Dragon Age 2 Message Board older than one year ago

For the second time in under six months, Dragon Age senior writer David Gaider felt obligated to step among the Darkspawn in the BioWare Forums to defend the sexual politics of Thedas.

A post on the forum declares that "Bioware Neglected Their Main Demographic: The Straight Male Gamer" in Dragon Age 2. The author's thesis (which you should totally read) posits several interesting arguments. Our favorite: "It makes things very awkward when your male companions keep making passes at you. The fact that a 'No Homosexuality' option, which could have been easily implemented, is omitted just proves my point."

"We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in [Dragon Age: Origins] and thus don't need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant," Gaider wrote, echoing previous sentiments in his response.

We think BioWare should seize this opportunity and release some DLC: the big, gaudy, golden "Necklace of Nohomo" that grants +2 against "unwanted advances" -- then donate the proceeds to the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

A peculiar accusation was made against Dragon Age II on the BioWare forums, in which a user accused the game of not properly catering for the straight male gamer. Honestly, I’d launched into writing this with the intention of factually reporting it, but just typing those words has made me want to start throwing chairs. What? Good grief, even if that were true, which it so spectacularly isn’t, wouldn’t it… but… good grief. Amazingly, one of BioWare’s writers, David Gaider, gave a calm, level-headed response where I would have said capital swears. He makes some interesting comments, as EG point out.

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#bioware When a forum poster decided to criticize the developer for neglecting the core role-playing game market - straight male gamers - when developing romance prospects for Dragon Age II, BioWare writer David Gaider's response was swift and elegant. More »

So Dragon Age 2 has launched and been reviewed, but if you weren't paying attention during your journey to become Champion of Kirkwall, you may have missed a couple clues as to where the next game will take place. THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD! Beware if you haven't finished Dragon Age 2...

Spring's in full swing, and you know what that means: Time for young love to start blossoming. Why not mix it up this year -- in a manner that's in no way sad -- and fall in love with video games? Today, Amazon's offering up a season's worth of affairs with Gold Box deals all day on potential digital love interests.

Why, right now you could have a fling with Dragon Age 2 for just $40, and there are some equally attractive offerings to come, judging by Thrifty Nerd's list of guesses. Are they all beauties? Nope. But it's spring! Let yourself live a little.

To play an RPG on the PC is to play a modded RPG. This has been the mantra of the dice-rollers for years, continually tweaking and altering our beloved games and, of course, fixing all the "mistakes" the developers made, as those hard-to-please fans are always keen to do. BioWare's Dragon Age 2 is no different, and we've collected here 10 useful mods for any wannabe Champion of Kirkwall. Dark days are coming; you'll need all the help you can get...

If you were experiencing one of a number of issues with your save file in the PC version of Dragon Age 2, you should be in the clear -- the game has been patched to remedy a handful of data oddities, a list of which can be found just below. The patch may also double the number of dragons. Maybe.

#pc A spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate series, Dragon Age: Origins was the first game of its franchise. Unlike many others, BioWare was wildly successful in bringing this role-playing game to realization as a true multi-platform endeavor, spanning releases on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Mac, and of course, the PC. More »

#art Say what you will about BioWare's Dragon Age sequel, one thing that I appreciated was the way the game tried to forge its own art style instead of getting lost in a sea of fantasy cliches. More »

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced that Dragon Age Legends, the ground-breaking Play4Free online RPG is now available to all Facebook users worldwide at http://apps.facebook.com/dragonagelegends. Dragon Age Legends, a collaboration between BioWare and EA's Pla...

#controversy A glowing fan review for Dragon Age II on Metacritic discovered to have been written by a member of the game's development team sparked outrage among the gaming community yesterday. EA's response? That's how it works. More »

It’s often the case when reading a review of a longer game that you’ll see the phrase, “The first few hours struggle to get going,” or perhaps, “It takes a while to find its feet.” Which I think is enormously unreflective of the experience, and indeed the experience others will have when playing it. When other games regularly last five or six hours, an RPG having a poor opening five or six hours seems pretty hugely significant to me. And so it is that today I’m writing about the opening eight hours or so of Dragon Age II, before the improvements I’m already starting to see wash the memories from my head.

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#review While the heroes of Dragon Age: Origins were busy saving the world, Hawke and his family were running for their lives. Their tale of survival and triumph amidst a city on the verge of turning on itself is the focus of the darker, grittier Dragon Age II. More »

Oh, hello Monday, what's this you bring? Why it's the week's UK charts, giving us a peek into what you lot have been playing over the weekend. EA's Dragon Age II leads the way, with BioWare's return to its fantasy universe proving popular enough to cast aside the phenomenon that is Pokemon. Poke...

