Dragon Age Unplayable After Windows 8.1 Upgrade

Certain aspects of all graphics are better with DX11 (especially complex surfaces, reflections, and flickering light effects.)

And you can't use the "High" or "Very High" textures under DX9.

On the other hand, lowering the load on your system overall probably improves game-play (less lag, faster loading times.)

BTW:  Once I updated my nVidia driver back in Oct, I haven't had any problems running the game under WIn8.1, DX9 or DX11.

[EDIT:  Oh, yeah, the GeForce GTS 250 is a DX10 card anyway, It is not physically capable of executing DX11 instructions.)

Thanks for the response.  I didn't realize that about my video card, but the funny thing is, I'm pretty sure I was running it as DX11 prior to upgrading to Windows 8.1.  Who knows...I'm just glad I can play again.  And I haven't noticed any graphics degradation (though it's tough to compare now, of course).  

Yeah, I know it's confusing that Win8 (and Win7, and even Vista with an add-on) supports DX11, and DA2 supports DX11, so the game lets you choose it as the Renderer even if your hardware can't handle it. 

But... If you don't have DX11-capable graphics card one of two things happens.  If, (as for you and me) you had a DX10/DX10.1 card then mostly you just get a static image in the places where a true DX11 system would be showing some sort of motion/flickering/etc., and a DX9 card might just show a black screen.

In DA2, all of the repeated "Area Loading" screens are of this sort.  The swinging sign as you enter the Hanged Man, the liquid gold filling the Kirkwall crest mold as you enter the Vicount's Keep, the bas-relief of the line of slaves as you descend into Darktown.  These have lighting and animation effects that require DX11 to display properly.

And in the worst cases, you get a total freeze and/or crash to desktop!

When I first discovered this I ran out and got the best DX11 card my poor old gaming rig could handle.  (Which isn't much.  Power supply and physical space limitations in the case required a true single-slot card.  I went with the nVidia GT640.)

Ok...so even though the answer was in the posting above i read straight over it somehow...but even then i figured it out on my own and noone really said how to change it to directx 9 from 11. So i struggled with this for a few days and felt i finally should make a post to help others. Ok so you can't open dragon age 2 after updating your windows 7 from the last time you ran auto microsoft updates.. The problem in most cases is that the update has put your direct x to 11 when it should be on direct x 9. How do you solve this? Very simple. First right click your desktop icon for dragone age 2. Then go to properties. After that you should be looking at your dragon age 2 folder with other folders inside with different names for the coding and such for your game. Look for the file that says bin_ship. double click bin_ship and inside you should be looking for something that says "dragonage2config". Once you have found this double click it. A menu with lots of options for the game should appear. Look for the option that says "video" once you click this you should see a list of options starting with it showing as a first option for resolution. Still with me? Ok now just look down tell you see the name renderer. Select the drop down arrow to the right of this option . It most likely should have it selected as direct x 11. YOU WANT TO SWITCH THIS OPTION TO DIRECT x9. If direct x9 doesn't appear in this drop down menu i would suggest downloading direct x 9 from a website like filehippo, then follow all these steps again. Ok now that you have selected direct x 9 go to the top left corner of the pop up screen this is on and select file. then select exit the program. An option to save will pop up. select save. Then double click your desktop icon and walla! =)

Thank you so very much ReddragonRobby, I've been trying for ages to fix the game. DA-1 and DA-3 work but DA-2 just wouldn't load for anything. Unload reload, looking at what all is running and reading a ton of post that say oh you have such and such running and that is what is breaking your game... only I don't have any of those installed!

Such a simple fix, I feel a bit silly that I forgot that the DragonAge2Config.exe existed. As many posts said disable full screen in settings only I couldn't get the game to launch to get to the settings... Setting it to DirectX 9 instead of the 11 worked like a charm! 🙂

*hugs* thank you again