I honestly never used the far-out camera in Origins. Maybe like a handful of times. I guess that makes me a bad tactical RPG guy or whatever but it's the truth.

I can understand why some miss it though.

I didn't use it all the way back all the time, but I did pull it back farther than you can in DA2. Like others have stated, I like to see the whole battle area, so I can easier adjust my characters accordingly.

I use the max zoomed out camera in DAO for placing nuke AOEs since placing them wrongly will kill my own party members. Also to position tanks or rogues. Then zoom in alittle above the head view and watch the action.

I tried to play the demo as if friendly fire was an option. AOE abilities still 'highlight' those effected so you can almost pretend...

Unfortunately this sort of play style, as well as targeting stationary enemies at a distance (archers/mages) only illustrate how clumsy the fixed camera can feel.

The game forces you to target the ground with most AoE spells/abilities. You cannot manually target a creature with fireball for example. You must click at their feet. This does not gel well with the camera system, it feels counter intuitive.

The demo even includes an instance of darkspawn archers firing on you from an elevated position. The camera and aoe mechanics combine to rub in your face "something's not right here" as you struggle to pixel hunt some area of hard to find dirt to target a fireball.

Like I said, I can understand why people would do that, I just rarely did. Since the people effected lit-up when casting an AoE spell (and do in DA2 as well) it was easy to do with the normal camera for me.

Okay, I just played it on XBox 360.

Playing a warrior I found myself button mashing, my normal attack shaving mere slivers of health off of enemies. The auto targeting was quirky and hard to predict. I only really cared when I wanted to make sure the splash from my specials did the maximum damage. While my normal attacks did almost nothing my specials would consistently annihilate entire groups.

I beat the Ogre solo, with the mage girl as she was the last one up (his sister or whatever). All she did was Winter's Grasp and kite with an occasional Fireball tossed in for good measure.

I sort of wonder why I had to press the stupid button at all, it didn't give the same feel as shooting in Mass Effect.

I guess I don't get the story vs. the original, the timelines seem to coincide somewhat and there's some flashback involved. And why is Flemeth different? I mean, she seemed to have a preferred form in DA:O why did they change it in this one? Can we not identify with a character that we can't imagine having sex with? Maybe there's a lore reason for this, it just seemed dumb to me.

I guess I might prefer it as a mage, playing the first one as a tank with a bunch of NPC nukers made me give up in boredom.

I think maybe a GOTY edition purchase is in order, if anything, the demo didn't really sell me on this one.

Agreed on all points. I recall one area in the very beginning where some darkspawn archers are firing on you from a ledge while another small group is attacking your party (this is along that narrow pathway at the very start). Couldn't target them at all with the mage, due to their distance from her, and the camera control issues. Didn't really matter, as my Rogue chopped them into so much sushi, but still, it was annoying.

I pretty much played exclusively with the isometric view in Origins. I'd use the third person view for walkng around, but the moment I entered combat the first thing I'd do would be to pause and zoom straight out. It also didn't help that I prefered to select my characters by clicking on their ingame avatars as opposed to the portraits.

So in short I guess I just never viewed the third person view as anything more than a travelling view and am too lazy to learn otherwise. :D

Anyway, I should probably bow out of the thread since I'm not gonna be getting the game and no need to further trouble you all with my negativity any further. Will of course keep an eye out for and respond to responses since it would be rude not to and since Bioware is one of the companies I like to keep an eye on out of interest I'll keep watching the thread. :)

I'd not be in the least surprised to find a "Make it like dragon age 1" mod being one of the first released since you're not the only one who liked the tactical camera. Some people are so dedicated to being lazy that they'll put in a lot of effort to avoid learning the new controls

Maybe, if it can it be done I'm certain it will, however thinking about it when you go into isometric view in DAO the game would cut away anything above a certain height. I don't know if it was something that can automatically be done to any location or if they had to design areas around it but if it's the latter then it may require alterations to the locations as well...

Having messed around with the toolset I will go one further and bet you a GOG there is an Isometric mod within 6 weeks of the games launch.

Well the demo is out so I'm guessing that work has already started, could well be ready for launch

Relevant quote: So they backed down the same as they did with Mass Effect and this time there is no activation limits at all either. Yay!

Steam version only uses Steam.

Awsome news. Very light on the DRM and the poxy release date check un-installs itself once it's checked.