Day-one texture pack released for Dragon Age 2

by JC Fletcher on Mar 8th 2011 4:00PM

On its own, the release of a high-resolution texture pack for the PC version of Dragon Age 2 wouldn't be that weird. It would just be nice for those PC owners with the gear to handle it. But this pack isn't being released years after the fact, when graphical display technology has improved and made the game look dated -- it's being released now, on the same day as the game.

In order to take advantage of the new textures, you need at least 1 gigabyte of video RAM, and BioWare recommends DirectX 11. You also need over a gig of spare hard drive space. You should probably clean your glasses, too, for the absolute highest visual fidelity.

Source: BioWare

Tags: bioware, Dragon-Age-2, electronic-arts, patch, pc, update

Reader Comments (65)

Wow, Id need an upgrade (if i was going to buy the game). I think my card is only 512 mb.

Good thing theyve done here though.

@LEONLEONLEON

You guys may be pretty lucky, but for a lot of people who are downloading this game, a gig is quite a bit, we don't all have nice data plans :(

@Hivetyrant Data plans...wait, what?

@YimYimYimi

It's an australian thing, ISP's here limit the amount we can actually download and then charge more/ slow your download speed to a snail's pace when you reach that limit.

etc. I used to have a 2gb/month plan, when i hit that 2gb limit my net would slow down to about 2kb/s.

It's a bullshit system to allow ISP company's to charge more for internet since they scale on both data and speed (what would you rather? slow with more data or faster with less? both is hugely expensive). Everyone knows we are getting robbed but no one has called them out on it for some reason, I would myself! but I don't know how to get these things changed.

I don't have any clue why this isn't in the game to begin with. Seems silly to me.

@Deschain

"You also need over a gig of spare hard drive space."
That's probably why.

@Deschain

its not in the game because it wasn't finished when the game went gold (according to bioware) and most of the people playing it on PC won't have the hardware for it.

It's just a little bonus extra for the subset of people with high end PCs game still looks great even without it. with it, its pretty impressive.

@Deschain
DVD restrictions? If the disc was already full, EA would likely be reluctant to throw down the extra cost of a 2nd disc and different packaging just for super-hi-res textures (or, at least, throwing it online would be much cheaper).

@Alex McKee Are you serious?

@Deschain

Maybe becuase it wasnt finished until AFTER the game went gold. Think of it as a patch that improves graphics, for PC users with good hardware only

@CypherSignal

Yeah, I agree. The capacity of a dual layered DVD or DVD-DL is very limited.

@LEONLEONLEON I mean it's 1GB of extra crap they may not have had room for on disk, that only a very small subset of users could take advantage of.

@Alex McKee

A gig is nothing man.

@Alex McKee

Only a very small subset?

I think all of you are underestimating how many people have decent video cards. It's a good portion of the audience.

@Aberhams

Really? I found the graphics to be the worst part of the game. That was the demo though, so texture pack should fix some of the issues.

@Billlop

I find it hard to believed that the last thing they worked on was textures. I'm more inclined to believe the DVD capacity excuse. Sounds like something EA would do.

@Deschain
After playing it for 12 hours with high res textures, I can assure you that it is still ugly. People look pretty good, environments look really bad. Game is pretty fun though.

@Deschain Why? the game was printed long ago.

@Alex McKee In the end the size of the stuff on the disc is 6.6gigs. 1 gig should've fit IMO.

@Deschain

the demo was defaulted to dx9 because it was an older built without all the dx11 bells and whistles finished yet. I can assure you, the finished product is downright gorgeous.

@KillaPat

Yup. These textures make the characters look better but the environments are still as empty and bland as before.

Especially the barren streets of "overcrowded" Kirkwall.

What in god's name is in that picture?

@Toop
Lil' Huey, of course! Aw~ He's hungry.

Oh look! A picture of something similar to the Harvester.

Man...I really hope that thing is not as hard in Dragon Age II!

@TheRepublic

That's not just similar...

Some people still need a warning about needing over a gig of RAM?

I feel special with 9 gigs.

@MrPistachio

a gig of VIDEO ram. Not system RAM. L2read

@MrPistachio

Video RAM, my dear, video RAM. You do not have nine gigabytes of that.

I would get ti but my card is only 768mb. Meh im having fun without it anyway. Im a bit annoyed at the performance though.

