Dragon Age Origins

[Stofsk]

Has anyone played this yet? I got it last night, installed it today, played it for about an hour and a bit just now, took a break because I was only half-heartedly playing it. It hasn't really grabbed me and sunk its teeth in. In contrast, I've been playing Oblivion for the last week and that did a better job of immersing me in the world I found.

[Hotfoot]

I played a demo at GenCon, and it was....passable. I'm going to wait on this one until Steam has some sort of crazy deals with all the DLC for under $40.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I'm playing it and loving it, except for the occasional frustration with the difficulty level.

It sucked me right in in a way that Oblivion never has (though to be fair I haven't given my latest mod cocktail a proper chance). DA has a huge amount of depth that I daresay rivals Morrowind, which is no small feat. It's also looking to have very, very respectable length - not quite Baldur's Gate 2, but damn near close if you factor in all the sidequests.

[Stofsk]

I'm playing it and loving it, except for the occasional frustration with the difficulty level.

It sucked me right in in a way that Oblivion never has (though to be fair I haven't given my latest mod cocktail a proper chance).

I really, really, really like the way Oblivion does its introduction/tutorial thing. Having Patrick Stewart give us Emperor Tiber Septim VII's quiet and forlorn voice knowing his fate is to die in a short span of time makes that whole sequence kick ass. Then meeting Martin and hearing Sean Bean's (squee) voice was like the icing on the cake.

The problem with Bioware games - and I'm talking about Baldur's Gate, KotOR and Mass Effect - is that the introduction/tutorial/beginner parts of the games frankly, suck. Mass Effect's was good, I liked Eden Prime, up until you get to the Citadel - where things seem to grind to a halt. The whole bit on Taris in KotOR is easily the worst part of the game and its no wonder that someone modded a skip-Taris thing for it.

DA has a huge amount of depth that I daresay rivals Morrowind, which is no small feat. It's also looking to have very, very respectable length - not quite Baldur's Gate 2, but damn near close if you factor in all the sidequests.

I never played Baldur's Gate 2, and I never finished Baldur's Gate 1. But I've heard that DA is basically Baldur's Gate in style - lots of pause-and-play action, and I imagine who is in your party matters more than it usually does.

How long is it so far? How far along have you gotten in the plot?

[The Cleric]

I cannot get into games where I am reliant to a large degree on AI controlled partners.

[General Havoc]

Stofsk, I could not possibly disagree with you more. I found most of Bioware's intro sections to be enjoyable, and often some of the best parts of the games themselves. I thought the opening dungeon of BG2 was that way, and the Taris sequence from KOTOR, and Mass Effect's as well. I thought in all cases, they provided an excellent intro to the game, and remain vivid in my mind years later.

[Stofsk]

I never played BG2, or NWN. But BG1's Candlekeep didn't really impress me all that much, although the bit after you leave and Gorion is killed by the Big Bad Guy was pretty cool.

As for KotOR, Taris is just dull. The Endar Spire is... ok. Mass Effects intro on Eden Prime is excellent, but I just don't like the Citadel as much as the creators want me to. A big part of why is all the Go Fetch missions on the Citadel.

(I love Bioware games so don't think I'm having a hate-on or anything, I just find their openings to be the weakest part.)

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Well, with DA you can pick 6 different openings if you don't like one. :P

(not to mention further variation depending on your other choices. Male city elf plays a little different to female city elf, for instance)

[Hotfoot]

Here's my issues with Dragon Age, since Havoc got me thinking more about it elsewhere:

1. The combat just isn't that fun. Most MMO combat is bland at best, made better by having other people that know what they're doing. Here, you just control a bunch of MMO characters at once in a pausable structure. PS, games where you HAVE to pause to win a battle are generally lame. At that point, just make combat turn based and go from there.

2. The story, as it was presented to me in GenCon, was boring and predictable. I had more fun fucking with the humans at bowpoint than I did with the "lol ancient evil rising up to destroy the world AGAIN" stuff. I've done it so many times it's just bland. To go back to Baldur's Gate, the point was never the end of the world, but rather the selfish ambitions of those who had too much power. That is always more interesting and more compelling a story than "Oh hey look here are these guys that we couldn't stop a thousand years ago but now you need to stop now because you're the chosen one." The only real difference in Dragon Age is that it seems to try to be darker and more edgy.

3. A step backwards in dialog. The main character has no voice, but everyone else does, bringing us basically back to 2000 in terms of interaction. I mean, it works, and I can see the reasons for doing it, but I don't have to like it. I guess I'm spoiled on the Mass Effect conversation system.

4. Day Zero DLC. Really? That's bullshit. I mean, if they had waited a month or two, I could have at least been given the line of, "Oh, it just wasn't ready right for launch", but this? Look, bottom line, micropayments can be a good thing, but this is the kind of shit detractors of the system have been railing against for years. I mean, at least it's not Horse Armor bad, but I do not like the idea of having an NPC offering me a quest and then getting a dialog saying, "You do not yet own this expansion, please buy it now."

For these reasons, Dragon Age is strictly an under $30 game for me.

[General Havoc]

Well I've not yet had a chance to play, but I'll pipe in that I generally agree with all of the points above except for number 1 (for generic games, of course, as I've not yet played DA itself). I don't think the ability or even need to pause the action mid-fight deducts from a game, even non-RPGs. Games like Homeworld, Myth, or Baldur's come to mind. It allows for much more complicated combat than you would find in a real-time-only sequence, and allows the game to ratchet up the difficulty level to a challenging degree. Let's face it, most games nowadays are pretty damn easy. Semi-mandatory pause features allow the developer to give out a reasonable challenge without turning the game into a reaction time challenge or a clickfest. I actually wish more games did it that way.