There are bans, and then there are bans. One user of BioWare's forums found himself facing one of the latter after having his account suspended for allegedly using inappropriate language in a post -- but instead of just keeping him from socializing temporarily, it prevented his PC copy of Dragon Age 2, purchased online, from running entirely.

EA has acknowledged that this actually happened to the affected user, but calls it an error. While it says it intended to temporarily ban the individual for violating the forum code of conduct, "there was an error in the system that accidentally suspended a user's entire account."

"Immediately upon learning of the glitch, EA took steps to restore the user's macro account and apologized for the inconvenience," the publisher told Joystiq. What it didn't say is what -- if any -- steps are being taken to prevent similar mega-bans from happening in the future.

[Thanks, Jeff]

#bioware One Dragon Age II player recently found himself unable to play the game he'd purchased from EA for an unusual reason. He'd called publisher Electronic Arts "the devil" on the game's official forum, leading to a ban from that message board and his copy of Dragon Age II. BioWare says that was an "error." More »

Wow, well here’s a crazy update. After being repeatedly told that he was intentionally locked out of his EA games because he broke the rules on the BioWare forum, and that this was in accordance to the Terms Of Service that he’d agreed to, this morning’s internet famous man, Arno, has just been told that it was in fact a mistake. (more…)

Be careful what you say. That’s the lesson BioWare forum user Arno has learned in the last 24 hours, after an ill-advised comment on the BioWare forums has led to his EA account being locked, such that he cannot play his purchased copy of Dragon Age 2 for 72 hours.

It reveals a clause in the terms of service that accompany buying an EA game that will surprise the vast majority who do not read the microprint. Misbehave in the forum (as Arno full admits he did), and you can have your right to play a legitimately purchased game taken away from you. Forever, if they want to.

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#dragonage It appears that a Bioware fan has been temporarily halted from playing his copy of Dragon Age II after copping a forum suspension. Which is weird since, you know, Dragon Age II is a singleplayer game. More »

#ea Dragon Age was an epic role-playing game. Sequels to those kind of things normally take years to be released (just ask Elder Scrolls fans!). So why did Dragon Age II come out less than 18 months after Dragon Age? More »

Dragon Age II was just released on Tuesday, if you popped in the title and connected to Internet, you'd see a couple pieces of downloadable content are already available. We take a look at both...

Amateur QA engineer "boricuacookie" discovered a glitch in Dragon Age 2 that awards XP infinitely. The glitch, taking place in the chantry, appears pretty simple to execute -- certainly much simpler than dozens of hours of fighting. But, of course, don't do this.

We know you're sick of listening to nerdy boys talk about games, so we've gathered together all the female editors to give you a different perspective. Girlfight is the place to hear Nicole Tanner, Dana Jongewaard, Kristine Steimer, Audrey Drake, and Meghan Sullivan talk about the games they love as well as serious issues about women in gaming and the games industry in general...

#cheats Want to gain fame, fortune, and power in Dragon Age II without trudging through all of those tedious quests? GameFront has unearthed a glitch that grants a player unlimited wealth and experience with the press of a button. Wanna see? More »

Dragons? Check. Blood? Check. Keeping your cool while surrounded by dragons and covered in blood? Check.

#video Video games can never do a decent sex scene. Know why? It's all about the mouth. In the movies, people kiss. In video games - like Dragon Age II - it's like two mailboxes clanging against each other. More »

Has Origins led to a bright new age? The second chapter of BioWare's epic RPG gets put to the test!

On its own, the release of a high-resolution texture pack for the PC version of Dragon Age 2 wouldn't be that weird. It would just be nice for those PC owners with the gear to handle it. But this pack isn't being released years after the fact, when graphical display technology has improved and made the game look dated -- it's being released now, on the same day as the game.

In order to take advantage of the new textures, you need at least 1 gigabyte of video RAM, and BioWare recommends DirectX 11. You also need over a gig of spare hard drive space. You should probably clean your glasses, too, for the absolute highest visual fidelity.

#video Dragon Age II is here, finally giving players the chance to cobble together their own version of the game's answer to Mass Effect's Commander Shepard. Watch me craft my version of Hawke, and then show us yours. More »

Dragon Age II is available for download today! If you’re American, anyway. If you’re in Europe, a magical temporal vortex of data-sucking horror slap-bang in the middle of the Atlantic is delaying the several gigabytes that comprise the digital version from reaching these shores. I mean, I presume it’s that. There’s simply no other rational explanation for introducing a gap of three days between regional releases in an age where information can travel between continents within moments. There’s no way it could be a near-sighted retail decision that will inevitably result in additional piracy from frustrated fans. No way it could be that.

Anyway, if you have it already you might be interested in the official texture pack, which is something I’ve often wished more developers can do. Pissed off that you’ve got blurry textures on your mega-graphics card because the game’s been skewed towards optimisation for lower-end PCs and consoles? Here’s the solution. (more…)