Rumor: PC Features Cut From Dragon Age 2

[L4hlborg]

Oh great. A made for console RPG. They're always great!

Mass Effect was designed primary for consoles and I loved it. And I know a lot of pc people who love it too.

Oh I like the ME series too. I just think this game will be even worse than the original, which wasn't all that good. And part of that is the dumbing down for consoles.

Being a console gamer myself, I find it a bit insulting that PC gamers refer to all console gamers as dumb, but I understand the point. I'd say that it's more like dumbing down for the mainstream audience, since I had no problems at playing Dragon Age.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I don't really care about the mods, but taking away my aerial camera, you bastards. I need that! Mainly because it's better for combat and because my party members keep getting in the way when I'm trying to look at things in close up 3rd person view.

 

[Jandau]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not raging or anything, it's just the principle of the thing. I'm sure DA2 will be an awesome game, it's just that I liked my zoomed out camera and I liked knowing that the mods were out there, even if I only used a bare minimum, mostly for game mechanics tweaks.

On the bright side, you can't really "remove" modding from a PC game, especially a single player one, you can just make it harder...

Read the full post. They won't release new mod tools, but they're looking into patching up the tools you have now to match the ones used for DA2. They'll also give you an overhead camera, just not quite as zoomed-out as the one from DA1.

The sky. It isn't falling.

...read my post. I never said the sky was falling, I wasn't raging or declaring that Bioware was dead to me. I don't need you to act condescending. I'm sure you can dig up some far more alarmist post to prey upon...

I read the whole post, they were vague at best. They were removing "something" but wouldn't specify what and how much. If they allow the camera to zoom out, why not allow it to zoom out like it did in the first game? Why make an announcement about it in the first place then?

As for mods, like I said, I don't care much about them. What the may or may not do is of little concern to me.

 

[Undead Dragon King]

Oh great. A made for console RPG. They're always great!

And what was Mass Effect? I also seem to remember Mass Effect 2 being excellent on the 360.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Market exploitation strikes again.
PC users used to be able to mod games. A lot of that changed after 2005.
The reason they did this is obvious, the publisher wants to sell you the mods. They want a monopoly.

It's just a fact of life that user created content on consoles just doesn't exist beyond superficial map creators. Little Big Planet and Halo 3 may have good map creators, but those absolutely PALE in comparison to what I could do with, say, UT2004. Or dozens of games before that even.

This is the real reason most "PC games" are just ports of PS3 or 360 titles; the publisher doesn't want anything at all to be able to compete with their product including their own product!. It's smart business for sure, but that doesn't mean it's necessary.
Unless a company plans to monetize such a feature, expect more developers to drop the idea entirely.

And I know people are going to throw Starcraft 2 at me for this, so I might as well address it in advance.
Blizzard plans on reselling user created maps for profit. (you can opt out of it of course, but it just means that someone else will just copy the concept and give it to Blizzard anyway if it's popular enough). I hope you read that license agreement carefully because Blizzard owns everything you produce with their editor; so if you were planning on using that plot scenario, character or gameplay mechanic in the future, you had better not use it in a Starcraft 2 map.
Despite the criticism I just doled out, I think it's a great system personally, but the point here is that even the best scenarios now will probably come at a price.

PC gaming isn't dying. It's just slowly moving towards a publisher monopoly.

 

[Brotherofwill]

If they're "going the way of the audience," does that mean they're going to dumb down even more? The first one was already boring as hell due to the utterly simplistic and restrictive combat and leveling systems.

Not to mention, apart from steadily decreasing levels of complexity, bioware has just been making the same game over and over and over.

Amen. Finally someone says it. Bioware's games are almost identical apart from the setting. Get party, build relations, sex, end boss, party members die/ leave, the end/ cliffhanger. Change your formula Bioware.

Dragon Age wasn't bad, but the combat and levelling were really simple, the game lost steam because of that. The way they keep dumbing down their franchises I can't really get excited for any of their work anymore. I certainly won't buy another DA or ME unless they change it up.

 

[Callate]

Bioware has always been so strong in its support for the PC that I find this rumor rather difficult to credit.

 

[RaNDM G]

Who cares Dragon Age: Origins blows... Bioware haven't made a great game since KoTOR.

Meanwhile, hundreds of fanboys succumb to their nerd rage and type eight paragraph essays over how much you suck.

 

[Bobzer77]

It's because of things like this that I want to grind the console community into the dirt. You know what screw you bioware, if this goes ahead you will be dead to me.

I'm gonna take solace in the last bastion of pc gaming with the indie community and Valve.

 

[sosolidshoe]

Obviously Bioware aren't reading these comments, and if they were wouldn't care for my opinion as I'm just a stinkin' PC gamer, but I'll make the statement regardless; no Isometric camera? No DA2 purchase.

