53 replies to this topic

[Archmage Silver]

According to Fernando Melo at Gamescom, BioWare will release Item Pack #2 DLC next week.

[Archmage Silver]

News:
Item Pack 2 DLC Released @ BioWare

[Archmage Silver]

Mark of the Assassin announced earlier:

MARK OF THE ASSASSIN ANNOUNCED!

We're excited to tell you guys about our newest DLC for Dragon Age 2 called "Mark of the Assassin." Hawke meets a mysterious female Elvin Assassin Tallis (played by Felicia Day) and joins her to steal an ancient relic from an Orlesian Baron in his well-guarded estate. This adventure features new items, enemies and environments! It will be out on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC on Oct. 11th for $10 or 800 Microsoft points. Hope you're as thrilled as we are!

Trailer @ GameTrailers

Mark of the Assassin Available October 11!

Hawke's party joins Tallis, the stealthy and mysterious Elvin assassin to steal an ancient relic from an Orlesian Baron in his well-guarded estate.

Excited to fight the new enemies, explore the new environments and collect the new items? Watch the exciting trailer here.

Mark of the Assassin, the newest addition to Dragon Age 2, will be available October 11 for all platforms.

Edit: Article @ Grey Wardens

Edited by Archmage Silver, 22 September 2011 - 01:48 PM.

[Kulyok]

Looks like there's going to be a "mysterious elven" Mary Sue.

I wonder if it's going to have anything in common with main plotlines: Wardens, Qunari, Mages/Templars, Flemeth. Because otherwise it's going to be a Leliana's Song copycat, and we all know how well THAT went.

[berelinde]

Somebody dropped a line that the host of the party is named Prospero, as in Shakespeare's The Tempest. If there's more to it than just somebody liking the name, it could actually be fairly promising, and very relevant to the theme of mages/templars. And David Gaider did go on the record recently as saying that he regrets not including more sane mages. As for the Qunari thing, so far, I'm thinking that it's a nod to the fans that are fascinated with all things Qunari, but that's just my take on it.

I've gone from being "Oh, look, a chick who pretends she's an elf gets her very own self-insert Mary Sue DLC" to being not completely vitriolic about it. That's probably about as good as it gets until the reviews start coming in. Unless you're really, really into wanna-be elven females stealing Hawke's spotlight, this is definitely one to wait on.

[GreyViper]

The newest DLC reminded to much Kasumi DLC for ME2, still was surprised they even made a new DLC for DA2. No vitriol from my part, although I have been spending to much time in RPG Codex, but my suggestion to Felicia would have been to get a part in DA3 rather then some forgotten DLC.

[Archmage Silver]

The newest DLC reminded to much Kasumi DLC for ME2, still was surprised they even made a new DLC for DA2. No vitriol from my part, although I have been spending to much time in RPG Codex, but my suggestion to Felicia would have been to get a part in DA3 rather then some forgotten DLC.

My bet is that Kym Hoy did a better job voicing Kasumi than Felicia Day will do here...

[Archmage Silver]

There will be a Mark of the Assassin panel at New York Comic Con, which should reveal some more information about the DLC pack, as well as news about the future of the DA franchise.

On an unrelated note, EA is adding Mabari to Sims.

[Archmage Silver]

News:
Mark of the Assassin DLC Preview with Felicia Day @ Joystiq

[Archmage Silver]

BioWare has announced a jigsaw puzzle scavenger hunt in anticipation of the Mark of the Assassin launch. If you use FB, Twitter, and the BioWare Social Network you can solve the puzzle and win a special prize. Follow the link for the instructions.

BioWare's news team now also posts "funny" Facebook screenshot captions as "News and Updates". While I may post a lot of less-than-interesting news tidbits, rest assured, you won't see any non-developer comments from any Facebook page. And even then I may edit out the "funny".

[Archmage Silver]

Mark of the Assassin has been released. You can get it for 800 BioWare Points or 10 USD.

[Archmage Silver]

You can check out the Mark of the Assassin trailer here. Grey Wardens have posted their MotA review, describing it as "Not exactly a killer..."

[Yovaneth]

Well, I enjoyed it. Remarkably for a DLC addon, there's four available endings that I counted. Not exactly the railroad that I think everyone expected. It took me about six hours on Normal and two goes at the end battle.

Oh yes - and there are some genuinely, intentionally funny moments in there that did make me laugh out loud.

-Y-

Edited by Yovaneth, 15 October 2011 - 01:59 PM.

