Roderick

Dragon Age

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Is anyone else having performance problems with the PC version? I noticed earlier that it must have a memory leak or something: after a couple of hours of playing, things slow down. So I restarted the game after every couple of hours. But now, after being to the Alienage, this happens after every couple of minutes and it slows down so much that it becomes unplayable. The alienage started it, but after that it happens everywhere.
I had some pretty terrible problems with what seemed like a memory leak but it was very extreme, like playing perfect at one point, and then it would just start to go extremely slow and eventually freeze. The times I had this problem was always in dialog sequences. Maybe I mentioned it earlier in this thread, I don't remember. But I have also noticed that the game runs much smoother when I initially start it than it does several hours later. It also crashed more than several times. Even with those problems, overall gameplay was smooth and I play on my laptop so I guess I'm bound to have some problems.

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I turned the graphics details down now and it works fine even in the large battles.

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I turned the graphics details down now and it works fine even in the large battles.

I get very slight laggy vibes in some of the cutscenes but otherwise it runs great.

PS - I check into this thread occasionally but I don't want to spoil the game for myself. Everyone's been cool with spoiler tags, but I'm paranoid. I just need to say it: this game has completely surprised me. I got it on a whim having not been even remotely excited about it at all, and it has consumed my life.

So yeah. I like this game.

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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1096-Dragon-Age-Origins

I know this guy's been criticized lately on this forum, but he totally sums up the reasons why I don't really like this game.

"Realistically, You'll probably just play through it once, then play the opening mission five times, because after that it's pretty much the same except for the occasional bit of dialogue. For example, I was an elf and every now and again, characters would say, 'Hello, you are an elf.'"

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For me it actually is encouraging. I hate feeling like I have to replay the game several times to see all the content. It's fine to have a ton of content that's not story related, or content that is harder to get to depending on what choices you make, but to make something completely inaccessible because you picked the wrong dialogue option irritates the hell out of me. If the game is more-or-less the same for each type of character (opening bit aside) I'm more likely to enjoy it.

...Also, just bought it from the Steam sale, so I'll be seeing what the fuss is about shortly.

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Oh.

Well that's encouraging since I just bought the game.

Hey, I'm like the only person in the world who's not a huge fan of it. Don't use me as your standard. Plus, I generally only like games that are cute or have motorcycles.

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NOT BUYING THIS

If you read back, on one of the pages of this thread, there's a spreadsheet. A damned Excel spreadsheet. No!

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I believe you're referring to a spreadsheet of Bioware game story cliches. It's not specific to Dragon Age. You can safely enjoy this game excel-free, as far as I'm aware.

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Sure it conforms(more then less) to the Bioware typical rpg... like some of the quests I've done in both mass effect and kotor before, and a few of the characters are pretty much other ones from their games; but so what? They're good at doing it and it's fun.

I have a lot to say about the game, but its been awhile so not really sure where to start, probably will in a later post.

I finished it last night, so unfortunately a lot of what I have to say are spoilers, but I'll comment on this. Any ending in this type of game always sucks simple because it ends; thats not to say dragons age sucked, its pretty much what I expected, but the production value/presentation of it felt really poor, which kind of has this lingering effect on me.

Bioware has this type of game down pat on the gameplay side of things, but I'd really like to see them work harder on presentation as it's the same thing for all their games and some times it's more polished then other(mass effect certainly was) but then to see such a long game that was faily consistent take kind of a dip right at the end is mildly dissapointing.

without getting into specifics on the fiction and events would anyone that has played to the end care to comment ont his; am i being too picky about

the end where it was a quick cut scene, an odd return to the castle where you get one last line with your characters, then your click a door and the credits roll where they show static background and text?

I have issues with the part between redcliff and the last battle with alistar and morrigan, but those are more continuity problems then anything, but it didn't really respond to the game I just played(alistar refered to himself as king and acted like it when he wasn't in my game)

Anyway, small quibbles as the experiance overall was a lot fun, just was hoping for a smoother ending... i guess it followed the lotr tradition in the end as well, ha!

