Oh the hag is great, not as good as the forest hermit but still enjoyably quirky. Morrigan on the other hand... Oh you're so unaware of the workings of the civilised world, oh you're so superior yet vurnable...
Bints just a manipulative condescending sociopath disagreeing with everything I do, here have some jewellery deep fry those dark spawn and crawl back to your burrow...

As a sidenote DA:O totally assumes you're a human or of similar disposition, well or a mage.
Beat the game as a Dalish and kept wondering... "How does this human politics, these human conflicts and these human faiths concern me again?"
In case you didn't play the dalish origin story btw, it explains why Merrill is so obsessed with that bloody mirror.

My very favorite character was a dalish rogue archer. Awakening makes them so broken if you stack in bard and assassin.

Never played awakenings but when DA2 makes you feel more involved as a Dalish (where they just reference you) then DA:O did, something's messed up.
Yeah Archer all the way

DA2 isn't bad but it does really feel uninspired at times, but it and Mass Effect suffered the same treatment. The story got made a little more bland for the wholesale crowd while the controls and scheme went for "Less RPG more action!"

Unless you were playing on the xbox I don't know what you're getting at, combat was one of the things the fanbase agreed upon being better in DA2

What fanbase was that? I much preferred the throwback to Baldur's Gate style present in DA:O.

The one frequenting the official forums, I think you're just coloured by preconceptions, give it a chance and you'll see that it's just as tactical and involved as DA:O, if not more.

I bought and played through it upon release. Not as good as DA:O. I felt more Diablo and less Baldur's Gate. I tend to stay away from official forums for any game as people on them are generally too far in either direction. The game certainly wasn't a travesty but it was definitely a step down toward making the game more accessible to a wider audience. I blame EA.

It got much better with patching, from a balance standpoint.
I've heard a lot of people claim that it's less tactical, more action oriented and aimed to a wider audience... That's actually only true on lower difficulty when you don't go indepth with the combat system, the real meat is in the combo system, the value of movement and positioning and the fact that healing is de-empathised.
I've heard people say reinforcements are bullshit because they can't plan their approach... Isn't it more tactical to adjust your strategy in the midst of battle in light of new conditions?
I've heard that the long cooldowns makes skills unusable and bland, but it makes setting up and abusing these limited skills more valuable and everytime you use a skill something awesome happens.
In addition the fact that your autoattacks are augmented by closing attacks,pushback and have swing arcs again encourages you to stay active and care about position outside of don't stand in fire and try to flank.

Again I think people passed it off as dumbed down because of preconceived notions of what it should have been like, DA2 is not a bad game, it's bad at explaining itself.

There was a combo system involving magic in DA:O, and you actually had to watch for friendly fire (note I played both on Nightmare).

The reinforcements were bullshit because of how they appeared. Spiders dropping down from a ceiling I'm okay with, but humans suddenly coming out from all around you starts to get ridiculous and unrealistic. Esepcially given their speed of appearance is based on how quickly you slay group 1. It feels less natural.

I have no problem with long CD moves, every game these days has them and even in DA:O you had huge moves that, while not having a CD, had huge stamina/mana requirements on them.

There were plenty of ways for them to improve upon DA:O without overhauling the system. My personal feel from the vibe is that Bioware ended up having to cater to the will of EA in their development cycles. Plus your choices in DA:O actually had real consequences versus DA2, exception going to what you do with your sibling in the deep roads.

It's a very subjective argument whether the direction DA2 took with it's combat was a good thing. Judged on it's own merits it's pretty darn good in my opinion and fun!
On spell combos I only ever used Shatter because the other spell combos wasn't worth how it messed up my magi, also the omnipresent nature of the status triangle system in DA2 was way more integral and allowed for some proper badass effects.
I disagree that either of the Dragon Age games had meaningful consequence to much of anything, it was quite binary in most cases with very few exceptions.

But yes, EA have successfully sucked the life out of Bioware and left a charred husk behind.
It shows with how obviously rushed DA2 was, I mean I needed a day 1 patch to not have constant crashes.
DA2 has been hailed as an awful game, that I simply don't agree with. It got some great elements and I enjoyed the hell out of it when I gave it an honest chance.

It's definitely not awful. It's a good game, just not what many people wanted. Would I play a DA3 that followed the same formula as DA2? Sure. Would I prefer it be more like DA:O, however? Well, you know the rest.

Im not holding out much hope for Bioware after the doctors left, tis a pity they crafted some very intriguing worlds... Including one of the more sensible Sci-fi universes I've seen.

Anyhow, I take it you're all over Project Eternity and Tides of Numenera then?

Well, I'm mostly all over Wasteland 2 and Star Citizen. Especially with the funds I dropped on them.

For Project Eternity I do love me some infinity engine and Chris Avellone does great work. Can't say I've heard of Tides of Numenera though.

InXile aquired the rights to Torment, as in Planescape torment. But WotC are kinda cunts like that and wouldn't give them the planescape setting. So they're using Monte Cooks new love child Numenera as their setting... Which kinda fits the tone. They're going up on Kickstarter soon.
Think Chris Avellone has his fingers somewhere in the pie, if nothing else he endorses it.

Well, Brian Fargo loves working with Avellone and Urquart, so you never know.

I installed DA:O last night to begin my journey. Now to decide what race and class combo I play. I've seen Dalish and City elf as well as human noble and mage. I don't think I've ever seen the dwarven ones... but I'm not a fan of dwarves.

Dwarves need more love.

"Mmmm...Pickle juice..."


-Tir