It's still under one banner. The name The Escapist is on Metacritic with the highest rating given to DA2 although Metacritic have taken liberties translating 5/5 to 100/100. I'm rather looking forward to Yahtzee's review because all his complaints about Origins have been 'fixed' just for people like him so if he now turns around and rips them a new one for not being like Origins that makes him a hypocrite. Fitting for The Escapist.

Epic battle = messing around? Damn dude, I hope you're wearing your +5 Plate Mail of Messing Around :D

Speaking of the escapist review, just caught this on the comments by the dude who did that fairy tale review. The full post is on page 12 of the comments in case anyone wants to check it out.

"As I was putting the finishing touches on the review, a source that I trust made sure that I say the option was there and I included it without verifying for myself if the feature was indeed on the shipped game. I take full responsibility for the error, and I've removed it from the written review. Hopefully, BioWare will patch it in later, but I doubt it."

A 'source' that he trusts made sure he'd specifically highlight a feature that wasn't there ? The very same feature Bioware sworn up and down that it was in only to come clean about it not being in hours before the US release ? Right, i'm not even going to bother with the 'without veryfing for myself' bit.

Wait till you go through the same dungeon for the 100th time, that is when you will notice why DA2 is worse.

Well it doesn't matter at all really. The Escapist review team is apart of the actual Escapist team. Yahtzee, and all of those other famous journalists and comic artists are independent. They don't have to share the opinion of The Escapist's review team, and they rarely do.

Was Mike Laidlaw around during the Baldur's Gate 2 era? Always noticed something shifty around his eyes in the videos he's in lol

I wouldn't give DA2 a 7/10. It's a 4/10 or 5/10 game in my book.

He's only been with Bioware since Jade Empire and worked on that along with Sonic Chronicles and Mass Effect 1. So yeah he's not even one of the Inifitiy Engine designers but they put him in charge of the 'spiritual successor' to Baldur's Gate...

Eh, I think 7/10 is fair. I think the massive shortcomings of the game only truly hit home once you finish it so as a 25-30 hour game with decent acting and a good story i'm happy with that score. TBH though as far as re-playability goes I actually quit playing my second character. I simply can't face the same cave again and again and again and while DA:O and also ME2 had their share of repetitive grind it was balanced by having different ways to do things. The fact that no matter what you choose to do in DA2 results in the same thing everytime just sapped my will to go on.

With DA:O I could face the Fade again knowing I could side with the Templars and see how that goes, or with ME2 I could try some of those Paragon or Renegade options but with DA2 every single quest has the same outcome with the only difference being if you were a good guy, a smart arse or a dickhead while doing it.
To paraphrase Zevran: "Games journalist integrity is an interesting concept".
Well it matters in the sense that they are poking fun at a game they have told all their readers is AAA quality. I fully understand they have different teams and outputs but at the same time it's all under The Escapist banner. This would be like a newspaper having a movie review giving it 5 stars and then another article in the same paper lambasts the movie for being poor hollywood fodder.

It didn't do it for me, Act 1 was horribly boring. The quests were pretty much standard MMO quests with no epic plot in the background other than to earn money. The game finally picked up at the Deep Roads, Rock Wraith, then slowed to a crawl again, doing MMO quests and fighting waves and waves of enemies again. Then the repetitive dungeons started getting annoying. Act 3, you knew more or less how the story would go, you're still doing the MMO quests, save this guy, kill some thugs underground etc only this time the repetitive dungeons got uber annoying. And in the end you're rewarded with an extra crappy ending of sequences.

DA2, will be lucky to get a 5/10 from me.

Thou are right . I will rejudge the Dragon Age 2 again after finishing it.


My mess around skill with my wife is maxed. So it would be no use to wear plus messing around gear. I prefer +10 personal deflector shield in combination with a stealthy retreat to survive our epic battles. But i can't miss the adrenalin rush of this.

Have a nice day

Cant write a review based on a demo, anyway i tried it and what i can tell its a console action game with some rpg elements, i like old style rpgs and i didnt like so much even the original dragon age cause it was too much linear and easy to be a true rpg, even if overall was a good game.
This new one imho got the dragon age trademark but its in fact some kind of action/adventure spinoff.
Also tbh the pc version seems badly outdated about graphic and the engine seems quite crap, it seems 10 years old.
Really not my taste, i can give a 3/10 from a demo point of view, i will never buy it even for 5 euros.

I did get a chuckle out of one comment about Laidlaw on the social site. I think it was something like "Mike Laidlaw was feeling tired, then he found a coffee-machine and that was where his 'press a button and something awesome happens' came from." It did make me laugh quite a bit. :P

No kidding, between the fairy tale reviews, the backstage bullshit with 'user' ratings and the flat out lies this was a very ugly release.

Okay, into act 2 now. After dropping the game to Casual difficulty so the combat is basically superfluous, I'm finding I actually enjoy the story. I may try bumping the difficulty back up again, but I really think I'll just find it tedious again.

To be honest if I do go back to play it again it will be on casual. If they are going to respawn enemies constantly like an action game I may as well play it like one.

Kinda makes you wish for a 'skip combat' option, eh ?

Oh wait, that would basically make it a movie ;)