battlefield as you scrolled through your strategic options.

Above: A shot from Dragon Age: Origins, showing the tactical combat camera pulled back as far as it will go. You won't be able to do this anymore in the PC version of Dragon Age II, but it's not as bad as you think

So we were worried when we heard that the tactical Baldur’s Gate-style combat camera from the PC version wouldn’t be returning in Dragon Age II. Well, it will and it won’t. BioWare is focusing on the third-person camera view for the console versions, but is also working with the PC version’s camera to keep the key elements of the tactical experience in the game.

We got to see an early prototype of the camera system that will appear in the PC version, and we have the feeling that fans concerned about the camera changes won’t be disappointed.

“The engine is redesigned from the ground up to basically work better with consoles. So if you played it on the Xbox or PS3 [version], you see that it looks much better. But that doesn’t mean that the PC can’t play to its own strengths – it just means that we understand how the engine works better. For the most part, we wanted to reach a parity, in terms of design,” explains Laidlaw as he boots up an early build of the PC version of Dragon Age II.

He zooms in and out to demonstrate how certain camera angles with the old system could complicate matters for some of the encounters featured in Dragon Age II. “So we basically said, ‘Okay. That is a problem.’ I don’t want to end up playing a game where I could not know there are archers shooting me because I’m looking the wrong way. So the camera doesn’t do quite the same thing it did, but still what’s very, very important, is that element of being able to maneuver around the battlefield,” says Laidlaw.

Laidlaw pauses the battle he booted up and pulls the camera back. Way back. The camera is no longer locked to a unit on the battle, so we didn’t see any panning about in this build, but all the functionality of the old camera system remains intact. You can pause and resume battle at will, queuing orders as you sweep across the battlefield as you did in the original.

Then Laidlaw starts adjusting the height of the camera as he floats across the battlefield. From what we saw, the only significant difference with the new camera system for the PC version is that it no longer snaps to that extreme top-down view, that made the game look like an RTS. It also doesn’t let you angle your camera upward as sharply for those extreme views from the ground. “It’s not only identical, but it actually gives me a better view of what’s happening,” adds Laidlaw.

“I understand why people are like, ‘Oh my god! It’s going to be simpler and dumb!’ But the tactical camera is just changing. It’s still there and I think it’s very effective. I totally get why there would be concerns, but we’re still working on it,” explains Laidlaw.

Dragon Age II is scheduled to release on March 8, 2011 in North America and on March 11 in the UK and Europe. Expect more news as Dragon Age II’s release date draws nearer. In the meantime, check out the latest teaser for the game.