Preview Dragon Age - the future of role-playing!

[Higher Game]

As for Bioware being "revolutionary", that's just PR-speak. I'm not sure why PR people do that

Hell, in the music industry, the big thing is to sound "retro". Garage bands that rip off The Velvet Underground somehow make it big occasionally. Old is good in lots of markets.

I'd love to see this approach in gaming. "You haven't seen a game like this in over a decade; it looks like it's fresh from 1996!!!!"

 

[sportforredneck]

As for Bioware being "revolutionary", that's just PR-speak. I'm not sure why PR people do that -- it seems pretty universal, too, like if you don't litter descriptions with over-the-top adjectives people are going to get the impression that it's dull just by comparison. Thus it becomes like background noise, sort of a reflexive thing that most of them don't even think about anymore.

Now just tell the Mass Effect people to shut the hell up with "extreme" and "Jack Bauer in space" and BioWare can be a little better off.

 

[Volourn]

"What with calling Mass Effect the best rpg ever."

Why do you lie? the opnly thing i've said that it will be better in every meaningful way than KOTOR. R00fles!

 

[taxacaria]

Indeed, some of BioWare's developers have been bashing each other with weapons in public places - reportedly being thrown out of a mall car park for doing so.

:shock:
Apparently they are preparing for the revenge of outraged customers.

 

[aries202]

As I understand it, from reading the Bioware boards on the Bioware forums, the game let you pick you beginnings. This means that you can either be, say a dwarf noble or a dwarf commoner or human noble or human trash (or something like that). What race and class you select at the start at the game decided then where you start in the game. If you pick the Dwarf noble scene, then you would start in the dwarf village, city or town. (whereever that is in Ferelden).

The best part to me is that the backgrounds you pick probably will come back to haunt you, either later in the game, or maybe from the game's beginnings. To me, at least, this sounds great, and if Bioware, can pull this off, then.....well. then...
I would be speechless.

In a thread over at the bioware forums, Dgaider did say that there are no healing potions, and your injuries sustained during battle would be permanent (I think), if you don't manage to drag yourself+your party back to camp, where you need to bandage etc. your wounds. There also will be no resurrection. period. (as in understand it).

And to me, Dragon Age could be a revival of the good ol' rpg game/genre that we all knew & loved in the 1990's. (My guess is that bioware is going to self-publish this, but it is only a guess...).

 

[Ryuken]

(My guess is that bioware is going to self-publish this, but it is only a guess...).

As long as MS doesn't get their hands on it and puts it out as a GFW-game (that label really has an adverse effect) or even worse, a Vista-only title.

 

[Surgey]

I hate kids.

Thank GOD. We don't have to worry about you breeding then.

 

[Fez]

He won't get hybrid babies by raping animals no matter how hard he tries.

 

[Julio]

 

[The Vanished One]

As I understand it, from reading the Bioware boards on the Bioware forums, the game let you pick you beginnings. This means that you can either be, say a dwarf noble or a dwarf commoner or human noble or human trash (or something like that). What race and class you select at the start at the game decided then where you start in the game. If you pick the Dwarf noble scene, then you would start in the dwarf village, city or town. (whereever that is in Ferelden).

The best part to me is that the backgrounds you pick probably will come back to haunt you, either later in the game, or maybe from the game's beginnings. To me, at least, this sounds great, and if Bioware, can pull this off, then.....well. then...
I would be speechless.

In a thread over at the bioware forums, Dgaider did say that there are no healing potions, and your injuries sustained during battle would be permanent (I think), if you don't manage to drag yourself+your party back to camp, where you need to bandage etc. your wounds. There also will be no resurrection. period. (as in understand it).

Sounds great to me too. I really hope they manage to make DA this way.

 

[Mr Happy]

...we're down to 1 NPC in DA being required -- and that's considering both the fact that you need never actually take him into your party and that there are... options... later on for removing him entirely, should you have developed a Carth-like antipathy.

This makes me wonder how attacking wil be handled, whether you can initiate combat or its some silly system like in kotor.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Actually... my view on Bioware's games, released and future, tends to more or less mirror the Hive Mind's... but this does look quite promising.

 

[Dgaider]

Just for clarification purposes:

As I understand it, from reading the Bioware boards on the Bioware forums, the game let you pick you beginnings. This means that you can either be, say a dwarf noble or a dwarf commoner or human noble or human trash (or something like that). What race and class you select at the start at the game decided then where you start in the game. If you pick the Dwarf noble scene, then you would start in the dwarf village, city or town. (whereever that is in Ferelden).

Correct. Imagine the vignettes from Temple of Elemental Evil, yet expanded into its own chapter rather than a quick cutscene. Eventually you are inserted into the main story at roughly the same point, but your background continues to have an effect -- especially when you end up returning back where you came from during the course of the game.

The best part to me is that the backgrounds you pick probably will come back to haunt you, either later in the game, or maybe from the game's beginnings. To me, at least, this sounds great, and if Bioware, can pull this off, then.....well. then...
I would be speechless.