[berelinde]

Well, I didn't dislike it as much as I expected to. I had a lot of problems with hand-waving the lore and I had MAJOR issues with how Hawke was pretty much a support character in Tallis's DLC, and I found the whole stealth segment decidedly un-fun (and the puzzles unintuitive). But the DLC itself wasn't horrible. If I had $10 to spend and had to decide whether to spend it on the DLC or a book, I would have bought the book (any book). The final battle was ridiculous. I heard they were getting away from making boss battles harder just by giving things never-ending health bars. Clearly, I heard wrong. Fortunately, the thing did very little damage.

[Yovaneth]

I had MAJOR issues with how Hawke was pretty much a support character in Tallis's DLC, and I found the whole stealth segment decidedly un-fun (and the puzzles unintuitive).

I didn't have any problems with this being Tallis' story rather than another Hawke story as Bioware made it pretty clear that it is to been seen as a link between the game and the web series (not that I thought a great deal of that first episode!). The stealth restarts were very definately irritating (what happened to 'dead'?) but it wasn't the only way through that segment. Also, it didn't take too long (define 'too long' ) to figure out that if you were pretty nifty with the cursor you could just run around most of the guards.

The only thing that really got to me was the constant mis-pronunciation of 'wyvern' (Y-vern) as 'wivern' ('wi' as in 'with'). I could cheerfully throw the voice-acting director into a bucket of acidified dragonshit for that.

-Y-

Edited by Yovaneth, 16 October 2011 - 12:53 AM.

[berelinde]

I had MAJOR issues with how Hawke was pretty much a support character in Tallis's DLC, and I found the whole stealth segment decidedly un-fun (and the puzzles unintuitive).

I didn't have any problems with this being Tallis' story rather than another Hawke story as Bioware made it pretty clear that it is to been seen as a link between the game and the web series (not that I thought a great deal of that first episode!).

The problem I have with that is that I consider it unethical to charge players $10 to view an advertisement. I do have to admit that part of it is my own fault. I had a very strong hunch that BioWare would be heavy-handed with this. Since they tend to write to the lowest common denominator, I did not expect the subtlety that would have made it tolerable for me. I downloaded the DLC with the knowledge that I was deliberately trolling myself. But somebody uploaded a video of it that had a great joke in it (the one joke in the entire DLC where Tallis didn't steal the punchline, as it turned out), so I figured I could put up with a little eyerolling if the banter was funny.

The ironic part is that if you or I wrote something focused so intently on our own original characters, player outrage over it would be overwhelming. Should modders be held to higher standards than professional developers?

[the bigg]

It could be argued that, in fact, we are doing a better job than Bioware's worst, if not Bioware's average.

[Archmage Silver]

News:
MotA Review: 7/10 @ Ripten
MotA Review: 7/10 @ GameSpot
MotA Review: 8/10 @ GamesRadar
MotA Review: 4/5 @ GamingAddiction
MotA Review: 8/10 @ The Controller Online

It could be argued that, in fact, we are doing a better job than Bioware's worst, if not Bioware's average.

Some certainly are better than BioWare's worst. The modding community's best productions can also match BioWare's average ones IMO, but obviously BioWare's best has always been out of reach for modders. With that said, if BioWare keeps up the current trend, modders will gain more ground.

BioWare would of course rebuff this by saying that they're on a tight schedule, and that modders have virtually unlimited development time. But based on quality alone and not the time used to achieve said quality, the former rings true.

[Archmage Silver]

News:
MotA Review @ IGN

[Kulyok]

I finally played Mark of the Assassin(or was it Mask?). The areas were very pretty, and I liked the party with lots of guests, including Bann Teagan, (un)dead Isolde, who was supposed to die in childbirth, and Leliana. But that's pretty much it for my "likes".

Tallis wasn't very awful(annoying, though), but the story was frustrating. "Let's steal something. Oh, wait, we're not actually stealing anything, I have your gem with me. We're saving innocent people instead. Potential Qunari terrorists, but never mind. Hey, why aren't you coming with me? I have another ten-page rant about Qun coming! Hawke, please! Don't run away!"

No story, no purpose. In Legacy, it was more or less clear: Wardens imprisoned the Ancient Evil, let's kill Demogorgon(or whatever) and get lots of loot. Yay. Here, it was kinda sorta lame. I wish Hawke was spying on Orlais instead. With Logain. (Yeah, like THAT'd work). Like I said before, Mark of the Assassin is more or less Leliana's Song, only longer and with gibberlings. And hey, whose idea was it to hire my Hawke, a vocal Qunari hater and a supporter of mother Petrice(yep, she's still alive in my playthrough in Act 3) to *help* Qunari? It's like hiring Branka to destroy the Anvil of the Void.