[XOne] Dragon Age 2

Ja, inderdaad... maar dat is het punt toch niet? Wat je zegt, in wezen verandert er niets. In tegenstelling tot wat anderen denken, die het vreselijk vinden dat de teksten die je leest plaats maken voor keuze-opties en gesproken dialogen.

 

A Look At The Qunari, Evolved​ BioWare’s been forthcoming about the new art style for Dragon Age 2, but even that didn’t prepare us for the surprise of seeing the redesigned qunari. Unlike the strange but decidedly humanoid qunari Sten from Origins, the images of the Dragon Age 2 qunari that we saw were muscular, nearly demonic-looking creatures. The most striking difference was the addition of horns. As it turns out, Dragon Age lore has an answer for why we haven’t seen them on qunari before. “Not all qunari have horns,” says Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider. “Some are born without them, but it has never been considered a defect. Instead the mark is considered special, indicating one who is clearly meant for a special role in their society—as a Ben-Hassrath who enforces religious law or as an envoy to other races. It is also not uncommon for qunari who abandon their beliefs to remove their own horns, for reasons not yet clear.” The change in qunari appearances have practical roots as well. “Art wanted to create more space between the races so we changed the way the qunari looked,” says senior artist Matt Goldman. “We have also changed the way elves and dwarves look for that matter, but qunari seem the most dramatic because you only ever saw Sten in Dragon Age: Origins.”

Dragon Age II: The New Art Style​ During our trip to BioWare’s offices, we had the chance to sit down with the company’s senior artist Matt Goldman and talk about the visuals behind Dragon Age II and learn a bit more about the team’s creative direction. Here are some of the highlights in Goldman’s own words. On cinematic influences: One of my favorite films is Yojimbo, and that was made shot-for-shot into A Fistful of Dollars. I love those Sergio Leone movies too. I have a lot of screenshots from not only samurai movies but those kind of cowboy movies [around the office] – Conan is obviously one of our other ones. On the updated look for Dragon Age II: Before, I think Origins was kind of like Death Dealer meets The Hobbit. It was half really “raah, scary” and half really whimsical. We wanted to take it into more of a desolate feel and kind of strip it down to a hot-rod Samurai look. Not only visually, but in terms of the actual storytelling motifs that appear in those movies. The cautionary tale was really appropriate for DA2. On the new narrative structure and what it means for artists: One main thing that the framed narrative story device has let us do was modify the UI stylistically in constructing a more coherent and consistent look. In Origins you had quite a few things – the leather book, the tribal thingies, the blood and parchment and so on and so forth. There were five or six different elements. For DA2 we use the tapestry elements in a lot of different ways – in the world map, load screens – and the actual presentation of the UI then becomes kind of like an illustrated manuscript that ties into the main story device. On taking stylization too far: Historically, I don’t think that ultra-stylized games really are that compelling for something that’s grim and nasty. It has to be at least believable, if not realistic. I think actually right now, games are in this kind of baroque phase, where everything has to be realistic and super-encrusted in detail. That was also another factor in the decision, trying to put the art in a place where it looked different from other things out there. Basically, we have this epic game. Origins is very large. There’s no way you could make a game that huge that is as baroquely and finely detailed as Gears of War, say. On working with well-known fantasy archetypes: I think there’s a lot of rich source material behind that. I don’t think you want to be throwing that stuff in the garbage. The job of the art team is finding an interesting way of conveying that character that is unique or has a fresh take to it. We definitely didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We did have latitude and we have changed around not necessarily the way elves look but the space that they’re coming from and what their mindset is. They’re more like plains Indians than like bushmen, say. On the sequel’s technology: Technology-wise, we really focused a lot of attention on the lighting engine. The basic forms and spaces are in themselves interesting and good lighting makes a substantial difference to the volumetric feel to the world. We spent a lot of time on epic terrain – sweeping vistas is something we tried to do, and I don’t think with very much success in Origins. On thinking about artists: We invested a lot of time basically making it easier for the artists to work on stuff. It’s not exactly a sexy feature, but by letting the artist iterate on things and look at things quickly, you end up with a much better product. On realism: The combat is really over the top. It looks crazy, but when you’re actually playing it’s very satisfying to do the whirlwind and see all those legs standing there that don’t know they’re dead yet. On spell effects carrying over to cutscenes: I personally argued against that a lot. There are various game reasons why [we did that]. It would be cumbersome to cast all of those spells again. But I think it really takes you out of the moment when you’re standing there, talking to a guy and he’s wrapped in glowing red plastic and there are flames shooting out of him and rocks falling on top of him. I absolutely agree that that needs to not happen.

Art:

Spoiler

En een kleine map

 

Klinkt en ziet er goed uit. Zeker de map ook. Zou geweldig zijn als je daadwerkelijk in de verschillende landen komt en dat ze ook allemaal een eigen stijl en feeling hebben.

 

Weet niet zeker of dit al bekend was?

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/4376174/1

^Is meer voor de PC spelers natuurlijk. Voor de mensen die op de consoles spelen is er geen verschil.

 

Ik moet nog steeds deel 1 een keer aanschaffen, want t ziet er wel erg tof uit!

 

Dat is wel een kick in the nuts voor de PC spelers Volgens mij wordt deeltje 2 meer Mass Effect dan Baldurs gate .

 

Waarom....

Lijkt alsof ze van RPG steeds meer richting snelle actie spel.

 

Die gasten weten toch zieke trailers te maken, DA had ook al zo'n gave. Plus als die wapens in de game komen ben ik ook blij. Ligt het aan mij of is het Flemeth die praat, had haar toch echt telkens vermoord?

 

Super vette trailer Ik vond deel 1 erg leuk, maar dit ziet er echt ziek uit

 

Duurt wel nog lang

 

Lang maar eerder dan verwacht .

 

[gt]703489[/gt]

 

[gt]703785[/gt]

 

Klinkt toch we veel belovend, maar deel1 vond ik erg matig. En grafisch echt beneden peil. Ik hoop dat deel 2 dat een stuk beter doet.

de CG ziet er wel weer geweldig uit....

 

Vrouwelijke Hawke:


Dit is geen vrouwelijke Hawke:

 

Zo dan, ligt het aan mij of zijn die visuals duidelijk verbeterd?

 

Nou de gezichten in iedergeval wel, 1 van de dingen die mij tegenstonden van Origins.

 

BioWare are offering a free piece of Dragon Age II DLC for those who sign up to their newsletter during October. To get the free Staff of Parlanthan, simply sign up for the newsletter on the official site for the game. You will receive a code to activate the staff for when the game ships.

Important: to make sure you are properly signed up to the Dragon Age newsletter, check your options on BioWare’s newsletter page here.

Dragon Age 2 will ship next March.

(igniq)