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Murdoc: I agree with you on the ending. It's disappointing to see when you've just spent hours completing the game to be presented with a single line and nothing further to do other than cue the credits.

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Well I haven't got to the end myself, but the beginning of the game has me hooked. I know it got a lot of rave reviews but I always had doubts, so count me as another surprised by just how good it is. A wholesome cross between NWN, KOTOR and Mass Effect.

Bad pathfinding, a painful to read UI and hilarious blood splatter aside, anyway. [/token criticism]

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Sure it conforms(more then less) to the Bioware typical rpg... like some of the quests I've done in both mass effect and kotor before, and a few of the characters are pretty much other ones from their games; but so what? They're good at doing it and it's fun.

I have a lot to say about the game, but its been awhile so not really sure where to start, probably will in a later post.

I finished it last night, so unfortunately a lot of what I have to say are spoilers, but I'll comment on this. Any ending in this type of game always sucks simple because it ends; thats not to say dragons age sucked, its pretty much what I expected, but the production value/presentation of it felt really poor, which kind of has this lingering effect on me.

Bioware has this type of game down pat on the gameplay side of things, but I'd really like to see them work harder on presentation as it's the same thing for all their games and some times it's more polished then other(mass effect certainly was) but then to see such a long game that was faily consistent take kind of a dip right at the end is mildly dissapointing.

without getting into specifics on the fiction and events would anyone that has played to the end care to comment ont his; am i being too picky about

the end where it was a quick cut scene, an odd return to the castle where you get one last line with your characters, then your click a door and the credits roll where they show static background and text?

I have issues with the part between redcliff and the last battle with alistar and morrigan, but those are more continuity problems then anything, but it didn't really respond to the game I just played(alistar refered to himself as king and acted like it when he wasn't in my game)

Anyway, small quibbles as the experiance overall was a lot fun, just was hoping for a smoother ending... i guess it followed the lotr tradition in the end as well, ha!

I know what you mean, but I was okay with the ending. It was all about the journey, man...

Possible Spoiler stuff:

Seriously though, I really enjoyed the campaign an awful lot, and I was ok with how they decided to deal with it, essentially using footnotes. I was a big fan of the blatant hints about forthcoming DLC and/or a sequel. Chasing down Morrigan would be a cool quest line.

I'm not happy about the existence of opening day DLC, but I can see myself paying for good and involved quest lines now that I've finished the single-player campaign. Hopefully they will release GTA:IV type expansions that add to the lore.

I am now playing through a second time, as a mentally unhinged mage that takes the most "evil" option available in every conversation. It's fun.

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I need to get a few final thoughts on this game to lay it rest after having a few days to sit on it. Some of it may be repeats from previous posts and I can't say I'm going to organize this post in any reasonable fashion.

I will block out plot spoilers and any major things, but not for general game set up so BEWARE OF SPOILERS. I'll start by talking about the game, then go into the plot spoilers of cataloging what went on for me; should have continued to update since the freshness of it might have been funnier, because my game wasn't really evil, they were just odd choices.

Game:

OK this game literally took over my life, it came out on the third(I think I got it on the 4th?) and it's already December, I played every weekend, all weekend and pretty much every night of the week. I literally ended October and woke up in December. Bioware games tend to do that to me, but it usually a couple weekends, so I can't praise the amount of content enough.

Too much content. I'd love to play it again, but considering it takes a literal month out of the year from me, I don't see it happening. Instead I used various save points to go back and see what happened in different decisions. I won't be able to get the full scope of it though and how they could all add up, nor will I have a chance(maybe going back to it in a couple years) to try out playing lady macbeth on alistar there; if that is even an option(wouldn't see why not since the males get a list of love interests).

Combat Inconsistency

I played a warrior for a good 10-12 hours and didn't really have much of a problem; but on my full game as a mage the classic Bioware frustrates certainly returned, especially by the end. I know it must be nearly impossible to tune a game list this when there are so many variables, but I don't get how I'm the hand of god one battle and the next I get shot down in a minute. Sometimes it's a lack of concentration on my part thinking I can breeze through things, other times I'll be playing the battle multiple times until I get it right.

