DA2 Continued

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6297/the_rise_of_dragon_age_ii.php

• "So there was no mandate, but I mean there were decisions that we made as a team that said, "Okay, this is, I think, more welcoming." Not "dumbed down" or anything like that, but welcoming. Like starting the game, your character walks up, says something kind of over the top, and immediately starts exploding Darkspawn. I haven't set my decks at all. I haven't spent points.
  
  What it does, is it lets you get into the game and go, "Okay, cool. This is what their combat is like. I get that." Then the next thing you do is build your character.
  
  Then you level up and you start spending points, and the RPG mechanics are introduced in a way that's gradual, in a way that welcomes someone who would otherwise maybe go, "Whoa! Too complex!" and shut it off immediately, and lets them slide into it without even recognizing it ‑‑ which frankly, ideally increases the overall RPG customer base, which means we can make more RPGs, which means I can play more RPGs that I don't know the ending to. I like that."
  
  From Mike Laidlaw.
  Dunno, dropping skills and making things less scary seems pretty dumbed down to me. I'm all for balancing mechanics so that they're more streamlined, but this seems too much.

  
  

  
  

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/8701-Dragon-Age-II-Review

"dialogue options inspired by BioWare's work on Mass Effect allow you to roleplay the voiced character of Hawke however you want"

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20071119

So one of 3 options...

The good

The bad

The sarcy.

Thing is, having an unvoiced protagonist allowed for 2 things.

From a game design perspective, you could have the following...

1) I will help you, but you must give me your youngest as an sacrifice to my gods

2) I will help you, but you must give me all your worldy posessions

3) I will help you, but you must give me a gold in return

4)haha, I shan't help you fool, prepare to die!

5) I will help you and look after you and you all my worth

Responses

1-3 "Steep, but I'll accept as I need the help!"

4 "maker have mercy!" *flees*

5 "oh, thankyou ser, THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU..."

5 options, each with a variety of effects, but only 3 outcomes for a voice actor. Hell, each of the 5 choices could differently impact on allies. They've hammstringed themselves out the gate by forcing themselves to pre-record everything. 

And why the hell does it need to be more clear what each sentence does? In DAO, you KNOW what your character's going to say, in this you need 3 cookie-cutter sentence types repeatedly used. Plus each phrase doesn't necessarily reflect what you've chosen.

Again, the morality of DAO was impacted on by your allies. In DA2, there must be an overarching aspect instead, which seems a tad reductionistic.

As a grey warden your choices didn't have to be "good". That's why murdering people was ok, so long as you were building an army up against the darkspawn. Hence why killing the dalish might be a good idea, to get the awesome werewolves. Keeping the golems around, allowing demons to posess children etc. All built the army against the bigger problem, the darkspawn.