According to a recent article by Alex over on the gamepur.com website, the PS3 / Xbox 360 patch is due to be released on April 18th. Although the official notes for the upcoming patch weren’t announced, Rob did reveal a few details on some of the changes that console owners can expect in the update.

For example, party members that are resurrected during a fight should now be able to rejoin the combat correctly; armor values should now adjust properly when changing shields and the cinematics should no longer be distorted on particular standard-definition TVs.

Hawke will no longer gain excessive coin / experience from rapidly and repeatedly finishing a single side-quest, or gain random talents or spells after using the Maker’s Sigh potion and saving / reloading. Choosing a target at close range has been made easier and the options menu now features auto-attack.

You can read what other changes have been made via the gamepur.com website. What other changes are you hoping for in the Xbox 360 / PS3 patch?

For example, according to James Orry over at videogamer.com, the video options menu will now enable a wider full-screen gamma range, and it should now be easier for players to select party members by clicking on their portraits while the level-up arrow is being displayed.

Gameplay has also seen several changes including Aveline’s final armor upgrade, which is now available during ‘Favor and Fault.’ Aveline’s Retaliation talent will no longer impose a delay when activated either. A few minor gameplay issues have been fixed and should no longer occur.

The developer has also made a few changes to the quests. For example, in ‘Herbalist’s Tasks,’ the varterral’s heart should now be available even when the player kills the varterral before they receive the quest. The ‘Who Needs Rescuing’ quest will also be able to be completed.

You can read what other changes have been made in the 1.02 patch via the videogamer.com website. Do you play the PC version of Dragon Age II? If so, have you been experiencing any issues?

Firstly we do not take credit for this guide as we are simply giving you a run through of a guide video which was uploaded on YouTube by JV2017gameplay, we have embedded this video at the end of this post.

Firstly you must go to your writing desk and accept the ‘Night Terrors’ quest, when you select your party ensure that you do not choose Merrill, once you have chosen your party go to The Chantry, go up the stairs to the left and then take a left and find the Evil Tome, select it and then choose to destroy the book, you will be forced into battle.

Next you should go to the Viscount’s Keep, head east and you will find another tome, destroy the book and then win the battle, after this head to The Bone Pit here you must head into the cave and then on the left you will find another tome, again destroy the book and win the battle.

The next part of the quest requires you to go to The Wounded Coast, go straight ahead and you will come across the Dank Cave, another tome will be found here, destroy the book and then win the battle. After this you must go to Sundermount, find the recently opened passage, find the evil tome, destroy the book and win the battle.

Finally you must head to Darktown, the Forbidden Knowledge quest should now show, if you follow the route shown in the video below you will find Fell Grimoire, again destroy the book and you will have to fight a Desire Demon, the boss will summon of Rage Demons, Abominations and a Revenant, which makes it a hard battle, therefore ensure you have plenty of health potions, you will probably need to loot some during the battle.

The video embedded below is a lot easier to follow than written instructions, let us know if the guide helped you to complete the Forbidden Knowledge Quest.

Let’s start with the patch (1.01), this fixes a problem with game saves on single core machines and it also fixes an annoying issue which would result in the game asking for non-existent drives. Some players reported that control issues would not allow them to unlock correctly, this should be fixed along with a Steam problem which would result in VO not playing after switching languages.

Patch 1.01 can be downloaded here, it works with all languages and is just 9MB in size.

If you want improved visuals you should download the high-resolution texture pack, to get the most from this pack you should be running Windows 7 with a DirectX 11 compliant graphics card with at least 1GB of video memory, BioWare also suggest that DirectX 10 GPUs with Windows Vista SP2 should also benefit from the pack.

If your PC meets the above specs simply download it here (1.08GB) and run it, once installed run the game and go into options, under video options tick the “Hi-resolution textures” checkbox, if your PC is DX11 compliant and you have the latest drivers installed you should be able to enable the “very high” settings without any problems.

Did the patch fix problems for you? If not, which problems still exist?

First of all, the Champion Gloves can be attained at the beggining of Act 3 once you have become the champion of Kirkwall by defeating Arishok.

