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Preview Dragon Age preview at ComputerGames.ro

Elwro

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Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age

There's a <a href="http://computergames.ro/en/games/viewitem/id/207/name/dragon-age-origins/section/preview.html">preview</a> of Dragon Age: Origins at ComputerGames.ro . First, some plot details:<blockquote> In DAO, everything revolves around the battle against the Blight and the Dark Spawn. A very long time ago, mages were the undisputed rulers of the Dragon Age world, but in their arrogance they decided to create a portal to the celestial home of the Creator in order to take his place. Unfortunately for them, the Golden City, as Heaven was known at the time, became corrupted and was transformed in the Dark City, while the mages that attempted this celestial coup became corrupted themselves, thus becoming the first Dark Spawn.
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Furious at their insolence, the Creator banished the mages back to earth, and they were forced underground due to their aversion to light. Then they started worshiping dragons, which were themselves banished by the Creator as punishment for lying to the humans and pretending to be Gods. This is why the Dark Spawn are relentlessly looking for dragons, and when they find one, it becomes corrupted, so much so that it transforms into an Arch Demon, which then leads his minions to the surface in a campaign of conquest and destruction. This is known as the Blight. To counter this menace, the humans formed the order of the Grey Wardens, whose primary objective is to battle the Blight. However, after the last invasion was repelled, the humans believed that the Dark Spawn are no longer a threat, so at the beginning of the game, when a new Arch Demon appears, the number of Grey Wardens is greatly reduced.</blockquote>I know the names aren't the most important thing in any plot, but the ones here scream GENERIC_PLACEHOLDER_LOCATION_NAME too much. The idea of dragons pretending to be gods in order to fool the humans is pretty nice. I wonder whether there'll be any explanation of the corruption of the, eh, Golden City.<blockquote>One of the interesting features of DAO will be the Origin chapters, three to four hours long, which will determine how your character views the world and how the world perceives him (or her). Serving as a prologue, they will paint a picture of the universe you are in, and the characters you encounter in this introductive part may even appear later on as adversaries, depending on the decisions you make. The dialogues will also be specific to the character you create (...)</blockquote>It's nice that the idea of vignettes seems to be catching on. The preview contains two examples of the introductory chapters.<blockquote>Aside from the player character being treated according to his Origin story, we were shown how quests can be solved in various ways. As a very simple example, there was a prisoner who begged us to bring him some food and water, rewarding us with a key to a chest containing some magic potions if we did. One of the options was to convince the guard to give up his food ration. The poor sod was about to be executed anyway, but it still took some persuasion.
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Another option was to find out where the chest and the key were, and then kill the prisoner. But that meant that the guard would have some questions for us, with a new variety of options to deal with this new situation, the most radical being &#8220;I&#8217;m a Grey Warden and I don&#8217;t have to justify myself to you&#8221;. The end result was the same, as the guard left us alone, but Dan Tudge explained that these outbursts will be counted in the grand scheme of things and in the end we will have to face the consequences of our decisions. We were also told that &#8220;playing nice&#8221; won't always be the best course of action.</blockquote>I'm not sure what "quest" they are talking about; and why would we kill the prisoner after finding out the location of the key and the chest? Also, please let this "grand scheme of things" NOT be just a meter whose level would vary throughout the game, but the endgame would contain a choice for the player to tip it upside down so that the former choices would become irrelevant. This is not criticism, just preemptive bitching.
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Read the preview <a href="http://computergames.ro/en/games/viewitem/id/207/name/dragon-age-origins/section/preview.html">here</a>.
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Thanks, <b>LCJr</b>!
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</A>
 

Hamster

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I know the names aren't the most important thing in any plot, but the ones here scream GENERIC_PLACEHOLDER_LOCATION_NAME too much.
Well, i think that for what appears to be a in game mythlogy or religion the names are ok.
But the story in itself seems to be pretty boring and generic ( judging only by this short version given in the preview, of course)
 

Pastel

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In DAO, everything revolves around the battle against the Blight and the Dark Spawn. A very long time ago, mages were the undisputed rulers of the Dragon Age world, but in their arrogance they decided to create a portal to the celestial home of the Creator in order to take his place. Unfortunately for them, the Golden City, as Heaven was known at the time, became corrupted and was transformed in the Dark City, while the mages that attempted this celestial coup became corrupted themselves, thus becoming the first Dark Spawn.

Furious at their insolence, the Creator banished the mages back to earth, and they were forced underground due to their aversion to light. Then they started worshiping dragons, which were themselves banished by the Creator as punishment for lying to the humans and pretending to be Gods. This is why the Dark Spawn are relentlessly looking for dragons, and when they find one, it becomes corrupted, so much so that it transforms into an Arch Demon, which then leads his minions to the surface in a campaign of conquest and destruction. This is known as the Blight. To counter this menace, the humans formed the order of the Grey Wardens, whose primary objective is to battle the Blight. However, after the last invasion was repelled, the humans believed that the Dark Spawn are no longer a threat, so at the beginning of the game, when a new Arch Demon appears, the number of Grey Wardens is greatly reduced.
:|
What the fuck is this shit? It's tripe, probably some designer putting on paper everything that came into his head and sounded cool.
If you're creating a fantasy world, you have limitless possibilities. Try to put some actual meaning into it all rather than just coming up with random incoherent bullshit.
 

