Roderick

Dragon Age

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They are worse graphics than Mass Effect

.

Yeah mass effect looked pretty slick and (personally) had a stronger art direction (Syd mead) but they have a very constrained and limited environments that sort of off set the huge space opera going on.

So I started Dragon age up last night, yep, still Fugly in almost every way, but here we go: ****Possible Spoilers?*****

Start 1. Import character creator, my 60 year old looking rogue, how had to be a human noble, but oh well, no biggy. Some 45 year old calls me his son... ok this is retarded. Quit Game.

Start 2. Ok time to make a meat head Warrior, lets shoot for Brom's version of Conan... 30 minutes later... It kind of looks like a retarded version of Stallone, lets try an expression, I slid it to the last expression and literally laughed out loud, my character was sylvester Stallone, dressed up like a down syndrome Conan. So I get started, learning the inventory, decide to go without armor and run around in my underwear, yet no one seems to mind, I guess they just got used to me being a retard. Fighting and getting blood on me is pretty fun when not wearing clothing.

So I play for 2 hours and once the game starts to pick up I pretty much decide I don't want to play a complete retard, so I'll try something else tonight. Since the human beginning is just so mundane, I think I'll go for a dwarf commoner rogue and see how that goes.

So far, it's alright, it's a western rpg, it's got the Bioware feel to it all, but I know it's supposed to be this kind of throw back, but it really feels this thing was made in the Kotor 1 era. I never really dug the Witcher, but that game looked pretty slick compared to Dragon Age, it had the generic fantasy vibe to it, but the designs were a little more unique, graphics were a lot sharper, and they at least tried with some different systems.

It just doesn't seem Dragon age flows well, and this might be what I want from a Blizzard game, but the Jrpgs(though I haven't played one in almost a decade) just seems to have a stronger production value and "editing" to it all... just too bad they have retarded characters and stories most of the time.

edit: Oh another gripe with games like this, and I know they are just games so what can I expect, but for some reason the games like DA and FO3 they are presenting this world where you make a custom character, make choices, and carve a path for yourself, but the problem I find every time is if you don't carve the one path they want, then it'll ignore you, some of the gameplay mechanics may respond to you, but the characters and story mostly don't. again you can't tailor make a plot for someone, but older games such as Fallout 1 and I'd even say newer ones like Farcry 2 do in a lot of ways modern western RPGs dont.

For example:

Human noble, castle is attacked, I slaughter like 30 guys in my underwear, no one reacts to me in my underwear(ok fine, I'm just being an asshole) but then suddenly cut to story element and it's dune where I have to hitail it out of there and the only way to do it is sell my life to servitude to escape. Sorry, but no, I just killed 30 guys, I'm pretty sure I can either escape on my own or go try to kill them all. ok fine, story element, its the start of the game. Get to camp, they tell me I can't go talk to my brother, they tell me I can't leave; just because some dude said so, f that, I'm turning around and running. Can't.

Maybe its because I'm at the start and its super linear right now, but i'd just like a rpg to be constructed more like a FO1, FC2, or GTA(to a small degree) where there is this story but the world starts and end more like a world sim then a structured take me by the hand at the beginning and end rpg.

Fallout is a pretty good example... go find the water filter. Do it or don't, makes no difference to the end of the game, once you get out in the world you don't know what your end goal is right away and can work towards anything in the mean time, that was one of the last times I remember actually making my own way in a world that wasn't made for me and it was cool.

Edited by Murdoc

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God damn I am loving this game, put over 20 hours in already, I haven't played a game this much for a long time. Baldur's Gate is one of my favorite games of all time and this just plays so much like it. It's crashed once randomly, and during some big battles it runs choppy on my laptop, but it's been surprisingly smooth overall. Wish BioWare would release the damn toolset, the download link has been up since launch but it just 404s.

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Would it be fair to say that if I like Baulders Gate I would like this game? That's what most of the reviews say, but the game doesn't look like it would be very Baulder's Gate-like. I guess I just need even more reassurance before I get any new shit.

...Gate-ish. Gate-esque. Gate-ious, that's good. Baulder Gatious.

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It's not Baulder's, it's Baldur's for gods sake. I don't even get where that quite common misspelling comes from. *

* sorry, I usually avoid nitpicking, but that one really bugs me.

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Is this a game I can play piece by piece, or am I just not going to enjoy it if I can't play all in under a month?

