Dragon Age impressions

[yes plz]

If you keep a look out for them, you'll also see that merchants sell books that allow you to learn the specializations.

 

[Grunker]

And what about nowadays' favourite rpg element? Are there lots of barrels to smash?

Not a one. In my book it autowins right there.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Some of the specializations aren't storebought though. Arcane warrior's one of them.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

One thing that has been bugging me since i started playing: Where the hell can i unlock the arcane warrior (or what ever the hell it's called)?

Spoiler

There's an item in the werewolf lair/ruins that does it.

Much obliged... I can't believe i missed that. :evil:

 

[Vibalist]

Also, did I pick an extremely crappy origin (male city elf) or was the entire 'your origin will effect how the world and everybody responds to you!' complete bollocks? Very few NPCS took note of the fact that I was an elf and even fewer cared about it. Even the Dalish Elf clan you help barely said anything about me being an elf. The only thing that really seemed to change was the very small amount of time you spend in the alienage late in the game when it finally opens up in Denerim.

I guess you picked a crappy one. Plenty of people respond to it if you are a mage. All dialogue with templars and mages during the Circle Tower is pretty much rewritten, and you also run into a guy from your past at some point. Along with this, plenty people will have some fluff dialogue about you being a mage, and occasionaly you can intimidate people into doing what you want by pointing out you'll turn them into a toad otherwise.

 

[DreadMessiah]

I have 200+ gold at 13th lvl and I bought powerful staff and robes and books and potion ingrediants. I love when bandits scatter shot my party in the back alleys lol. Glyph of repulsion is fun combined with storm of the century though. Watch enemies fly backwards again into the storm! Arcane warrior is nice. Kinda like super saiyan mode for mages. Elemntal spells not working good enough? That is okay just turn on arcane warrior mode and hack through those enemies! Mage one second, warrior the next! This I like a lot.

 

[mediocrepoet]

When I started playing this I was torn. After suffering through the ubiquitous and retarded marketing campaign, I was relieved that the game wasn't total ass but at the same time, some of the VA and writing was lacking - especially when you're heralded almost immediately with the Battle for Helm's Deep. I started writing it off as a fairly solid (and expensive) effort, but nothing to write home about.

As I kept playing though, I started to enjoy it more and more - not because the writing or VA improved, these things are fairly consistent throughout most of the game and not because the combat was overly hard (I completed it on hard difficulty) although it was challenging enough to make things interesting and at first there is a bit of a learning curve involved. I came to really love the game because it seems to be a game where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

LARPing simulator or whatever you want to call it, I thought it was great that the types of responses and actions you can take really seem to accomodate most types of characters - or at least the ones that I'd tend to play. Also, the choices you make really do seem to make differences at least on a single playthrough.

Some of the combats feel really inspired - the high dragon fights are probably the most fun and interesting dragon fights I've seen in any game so far. They're really impressive and reinforce the idea that you're fighting a dangerous beast rather than a sack of hp and loot.

The themes, quests and companions are numerous and varied enough that even though many of them clearly take their roots in other things (e.g. the Da Vinci Code, A Song of Ice and Fire, Lord of the Rings, etc.) - they're still fun and most people should be able to find some questlines they like even if they don't like them all.

The character talents, though fairly simple and straightforward, offer enough customization between them and the choices in advanced classes that you should be able to make the type of fantasy hero you want whether a D&D gish, cleric/mage, paladin, curse based warlock, etc. Or you could ignore character type themes and min-max to your heart's content.

All in all, I started the game not completely sold on it, but by the end of it, I was lapping it up like an unapologetic fanboy even though I can still see the flaws in the product. To be honest, I was surprised to find that I enjoyed the game this much even after spending way too much time with it. I also didn't find that I had "game fatigue" set in - that's the point where I start to get bored with what I'm doing and start dropping whatever I'm doing and making a serious push for the endgame just so I can be done with it or start the next game.