Hamster

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As i undestand that episode(pretty stupid one) with young Gay Warden helping the king is a vignette for a human warrior and not part of the game that goes for all charachters?
 

Warden

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Dragons as gods.. :roll: It's really strange that someone at biowhore plays strategy games (Heroes of might and magic 5 has dragon gods as a trademark).. who knew that they can go beyond mind numbing dialogues and play strategy games.
I hate the overflow of dragons every other game seems to have.. and when they're divinified I hate them even more.

Corrupted golden city.. angry maker... Maybe this is the work of baby gaider after all.
 

Nael

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Warden said:
(Heroes of might and magic 5 has dragon gods as a trademark)..

Are we forgetting Dark Sun?

EDIT: Although I spose those were "kings" and not "gods"
 

Jaime Lannister

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"Once there, we were greeted by the young king Kaelyn"

They've gone beyond using placeholder names and started simply stealing them.

(in before nothing is physically removed from an inventory)
 

yes plz

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Golden City... Dark Spawn... maybe they're actually taking the piss and this'll end up being a parody of CRPGs.
 

Volourn

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"The description of the combat sounds suspiciously KOTOR-ish"

Nah. Sound smore NWNish/IEish.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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yes plz said:
Golden City... Dark Spawn... maybe they're actually taking the piss and this'll end up being a parody of CRPGs.
And All-Star Batman isn't written seriously at all.
 

dagorkan

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Wow what a crappy back story... still, cRPGs aren't known for setting originality, and neither is Bioware, let's hope the C&C's make up for it
 

Pastel

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dagorkan said:
Wow what a crappy back story... still, cRPGs aren't known for setting originality, and neither is Bioware, let's hope the C&C's make up for it
But this isn't just unoriginality, it's tripe. Fallout is very unoriginal when it comes to setting, but it's good because of it's elegant simplicity. "Bombs fall, everything goes to shit." The same can be said about AoD.
IMO, deep settings like Planescape are plainly superior, but that's not to say that a simple setting can't be the basis for a good game. Dragon Age's setting is neither.

DarkUnderlord said:
I agree with the person who's using Lumpy's avatar.
I'm his alt.
 

Elwro

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I at least partly agree with the guy who's an alt of the guy using Lumpy's avatar. I just hope the actual plotline of the game is better.
 

Xerxos

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Elwro said:
[...]Also, please let this "grand scheme of things" NOT be just a meter whose level would vary throughout the game,[...]
The devs confirmed multiple times that there is NO GOOD/EVIL meter. (if that's what you meant)

EDIT: link
 

Elwro

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Well, it's nice, but the point is that it should not be a meter of anything which would have the unfortunate feature I wrote about in the newspost. (See KotOR.) Regardless of whether it measures Good/Evil, Law/Chaos, Dark Side/Light Side or Justice/Injustice or whatever.

Thanks for the link; it sounds nice.
 

thesheeep

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Cloaked Figure said:
it sounds great tbh..i dont know what you guys are talking about. its been quite a while since we got a game like this.

There is truth in his words ;)

Anyway, I also think it's not that bad. Sure, not the most awesome stuff ever, but hey, better than getting your parents killed by Orcs.
 

MetalCraze

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OMG. Did DGaider really write the backstory? Seems like Bioware continues on its quest for genericness.

“I’m a Grey Warden and I don’t have to justify myself to you”

did he grab collar?
 

aries202

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If you follow the Bioware DA:O forums, you will know that David Gaider constantly says that this example is just an example of the choice and consequence in the game.

He also constantly has said that there is no good or evil meter in the game, no paragon or virtue meter either; the game tracks your actions and you get consequences for your actions be it what we (or you as the player) deems either good or bad.

In a thread named 'no love for the good guys' someone is complaining that the 'evil' options seem to be getting more xp and loot than the 'good' options. David G. answered them with yes, it so, because we wanted to make it so'. To him (and to me) it does make sense that if you're being nice to the guy in the cage and provide food for him that you get the key easily like you would in many others rpg. You need to be a little but selfish here -
as 'good' (or something like it) is seen as being unselfish asking no rewards for yourself but doing it for the greater good.

As for the backstory - who says this is real backstory? This is just what the Chantry - a religious instution indoctr -ehm- teaches. Computergames.ro didn't seem to have grasped this concept, somehow, though.

The Chantry also teaches that the Dragons are 'evil'
since they are the Old Gods. But then, of course they would say this - they are doing what they can to keep the competition out.

I don't know why we would kill the prisoner after finding out where the chest and the key were - but I like the game gives us that option - to be a real asshole and a jerk, I mean. Not many games out there do this today.
 

Xor

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The backstory had a few good ideas, but it mostly sounds like a generic bioware good vs. evil story.

I'll take a wait-and-see approach here, maybe the gameplay will be fun.

Maybe.
 

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