I get some major slowdown on big battles even with everything turned down to medium! My rig can handle Crysis 2 maxed out on the same res Dragon Age 2 is. Also, If i turn off Full Screen and put it into windowed mode i gain roughly 20fps!!! It just reeks of bad programming to me :(

@Billlop

Probably driver issues. Make sure they are updated. If they are look for hot fixes.

@Deschain if you are using an nvidia card, you gotta get the latest beta drivers for it to work right.

"According to the current Steam hardware survey, this accounts for only 5.6% of PC gamers" Courtesy of Gamesradar; I don't know about anyone else but I won't a part of the 5.6% that benefit from this.

@doreo
Average PC gamer =/= Average Dragon Age 2 gamer

wow...thats a first time ive felt that my video card cant do something just cause of the RAM :(

I've got a GTX260 with 896mb and I feel penis envy.

I need moar.

Does anyone know if they fixed the abilities bar not showing up in eyefinity bug from the demo? Is the HUD nice and centered? If not, can we center it manually in the .ini files?

That's the only thing I'm waiting to hear about.... mmmm 6048x1080 goodness.. do want.

looks pretty awesome

Now I have to decide whether to buy DA2 or not... I haven't beaten the first yet and that's the big deal breaker for me. But HIGH RES TEXTURES!

The graphics whore in me might win this round...

I just bought a geforce GTX480 to replace my just broken 8800GTX which only had 768MB of ram but because of that I now can't afford DA2:(

How do I check my video ram? I looked into dxdiag and there's one which says I have 6079mb in system and another in display that says 2034mb.

@The Only Girl

what graphics card do you have?

@The Only Girl

Video ram is just the ram your graphics card has. Most old cards have 256, medium spec cards have 512. Cards like mine (8800GTX) have 768 or around that. High spec cards have 1gig+

@BrianH
ATI Radeon HD 3300

@The Only Girl
You can find out that and more by downloading Speccy for fee.
http://www.piriform.com/speccy

@The Only Girl
I should probably add it's onboard. xDD
My other one burned out a long time ago from playing Crysis.

@The Only Girl

If you have Win7:

Right-click your desktop, go to "Screen Resolution". Click "Advanced settings" on the right lower corner.

You'll see your card's ram under "dedicated video memory".

@The Only Girl

onboard graphics will never have 1gb of memory, not for now at least

@KazamaSogetsu

Only dedicated video RAM counts? My 2301 Mb of total graphics memory is useless then? Bummer...

My 5770 (1GB memory) couldn't run the demo at very high at steady 60fps, I suppose it won't get any better with this pack.

Oh well :(

@KazamaSogetsu I have a 5770, I installed the high res pack and did not have a change in FPS at all.

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Dragon Age 2

Day-one texture pack released for Dragon Age 2

Reader Comments (65)

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:08PM LEONLEONLEON said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 11:59PM Hivetyrant said

Posted: Mar 9th 2011 1:25AM YimYimYimi said

Posted: Mar 9th 2011 3:54AM AntiVillian said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:10PM Deschain said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:15PM Alex McKee said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:15PM Aberhams said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:15PM CypherSignal said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:23PM LEONLEONLEON said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:26PM Billlop said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:33PM isotrex said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:43PM Alex McKee said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:00PM Deschain said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:03PM Deschain said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:04PM Deschain said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:06PM Deschain said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:35PM KillaPat said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:39PM Viiral said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:37PM Altrix said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 11:39PM Aberhams said

Posted: Mar 9th 2011 12:46AM arkweld said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:18PM Toop said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:02PM The Only Girl said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:18PM TheRepublic said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 8:50PM ironneko said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:22PM MrPistachio said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:24PM Billlop said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:29PM KeenCommander said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:24PM Billlop said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:08PM Deschain said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 11:41PM Aberhams said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:29PM doreo said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:37PM KillaPat said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:41PM shadowhowl1900 said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 4:57PM captcarl said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:05PM txphisher said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:09PM BrianH said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:09PM liquidsoap89 said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 5:42PM Glassneedles said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:07PM The Only Girl said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:15PM BrianH said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:19PM Billlop said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:25PM The Only Girl said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:27PM BPMOmega XBL PSN Steam said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:27PM The Only Girl said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:28PM KazamaSogetsu said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:34PM BrianH said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:43PM ironneko said

Posted: Mar 8th 2011 6:22PM KazamaSogetsu said

Posted: Mar 9th 2011 8:34AM DAmwake said

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