I invested an unhealthy number of hours into Dragon Age: Origins. My anticipation for Dragon Age 2 is off the charts so I jumped at the opportunity to download the demo. Though short, the demo did a good job at presenting almost all the changes to the formula while also showing off some potential problem areas.
I played the PC version of the demo which I downloaded off Steam. From the very beginning of the demo there is a noticeable hitch that occurs every time the camera angle changes during a cinematic. That could either be due to my PC not being up to snuff (Unlikely, but plausible) or a bug that wasn't yet fixed before the demo was made. Either way, I'm not too worried about it.
While watching the opening cinematic I was able to form a first hand opinion of the most obvious change from the first game, the new art style. My opinion...I like it. The story in DA 2 is presented in flashbacks from the perspective of a third party character so it makes sense that everything is a little exaggerated. It's a smart visual reminder that story tellers have a tendency to embellish in order to make a story more interesting. While at first glance the new art direction might seem jarring, once you get into the core game there is enough familiarity there to make Origins players feel right at home.
After the intro you choose a character. You have to play as a human, which is fine with me since I tend to pick a human character in most fantasy games. So, the only real options are gender and class. The classes are the same as in Origins (Warrior, Rogue, or Mage). I of course, chose male warrior (some thing I also tend to choose in these types of games). From there you are sent to a customization page and given absolutely no customization options to choose. This was both disappointing in that I didn't get to see what options were available, but also surprising since I was not aware that you could change your physical appearance at all.
Once the game proper begins I was thrown straight into the combat which has been noticeably sped up. The animations were so quick that I actually had trouble clicking on enemy's to attack them. Instead Hawke (the main characters name) would go stand in the spot that the enemy was when I tried to click on him. when I was able to click on an enemy Hawke would quickly charge up to them, closing the gap. The action is really fast compared to Origins. And the violence has become cartoonish and over the top. Enemy's torso would explode into geysers of blood after a quick spin of the blade. This got toned down after the narrator was called out for exaggerating a bit too much. But for the duration of the demo I found the hyper-kinetic action and overall speed of combat to be kind of disorienting.
The controls are essentially the same. WASD controls movement or you can left click to move diablo style. Holding down the right mouse button controls the camera. You can zoom in and out with the scroll wheel. And the space bar pauses combat. All the same information is displayed across the bottom of the screen only in a new angular visual style. you still click on enemies to initiate combat and click on powers at the bottom (or use hot keys). I was locked out of the inventory for the demo so I didn't get to see what changes they made there. Leveling up seems fundamentally the same. The UI is more stylish and the abilities are separated into multiple branching trees rather than they straight forward progression from the last game.
Although the lack of different playable races doesn't effect me, I can see that being a big factor in others picking up the game. But from my experience with the demo, Dragon Age 2 looks different and moves much faster but plays the same as Origins. So I know I will be picking it up when it releases on March 8 (The day before my birthday... just sayin') I think I'll download the 360 demo just to see if the combat changes translate to a better console experience which is what I think was Bioware's plan.
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