I don't know about "coming back to haunt you", but certainly there are elements of your background that carry forward. You'll meet characters again, perhaps have old enemies, and it will definitely affect how your game ends.

In a thread over at the bioware forums, Dgaider did say that there are no healing potions

No healing potions that heal instantly. There are potions which increase your regeneration rate, however, the difference being that potions thus don't become an endless and portable supply of instant hit points and mana.

and your injuries sustained during battle would be permanent (I think), if you don't manage to drag yourself+your party back to camp, where you need to bandage etc. your wounds.

Injuries can be sustained when a character goes down during a fight (which they will), and those injuries are persistent until bandaged at camp, yes.

There also will be no resurrection. period. (as in understand it).

Not in the world, no. Dead is dead. But you also aren't dying when you go down in combat, either (not unless the entire party wipes, obviously), so this is more of a setting consideration than a gameplay one.

And to me, Dragon Age could be a revival of the good ol' rpg game/genre that we all knew & loved in the 1990's.

I don't know quite how accurate that is, but it certainly is the closest we've come to the style of the BG series since we finished it. It isn't an Action/RPG hybrid, anyhow, by any means.

(My guess is that bioware is going to self-publish this, but it is only a guess...).

While electronic downloading is certainly an option, I really doubt that Bioware would make that the extent of DA's release. There definitely will be a publisher at some point.

 

[Texas Red]

Well, the backround choise is certainly the right road for the future RPGs. I enjoyed the ones in NWN 2 quite a bit even though they were rather insignificant.

So, DA will yet again have annoying immortality by which you die only when the whole party dies. Much debate has been following such a system. In my opinion it just makes the combat too easy andsinconsequential. With this system the combat both in KotOR and NWN 2 was a nuisance rather than enjoyable like it was in BG. I think it is impossible to make the combat actually challenging and difficult with this immortality thing, since it would be inevitably concluded that the constant "deaths" of your companions would be just too annoying. In the end the combat becomes trivial and devoid of strategy.

 

[Ivy Mike]

Since everyone knows that this question will be asked sooner or later here goes:

How about them multiple-paths, choices and consequences, etc. we all love so much? Will we see them or not?

If this has been asked and answered you'll have to pardon me and give me a link.

 

[obediah]

In a thread over at the bioware forums, Dgaider did say that there are no healing potions

No healing potions that heal instantly. There are potions which increase your regeneration rate, however, the difference being that potions thus don't become an endless and portable supply of instant hit points and mana.

This is the kind of thing that makes me shake my head and weep a bit for computer rpgs. Let's look at the history of this particular "fix".

Problem: I got Thondor to lvl 12 but then I got a few bad rolls against an ogre and he was killed. I don't want to start over.

Solution: Sprinkle a few get-out-of-jail-free cards into the game world - say a potion that gives you hp back. Make them rare so they are treasured and using them is a tough call for the player

Problem: Things were good, except all the people buying rpgs were fat old guys.

Solution: Lewt. Lots of it. Swords+23, bags of holding stuffed with artifacts, and little old healing potions that can be put in stacks of 99.

Problem: Too many healing potions, how to make combat challenging?

Solution: Implement time delays in healing or having healing potions do a slow regen

Problem: Healing potions are so slow, that sometimes you know you are going to die a while befor eyou do die. If only there was some way to have a limited number of items to heal you instantly to escape such situatinos

Solution: Stat! More bandaids!

 

[Volourn]

"If this has been asked and answered you'll have to pardon me and give me a link."

It has been confirmed in the postive.

 

[OccupatedVoid]

If Dragon Age has a toolset, it better not be like NWN2's. :cringe:

 

[Human Shield]

So, DA will yet again have annoying immortality by which you die only when the whole party dies. Much debate has been following such a system. In my opinion it just makes the combat too easy and inconsequential. With this system the combat both in KotOR and NWN 2 was a nuisance rather than enjoyable like it was in BG. I think it is impossible to make the combat actually challenging and difficult with this immortality thing, since it would be inevitably concluded that the constant "deaths" of your companions would be just too annoying. In the end the combat becomes trivial and devoid of strategy.

But this injury system he mentioned is new. I'm assuming its like Guild Wars where whenever you die your max HP goes down making it harder to complete the level. I would like to see a gold cost for bandaging at camp (exponential for the number of "injuries", or else human mine clearing is still an option), but your character is normally overflowing with gold in Bioware games so they would have to fix that.

 

[Levin]

It sounds like Bioware is very busy recently?DA,ME...Which is the key?

 

[aboyd]

So, DA will yet again have annoying immortality by which you die only when the whole party dies. Much debate has been following such a system. In my opinion it just makes the combat too easy andsinconsequential. With this system the combat both in KotOR and NWN 2 was a nuisance rather than enjoyable like it was in BG. I think it is impossible to make the combat actually challenging and difficult with this immortality thing, since it would be inevitably concluded that the constant "deaths" of your companions would be just too annoying. In the end the combat becomes trivial and devoid of strategy.

I think what you're saying is true, but only on the surface... not down to the core. In other words, I think their idea is good, but their implementation is poor.