Secondly, to gain the chestpiece, you need to go to Hightown during the day and find Hubert (who stands in the centre of the market), talk to him and he will have a quest for you. Upon accepting his quest you must go to The Bone Pit, where you will have to slay a high dragon, after this you can loot it and you will find the chest piece.

Next are the boots, for these you will need to go to The Gallows, you will need to speak to the templar and knight commander who can be found in the templar headquarters. You will need to accept the “On The Loose” quest and when you encounter Huon you must defeat and loot him.

The last item, the helm, can be found in the following quest “Best Served Cold”. You will encounter a mage called Grace who you will need to kill and then loot to acquire the final piece of the armor.

You may need to spend a little time getting through the story first to reach some of the challenges so patience is key here. The video can be viewed below on how to get the armor, let us know in the comments section if you have managed to obtain it with our brief instruction guide and the short video.

Check out the pros and cons below that are thanks to one tipster (Maran), and let us know what you think about both the positive and negative, and feel free to give your overview of Dragon Age 2.

Pros:
1, Humor, the companions had some great lines!
2, Return of a few old faces but once again few major parts for loved characters. Thankfully the new characters are quite a lot of fun, but lack any what you would call evil characters. Chaotic Neutral at best.
3, Somewhat more balanced classes, with melee two hander’s being the new arcane mages. You can still make tank mages, when you understand how overpowered AOE is generally and how blood magic can also become overpowered once again.
4, Generally speaking if you just want to blow off some steam and not care about what you are killing or why, it is an enjoyable experience in maybe 30-minute bursts.
5, Interface is fine. There are some small odd bugs with character faces or camera angles being limited so it works and is practical.
6, Couple of great quests amongst the many terrible ones. The Serial killer quest was an example of what Dragon Age Origins was in many ways, a small glimpse of greatness.

Cons:
1, Repetitive Areas, which limit the desire to finish the quests let alone replay anything.
2, Limited Armor selection, making for more basic gameplay. AOE everything equals win, making for completely mindless combat unless you are playing on nightmare.
3, Your quest choices don’t affect the story, they just add fluff; it is tough to shake the feeling and that is the biggest disappointment of all. This problem is even more exaggerated with the reuse of areas.
4, No real ending for the companions we’d spent 50 hours or so with, what happened to anyone? No Epilogue, no closure. Knowing Bioware they won’t wrap this up in the sequel either as we’ll have all new characters.
5, Bad pacing and quest design at times. This was hinted above, the serial killer quest finding your mother is a great quest and an example of feeling compelled to finish it. As an example of bad pacing, I’d finished quests before being told I had them, which in my first hour or two confused the hell out of me. Pick up an item in an office and talk to a random NPC – then I’d been rewarded with no idea I had a quest or any dialogue except a thank you, bizarre.
6, A further example of pacing problems, waves of enemies making all fights feel the same, bar one or two boss battles which thankfully break up the repetitive AOE, AOE, AOE, Heal (Maybe or just yawn), AOE combat.
7, Too few healer NPCs.
8, No Mod Support to fix the above or give us replay value, which this title really needs help with being set in the same landscapes. With Mod tools people could have fixed the waves and perhaps opened up a few new areas but no dice.
9, Reusing the same concepts all the way through the game. (Bandit Waves), (Demons, Demons, Demons), (Mages and Templar’s are all insane, You won’t find much attachment to any of them, and to be honest an option to kill them both at the end of it all was needed. At the end of it all though it doesn’t matter a bit, as it all players the same anyway).
10, Less interaction with companions, and instead being forced to run around the city (Again) just to talk to them.
11, There is not an area of the game that was made more complex, engaging or added any depth, not one.

Do you agree with the pros and cons listed above? Let us know your thoughts on Dragon Age 2.

Thanks Maran

Anders is a mage who we first saw in Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, he is pretty laid-back and uses his magic to help people you can find out more about Anders here. Aveline Vallen is a human warrior and is one of Hawke’s companions, you can find out more about Aveline here.