Also, Bioware does an awesome job at making you feel godly by the end, but I feel they tune many of those enemies at the end to be overly easy making it a breeze to fly through; which is on one hand cool, but gets old pretty shortly. I know I was constantly tuning the difficulty in the options from easy, normal, to hard in the later half of the game; they almost should just give me a hotkey for it.

Characters:

I loved my crew in Mass Effect and one of the only facts I know about ME2(I'm on media boycott because I want the game to be fresh) is that I won't get them which worries the hell out of me because I'll compare all bioware characters to them until they come up with some better ones.

In Dragon Age there seems to be a lot of them and the fact that I can't get some or can tell them to leave kind of makes me wonder why those options are even there; just to give me options? Peferably, I'll always chose more content over none, so why the choice? I realized in the end, too, that I killed a few people that could have joined me and didn't even realize it.

That stuff is neat, but again why? I don't need options like that, I can chose to ignore them in my camp if I want, but at least I have the option to always go back and use them. Not if they are gone or dead.

Also this was an odd Bioware game in the sense that in past titles I felt each party member was as important as another and you really decided who you took a long and talked to a lot. While some characters are obviously better then others (and I think most people will always stick with those) there wasn't a lot of clear distinction. In Dragon Age though (and this may be a wrong perception based on my experience) there really was a distinction in the party members, there were 2(maybe 3?) main characters and the rest were sidekicks. They seemed to have more ties with the plot, had the most dialog, etc.. so that was kind of an odd experience.

Production Value/Presentation/DLC:

Going to repeat myself a bit here and I don't mean to bash the game since it's of high quality in the subject, but I can't help feel uneasy about it by the end. It's a huge game, the graphics are adequate, menus work, music is alright, cut scenes are alright, etc, etc. But it's kind of the same stuff as every other Bioware game, they have a formula for presentation(and in gameplay/story, but I'm not discussing that since I haven't tired from that) that they haven't really broken out of nor have they improved. I think other games like Mass Effect used that formula better, mostly because of the art direction was more fresh(but equally as unoriginal as DA) and the sound design really worked to give it a more coherent package.

But, and these are minor things, but the conversation systems seem a bit jilted, the popping a cutscene in after a bit of a load, jerkiness of animation, hard cuts between conversations and finished a conversation. Really small things, but pretty much the same issues I had with Kotor; so they've had 6 years and 4-5 games to kind of improve it and haven't. Again, a small thing, but if they could just smooth that process out to get rid of the early 2000 "gaminess" it'd be a great improvement. A side note would be, I think about Twilight Princess, the cutscenes had no talking, it was their first stab at a "maturish" looking game and I can remember several scenes from it that were masterfully directed, smooth transition into them, amazing shots and animation, really set the mood and feel of the entire game. Also any modern FF, while I'm not big on story/characters/gameplay with it, they know their stuff in presentation department and it took them a lot less then 13(or whatever they are on now) games to do it.

I mention this because it was(as far as I know) their first try doing it(not a zelda game) and they did it in a memorable way, so come on Bioware, step it up in the presentation department; I stress this because I haven't see much improvement over their games, so I don't think its any sort of mandate of theirs.

Art Direction: Mentioned it before, the thumbs mentioned it; fuck lotr. The game was conceived like 7 years ago, so I can understand at that time lotr was awesome and everyone was digging it back then and after playing it you can get the sense it started out as that game and slowly started to become it's own awesome entity. OK, again back to Mass Effect (I'll do this a lot because I think its Bioware's pinnacle for this type of game and all games will be compared to it) Mass Effect's art direction was basically a break down of the design Syd Mead, so in principle it was no better then going out and breaking down the direction of LoTR; the only difference is the execution on Mass Effect was better and I think Syd's art, while reference by everyone, was never fully exploited like it was done in ME, making it very new feeling, even to those familiar of his work.

