ME2-ing it up is disappointing if true, but I do like the sound of a different visual style.

I'm not usually this shallow, but I will openly admit that I think Dragon Age looks absolutely physically pain-inducingly boring purely aesthetically. I've never been a fan of the LOTR school of fantasty, but you *can* give that stuff visual appeal with some effort, and Dragon Age is exactly the kind of brown medieval paste I can't stand.

So if they spruce those things up some, make coming into a new area or a new town meaningful presentation wise by actually changing up the scenery a little, and have characters in there that are halfway charismatic, I'm probably actually game for it.

Well I've nothing against dated graphics (even though that sounds like a weird statement to make), I just mind the complete lack of visual identity in most western role playing games in general. I think Oblivion looked insanely dull too, but it had enough novelty to it with its open structure for me to persevere.

With Dragon Age, with BioWare being "free" of the D&D license limitations could develop a unique looking fantasy world, but I guess they weren't really that interested in doing that. It is, for all intents and purposes, still a brown D&D thing still. I guess you could argue that Mass Effect borrows heavily from established sci fi things too, but I reckon it still makes for a fairly unique looking whole.

I hope that their allusion to a new visual style means they're more actively pursuing some personality in that regard. I'm not usually the douchebag that goes "GAME X SHOULD DO Z AND Y TO PLEASE ME! ME, ME, ME!!", but in this case it is literally what's standing between me and interest in spending time in this world.

The Dragon Age world, to clarify. Otherwise would be a tad dramatic. :D

I think Mass Effect 2 was sort of a rude awakening, I really wasn't prepared that it'd be.. the thing it was. I'm not even sure I even really dislike the game, it just sort of removed things that didn't work in ME without filling the void. I found myself trying to linger in environments, *looking for something* and time and again having to realise there's really nothing to look for anymore. I hated the loot in ME because the loot itself was 99% garbage, but a loot *system* is still an element that contributes to the pacing of an RPG-esque experience. Without it, rushing through tight corridors was a bit of a shocking shift towards a shootery pace, one that subsequently made the world feel disjointed and split into "levels" rather than being a large, living space that you'd thoroughly explore.

Ultimately - though I played it through - I was sorely disappointed in Mass Effect 2, but I may one day return to it on its own terms and enjoy it a fair deal more.

But my point here is that Dragon Age just by virtue of being a classic RPG has elements to it that I can't imagine even Bioware would remove outright. I can see them wanting to update the storytelling of it to something approaching ME, mechanically, because that's an incredibly well executed way of role playing a story, but I sincerely doubt it would ever get ME2 levels of extreme.

In fact I wager even ME3 brings a lot of systems back, improved rather than cut out.