This past year alone, I went on a nostalgia trip to remind myself where these games came from and played or re-played BG+TotSC, BG2+TOB, IWD, IWD2, PS:T, The Witcher, NWN2 (OC, MotB, SoZ and Mysteries of Westgate) and Knights of the Chalice. I don't recall enjoying any of them more than I enjoyed Dragon Age. I can say that I found fewer flaws in some of those products such as not having "ze annoying faux-French aksentz" or the "ZOMG grimdark Joining ritual" and melodrama but I don't think any of these games had the same scope or came together in the same way. YMMV.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Soooooo... what's the Classic Biowarian Plotwist (TM) in this one?

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

If you're an Elf Mage, pretty much everyone has some form of problem with you. Either you're an inferior being (Damn elves), or something they expect to explode into full-blown demon any second (Mage).

 

[made]

Finally finished it. 70 hours total, ~60% of the "content" completed. The late game just kept dragging on and on, although I guess that's partly my fault for doing every last side quest.

The archdemon fight at the end was very anti-climatic. He's easier than the other dragons in the game, and you have an army to help you. Makes you wonder what all the fuss was about.

Overall decent game, provided you run with a balanced party that keeps the combat from being frustrating without exploiting various broken abilities, and you have a working ESC key to skip through the at times painful dialogue.

Currently I've no desire to replay it until either Bio releases a patch or mods start fixing the various issues with the character and combat system. One dev is seemingly working on fixes in his spare time, while also writing a wiki to make up for the lack of documentation. It's like they spent the entire budget on amateur voice actors and hobby writers, completely neglecting the technical side. AAA title my ass.

 

[Grunker]

Soooooo... what's the Classic Biowarian Plotwist (TM) in this one?

I was wondering that myself... Probably the fact that

Spoiler

Loghain betrays the king, which leads to the king's and Duncan's death

but that's very early in the game.

Beyond that, there really isn't one.

 

[foobie-bletch]

sage

 

[Drakron]

Probably the fact that

Spoiler

Loghain betrays the king, which leads to the king's and Duncan's death

but that's very early in the game.

Beyond that, there really isn't one.

Well TVTropes have that as The Untwist in the Dragon Age page.

 

[Grunker]

Probably the fact that

Spoiler

Loghain betrays the king, which leads to the king's and Duncan's death

but that's very early in the game.

Beyond that, there really isn't one.

Well TVTropes have that as The Untwist in the Dragon Age page.

But Biowares twists are always untwists. I think that's the entire reason for Roxor's post.

 

[Mangoose]

Probably the fact that

Spoiler

Loghain betrays the king, which leads to the king's and Duncan's death

but that's very early in the game.

Beyond that, there really isn't one.

Well TVTropes have that as The Untwist in the Dragon Age page.

Spoiler

I didn't like that there wasn't one, honestly. Not that the typical Bioware plot-twist is great, but that the story feels bland without one. My theory when I read about the setting was that the Darkspawn were not created out of evil intentions, that the Tevinter Imperium was NOT trying to take over heaven, and that the Chantry was instead proclaiming a twisted view of events.

If you're an Elf Mage, pretty much everyone has some form of problem with you. Either you're an inferior being (Damn elves), or something they expect to explode into full-blown demon any second (Mage).

Yeah I'm replaying as a Elf Mage hoping to be Blood Mage. I've never really been enthusiastic about replaying an RPG so soon after I finished it, but with a new origin story, different party members, and new combat strategies and tactics I've learned through my first playthrough I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Drakron]

Well I do not think Bioware twists are untwists as they only really got a reputation for twists with KotOR and Revan was well done.

Also it was Jade Empire that followed with a attempt at a twist that simply did not work very well (or at all), Mass Effect did not had any as its pretty straightforward.

 

[Grunker]

Well I do not think Bioware twists are untwists as they only really got a reputation for twists with KotOR and Revan was well done.

Also it was Jade Empire that followed with a attempt at a twist that simply did not work very well (or at all), Mass Effect did not had any as its pretty straightforward.

Erm... Baldur's Gate's "No, Protagonist. I AM YOUR FATHER!" is not plottwist? Baldur's Gate even had two. First, "I AM YOUR FATHER!" (or rather, "he is your father") and then "HE IS YOUR BROTHER!"

