http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfs6mp_the-witcher-2-eurogamer-expo-2010-presentation_videogames
Uh-mazing.
I didn't much like the first Witcher, but the second one looks like a genuine game of the year, if not the decade.
Now if only my PC wasn't made of cardboard.
I always meant to pick up the first but I still haven't gotten around to it.
And in stark comparison to the Witcher, here's a few things I learned from Dragon Age 2:
Each cave, sewer, dwarven thaig and bandit hideout looks exactly the same as the last.
Major trade cities are sparsely populated, blandly coloured and disquietingly calm.
Mages will always turn to blood magic. They cannot be trusted. At all.
It doesn't matter what decisions you make and who you ally yourself with. Choice is a lie.
That's odd; so you'd say DA2 was a step backwards?
Orzammar in DA1 felt very crowded and bustling, and even the big city seemed okay in size.
Maybe they're rushing things"?
I would have though that the dungeons would look different--one of the reasons ME2 had so much art was because of the complaints that ME1's dungeons were all the same. One would think that Bioware would cross-apply the lessons?
Just looking at that preview of Witcher 2, it looks pretty darn badass.
Looked nifty. Some of the combat animations seemed a little off, but not much more so than most games (and the others were the finished kind!). I liked that he had a torch quenching spell, a bit out of the ordinary and the genre really needs some fresh ideas to ensure it doesn't go stale (so many fireballs...).
Would have been fun to see a double playthrough of some sort so they could really show off their proclaimed non-linearity.
QuoteThat's odd; so you'd say DA2 was a step backwards?
Orzammar in DA1 felt very crowded and bustling, and even the big city seemed okay in size.[/quote]Maybe they're rushing things?[/quote]I would have though that the dungeons would look different--one of the reasons ME2 had so much art was because of the complaints that ME1's dungeons were all the same. One would think that Bioware would cross-apply the lessons?[/quote]Clearly not. This was the worst aspect of DA2. It is made all the worse by the fact that those repeated maps are large but uninteresting, so that you spend much of the game walking. If the maps were unique I wouldn't have minded, but by the third time traipsing through the same damned cave in the belly of Sundermount I was genuinely pissed off at them wasting my time like that. A full third of the game is probably padding.
I saw only one true improvement from Origins to the sequel: the models for the elves, dwarves and qunari look far more unique and genuinely nonhuman. I liked that. But not much else.
Thanks for the summary... I really want to get DA2, but I have yet to hear anything good about it. :( You're about the fourth person I know who has panned it- all for different reasons... and I saw a few episodes of a let's play... and they were very disappointing.
If I buy the game used- how horrible will I be gimping myself? (Since I won't have the hound or the market)? I absolutely despise inventory management, for example- and I rarely sell anything I pick up. I also dislike lots of loading screens to go through to return to X place to sell things.
I also dislike underground areas. I only like the above-ground areas in DA1. And the outside areas.
This makes me concerned for ME3...which I already thought was coming out too soon after ME2- I was unsure if they could make a good game so fast- and I am skeptical about the Earth-based setting. I don't want to play ANOTHER game based on earth. Halo already had an earth based attack. I am hoping that in ME3 we get ship to ship combat! The only good thing is that ME3 apparently slipped from Holiday 2011 to February 2012, so it seems that Quality control is coming into play, to some degree.
Buy it used. Buy it as cheap as you can. I don't mean to say it's a horrible game, but it certainly isn't worth paying the full price of a major new release.
There are a lot of loading screens (at least on the ps3), and they are much too long for current gen.
On the plus side, Inventory management is minimal. You don't have to bother with your followers' items at all.