Dragon Age II Demo

[Tbone]

Dragon Age II demo is now available for download! If anyone finds a speedy source, please let me know! Bioware's download site was going way too slow. I found an alternate link here, but I'm still looking!

Edit: Found a torrent here!

[Ragnarok]

Nice  do you know how long the demo is?

[Tbone]

Nope. Just finished downloading. Installing now.

[JazzyC]

It’s 1.9 GB in size, and will let you play through the prologue section of the game. You’ll be able to explore the central city of Kirkwall a bit, and meet sexy lady pirate Isabela. Completing it will also unlock a lovely dwarven blade to use with the full game when it’s released.

[Tbone]

Ok, I just finished the demo!

I played as a rogue. I'll probably play through as a warrior as well just to tell the difference. The demo takes you through the prologue, essentially, and then fast forwards you a bit to where you meet up with Isabella. It's a nice little taste.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the demo. The combat was SO ramped up from the last game. It's extremely fast-paced and smooth. The rogue had a lot of cool abilities like backflips and backstap, each with cool animations. The pause function is still in, however, which is good, because things happen so quickly that I could see how you could get overwhelmed. At one point my rogue died, so I played the mage for a bit. Even the mage abilities had been ramped up. Everything was instant and felt powerful. If you played the original, you'll know what a vast improvement this is over the somewhat clunky chess-like combat of that one.

The UI is so much more inviting. There's now a dialog wheel like ME2 (and how SWTOR is going to do it) with just a synopsis of what you're going to say and an image in the center that shows the emotion you are conveying (protector, aggressive, etc). The level up system is stream-lined quite a bit. Attributes clearly mark what's being improved and even show your DPS, defense, etc. changing as you level them up. The skill trees have a nice graphic interface that makes it really easy to check on what new ability you want. Inventory was locked for the demo, so I don't know how that will be.

The cinematics and voice-acting were, of course, top notch. The wheel system is SO SO much better than DA:O typing the whole thing out. And of course your character talks now instead of being mute - basically taking all the improvements from the other Bioware games and putting them in this one. SWTOR is using the same system, so you can see how well it works here.

The graphics were pretty good, especially considering that anti-aliasing and DirectX11 were disabled for the demo. I found myself really wanting to turn those on, though, to see what the game would look like to its capacity. Guess I'll have to wait on that one, but let me know if anyone finds a way to turn them on.

Not much was revealed story-wise, so it's hard to say if it's going to be as interesting as DA:O's story. Of course you can read up on a lot of that without playing the demo. The most notable story-telling device is that it takes place over a decade and is being told by one of your dwarf friends, so it's all flashback and will skip ahead a year or so at times.

As a little teaser, those of you who played DA:O, about mid-way through the demo you meet up with a familiar face in an interesting way!

[Ragnarok]

Well I cant wait to try it out now. I had a lot of people eating up my bandwidth earlier but now I should be fine, hopefully I will be able to play it in half an hour.

[Strod]

It was a great Demo, the Rouge class feels a bit overpowered in the Demo. The Mage was pretty powerful but not as obvious as the Rouge. The Warrior comes in as the weakest, odd but I like anything that goes against the grain.

I will most likely go Mage for my first play through.

[Ragnarok]

The demo was pretty great it definitely beats DA:O. The combat is just so much more fun, it still has all the strategy but just moved faster. I played the warrior first  and had to use my laptops built in mouse which didn't work out to well. The warrior definitely was the harder of the 3 classes to play. If you went sword and board it did make it a little easier though. I especially liked the new ability tree system. This games shaping up to be a great action rpg, but im still mad I cant be a dwarf .

[Tbone]

I'm still mad I can't be a dwarf .

Omg just put black tape on the screen where your guy's legs are. Problem SOLVED!

[Ragnarok]

lmao

[Subb]

I hope Morrigan and my Warden are mentioned in some way. I think that *SPOILER IN WHITE*

Alistair may turn up if you decide to get rid of him at the end of the game i.e. Anora as queen (and you as King if you're a nobleman) and Loghain's spared. In the epilogue, it states he leaves Ferelden. Or if you make him King he may just turn up to greet the champion. Also Alistair's voice actor is in IMDB for DA2 and is reprising his role.

[JazzyC]

Interesting graphical bug for me.  The bottom two front teeth were missing on all the characters.  Couldn't stop noticing it once I saw it.  They just had a small fang-like piece in the middle where the two teeth would meet.

Also, seems the Voyager crew are slowly making their way into this world.  First Tuvok and now Janeway.

[Subb]

Hahaha, Janeway and Tuvok were both in Origins but is Tuvok back in DA2?

[JazzyC]

You know,  I never realised she was the voice of Flemeth in the first.  Assumed they had changed voice actors.  But Tuvok in my DA playthrough died purely because the demon had a sultry voice.