Game News I cast Magic Missile - Dragon Age

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age

ShackNews have <a href="http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/58140">a video of mages casting fireballs and such</a> in BioWare's Dragon Age:
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<blockquote>BioWare's Dragon Age is billed as a good old-fashioned RPG, and what would an RPG be without its mage class? Take a look at the wizard and its flashy effects--including one that seems right out of Mortal Kombat--in the video below.</blockquote>
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It looks pretty fun.

 

[Fat Dragon]

Looks pretty awesome, will definitely play through as a mage first.

 

[LittleJoe]

I'm not expecting miracles from this game, just make it better than NWN 1 and 2.
And for god's sake GET THE CAMERA RIGHT!

 

[spacemoose]

artillery mages are for fags

 

[Andhaira]

One cool thing I saw in a video is the mage quenching an inferno by using an ice based spell.
Cool beans.

 

[SuicideBunny]

the anims look very hadoken/kamehamehanish.

 

[JarlFrank]

BioWare's Dragon Age is billed as a good old-fashioned RPG, and what would an RPG be without its mage class?

Different.

 

[BethesdaLove]

I find it disappointing if you have all the freedoms in the world and you come up with "Fireball".

DnD had time to develop an extensive spell arsenal. It has interesting spells, like Symbol or Wish. Though I dont play tabletops and dont know any other system. Are there other, different magic systems?

 

[Andhaira]

I to wish they had named their spells exciting names like: The raging infeno ofTutakman, instead of fireball.

Also, yes there are many other magic systems out there in pnp. Wfrp v2.0's system for example is excellent. The lotr rpg by decipher had a fantastic magic system as well.

 

[Dyspaire]

There are people who prefer tennis, and there are people who prefer chess. Both are great games; both are fun in their own right.

I will always prefer my crpgs to play like chess. That's just me. That won't change.

Baldur's Gate had some chess in it.

Every game Bioware has released since, however, seems to be tending more toward tennis.

A very pretty interactive movie. With semi-engaging, tactile mini-games included at various intervals... to make you feel like you're actually having an effect on the outcome of things.

From a role-playing perspective, I have more hope for the influence Mr. Boyarsky will have on Blizzard and Diablo 3, believe it or not.

I guess for me the fun was always in trying to see what we could get away with; within the constraints of a system of rules, without breaking them.

I don't know if that makes any sense.

Would love to be pleasantly surprised.

 

[JrK]

Holy shite, only flashbangkill kind of magic. How dreadfully unimaginitive. At least BG had things like Web, Confusion, Dominate and Timestop.

They should get a cue from Diablo3, where the mage looks particularly interesting. A true mage's power should lie in crafty usage of his powers, not brute killing strength! I particularly like the Teleport spell in the vids. EDIT: slow time also looks like TE SECKS!

 

[lightbane]

I find it disappointing if you have all the freedoms in the world and you come up with "Fireball".

DnD had time to develop an extensive spell arsenal. It has interesting spells, like Symbol or Wish. Though I dont play tabletops and dont know any other system. Are there other, different magic systems?

Well, there's the Sphere system of Mage: Ascention of the Old World of Darkness ( a tabletop rpg from White Wolf), where you have to use "Spheres" of several elements to make spells, the system is insanely complex but technically you can do anything with it (in fact, the spells actually alter the reality, thus doing that sometimes there's a reality paradox that backlashes to the mage), in Mage the Awakening the system is better but in exchange the plot and setting is a bit worse. I have to mention too the Pledges from Changeling: the Lost, where you can make magical agreements and promises to do something (with boons if you stick to what you agreed and curses if you break the Pledge), plus there's the Contracts spells too, that are more like "fae" magic than anything else.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Holy shite, only flashbangkill kind of magic. How dreadfully unimaginitive. At least BG had things like Web, Confusion, Dominate and Timestop.

They should get a cue from Diablo3, where the mage looks particularly interesting. A true mage's power should lie in crafty usage of his powers, not brute killing strength! I particularly like the Teleport spell in the vids. EDIT: slow time also looks like TE SECKS!

Well that was a trailer and the kind of spells you mentioned aren't as flashy as the flashbangkill kind, so who knows they might still be there.

 

[poocolator]

I find it disappointing if you have all the freedoms in the world and you come up with "Fireball".

DnD had time to develop an extensive spell arsenal. It has interesting spells, like Symbol or Wish. Though I dont play tabletops and dont know any other system. Are there other, different magic systems?

I nominate the "Conjure Hemorrhoids" spell.

 

[Fenril]

"puny scorching inferno"

"normal scorching inferno"

"GRANDMASTER SCORCHING INFERNO!"

"DEMIGOD SCORCHING INFERNO OF TRANSCENDANT BURNING!"

There original and revolutionary fire spells with 4 levels of power.
Are you reading this bioware, you better hurry and hire me now otherwise im taking my skills to the competition.

 

[Smarts]

DnD had time to develop an extensive spell arsenal. It has interesting spells, like Symbol or Wish. Though I dont play tabletops and dont know any other system. Are there other, different magic systems?

The Ars Magica system was pretty fun, though tricky without a DM.

It ran along the same idea as skill points in most other RPGs. You could put points in verbs ('I destroy' or 'I control'), and nouns ('Fire', 'Air', 'Energy', 'Beasts', 'Images'...) and then it was a simple skill roll - your verb+noun score vs. the spell difficulty (a fireball would have been a difficulty 30 'I Create Fire', for example). You could either learn established spells, invent your own using the guidelines, or cast weaker spells on the fly without knowing the spell beforehand.

The whole idea was for folks to apply their imaginations to spellcasting, as the RPG was basically all about wizards. Eventually you'd be able to do traditionally crazy stuff like move mountains or make the sky rain fire. Great fun, but very difficult to translate into a computer game.