It's because so much of it is static design. When you have very non-open areas like this, you can make things look great with nothing more than good static lighting and placement. It's a completely different beast than large, open-area games where the time of day/lighting changes. DAII has the same weather and lighting in every place, except there are night/day version for each area. You'll notice that any lighting that is actually on a dynamic object is very boring and doesn't look very good. Basically, static atmosphere created by good art design makes for good graphics without lots of power needed.

If anyone is curious what it looks like, I've uploaded 127 screenshots so far. They're... massive, so if you have slow internet, I'm sorry. All uncompressed .png at 1920x1080. They're all at "max settings", though the AA still looks pretty bad. Could use some SSAA. I also turned off DDOF about halfway through, because I thought it looked better without it. I didn't really filter them before I uploaded them, so some may be boring, or strange, or very similar to each other. Shouldn't be any real "spoilers". Very few of them show any dialogue.
http://profile.imageshack.us/user/bigassscreens
Just go to the tags on the right and click DragonAge2. I'm slowly uploading the rest I took, but it's slow.

As for things unrelated to graphics, literally all I did today was play this game. The plot is basically broken up into segments with you doing as many side quests as you want before taking on a quest that moves the plot along, followed by returning to the city with time having passed, and basically repeating that. I was worried as I was completing the second "segment" that is was going to be the end of the game, since that was the first time when the plot felt like it had really begun. Luckily, there seems to be a third plot segment, so it's not as bad as I was expecting. I've put an inexcusably large number of hours into this game in a single day though, and I don't really know why. It wasn't THAT good, but I enjoyed it, and I really had nothing else to do today. Good thing it came out in the wake of 3 exams I guess.

so i just put in about 8 hours into the game. gotta say its not AS bad as the demo. its not great, but its not terrible like i felt it was going to be once the demo came out.

I went with the default "Hero of Ferelden" background, i'm definitely liking the tie in its shown to DA:O. Feels much more i'm still part of that same world moreso than ME2 did with ME1, which i wasn't expecting. it almost makes up for the change in art design...

...but then i look at a elf's droopy ass ears, and I snap out of it and proceed to die a little inside. :dead:

still haven't run into any noticable glitch. I was half expecting to get some error while trying to enter in my codes for my dlc goodies like i did with F:NV (still pretty pissed about that btw).

Oh and one other thing, I'm calling it now:

I only saw Merrils and Isabellas... Both were terrible, Isabellas was made worse by the music...
I actually think the characters dryhumping in brown underwear was better.

Also I am going to hate Merrill she seems like the new Tali, nervous/shy, check, tries too hard be cute so its harder to take them seriously, check. Now thats what I get from a 2 minute video, maybe its wrong, but judging by the writers "so cute omg" post uh, merrilmancers *shudder* becuase the creepy Talimancers could just be stuck in the ME forums.

And now for the first exploit of the day!



http://social.bioware.com/forum/Dragon-Age-II/Dragon-Age-II-General-Discussion-No-Spoilers-allowed-here/Shield-Glitch-6407579-1.html

:lol: wow. Just unequiping a shield, was this tested at all ? I wonder if people will [censored] as much as they did with obsidian games.

You know what, I am unsure about if I wll like this game or not, but the hatered is starting to piss me off, see I would like a genereal average view, find the average score, I dont want biased results from really devoted fan/troll posts, but really http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews?dist=negative Apparently its that site we cant name.

I am slightly more to dislike, but I dont think it deserves to be treated like this, I sure as hell dont like the fact I have no idea where it actually is on the rating becuase of these troll posts.

I'm probably too late, but just for future reference:

Use http://min.us/ to upload high quality pictures.

- 50mb file size limit
- The images don't get compressed when you upload (which is why I use min.us to upload my huge minecraft screenshots, 5mb+ png images)
- Images never get deleted unless they violate the tos
- Allows hotlinking but also has albums
- No public images, the only way to find your images is if you give someone the link
- Desktop uploading tools <3
- ∞ faster than imageshack

Yes, I realize this post sounds like an ad for min.us. I'm not affiliated with min.us in any way, I just really hate imageshack/photobucket/tinypic/flickr/picasa/whatever because of the restrictions they enforce, and because it's impossible to upload uncompressed images to those services.