DA was called a "dark fantasy" or something, and yeah int eh context of the narrative and fiction, it was, so I can't help but think if it took the art direction of Diablo, how balls out amazing my experience would have been. Diablo's designs are rooted in classic fantasy and not crazy imaginative, just something about it seemed to fit the world DA wanted to be more then the LOTR stuff.

DLC: I hate DLC. Not on the principle of charging me money for stuff, but on the principle that it is almost never satisfying to me. The GTA stuff? Yeah sure 20 bucks and you get a little story, but I'd rather have paid them 60-70 dollars for a full game of Lost and the Damned; the "snack" that is DLC just isn't enough even if it's done well.

Dragon Age has a scary integration into DLC and I'm sure by next year most games(if they are smart) will have similar systems implemented. I will also say there is a likelihood that I will be buying DA DLC assuming I still have it on my computer by the time new stuff comes out, not to mention there will be the mods, etc...

What I don't want, and this is a bit of a spoiler, is main quest continuations in DLC. DLC feels cheap to me(I got one for free with the golem quest, and something wasn't right with it)and just like a bunch of fight missions with maybe a few pieces of dialog. Since most of my love for these games comes out of the conversation trees, I don't want to see what my party members are up to by having one last battle with them, I'd rather that just be explained in the coming sequels so it can be done properly.

So yeah, guess I had a lot more to say on it then I thought, so sorry about that. I'll leave the tale of my experiance for another time or never, depending which comes first.

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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1096-Dragon-Age-Origins

I know this guy's been criticized lately on this forum, but he totally sums up the reasons why I don't really like this game.

"Realistically, You'll probably just play through it once, then play the opening mission five times, because after that it's pretty much the same except for the occasional bit of dialogue. For example, I was an elf and every now and again, characters would say, 'Hello, you are an elf.'"

I haven't watched the video, but on its own, that seems like a silly reason to not like the game. There are, what, dozens and dozens of hours of content in a single playthrough, and the game is bad because there aren't even more hours and hours of unique gameplay to allow for a different enough experience when you play as a different race? What about the actual game itself?

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I haven't watched the video, but on its own, that seems like a silly reason to not like the game. There are, what, dozens and dozens of hours of content in a single playthrough, and the game is bad because there aren't even more hours and hours of unique gameplay to allow for a different enough experience when you play as a different race? What about the actual game itself?

I just thought the quote was funny, not representative of my opinion. What I was agreeing with was the content of the whole video. I guess I wasn't really clear on that.

edit: Then again, most of the problems I have with it are the same problems I had with Fallout 3 which took me a long time to really "get into" but then ended up being a truly great game. Maybe Dragon Age just hasn't clicked with me properly. I've probably not done more than scratch the surface in terms of the content being offered, but it seems like it would be sort of a chore to go back to it. I went into it optimistic, but the more I played the more and more I had to admit to myself that this game wasn't doing anything for me. If someone could list a couple spoiler-free reasons why I should stick with it, I'd be appreciative.

edit 2: Also, Chris, I didn't say the game was bad, just that I don't really like it, which I think is a significant distinction. I don't consider my opinion to be representative of some kind of gold standard of taste, so I'm not trying to suggest that other people shouldn't like the game. My reasons for not liking it are probably kind of idiosyncratically based on the way my brain responds to certain things in games. Also, the even the dude who did that video review is really into the game. He was just listing its shortcomings in the beginning. I'm writing a lot in response to your statement not to argue with you, but because I want to make clear that I don't want to discourage other people from playing the game. Most people will probably love it and they're not wrong to do so. I've only been seriously into games for about 1 year so my perspective is different. I have a hard time with suspension of disbelief, I think because I'm not used to understanding the limits on what is practically possible in games. There are other issues, probably, in my head that make me think about games in weird ways. I was bummed out when I saw that I had made Cigol feel bad about buying the game because I had not intended to do anything like that .

Edited by GrouchoClub

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Well, Zero Punctuation is about being funny as much as it is anything else.

I can see why you'd have issues with the game, and I find it completely understandable. I'm actually shocked I like this game so much! I just play on easy and treat combat as more or less an obstacle to more plot stuff. I'm being forgiving in that manner, but I can see how the game just wouldn't work for someone. My own interest in the game has been very difficult to nail down and define, other than "I am having a lot of fun playing this game."