I get stuck with this problem ALL the time. I'll start a long RPG, play like a machine for a few weeks.. maybe.. then drop it for a while. Invariably, when I get back to it, I can't remember where I was or what I was doing, even if I do remember how to play. :frusty:

This happened to me to some degree with Mass Effect, so it may be the same deal with Dragon Age as well.

I'm still getting it. :yep:

Also, I've heard it's difficult to make a character that doesn't look completely bizarre. Is this correct? It can't POSSIBLY be as bad as the character creation for Oblivion, right?

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It's not Baulder's, it's Baldur's for gods sake. I don't even get where that quite common misspelling comes from. *

Are you sure? I really remember playing a rouge in Baulder's Gate.

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About this character creator. Is it a necessary component or was it only for those who want to do this early? Can I do the same things from within the game?

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and during some big battles it runs choppy on my laptop

Holy Nike Track Suit! On your laptop? What are your Laptop's specs if you don't mind my asking?

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Anyone have a sense of which would be a better experience - playing the PC version on a just-meets-the-minimum-requirements MacBook Pro, or the console (specifically, Xbox) version that all the reviewers seem to think is so terrible?

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Anyone have a sense of which would be a better experience - playing the PC version on a just-meets-the-minimum-requirements MacBook Pro, or the console (specifically, Xbox) version that all the reviewers seem to think is so terrible?

I haven't played both versions (I've read a lot about both) but I think the key there is whether or not you need the top down view. If you can work with over the shoulder third person while managing light tactics then the 360 version is fine (in my opinion). Keep in mind, you only ever have four characters in your party, so it's not like you're playing an RTS with a ton of units. You switch between the characters during battle with the right and left bumper and you can keep the game paused in the tactical radial menu while you're doing so. Basically, I find myself issuing commands, Letting them go for a couple seconds and then pausing again and checking up on how things are going. To me, it feels a little like the Fallout 3 combat with VATS (constant switching between real-time and psuedo-turn-based). Sometimes, the battle gets a little overwhelming for me with the console's camera view (and in that case, I switch to casual difficulty for a short time*). *will return to this point at end of post.

The graphics and (to a lesser extent) framerate are lame in the console versions, but is that really important? Also, it depends on what you're used to, I'd say...I play console games almost exclusively, so, while I can certainly imagine the factors that make the PC version "superior", I've spent so much time with the 360 controller in my hands that it feels natural and enjoyable to play this game with it. I've played for about 8 hours and other than one or two VERY brief moments in-game, the cutscenes were the only time in which I experienced framerate issues. I doubt the graphics and framerate are worse than what you'd get on your Macbook (but then, what do I know).

* Back to the difficulty issue... I've spent a little bit of time playing this game on the casual setting, and while it's a little too easy, it is nice, for the following reasons:

1. It allows me not to really have to worry about tactics, I can just pick a character and run around whooping ass, which is not how I'd want to play the whole game, but it's fun.

2. It makes my party of brave warriors seem so fucking badass when a we take out 5 or 6 low level baddies in about 20 seconds, and I feel like we should be able to handle those guys with relative ease, we're not hardened veterans, but, nevertheless, we're fucking Grey Wardens, bitches!!! 'Na mean?

I think it would have been cool if they been able to convert this to more of a pure action RPG for the consoles but I guess that might have been cost or time prohibitive...or it just wouldn't have allowed for the amount of tactical management they wanted this game to have. I've heard this was originally going to be a PC only release, so I'm just glad the rest of us get to play it, and, again, I've very pleased that it seems like Bioware honestly tried hard to make this work on console (for the most part, it does).

In my wildest dreams, I'd have had the tactical depth of this game wrapped around something like the combat engine from Fable II, and the option to switch between pause and play or direct control (I'd do a shitload of both). You're welcome to think I'm a philistine if you like.

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1. It allows me not to really have to worry about tactics, I can just pick a character and run around whooping ass, which is not how I'd want to play the whole game, but it's fun.

I've been playing on console and doing this. It is easy, but for the life of me I can't figure out how, as a mage, fireball is ever useful if you step it up to one of the difficulties where friendly fire is on. I don't think I've dropped a single fireball where someone on my team didn't get caught in the blast.

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Ok started a new game with dwarf commoner, already it's cooler. Does anyone know if they create your family based on your choices(FO3)·(I canèt seem to make a question mark on my pc suddenly...)

My retarded mongoloid character didnèt seem to have any resemblence to the family, but my dwarf playthrough looks like it may did(or I lucked out by making the character look like the sister model)

Edit: Ok, having a lot more fun with the dwarf. Not sure why that is, but a game has to hook me with something from the start and I found the dwarf beginning so much better then the humans(wouldnèt mind trying elves, but Ièll wait to play the game more)

wtf is going on with my keyboard... ignore the weirdity.

