Roderick

Dragon Age

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Also, I love it when developers tell us what we like and want. “The vibrant worldwide community of Dragon Age fans will relish uncovering the secret motivations of the darkspawn, revealing how the darkspawn continue to infest the world despite the defeat of the Archdemon.” You have no choice in the matter!

Lol, I thought the exact same thing. Maybe I took my "roleplaying" too seriously or it's just my natural inclination but I couldn't give two shits about the darkspawn or the archdemon.

The only reason I did/had to(which means I just killed them a lot) is because thats what the overarching game was about and I didn't have a choice. In the real world the moment duncan died I would have hoofed it to the next country that wasn't so screwed up.

Even after my success in the game with the darkspawn I couldn't care less of their obvious motives or their secret ones.

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Late as always, having finished Assassin's Creed 2 last night, I'm starting Dragon Age today. Anyone want to recommend a particularly good character type? I'm not asking for builds or anything detailed, but I understand there's a selection of opening section depending on race and... class, is it? Chris's lower-class dwarf sounded pretty cool. Any other suggestions?

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Late as always, having finished Assassin's Creed 2 last night, I'm starting Dragon Age today. Anyone want to recommend a particularly good character type? I'm not asking for builds or anything detailed, but I understand there's a selection of opening section depending on race and... class, is it? Chris's lower-class dwarf sounded pretty cool. Any other suggestions?

There is only one true "Healer" in game, and you CAN miss them, so if you're not confident in staying alive, a mage is a good idea. Despite that, it's all the same really. Dwarf common rogue is cool :D

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Okay, so is there a mod or trick that lets me play this like a normal person, and not like an octopus? Surely there's a way of having the TAB button function be togglable, and surely there's a way to strafe?

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I don't know if you can toggle the TAB function. Strafing is done by holding the right mouse button, I think.

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I'm playing this game in windowed mode, and I'm really impressed by how well it's behaving. It runs perfectly, and when it loses focus it mutes. I can leave it running in the background and just come back to it whenever. I'm really starting to dig windowed mode in games, especially in a multimonitor setup, where clicking outside a full-screen game makes it go crazy.

Also, what's with all the voices being strangely not engaged? For example, the guy lecturing the troops and scalding them for something or other spoke like he was reading the lines from a script. I guess he was.

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I'm playing this game in windowed mode, and I'm really impressed by how well it's behaving. It runs perfectly, and when it loses focus it mutes. I can leave it running in the background and just come back to it whenever. I'm really starting to dig windowed mode in games, especially in a multimonitor setup, where clicking outside a full-screen game makes it go crazy.

Also, what's with all the voices being strangely not engaged? For example, the guy lecturing the troops and scalding them for something or other spoke like he was reading the lines from a script. I guess he was.

Windowed mode is the future, dude. Especially for dual wielding Spelunky/Peggle.

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I too intend to start out on my DA adventure shortly, having completed ME2 and got the itch for some more RPGin'. Regarding the mage, does the class have a decent melee option as well, or is it all spells? I like me some healing spells, but at the same time I'd rather play a melee class most of the time and leave the support up to the characters I recruited to, y'know, support me.

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Mages can use regular weapons, but putting points into Strength and Dexterity in order to meet minimum requirements or be decent at using them will mean fewer points for the magic-related stats.

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The Arcane Warrior specialization allows your character to use your Magic stat instead of Strength when determining if you can equip an item or not.

You unlock the specialization during the Dalish Elf part of the main quest.

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Currently enjoying this fine game. It really makes me feel like a hardcore gamer.

If I one day make a game that's mostly about dudes with big beards in big armors, I would place it towards the very top of my list of priorities to not have everything just intersect. I mean, even not considering player characters with customization options, they've made this NPC guy, given him a specific suit of armor and a beard. They have full control of everything from mesh to animation -- why is his shoulder plates passing through his chest and beard?!

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So I'm considering quitting this game. Although this is clearly a great PC RPG, and it looks good, and it is incredibly well made, loading quickly, sweet interface, seems incredibly stable, etc., the story isn't really grabbing me. I find myself clicking through a lot of dialogue because, oh, there's just so much of it, and I don't really care about this kind of stuff. Old witches and magical forests -- to me it's more cliché, which prevents me from caring. I guess it's one of those cases where it's obviously excellent, but just not for me. I think I'll play Mass Effect 2 now.

Oh, it just hit me that there seems to be something weird about how, except for the increased shader quality, close-up talking sequences haven't really improved at all since they first appeared in games. There's still all the blank stares, weird movement transitions, badly timed transitions, all sorts of stuff. It really stands out as very half-assed in such on otherwise polished game, especially since there's so much of it.

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Seconded...the writing in Dragon Age is fucking godawful.

