Dragon Age II Combat Preview

IGN has slapped up a Comic-Con-based Dragon Age II combat preview that attempts to determine if BioWare dumbed down the combat system in the forthcoming sequel. They also reveal a few other nuggets toward the end:
Different attacks are mapped to the X, Y, and B buttons of your controller (we were playing on an Xbox 360). Hawk, the hero of the game, had a typical sword swipe mapped to X, a thrust mapped to Y, and a twirl that would take down all the enemies around him mapped to B. By holding the right trigger you can access a second set of attacks, so it seems you'll have six moves available to you at a time. Each move has a recharge time, so you can't just keep mashing the X button to chop through enemies.

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We also got to see the new conversation system. Dialogue has been simplified so that you only have up to three choices. Each choice is represented by an icon that indicates whether or it's a "good," "nasty," or "badass" choice. Good choices are represented by an olive branch, nasty by a Greek comedy mask, and badass by a red fist. This is an easy way to gauge what response your dialogue choices will produce.

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A couple other things we noticed:

- The intro cut scene recaps the story of Dragon Age Origins, so newcomers should be able to jump right in.
- The title screen already has a "Downloadable Content" option.