They've always had plottwists - and bad ones. People say Revan was good because you didn't expect it, but that's extremely bad logic. It's incredibly easy to pull of that kind of plot twist - if you make no connection to the twist prior to the reveal, how the fuck should the player guess it?

Examples on the above is "OMG GOOD NPC WAS EVUL ALL THE TIME!" or "OMG EVUL GUY WASN'T EVUL AT ALL HE FOUGHT FOR A GREATER GOOD ALL THE TIME!"

The hard plot twists are the twists that have meaning within the context of the game, and that means they have to have meaning throughout all of the story - not only after the reveal of the twist. Doing that is much harder, because you have to establish connections to the twist all the way through the storyline, which in turn means danger of the player guessing it (i.e. large risk of untwist).

And no, three or four visions without context do not count.

An extremely good example is "The Crest," in which a crew on a navy destroyer are terrorized by a paranoid captain. They end up relieving him of command, after which they get prosecuted for disobedience. Through the whole film, you sympathize with these guys, because they are being terrorized. When they win the case and all's well, their advocate arrives at the "we won"-party, shit drunk. He tells them that when he took on the case, he thought he was defending a terrorized crew from an evil captain. But under the course of the trial, he found out just how sick the captain was, and how, instead of helping him, the crew backmouthed him, didn't report his illness, and were generally just assholes. All of this has never been hidden throughout the course of the film, so in the end, the twist leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth, because you realize that the betrayal wasn't the captain's. It was theirs. And therefore yours, since you sympathized with the crew.

That's how to do a plottwist. Not this "omg u dind't xpect taht lol"-bullshit.

Fuck, what a rant. I need to stop drinking so much coffee.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Well I do not think Bioware twists are untwists as they only really got a reputation for twists with KotOR and Revan was well done.

Also it was Jade Empire that followed with a attempt at a twist that simply did not work very well (or at all), Mass Effect did not had any as its pretty straightforward.

Erm... Baldur's Gate's "No, Protagonist. I AM YOUR FATHER!" is not plottwist? Baldur's Gate even had two. First, "I AM YOUR FATHER!" (or rather, "he is your father") and then "HE IS YOUR BROTHER!"

They've always had plottwists - and bad ones. People say Revan was good because you didn't expect it, but that's extremely bad logic. It's incredibly easy to pull of that kind of plot twist - if you make no connection to the twist prior to the reveal, how the fuck should the player guess it?

Examples on the above is "OMG GOOD NPC WAS EVUL ALL THE TIME!" or "OMG EVUL GUY WASN'T EVUL AT ALL HE FOUGHT FOR A GREATER GOOD ALL THE TIME!"

The hard plot twists are the twists that have meaning within the context of the game, and that means they have to have meaning throughout all of the story - not only after the reveal of the twist. Doing that is much harder, because you have to establish connections to the twist all the way through the storyline, which in turn means danger of the player guessing it (i.e. large risk of untwist).

And no, three or four visions without context do not count.

An extremely good example is "The Crest," in which a crew on a navy destroyer are terrorized by a paranoid captain. They end up relieving him of command, after which they get prosecuted for disobedience. Through the whole film, you sympathize with these guys, because they are being terrorized. When they win the case and all's well, their advocate arrives at the "we won"-party, shit drunk. He tells them that when he took on the case, he thought he was defending a terrorized crew from an evil captain. But under the course of the trial, he found out just how sick the captain was, and how, instead of helping him, the crew backmouthed him, didn't report his illness, and were generally just assholes. All of this has never been hidden throughout the course of the film, so in the end, the twist leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth, because you realize that the betrayal wasn't the captain's. It was theirs. And therefore yours, since you sympathized with the crew.

That's how to do a plottwist. Not this "omg u dind't xpect taht lol"-bullshit.

Fuck, what a rant. I need to stop drinking so much coffee.

Uh...the KoTOR one has so many references to it before the 'big reveal' that in retrospect it seems utterly obvious, as though you had to be an idiot not to get it beforehand.