Edited by Murdoc

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About this character creator. Is it a necessary component or was it only for those who want to do this early? Can I do the same things from within the game?

Mostly for those who wanted something to do before game release. If you want to create a Bioware account and upload your character, it unlocks a ring for any of your games once you actually start them.

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I do get kind of annoyed with my party members being such nagging pragmatists. They're always complaining about how we can't waste our time doing relatively minor tasks when we should be battling the darkspawn, and I'm like, "Guys, look...this is an RPG. You're honestly telling me not to do the sidequests? I paid sixty dollars for this game."

And be careful when you give gifts to your party members. I gave something to one of them, only to find out later on that it would have been of huge sentimental value to a different character. But I guess that's part of what makes the game cool: your decisions don't always turn out as planned. I suppose it's also a case of a game's systems allowing for interesting, unscripted things to happen. I had a very good reason for giving the gift to whom I gave it, then all the sudden the plot gives me the old switcheroo.

I know that I'm being super-vague in the above paragraph, but I want to put this concept out there without spoilers or spoiler-tags.

edit: Also, the whole thing with your party bitching at your about side-quests offsets the issue that's been discussed in regard to Mass Effect in one of the first episodes of thumbs which is that there are a million people all over the place just spontaneously asking you, of all people, to stop and help them. It's interesting that characters in the game stop to say "this is bullshit" That way...when you go ahead and do the stuff anyway, there's a narrative tension and significance that makes it more than just padding for the main quest.

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Wow. It was almost a puzzle to figure out which of the 3 "Multiplayer CD Keys" to use to unlock the DLC of the Steam Digital Deluxe versions. The naming of the keys didn't help much.

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Started a female human noble character and played through the origin story. That part was quite short, but I didn't explore everything. The game is not as ugly as I feared from comments here, but the characters sure are. She looked much prettier in the character creator than in-game.

Aafter hearing the human noble story is similar to

Song of Ice and Fire, I named my character Arya and her dog Ghost, Nymeria didn't seem appropriate for a he

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Ok out of the origin and tutorial-ville and into the world. Was up until 2am to play it, which is really rare for me to be playing a game that late(unless Iw as playing online with friends in the west) so that says something.

My play style has slightly changed now since the Thumbs cast now that I know I can sleep with women and kill children, but Bioware alway does a really good job of sucking me into being really good just to squeeze the all the content out things. I'm also wondering how many people I'll be able to pick up along the way, since they seem to be joining me left and right and it seems I can tell them to piss off whenever I want(not sure if they will actually go though) but I wonder if I would be able to go pick them back up if I needed.

The games visuals seems really hit or miss, like some characters are really well done(at least for this game) and others are just aweful... and it doesn't even seem like there was priority over the importance of the character, it just seems like uniformed skill set on the art team and a lack of art direction to make sure it gets to where it needs to.

Also, I think ever brightly lit human place is probably by far the ugliest, there is no light direction in the environment or different materials, so it all just flattens out. It really kind of feels like this was their first next gen game where they didn't know how to properly make a normal map or light to specifically show of the textures/materials... It doesn't seem like there is a day or night cycle in these areas(ala Kotor) so I'm not sure what the issue was because kotor had amazing mood lighting that really showed off their environments(mostly).

I've always considered Mass Effect a "Kotor 2" you can see where it came from and they changed a lot of things around to just work better(and some tiems worse, but they made an attempt) at the style of game it was trying to be.

So with that said, Dragon Age is really, really, really more Kotorish then Mass Effect, so this almost feels like Kotor 1.5, or at least a split in the tree going more to enhancing what Kotor did well but sticking with the formula. Just the environment setups, the tasks, world travel, character interaction, your first 2 main characters that join you, the story set up really, combat is back to being more tactic oriented like Kotor(I really liked this so glad its back in a bioware rpg, but think it has no place for mass effect) so it's really kotor + DnD; which works.(I never played Baldurs Gate, so I imagine a lot of BG was in kotor?)

There are also things in here that I would die to have in ME2. I felt the one design flaw(not some of the combat, that was just some other kind of flaw, I think mostly level design since when it worked in a certain area it was amazing... like the end and the DLC) was the Citedal was the kotor rpg solve problem game and the other planets was more or less the kill everything dungeons. The one thing I liked about Kotor and DA was the rpg-talk to people-solve problem was spread out everywhere and that's what really draws me into DA right now, their dialog has a certain style and it's fun developing who my character is...last nights play through really made him foggy.

