Dragon Age 2: Gameplay and Discussion

[rajpoot]

The spoiler-ed character description made me laugh more than most jokes in the game. The reason I find it hard to care about the companions is because they hardly seem have lived any life before they met Hawke. In the previous game, everyone seemed to be keen on talking about their past experiences in great detail. I miss that here.

[Greyblades]

I feel realy out of the loop here; I dont think in my last playthrough I realy noticed all the angsting and when I did I didnt mind much, maybe its because I didnt play all that many JRPG's and arent sick and tired of them, but I dont realy feel the revulsion you guy are getting .

Ok I've got my own gripe: why the heck does this game feel so rail-roaded for failure?
For example:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

During one of the main quests you have to escort a rogue qunari mage out of the city to some beach on behalf of a chantry sister, he's also mute, I can't refuse, its a main quest. Ok the sister isnt exactly miss nice and is getting on my nerves; screw her I'm going to blow the whole thing to the arishok... Ok he doest care, just says "I'm worthy".

With no other option I agree and take the walking magic-brick-out-house to the beach, sounds like the start of a picnic. After beating up the usual thugs on the way (kinda missing the option to intimidate by pointing out that I beat a fricking dragon in an earlier quest, mage didnt help much by the way) I get to the beach and there's a bunch of qunari who ask for him back, I say get lost he's mine and a fight ensues. After I've finished up and take a rod from the qunari, the mage starts talking, but says he has to die. I tell him no but the mage still sets himself on fire and dies , apparantly none of my mages can summon a pail of water.

Annoyed I reload to an earlier save and hand him over to the qunari hoping for a better outcome, nope, the qunari executes the mage and then attacks me in fear that I was possessed by a daemon the mage might have summoned. In retrospect maybe having anders/daemon of vengeance along might not have helped my case.

In the end, no matter what I do the qunari group attacks me, the mage burns to death, the arishok ignores me and I can't even kill the sister that started all this just threaten her. Even that just gets a dismissive reaction out of her.

And that's one of the least disasterous quests.

[Kekvit Irae]

For example:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

During one of the main quests you have to escort a rogue qunari mage out of the city to some beach on behalf of a chantry sister, he's also mute, I can't refuse, its a main quest. Ok the sister isnt exactly miss nice and is getting on my nerves; screw her I'm going to blow the whole thing to the arishok... Ok he doest care, just says "I'm worthy".

With no other option I agree and take the walking magic-brick-out-house to the beach, sounds like the start of a picnic. After beating up the usual thugs on the way (kinda missing the option to intimidate by pointing out that I beat a fricking dragon in an earlier quest, mage didnt help much by the way) I get to the beach and there's a bunch of qunari who ask for him back, I say get lost he's mine and a fight ensues. After I've finished up and take a rod from the qunari, the mage starts talking, but says he has to die. I tell him no but the mage still sets himself on fire and dies , apparantly none of my mages can summon a pail of water.

Annoyed I reload to an earlier save and hand him over to the qunari hoping for a better outcome, nope, the qunari executes the mage and then attacks me in fear that I was possessed by a daemon the mage might have summoned. In retrospect maybe having anders/daemon of vengeance along might not have helped my case.

In the end, no matter what I do the qunari group attacks me, the mage burns to death, the arishok ignores me and I can't even kill the sister that started all this just threaten her. Even that just gets a dismissive reaction out of her.

And that's one of the least disasterous quests.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You'll see that sister again real soon...

[Greyblades]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You'll see that sister again real soon...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I know I've allready finished the game. I realy hated the final meeting, I actually had become somewhat fond of the viscounts kid, Him being one of the few characters who seemed the least bit idealistic in the game, and after yet again not being able to prevent his death It was realy frustrating that a qunari shot the sister before I could. Freaking kill stealer!

[Mailman653]

Buy Dragon Age II, get a free digital copy of Mass Effect 2 for the PC.

[Scienter]

Just an FYI to people who are still playing: Isabela's friendship perk causes a game breaking bug. If you gain her friendship perk, you'll lose 5% of your attack speed every time you save a game w/o her in your party. The save game is broken, and it will assume that she is in your party when she is not. You probably won't notice the decrease in attack speed until your attack animation slows down. I had this issue w/ my rogue, and fixed it by downloading the gffeditor (http://social.bioware.com/project/1936/#files), running daosavegame.exe, and changing my attack speed animation back to 0.0. It's value number 42 if you use the editor I posted. There hasn't been a patch yet, so this is the best way to get around it IMO. It works, but occasionally you need to go back in and re set it unless you keep Isabela in your party. If you get the bug, it eventually makes your character unusable because the attack speed is so low.

Apparently, this also happens with the DLC companion Sebastian, but I don't have him so I can't verify this.

[rajpoot]

Just an FYI to people who are still playing: Isabela's friendship perk causes a game breaking bug. If you gain her friendship perk, you'll lose 5% of your attack speed every time you save a game w/o her in your party. The save game is broken, and it will assume that she is in your party when she is not. You probably won't notice the decrease in attack speed until your attack animation slows down. I had this issue w/ my rogue, and fixed it by downloading the gffeditor (http://social.bioware.com/project/1936/#files), running daosavegame.exe, and changing my attack speed animation back to 0.0. It's value number 42 if you use the editor I posted. There hasn't been a patch yet, so this is the best way to get around it IMO. It works, but occasionally you need to go back in and re set it unless you keep Isabela in your party. If you get the bug, it eventually makes your character unusable because the attack speed is so low.

Apparently, this also happens with the DLC companion Sebastian, but I don't have him so I can't verify this.

^^^ What he said.
It does happen with Sebastian too.
You need to open the savegame and modify it each time they are removed automatically from your party....like say when you go to your homebase. On the other hand you can simply change the base value so that it can neutralize the effect once and for all.
When it first happened with my warrior I thought the slow animations looked kind of cool...till I got kicked in a big fight.
Even if you don't have the bug get the editor. It has tons of stuff you can play around with including inventory, talents and approval of companions.

[rajpoot]

Song dedicated to DA2.....It's by the same people who did the Commander Shepard song.

Link, to listen, or to buy.