I think I’ve mentioned before that I definitely looking forward to The Witcher 2 way more than Dragon Age 2, but this preview from Warcry just tipped the scale even more in favor of Witcher. Anyone else read the preview and walk away feeling… WoW-ed?
It just sounds like every ‘improvement’ is aimed at making the whole thing easier, and I never found Dragon Age to be impossibly difficult to begin with. Rather it was a solid challenge in a genre that too often provides you with interactive cakewalks, and it was that challenge that masked a lot of the combat systems shortfalls (that became very apparent once things got easy towards the end). I doubt making an RPG’s combat more ‘actiony’ is really going to impress me either, especially since originally Dragon Age was intended as the spiritual successor to Balders Gate, a game certainly NOT about bash-em action.
Perhaps I’m just being glass-half-empty here (which would be a first), but right now DA2 is looking very much like a pass.
Hardcore Casual 
I just read through that and, other than the bit about skill trees, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. They’re streamlining it, which the game definitely needed; inventory was annoying to deal with all the time. I agree with you on the difficulty setting but we can always bump it up to hard, yes?
The changes I’ve heard about them making sound more akin to how ME2 became more action oriented than the first. If it turns out to be that way, I think it will be for the better.
Generally moving something up to Hard just increases the numbers or allows the game to ‘cheat’, rather than increasing the baseline difficulty. In other words, DA1 was tough in parts because of the setup, the method to deal with the enemies, stuff like that. “Simpler” encounters, cranked up numbers or not, are still simple.
Plus bumping up to Hard generally means min/maxing the game, which is fine for some, but I find doing it in a single-player game rather lame.
I dunno. There’s some room for interpretation. When it talked about speeding up the combat, the Bioware person talked specifically about speeding up the animations — that could mean more “action-y” a la ME2, or it could mean they simply made more concise, quicker animations. The web advancement could be a simplification, or it might lead to a large number of viable character builds. I’m not actually sure they said anything about simpler encounters, but they did say something about adding enemies with roles: leaders, generals, assassins, and whatnot. Which could lead to new complexities in combat, or simplified “kill the general and the rest will follow” encounters.
So I’m not saying your wrong. But I think that wasn’t an article that could help you decide if the glass is half-empty or half-full. The glass is in the middle.
You are correct, too early to tell from just that piece (and I’ve not bothered to dig deeper). I just don’t like devs talking about making things easier when I found the original just right. This is the part:
Was the default setting, especially on PC, too hard? Yeah,” admits Laidlaw. “‘Normal’ felt more like ‘Hard’ to me.”
I read the above and think ‘dumbed down street, here we come’. Hopefully I’m wrong.
Unless Insanity in the first game is where they want hard mode to be in the second, I think they have the wrong people deciding on difficulty.
“In Origins, your companions either approved or disapproved of just about everything you said and did, from how you handled quests to your conversations with them to the gifts you gave them. If they disapproved enough, they might decide not to follow your commands or just abandon you completely. In theory, it allowed for a lot of role playing, but if you wanted to have the strongest crew, you were pretty much obligated to keep them all happy. DA2 uses a similar mechanic, but with a far more interesting twist: Instead of approval and disapproval, you now have friends and rivals. Your companions will have your back no matter what, but if they’re your rival, there will always be a bit of tension between you.”
Now, I’m going to admit up front that couldn’t make it all the way through Dragon Age: Origins because I just got sick as hell of the errand boy nature of most of the tasks/quests. However, if there was one thing I really liked it was how my party interacted. A shame to see they are tossing that away in favor of allowing you to have the most powerful party no matter what.
They’re removing a lot of the features that I enjoyed from the first game from what I hear, it really makes me wonder who Bioware thinks their player-base consists of.
I also couldn’t even finish DA:O. The game was boring and repetitive, with broken combat and the most predictable cliched story imaginable. Not to mention vastly overrated visuals (didn’t the mouths not even move when they spoke??).
Lets not even start on the ridiculous DLCs (not that I purchased them myself of course).