Also, I'm at school and imageshack is blocked, which is the main reason I posted

Merrill seems to be in Tali's boat, I agree, but this is bioware we're talking about. They always repeat character archetypes. Allistair Onasi anyone? At least in DA2 Hawke is actually older than carver.

I know they repeat, but I thought DA2 would try to be somewhat different becuase your not a chosen one saving he world from extinction or something.

Bioware would repeat these character archetypes if they were making a japanese dating sim.

Well with the fact that they arent far away from making a dating sim :/
Add in the fact they changed lore for fanservice (Tali in ME2) BW needs toget its priorities right.

very true.


I haven't played ME1 (graphics card bug made me purchasing ME1 a waste of money) so I'm not sure what your referencing. How did Bioware change tali/lore for fanservice?

iirc Quarians could remove thier suits without it being fatal becuase of weakened immune systems iirc, in ME2 this was changed to "minor allergic reactions".
And it changed her as a character too, she in ME1 had no interest in shep, in ME2 she is suddenly attracted to you, just like Garrus.

Well... except it's clearly not impossible, since I currently have 411 uncompressed .pngs uploaded to imageshack (done using the desktop uploading tool).

That's not to say that Min.us doesn't look infinitely better than imageshack.

Finally got around to playing it. Spent around four and a half hours on it and I am so tired right now. Anyway this is obvious the game isn't great but it's not nearly as bad as I was expecting. I am playing on hard and once I got all the addon items combat has been really easy.

Actually imageshack compresses everything larger than 1.5mb.

I just checked their FAQ to confirm this ^ and it's true

Well, they're not doing a very good job of it. Most of my images are 2-4MB on imageshack, and downloading it gives me an image with the exact same MD5 hash as the original. Also, they're still .pngs at the same resolution, so by that alone they haven't been compressed.

Sarcastic Lady Hawke rogue is the greatest concetration of win in a long time :lmao:

As for the rest, BioWare has, once again, failed to disappoint me.

I'm going to buy the game at some point this year. I hope I haven't missed some things by not getting the preorder "signature edition". Probably haven't missed much that the regular edition won't have.

Pleasantly surprised by the game! So far there's no world-saving (thank GOD), and I like the framed narrative approach. Also, the voices didn't turn out to be half as bad as I expected, so I'm not getting the Mass Effect vibe so much.

Still, I doubt it has a lot of replay value, and dungeons do seem recycled so far.

Yeah, it has Mass Effect approach; same few dungeons used again and again, with some paths blocked and entrances at different places. Still those dungeons are quite pretty. Just a sad fact with finite budget, when quality goes up quantity goes down.

Just wait a couple months or so. Hopefully, both the fan-rage and fanboism will die down by then and both people and the press will begin looking at DA2 a lot more objectively.


Technically, they didn't really say how the Quarians' immunity systems worked and that they could remove their suits within their ships, so we can't really call their treatment in ME2 a retcon. But I agree, the whole thing just reeked: "Hey, let's milk this and tease the Tali fans!"

To be honest, Garrus never even thought of having relations with humans. His hesitant "are we crazy for thinking about doing this?" attitude is quite realistic in showing a friendship becoming a romance.

Aerie...er...Tali on the other hand... :shakehead:

As for DA 2, I am watching a podcast feed and I am around the point where . Pretty meh so far. Squadmates are boring except for maybe Varric and I am already sick of

Not much a few pieces of armor and equipment and you'll have to pay for the exiled prince, and the black emporium. I wouldn't though. If they weren't free I would not have shelled out the money.

Even though this is a DA thread, what's with the Tali hate among the gamers? To me she's a sweet kid. (Yeah, I know she's a fictional character.) Seriously, she's not only nice but a good fighter in the ME series. The scene where was believable to me. Now Garrus, I have to agree that that's a stretch, having a romance with a human.

Okay, back to the Dragon Age discussion.

Backlash against her enormous fanbase, usually. Pretty much why I don't like her. On her own terms, I don't find Tali to be a particularly interesting or memorable character, to the point where I don't understand her fans and am more than a little scared of them.

Getting this back to Dragon Age, and speaking of creepy fans (:P)...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxo-ss-n8GA. DA2 spoilers ahoy.