Eurogamer Expo 2010: Dragon Age II Hands-On Impressions

I walked in at a brisk pace heading straight for the over 18’s section, taking my place at one of the four Xbox360 pods which had been set-up with Dragon Age II. The female gamer next to me proclaimed that she would not move all day, it’s safe to say that Bioware’s upcoming RPG was highly anticipated at the 2010 Eurogamer Expo. Having played Origins on the PC the whole console thing was a little new, my only experience of any Dragon Age game on consoles was at the 2009 expo and it was not great.

The first thing that hits you is the new art style and improved visuals. In Origins character models were generic with many shared features. Dragon Age II remedies this to a certain extent, giving key figures a unique look which will be hard to replicate. The “Witch of the Wilds” Flemeth appears in the demo with a complete re-design. Her model in Origins was so simple, it could be easily replicated in the character creator, but not this time.

Moving on to the combat, I chose to play as a male warrior.  The start of the demo pits you on mountainous terrain with one companion in your party. I had a standard console UI with three key abilities mapped to the face buttons. Having not played Origins on the console, I assumed that the fourth and final face button “A” would initiate an auto-attack.

I flung my warrior into battle using my three main abilities rather quickly. The first thing I noticed was my stamina bar. If you used three attacks in Origins, your stamina would be toast, that’s not the case in Dragon Age II. My stamina bar was still three quarters full and regenerating at a steady pace. With all main abilities on cool down it was time to check out the “auto-attack”. Pressing “A” no longer starts an auto-attack, instead it unleashes a normal sword attack. Press it multiple times and you get a generic hack’n’slash combo. This is somewhat of a revelation, as I found myself focusing solely on my character and supplementing my main abilities with hack’n’slash. I no longer felt the need to switch to my party member, as my character always had something of use to do.

He's behind you!

The way you play Dragon Age II will be decided by you, if you enjoy mixing and matching your combat between a range of classes then the old party switch system is still in place. On the other hand, if you wish to focus solely on your character then that is most definitely an option and it is quite effective too.

The same good old story element which made Origins so successful is back. Players will once again have to converse with a multitude of characters and a number of dialogue options are at hand in helping you do that. A new system of dialogue symbols is in place to show players exactly which each dialogue option entails. For example, a funny option will show a jesters face  to ensure even the most simple minded gamer will understand what they are about to do.

This is part of Bioware’s dumbing down process to ensure that not only the “hardcore” gamers can properly experience this epic journey through Ferelden and beyond.

From this quick first look I can already see that Dragon Age II is shaping up to be a great game. Bioware have already addressed my biggest gripe by improving the melee classes of the game, thanks to improved stamina and increased attacks. It was hard to get into the story on a very busy expo floor, but what I did see…I liked.