As an example, I am playing BG1 right now. My character is not a tank, and so needs protection. Every good item is on my character, while the other characters are relatively unadorned. Every character rallies to protect my character at all costs. Why? Because if my character dies, the whole game ends. And that is retarded. If Imoen dies, I can simply drag her little bod over to a priest who will resurrect her. But if MY character dies, apparently nobody can be bothered to do the same for me!

That's stupid. The whole game ends up imbalanced, as I try to uber-protect my sorcerer to the point that he has better AC than fighters, etc.

And that's the problem that I think Bioware is trying to address. It's this ridiculous I-can-rez-you-but-you-can't-rez-me problem the old games had. So nowadays, if people go down in battle, the assumption is that as long as ONE character survives, he can revive the rest. I find that to be true and good.

However, I beg to differ with their implementation. And this is where I start to agree with you, TWD. Having hurt characters pop back to life isn't how it should be done. They should stay on the ground until revived. If there is no potion or kit that is available for reviving them, then they should need to be dragged out. In addition, there should be the possibility of death & resurrection at a COST, rather than this free "they were only sleeping but now they're back up" BS.

For example, in BG2 there was a point where one of my characters died in the sewers. The battle was no longer in my favor, and I fled. But the bad guys gave chase! So I'm up in the temple district, fighting off guys from the sewers as I run toward a temple that will resurrect my tank. I get to the temple -- the bad guys follow me in -- and I find that the resurrection will cost more than I have! So now we're duking it out in the temple, and I'm about to lose another character. I don't recall what happened exactly, but in the end I had 2 of 6 characters still alive, we lost most of the loot the dead characters dropped on the ground, and getting everyone back to life cost me DEARLY. Basically selling off every item we possessed, and picking up again with zero gold and zero magic items.

To me, that was correct, mostly. Aside from the bit about my main character being one of the two that survived because he was fully adorned with every magical protection possible (because he had to be, because I didn't want the game to force a reload on death), the difficulty and cost of reviving the party seemed right.

In my opinion, current-day Bioware correctly addressed the issues surrounding the death of the main character, but they took it too far. The new system is both an improvement, and a miserable failure. To bring it back to good, all they need to do is make it sensible. But I'm just not sure that anyone at Bioware would be on board for such a thing.

 

[Castanova]

The problem is, most people wouldn't have done what you did (i.e., continue playing and selling off items to revive characters). Most people would hit Quickload the second they realized the battle was going to be a disaster.. many people would hit Quickload right after that first character died, to be honest.

The problem is that combat in RPGs is usually inherently not fun. It's only fun because it rewards you with xp, items, and storyline advancement. ~95% of encounters in BG2 (and any other Bioware game or modern RPG, pretty much) are flat out boring. Instead of solving these issues by addressing the root of the problem (a combat game with boring combat) we get a bunch of tweaks on the risks/rewards of entering combat in the first place.

How do you make combat fun? By making it involve your brain and/or involve your reflexes. All modern day RPGs fail to force the player to use brains in combat but, to make matters worse, these third-person, RTwP titles don't really involve reflexes either.

 

[Volourn]

"The problem is that combat in RPGs is usually inherently not fun. It's only fun because it rewards you with xp, items, and storyline advancement. ~95% of encounters in BG2 (and any other Bioware game or modern RPG, pretty much) are flat out boring"

Complete, and utter bullshit.


Aboyd makes a good point about the 'game ends if the PC dies' in the BG series. In a world where ressurection is possible, and where you can rez comapnions it seems silly that npcs won't do that for you.

That isn't an issue in DA, though.

However, it was kinda 'fixed' in BIO's latest games but they all their own problems.

The best way to do these thinsg. You die, youd ie. If there's a way to bring characters back up, the npcs should be able to do it.

However, I believe in DA, if you fall unconcious you ndon't instantlya rrive after battle ala KOTOR series or NWN2. You have some sort of semi permenant injury -at minimum - until you reach camp qand heal thyself.

Not my preferred method; but it definitely sounds better than KOTOR series for sure.

 

[Castanova]

Complete, and utter bullshit.

I call bullshit on your bullshit, bullshitter-pants. Let's go with the best Bioware game, BG2, just for argument's sake. (a) you can beat somewhere around 90% of encounters by focus-firing on each enemy until they die and maybe casting one or two spells if it gets a little hairy (b) you can beat the other 10% by dying once, figuring out you need a certain buff spell beforehand, reload, and auto-pilot focus fire again but this time with some more spell casting.

Positioning means nothing (especially in recent Bioware games where you barely even have a party anyway!). Getting killed is basically meaningless ever since after BG2. What is there to hold an adult's interest in modern RPG combat? Do tell.

 

[The Vanished One]

The problem is, most people wouldn't have done what you did (i.e., continue playing and selling off items to revive characters). Most people would hit Quickload the second they realized the battle was going to be a disaster.. many people would hit Quickload right after that first character died, to be honest.

That's what I would do. I admit that reloading when something goes wrong isn't a great display of skill, but I can't think about a way to make "continue playing and selling off items to revive characters" appealing, except for your own determination.
What aboyd did is the most right thing to do of course.