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I love Dragon Age. Perhaps too much like Baldur's Gate games, but that's precisely why I love it so much.

What I don't understand is, though, why the deluxe edition is so much more expensive than the regular edition. You get the blood dragon armour and the stone prisoner DLC for free when you register your game, so it seems the deluxe edition doesn't really offer much to warrant the difference in price.

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It comes with some other stuff of course but it also has an extra bit of DLC (the Wardens Keep) which the standard version doesn't - and you could argue it's the only proper DLC of those available. I've not bought it myself, as I see no point for the time being, but I have to say I'm tempted.

Perhaps too much like Baldur's Gate games, but that's precisely why I love it so much

I'm with you, but it's more like Mass Effect and KOTOR (in particular) than Baldurs Gate. As with Fallout 3 there's all this talk of spiritual succession but it's not true. One day someone will make those games, but not yet.

NotYet.jpg

..not, yet.

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Just bought it today for the modest sum of £10 on the 360. Looking forward to this, but maintaining some form of skepticism. I'm feeling Male Elf commoner tank.

But the ability to be a commoner dwarf female mage...how can I not...

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Oh, man.

I've been playing the heck out of this game for the past week and it's great. It's been a while since I've been so invested in the story of a game to get so totally addicted. I think the story flows well without dragging and I love the interactions between the characters. I also appreciate the approachably difficult combat. I have had my butt handed to me several times, but the challenge manages to stay away from "hurl the controller at the TV" territory. Yay.

In general, I'm not hung up about graphics and I think I'm easily impressed, so IMO it looks pretty great in general. There is one wierd thing that I can't get over though and it may be completely stupid. Is there only one figure model for NPCs? This bothers me most with the Chantry nuns, or whatever they are, probably because other NPCs are in armor, or have less.. exaggerated features. No matter what age or structure their heads have, they all have exactly the same bodies attached. I just watched a cutscene with a very aged and a young nun who are identical from the neck down. I find this totally jarring, for some reason. It's like they're all wearing foam-rubber suits or something.

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But the ability to be a commoner dwarf female mage...how can I not...

Not to burst your enthusiasm bubble, but you can't do this without the assistance of mods. For one thing, dwarves can't be mages. For another, mages all have the same mage background (no noble/commoner split).

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Not to burst your enthusiasm bubble, but you can't do this without the assistance of mods. For one thing, dwarves can't be mages. For another, mages all have the same mage background (no noble/commoner split).

Oh well, it happens! Playing as an Elven Mage, and it just sucked the last 7 hours of my life like that.

But why do I love it so much!

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I thought mages started out pretty powerful and ended really powerful. I found parts a lot more difficult then my warrior, but that was mostly because I couldn't turn Alistar into a good tank(not sure what I was doing wrong) but when I had a good meatshield things went alright, but did rely on the party a lot until the end.

Yeah playing an elf mage was a little dissapointing and this kind of goes for all races; theres not a lot of difference really. the mage overrides race most of the time and found the mage background to be kind of poor, I mean with all the backstory of the chantry and stuff and even specific dialog worrying about the apostate traveling with you being a problem with templers, it never came up. Sure I'm a grey warden, but does a templer know that? You'd think it would come up and that templers/chantry would react differently to me.

Honestly, the game made the most sense as a dwarf; I think they had the best startings and the dialog trees made more sense coming from a dwarf that doesn't know anything then any other background; they also pointed out I was a dwarf more then anyone pointed out I was a mage or elf.

A quibble everyone has anyway, but hopefully can be improved in the sequels.

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Alistair is horrible at drawing aggro IMO. I used Shale for most of the game because he will always have aggro since he has 2 passive and 2 active skills for that, but at the end I saw the potential for Alistair because of some items that would render him invincible (magic resistance and +% healing) but he couldn't hold the enemies off me... I had to use him for the final quests anyway so it wasn't wasted money at least.

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