Well, I'm the last one to judge anyone's writing, really. It's just that... you talk to this guy, and he has three or four stories to tell, and they're all about this invented lore of this world, and I have no way to tell if it's related to the story or if it's just weaving the rich tapestry of the world, etc. Unable to determine if it's important or not, I skip it. As a consequence I lose interest in most of the main story as well. It doesn't help that I feel that they hired some crazy guy to do the "evil" dialogue stuff, and you meet some guy and the last alternative is "Hello (Kill him)" and it doesnt' make any sense. I started out trying to be evil (i.e. rude, greedy and ruthless), because I've had some success with that in both the KOTORs and Mass Effect, but in Dragon Age it feels like I'm playing it the wrong way. Everyone just gets angry and tells me to go away, which is obviously the natural way to react to some guy who comes up to you and is all "You don't need to know," but not what I expect from a video gaaaaames.

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Funny you should reference Mass Effect 2, I'm having the same situation. I just don't care about ALL THE WORDS. I skip through as much as I can, there's just so much filler.

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Well, I guess the difference is it's easier to get me excited about spaceships and lasors!! than ancient curses and magical elves!!! I always assume games have bad writing.

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I felt the same way about the original Mass Effect.

I think I've played around 42 hours of Dragon Age so far, and I still haven't completed it because there's just too much content. It's draining having to actually listen to all the dialogue and when I went back to it (after completing Mass Effect 2 and feeling optimistic about my chances) I rushed through the last location marked on the map only to be greeted with two new unexplored locations that required you to jump through the same familiar hoops associated with all the previous areas.

I like the game, but I just wish it'd end already!

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Really the writing in Dragon Age was godaweful? I thought that about the story, premise, and any dialog related to those two; but the dialog everywhere else that didn't have to do with the main quest and the "surface" fantasy was pretty damn great.

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Really the writing in Dragon Age was godaweful? I thought that about the story, premise, and any dialog related to those two; but the dialog everywhere else that didn't have to do with the main quest and the "surface" fantasy was pretty damn great.

I've been toying with the idea of returning to the game. But, to me, everything about it stunk of the most bland of Forgotten Realms D & D based novels. I only got about 15 hours in, though. Maybe it gets better.

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I've been toying with the idea of returning to the game. But, to me, everything about it stunk of the most bland of Forgotten Realms D & D based novels. I only got about 15 hours in, though. Maybe it gets better.

Nope, your not wrong there about that blandness, it's really, really, really hard to get past. But it's more apparent during the beginning and the end then it was in the middle and really that backstory/"rich tapestry" stuff people love to share to you is actually what made me at least like the world they made.

It really shows promise in what they could do as a brand in later installments if they can get their art department and the main questline to step it up like the backstory and politics of that world.

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I wasn't crazy about the general setting and premise, but I did quite enjoy talking to my companion characters back at the basecamp. This, for me, was the highlight of the game. There's tons of dialogue here, and I found almost all of it well-done and interesting. So much so, that I started rationing it, by refusing to talk for very long before questing again. (I was afraid that I would use up all the character dialogue before the game proper was finished, and then I'd be left with hours of grinding to get through without any backstory to make it more palatable.)

Sten, in particular, was a great character to talk to, precisely because he does not want to talk to you. His answers were short, vague, and often ended with "Why are you asking me this? This is irrelevant, and we have work to do."

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i can only hope bioware learns from its past with baldur's gate in any future dragon age games they make. i couldn't stand the long dungeons filled to the brim with enemies in dragon age. i went to the dwarven mines third and by the time i got to the boss i couldn't take anymore of it and haven't gone back to the game since. a lot more enemy variety would really go a long way as well.

as far as the writing is concerned, beyond being bland, i really think they failed to sell the darkspawn as anything more than a gang of bandits.

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i can only hope bioware learns from its past with baldur's gate in any future dragon age games they make. i couldn't stand the long dungeons filled to the brim with enemies in dragon age. i went to the dwarven mines third and by the time i got to the boss i couldn't take anymore of it and haven't gone back to the game since. a lot more enemy variety would really go a long way as well.

as far as the writing is concerned, beyond being bland, i really think they failed to sell the darkspawn as anything more than a gang of bandits.

Really? I loved finishing dwarf mines, it was a bloody gauntlet... I think I may have wrote about it here. By the end of it my entire party was beaten to shit and when I left the open sky really felt weird to me.

Just the fact that a video game gave me the real feeling that I just went through something really challenging, I left with a few scars, and that the surface world suddenly felt weird to me because I was down there so long is pretty unique.

Granted, I probably didn't feel this way when I was in the middle of it.

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Dwarf mine area was by far too long and the most boring part of the game, I couldn't wait to get out of there. It was just fighting the same dudes over and over and when I got to the first boss I thought that was it, and then there was still a huge fight left after that.

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