Bethany Hawke is Hawke’s younger sister and Carver’s fraternal twin. Bethany is a mage who only appears in Dragon Age II, you can find out more about her here. Carver Hawke is Hawke’s younger brother and Bethany’s sister, Carver specializes in Two-handed weaponry, find our more about Carver here. Fenris is an elf warrior who can be a romance to Hawke or a companion, for more about Fenris check out this link.

Isabela is a romance option or campanion for Hawke and appeared in Dragon Age: Origins, more can be found here about Isabela. Merill returns to the game as an elf mage and a companion to the elf warden, here is some more info about here. Sebastian Vael is available with The Exiled Prince DLC and is an archer, more info on him here.

Varric Tethras is a dwarf who encounters Hawke in Dragon Age II and also narrates parts of the story. Go here for more about him. Finally on the page there is ‘Dog’ (the default name of a Mabari war hound), he is the Hawke family dog and is a minor fifth member who is summonable, you can find out a little more here.

Which is your favorite Dragon Age 2 companion?

It must be said however that all credit should still be placed firmly in the hands of Pokémon publisher Nintendo’s hands due to the game topping the chart for several weeks while only being available on one platform compared to Dragon Age 2 which is available on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Pokemon Black slipped from 2nd spot to 4th, whilst Fight Night Champion held its grip on third position, Nintendo will be very pleased that a DS release is selling so well considering it will offer no 3D visuals when played on the soon-to-be-release Nintendo 3DS, however let’s face it any Pokemon game is going to sell well these days.

The top 40 list can be seen here and you can draw your own conclusions about the movement, however for now we won’t knock Dragon Age too much, instead we’ll congratulate it on its glory and first week at the top of the charts, do you think it will last another week at the top spot?

An article over at Bitmob is reporting that when playing Dragon Age 2 on a 4:3 display, every cut-scene in the game is squished. This makes up for almost half of the game, and the image flickers during cut-scenes as well. The problem is noticed only ten seconds into the game with the opening cut-scene, so means the developer either didn’t test the game on a SDTV or didn’t care.

The first patch planned for the game has no mention for a fix for this. Many people may just say so what and get with the times, but there will be many gamers who use their consoles on a second TV so why should they? Does the industry now not consider SDTV gamers?

The problem is many reviewers of the game may not even own a SDTV anymore, so developers may not be able to test their games on this platform now. Even without the aspect ratio glitch text is really tiny and hard to see. If developers no longer want to support the SDTV platform than fair enough, but it would be nice if they put a warning on the game before people lay out hard earned cash for a game.

There may be some gamers using SDTVs especially the younger generation who have to rely on parents to provide them with a TV, which in many cases could be a hand me down.

Do you know of anyone using an SDTV?

The game is not a direct sequel to the first installment according to Greg A over at the sixthaxis, instead it tells another story which is set close to the first in both location and time. This game tells the story of Hawke which spans a ten year period from which they work up from being a refugee to become The Champion.

Unlike the first game the graphics in Dragon Age II range from good to really impressive, once you progress into the city section the graphics improve greatly. One problem with the game was the lack of variety with some of the locations.

In this installment the game engine has been vastly improved over the original. The reviewer summed up by saying the game is engaging and well realized fantasy game, and gave it 9 out of 10.

Evan Narcisse over at Techland has also reviewed Dragon Age II and liked the way you can tweak your player’s abilities and equipment. He also liked the combat and squad control which was felt to be a big improvement over Origins. Not normally liking fantasy type games found his opinion changing thanks to Dragon Age II, and gave the game 9.7 out of 10.

CVG have rounded up some prices for UK gamers and are reporting that Amazon and HMV have it on Xbox 360 and PS3 for £38.89. Slightly cheaper is Zavvi who are charging £37.85 for the console version and £27.85 for PC.

In the US Walmart is charging $59.96 for both the Xbox360 and PS3 versions, while Amazon is offering it for $59.95. For PC and Mac it will cost you $57.99 with Amazon.

Have you played the game yet? Do you know of anywhere where it is cheaper?