The 'twist' was just fine - as evidenced by their ability to communicate the twist almost entirely through a montage of scenes that you've already encountered (and they are far from the only references to the twist before it occurs). The letdown in KoTOR was the complete lack of impact that the REVEAL has afterwards - that you can march around Korriban trying to reveal yourself as the true lord of the sith and having everyone pat you on the head and telling you to hope back in your linear box.

 

[Grunker]

As said many times before, the chance of me being a retard is not impossible by any means. But I did not see the Revan-twist coming by a longshot, and it wasn't obvious afterwards either. The only thing they did to add context beforehand, was saying: "You have no memories." Wow. What a schocker in an RPG. Of course you don't give thoughts as to why when they hand you the biggest cliché ever, unless they do like PS:T and actually emphasise that there is a reason for it.

Then the visions. They are totally meaningless until the reveal. That is not having context with the storyline prior to the twist. I only saw the point of the visions after the reveal; they have to have context beforehand.

As I said, I might be the idiot, since the above relies solely on my experience of it. But I'm not convinced otherwise as of yet.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

I didn't have problems with the Kotor twist, but I did call it from... like, the very beginning of the game.

Anyway, just finished the landsmeet and there doesn't seem to be any major plottwist incoming. I must say, though, there does seem to be meaningful C&C in this game, as I found out.

 

[Drakron]

Since KotOR was already addressed ...

Erm... Baldur's Gate's "No, Protagonist. I AM YOUR FATHER!" is not plottwist? Baldur's Gate even had two. First, "I AM YOUR FATHER!" (or rather, "he is your father") and then "HE IS YOUR BROTHER!"

No, because the Bhallspawn is told exactly what s/he pretty much from the start and who Saverok is as well, there is nothing twisted.

Also there is no "No, Protagonist. I AM YOUR FATHER!" moment, maybe in "Toilet of Bhall" but I never trusted the bullshit that come out from "Gorion soul" mouth that the Solar summoned as the math does not add up since Time of Troubles was in 1358 DR and BG started in 1370 DR so ... sorry I just dont buy that.

 

[Grifthin]

Well - I got sucked into the Dragon Age main quest finishing it last night late. GODDAMN BASTARDS AT BIOWARE I ended up with probably the most fucking depressing and at the same time heart warming ending I've seen in a Videogame for the last decade.

My DA fever is abating slightly now that I've finished it, and I'm going to start with a different character to replay some different choices. Shit - they just completely blew me out of the water with the ending though. I mean WTF.

Game completed about 40 percent of the game, so I'm going to try and get 100 percent this time.

 

[Volourn]

Doubt you will. Way too many variables.

Anyways, been working Orzammar, and have entered the Deep Rods. Orzammar is awesome. This much dwarf love is too sexy for its own good. My only complaint about it is that I wish the poor dwarf area was a little bigger. It's just a set up for one quest.

Considering I'm a noble dwraf who was set up by my brother, my chocie on who to side with was rather easy as I took Harrowmont.

LMAO at the Provings. The official Provings were super easy, but the 'secret' ones were extremely tough. L0LZ And, all I gots was a damn dirty ring that i promptly sold even though it got ints own codex entry.

I love the multitude of actions you get as a dwraf noble there - both good and bad. I must say this part of the game it's actually makes sense for being a Gray Warden considering that otherwise you've been banned from the city.

Morrigan is now officially my girlfriend. R00fles! Hell, what's hialrious, that even the relationships in this game come with lots of avriant dialogue. I mean that old cleric woman is chastizing me for frolicking with an 'untrusty sort', rogue girl comes off a sjealous even thoguh I barely interact with her, oghren is a pervert, etc. Morrigan is so cute, and funny. HA! The sex scene, btw, is cheesy but that's to be expected. Should be noted that it's from all angles.


Just reached level 16. Pretty powerful, but cna still die if I'm sloppy. Any half decent fight, I have to control Morrigan otehrwise the AI does a solid job.

 

[Grifthin]

Depending on your choices you might get royally fucked soon. let me know when you finished the game.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

http://social.bioware.com/project/651/#gallery

There's already mods out changing characters appearances.


Though the Morrigan there *does* look more like the one from the box art.

http://social.bioware.com/bw_projects_g ... dia_id=290