Dragon Age: Origins' storyline was predicable action-fantasy shlock, certainly not worth buying for. I bought the game specifically BECAUSE Bioware promised they would take advantage of the platform's advantages; namely increased control, multiple camera angles and full mod support. If those features are not present in DA2, what reason do I have to buy it?

I own a 360, but I'm not interested in playing RPGs on it, nor direct ports of games from consoles. I'm not interested in buying into the "console gaming mentality" that publishers are so keen to push on gamers, of playing a game once(twice max for achievements), then discarding it for the sequel. I want to buy a game and play it for a long period of time. I want to play expansion packs set in the same world with the same characters. I want to play mods which open up new areas of the world, add new items or characters, and upgrade the game's graphics. I want to buy the sequel because it's another exciting evolution of the franchise, not because I have no other choice in the matter if I want to keep inhabiting the same fictional universe.

Bioware are supposed to be the Valve of RPGs, you're supposed to be the ones with the clout to tell your publisher to fuck right off when they suggest screwing over a portion of your customers. The fact that you are unwilling or unable to in this instance makes me think I won't be a customer of yours for much longer, which is a shame considering I own or have owned every Bioware RPG since the original Baldur's Gate.

 

[The_ModeRazor]

So... is it going to be some kinda Fable clone? That would hurt me. Really.
And no mods...
What the FUck wer they Thinking?

 

[kibayasu]

Bioware has always been so strong in its support for the PC that I find this rumor rather difficult to credit.

Well its a bit less of a rumour when the lead designer of a game explicitly says it.


Anyways, as far as I can tell, he basically says two things about the game:

1) The aerial camera has been replaced by the ability to pan freely around a small area surrounding where combat is immediately taking place.

2) A mod kit might be released, but could very likely not be.


But we've all seen this kind of double speak from developers and publishers before. Someone important says something that pisses off a segment (or in this case, possibly nearly an entire platform) of an audience, then quickly backpedals all the while epousing "Oh we MIGHT do this and we MIGHT do that, but not on release because we're working so hard on the game itself." While I'm sure they actually are working hard much like every other developer, its the exact same speech I've seen a dozen times before.

If he meant that DA2 would have a mod kit sometime after release that's what he would have said in the first place. But no, he said quite clearly (and I think its rather hard to mistranslate "No mod kit." from "There won't be a mod kit available on release but we might release one sometime after launch.") there was going to be none. So I won't be expecting one.

 

[KiKiweaky]

Love the way pc games are continuously being made to resemble their console cousins.... If this is an attempt at making me buy more console games you can eat shit and die, x box games are riduculously over priced brand new and there is no way in hell I'm going to fork out money for the 'pleasure' of playing on xbox live (It still amazeses me how many people pay for it)

But ye developers are going to lose out on a very special part of gaming which is the modding commuinity. I don't do modding but there are some great ones out there, which in the next few years probably wont exist *cry*

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

main reason: GREED! Business acumen

because they don't want you to play mods (which could replace Stupid DLC) and because they prefer it to be as lucrative as in consoles (no free mods on consoles the bastards!).
so you are right about prefering PC over consoles.

Well, now I do have a valid reason why I do not like BioWare apart that I do not like their games...

I am quite disappointing actually, as I am a PC gamer myself, and though I do not like BioWare's games, I fin it sad that they aren't going to support the platform. However, this is only a rumor, and hopefully it isn't true...

Serious, PC elitists need to stop bitching. Consoles sell more, and companies exist to MAKE MONEY. Let me reiterate, these are companies who need to MAKE MONEY. Considering that so many companies have recently lost money, they need to do that more than ever. Ergo, they go where the consumers are.

It isn't greed, it's complete sense. If you were clever, you as the director of a company would do the same thing. If you wouldn't, then please never run a business, you'll probably bankrupt yourself.

remember back in the day? when games companies only made games for PC? and PCs were like a million dollars so only few people had them?? how is it that back THEN they could still make enough money to support the community, and now they are making billions of dollars, they are too lazy to even port across features from the old one!?? it is just completely inexplicable!

Because "back in the day" games didn't cost millions and millions of dollars to create. Also, read above.

i'm no PC elitist, i'm just saying that there's more possibilities with it obviously. also back when gaming companies started, they weren't an "Industry" as people tend to call it now, on shows or about every game; and were not being administrated by Economists placed as CEO's, but by geeks, at that time games didn't had so much sequels, they had more originality and had a longer Life Expectancy.

 

[lacktheknack]

There's nothing to be said here except...

<link=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

[Devil's Due]

I'm overjoyed that PC elitists are getting their commupance. Too bad the non a-hole PC gamers are getting screwed too.

In a strange way I rather agree with this post. My first thought was the PC elitists getting upset, which pleased me to no end, but saddened because there are a lot of modders out there that are a good bunch of people who make stuff that is absolutely funny and exciting.

Also, I was surprised at the line that the consoles sold the most. This took me by surprised, I honestly didn't know that. Oh well, the more you know, huh?