Preview New Mage-Related Media For Dragon Age

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age

Bioware has put up some exclusive screenshots and a short trailer showing off some of the Mage class abilities in Dragon Age: Origins. It requires you to log in as a member of their forums however, so I didn't investigate much further (not to mention Bioware's Dragon Age website usually crashes my browser), but I'm sure some people will be interested enough to check them out in the <a href="http://dragonage.bioware.com/gallery.html">Dragon Age gallery</a> and may want the heads up. Assuming you don't frequent the places I rip news from, of course.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://gamebanshee.com/">Gamebanshee</A>

 

[Jaesun]

hmmm the mage combat video was....... interesting.

 

[MetalCraze]

Damn the game looks as fugly as NWN2

Next-generation graphics

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

The textures and lighting looks good enough ( I have pretty low standards though), but the character models look awful. Technically, it looks fine, but the aesthetics are pretty terrible. Well...the blood is pretty lame too...but I'm spoiled with Ninja Gaiden I guess.

Also thanks for linking the images here.

 

[Jaesun]

And with it's new "Avoid the mage" AI, playing a mage is even more EXTREME!

 

[VonVentrue]

Damn the game looks as fugly as NWN2

You're trying too hard, skyway. The art direction is questionable, but I wouldn't go so far as to say DA "looks ugly". Besides, this particular aspect of the game is the least of my worries.

 

[MetalCraze]

No sorry. I don't consider an empty edgy ground, a bunch of stones and a few copy-pasted trees - something even decent. It is a terrible art design and it just shouts "they were too lazy".
MotB looks decent-to-good
Drakensang looks good (and how about comparing its budget to DA?)
DA looks bad.

 

[poocolator]

Damn the game looks as fugly as NWN2

You're trying too hard, skyway. The art direction is questionable, but I wouldn't go so far as to say DA "looks ugly". Besides, this particular aspect of the game is the least of my worries.

Hey, the fuglier it looks, the more likely it'll actually run on my graying PC.

 

[Risine]

So much development time for such an ugly and art-directionless game ( how can this be, I'm pretty sure they have excellent artists in their team ).
They should have made a NWN2 mod, they would have spared millions bucks for the same result.
Is it me, or 3D RPG visual games have come to a peak for the last 3-4 years?

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Hmm, looks like shit. Im really disappointed, until they released the first screenshots of the game I was cinvinced that they will do pretty well in the visual and art design department, even if the rest of the game would suck. That hope is gone now, the art design is as bland as it gets.

 

[Volourn]

"is as bland as it gets."

Dejavu. Reminds me of the Codex. R00fles!

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Hey, the fuglier it looks, the more likely it'll actually run on my graying PC.

Very unlikely. Remember NWN2? Sprinkle that with more polygons, complex graphical effects and shaders (and quite probably, bigger texture size), and you have yourself... a true role-playing game.

 

[OlSheep]

Something is wrong with the way these characters hold their staves... The hand in the second picture is clipping through the weapon (and the hand in the first picture looks, for lack of a better word, gay).

 

[Hamster]

I was also hoping for a great art direction after seeing first renders, sad that it turned out to be so shit.

 

[Jaesun]

Perhaps those are the XBAWCKS screen shots.

 

[yes plz]

Hey, the fuglier it looks, the more likely it'll actually run on my graying PC.

Very unlikely. Remember NWN2? Sprinkle that with more polygons, complex graphical effects and shaders (and quite probably, bigger texture size), and you have yourself... a true role-playing game.

Though they may suck at making games, BioWare is good at optimizing their shit recently. Mass Effect runs completely flawlessly on high/max settings on my computer whilst NWN2 runs like complete shit even on medium/low settings.

 

[thesheeep]

Seriously, wtf are you talking about?

This is not Gears of War 3, this is a (well, supposedly) huge world RPG. And those are close-up screenshots. It's not even supposed to be played from that close.

You'll play the game more like this, I guess:

The graphics may not be the best that are possible today, but who cares?

...Hooray for bitching for the sake of bitching!

 

[aries202]

In this thread

http://daforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.h ... &forum=135

at the Bioware forums, Alodar has found this
interview with the good doctors, Ray and Greg from Bioware.

http://weblogs.variety.com/the_cut_scen ... g-gdc.html

Here you will learn how Bioware first makes out the world, the story and the characters come to fit the world, not the other way around....

As for the screenshots, they are supposed to give a bit of nostalgia, I find, as they clearly remind me of playing Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights.

I agree about the animation of the mage's staff, though.

I highly doubt these sceenshots are from the Xbox 360 as Dragon Age is being made for the PC first, then ported to consoles. Besides, when did rhe RPG Codex care about how great or good a game's visual presentation is or was....

It is the stoiry, the characters, the dialogue I'm more concerned about - especially the whole travelling from town to town recruiting people to a big (rts?) battle....

 

[MetalCraze]

PC and console version are being made together.

@thesheep: the art design is still terrible - no matter from which angle you're looking.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Though they may suck at making games, BioWare is good at optimizing their shit recently. Mass Effect runs completely flawlessly on high/max settings on my computer whilst NWN2 runs like complete shit even on medium/low settings.

That's because they've used U3 engine in ME (and you still must have a pretty powerful PC for ME to run well). In DA, they're back to self-made.

 

[yes plz]

Doesn't mean they won't be able to optimize it well.

 

[thesheeep]

@thesheep: the art design is still terrible - no matter from which angle you're looking.

It could be more interesting, yeah. At least from what I've seen so far.
But terrible? Come on...

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Doesn't mean they won't be able to optimize it well.

Actually, it does. NWN1 didn't perform well, back in the day. Neither did KotOR1, at the time of its release. And JE:SE? KotOR1 in disguise released years after.
Mass Effect? A 1.5 year old game may run well on your new PC (congrats), but Bio has little to do with it. Compare its performance to Gears of War or Mirror's Edge, for example, or try running it on a "graying PC", just for chuckles. And that's with areas the size of a cardboard box and copy-paste low-poly environments.

You want to believe? That's fine. Either way, we've already wasted more posts on this than it's worth.

 

[MetalCraze]

@thesheep: the art design is still terrible - no matter from which angle you're looking.

It could be more interesting, yeah. At least from what I've seen so far.
But terrible? Come on...

I saw such visuals in PoP2:WW, a 2004 game made for a console with 2001 tech.
This is bad. Bioware got ridiculously lazy.

 

[Thrasher]

The graphics may not be the best that are possible today, but who cares?