With all the comments here and in other reviews on DA2 you can see a clear divide in the fanboy base. You have the new fanboys who lick up anything Bioware throws out, that don't realize the Real Complexity that Bioware games used to guarantee. Then you have the Old School Bioware fans like me who have been with them since Baldur's Gate 1 on the PC who expect real depth in a Bioware RPG. The Old School fanboys are panning DA2 for being consolized trash and the new age fanboys are flaming the old school fans for not blindly worshiping DA2 like a good fanboy should. I'm sorry, I like DA2 and I'm still pretty happy I bought it, but I expect better from Bioware. I expect quests that turn out different in multiple situations. I expect to be able to equip All my party members and to be able to make them look different. I expect crafting supplies to actually disappear from my inventory when I use them in game. I expect depth. Until Bioware proves to me they can still make PC Games, I'm going to do the only real thing a consumer can do in this country, and that's Vote With My Wallet and not buy anymore Bioware games (except for maybe the Star Wars MMO).

Now days it just seems like Sega has forced Bioware to forget their roots and to forget the gamers who's money got them where they are today. If it wasn't for the hard core PC Gamers out there who demanded Quality Games with Real Depth, Bioware never would have taken off and gained the reputation they did. Now Bioware went multi-platform so they could try to "cash in". They need to look backwards and realize what it was that made them THE NAME in RPG'S and they need to cater to THAT Market if they want to be back in the saddle as king of the RPG makers. Trying to cater to both the PC crowd and the console crowd at the same time just leads to neither group being truly happy with the games that are made.

Just so I put this out there right, I do "like" DA2, but, I don't "love" DA2 like I did the first game. The combat changes are cool and if you crank up the difficulty it does have a decent level of strategy to some of the fights. Still, that doesn't make up for the numerous other areas where they dumbed down certain mechanics that weren't very deep to begin with. They took short cuts re-using maps, in many of the side quests they only give the player the "illusion" of choice where none exists because no matter how you play out the quest it ends the same way, they took away party equipment managing, they turned what little bit of crafting DA had and turned it into a collection game where once you pick up something once you have it in your inventory forever even after you use the ingredient, I could go on and on where they streamlined things that didn't need to be streamlined. It's a shame really because this is a sign of how things are going in the industry. However, I don't think all the blame is to be put on Bioware for this dumbed down mess. I blame Sega. I would almost bet my entire gaming rig that Sega had a hand in rushing Bioware to cash in on the success of DA:O while the heat was still there. In the end though it cost Bioware a major hit to their long term loyal old school customers like me. I've been a hard core Bioware fan since the days when you couldn't mention Bioware without also naming Black Isle, and you couldn't mention Black Isle without mentioning Bioware.

@TrueIori You're completely right man, dead on in fact. This whole "Final Thoughts" article seems Incredibly "Loaded" if you ask me. The questions come off like a set-up designed to give the dev in question the opportunity to BS his way out of bad design choices with simple excuses, plain and simple. If they wanted to make players keep the intended look of a character they could have designed plenty of specific armors that would only fit the character they were meant to fit like how most everything is made for "Hawke". Saying they wanted a character to look a certain way and that that's why they limited equipment is a BS excuse and anyone who's ever worked in the industry or even in graphic design can tell you that. I wish someone would have given me a chance to ask the dev questions because I really would have put the spikes to him with some Hard Hitting Questions...like, "Why did you feel the need to streamline (aka Dumb Down) parts of the game that were important to retaining what little bit of depth the first game in the series had?".

"one of the parts I really disliked about Origins where I'd see people's screenshots with their badass team and they would kind of all look the same" Gee, that could Never Be because you just didn't make enough Variation in the different suits of end game armors in the first game? Hmm? Maybe having 3 or 4 sets of the same type of armor would fix the problem.

If it can "truly" work with out lag it could be huge. We'll wait and see if it delivers. Even if it does, you'll still have those people like me out there who are hard core about owning "actual games" and not renting them.