The on the fly character banter, thumbs already talked about this, but I loved this in ME1 int he elevators I made a point of taking elevators. But there is so much more stuff in this now and them doing it while walking around would be amazing.

Ok back to my game, my character is realllly bad at intimdating, and I tend to explore every possibility even if it means killing a person when the situation seems to warrant it( I need help, the world is in peril, my mission is to help it, if I have rough someone up to get that help, I think it's justified) but since I'm so bad at intimidating the first town I come into I scare off a few people with no results and kil a few people that I really could have used their help. The problem is I'm not seen as "bad" to get the bad party members to like me since I'm ultimately trying to help and I'm not seen as good... I'm just kind of a incompetant screw up right now and this was all after a few conversations, so that's pretty cool. There is always this grey neutral area and I'm sure it's here, but I think I found the *fourth way "Useless Knob".

*edit: said third way when I realized it's actually the forth. I'm sure there are many more mistakes then that in the post, its just the one I thought of when I hit submit.

edit2:

Well no way I can win the battle in redcliffe, I did better the first time, not so much the other ten times, there goes that town, maybe they should have recruited the human to save the world, I'm doing a pretty crap job at it. RIP Redcliffe.

And honestly, I could go back and make decisions differently, but I'm not. I'm a capable person, but you recruit me and then 2 days later expect me to save the world, this is what your going to get, next time get the seasoned proffessionals, not the rookie.

Edited by Murdoc

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Started a female human noble character and played through the origin story. That part was quite short, but I didn't explore everything.

I like the game so far but the whole Origins deal seems kinda ridiculous. I'd read it would take 2 or 3 hours to complete but it's really just 30 minutes at best. It's not even the entire tutorial. Not sure yet if it has much influence later on though.

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I've always considered Mass Effect a "Kotor 2"

But there's already a Kotor 2 and a Mass Effect 2...so does this mean the real Kotor 2 is like...Mass Effect 0.5

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Murdoc, I would say this game is much more like Baldur's Gate than KotOR is (aside from the setting obviously). The tactical top-down camera is exactly like BG, and the gameplay is extremely similar, in both the battles and the conversations. This one is just much more gritty and mature. But I am loving it.

just completed recruiting the mages to my cause, the fade levels started out annoying but turned out extremely well I thought.

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This one is mature? How so? Not to be a downer on it, but throwing in gore and tits doesn't really make it mature in my books. The story so far is pretty sophmore, but that's not really what I'm in it for, its the day day conversations that is getting me going, but its the same stuff from most Bioware games.

I dunno, I'm finding the mechanics exactly like Kotor, just with more DnD into it; again this is probably just Baldurs Gate then, like a lot of people are saying. So I can only assume Kotor was very much like BG, because the same beats in the story/gameplay/characters,tactical combat, environment setup, quest setup, etc... is straight from Kotor; which I guess was straight from BG.

Cool stuff though, spent the day playing. I really really would like the AI to figure out not to step on traps that have been dedicated though. I also can't figure out the automated AI thing. It supposed to be like that other Final Fantasy or something? I saw it work in that, but I can't seem to get the auto AI to do anything I think it will do so it pretty much becomes useless.

@GrouchoClub: The abomination that is titled Kotor 2 isn't Kotor 2, and that is the last I will speak of it here. This is also why I always considered Mass Effect Kotor 2 because it was the logical direction for that series.

@Erriki: Probably right :) I just have no basis of BG to say.

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It supposed to be like that other Final Fantasy or something?

It seems to be similar to the party ai control in FF12.

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@GrouchoClub: The abomination that is titled Kotor 2 isn't Kotor 2, and that is the last I will speak of it here. This is also why I always considered Mass Effect Kotor 2 because it was the logical direction for that series.

I still have yet to understand the horrible reaction some people have to Kotor 2. It wasn't as good sure, and the end game wasn't all the rest of the game had built it up to be, but I still really enjoyed it. Is it that I don't care about the Star Wars license? It that why I'm missing the hatred? I thought it played well and fleshed out some back-story nicely. I can understand not counting it as part of the continuation because it was made by Obsidian and not Bioware, but it certainly wasn't an "abomination."

Then again, the only non-internet person I've known who had that reaction to Kotor also used that

his character died at the end of Fallout 3

and how angry that made him as his rationalization for pirating all of Fallout's DLC rather than buying it. "If their ending was so shit why should I pay for more?" if I recall correctly. Maybe the reasons he'd give aren't something I really want to understand.

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