Gaming The Inquisition's Here and It's Here To Stay: The Dragon Age Series

Hope so, I was a summoning whore in Oblivion. Most of my characters had the conjuring skill as a major.

http://kotaku.com/5381874/two-years-worth-of-dragon-age-dlc-is-planned

Sounds good. Very similar to Oblivion with its two year span of expansions and smaller DLC.

 

Ok, should I get Dragon Age or pay my electric bill?

 

Buy Origins then tap into your neighbor's power grid. Problem solved!

 

Dragon Age: Journeys announced.

Dwarves!

Also: Hands-on preview at GameShark.

Can I just hibernate until November 3rd? My lust for this game grows by the day.

 

i'm really, really, really wanting this game as well. looking like it's gonna be one heck of a ride.

 

Only 2.5 weeks away. You'll have played it and got sick of it in no time.

 

unlikely, especially given the fact that it's gonna likely get the modders community behind it... and THAT makes for one helluva large amount of replay value.

 

And even if you own one of the console versions...user-mods galore (very, very likely). For the first time ever. Based on what I'm reading, it wouldn't shock me if the replayability of this thing approaches Oblivion-like proportions. At least that's what it sounds like BioWare's trying to do -- one-up Bethesda at their own game. Different, multiple opening scenarios are a very good start.

This is actually something that I struggle with. When DLC comes out sometime later on after a game's initial release, I want to play it, but I've probably already played through the game a few times by that point. That's what's nice about Dragon Age, because while most games have some variety in the beginning, there's no game that I know of that has experimented with completely separate stories from the onset. Though the beginning stories all meet up somewhere down the line, I'm not forced to relive the same events over and over before it branches out again.

Getting back to DLC, though, I definitely like getting a lot of content right from the beginning, and going straight through as if it were part of the original game. I like the seamless nature of it, although in games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion, there are certain questlines I'll leave untouched on a particular playthrough, depending upon whether or not my character is "good" or "evil," and whether it'd be an appropriate role-playing choice organic to that specific character. To me, DLC right from the onset is the best of both worlds...I don't have to wait for an expansion, and I don't have to go through a significant chunk of the game again to play a new segment (small, when compared to the core product).

BioWare has essentially solved two of my main problems -- re-playability in the opening segments of the game, and providing additional content right from day one. Now just so long as the game itself lives up to our sky-high expectations...

 

if the hands on articles are any indication, then it would indicate that if it doesn't live up completely, it'll come pretty damned close.

and you hit on it exactly leto. and i do mean exactly.

on another note, that was one of the things i loved about NWNs. the fact that the user made content could be so completely separate from the regular game. some of the most critically acclaimed modules for it had nothing to do with DnD even, and were completely user made universes. there are MMO's that are getting constantly upgraded... for a game that's nearing a decade old. thats the kinda community that we're getting with dragon age, because it's bioware's community. even now i go back and play NWNs for the NEW content that is still coming out. that, to me, is mind boggling. and look at how long NWNs was officially updated/added to and so forth. the patches for that went on for so long it was insane, plus the premium modules and other stuff. if that is any kind of indication of the support that this game is going to receive then this is the kind of game that the play life will be counted in years, not weeks.

 

I'm such a flake. I just pre-ordered the LCE.

I was just going to pre-order the normal version at EB Games as they're doing one of those exclusive pre-order code things, and after seeing all the extra stuff I broke down and ordered the LCE instead.

What the hell - it's not often we get big budget hardcore RPGs these days, might as well make the most of it.

 

Do you get the Blood Dragon Armor down there when you pre-order, zac? I've been hearing stories/rumors of this not being the case, for some reason or other.

Also, speaking of screwage:

Apparently BioWare has created an exclusive area/level for Dragon Age that will only be available on the next PC Gamer issue's DVD (it's mentioned on their latest podcast).

I seriously hope this isn't true. All the pre-order bonuses from all the different retailers -- okay. Sure. And I like the DLC. But come on, this is starting to get out of hand. This has EA's stinky fingerprints all over it.

If they want to release free stuff, take an example from Epic Games. They release large map packs and mods to everyone. They don't make them exclusives. And they do so because they care about their fans. Not because of some inane, bullcrap marketing ploy.

This isn't BioWare trying to be nice by giving away free things. It's EA ****ing with people. As usual.

 

The Blood/Dragon armour is part of the LCE according to this: http://www.ebgames.co.nz/xbox/product.cfm?id=14781

So looks like I'll get it either way.

 

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-dragon-age-origins-360/17-1528/

Awesome 360 gameplay video here.

"That's how tough he was. He went through the entire dungeon with nothing on!"

 

It should be noted that the two major issues they had in that video--game unpausing when selecting something in the radial menu and a lack of tactics--have been addressed by the devs that they just didn't figure those out. You can set it to let you queue things up in the radial without unpausing and there the tactics system in the PC version is still available in the console ones.

 

I'm quivering in anticipation for this game. Right now, I know exactly what a 45-year-old pedophile at a Jonas Brothers concert feels like.

 

http://kotaku.com/5390868/bioware-reveals-dragon-ages-massively-single+player-details

I was hoping for something similar to Fable 2 or Demon's Souls, but this looks pretty cool. At least we'll be able to show off our characters to each other.

 

This is going to be cool. Valve's influence is definitely being felt, here. So instead of us re-posting compendia of our various adventures in this thread like in years past, we should just be able to post a straight link to the BioWare social site where our character chronicles are uploaded, and let everyone peruse them from there. Nice. Looks like data-tracking, quest-analysis...the works. And that's actually the Xbox 360 version the author used to create his character -- looks terrific. Folks who were screaming "watered-down console versions!" are getting proved more and more wrong by the day.

Which means, hypothetically, I can post my characters' chronicles and show everyone how I went about doing my particular runthrough of the game, while -- say -- zacparis and Aragorn can show me how badly I frakked up a given quest via their own characters' stats and logs. This part in particular had me intrigued:

---

[color=blue]Melo said he expects player's chronicles on the Social site to be radically different. And he hopes players will look at each other's and be excited by the differences. "You'll have the ability to see a friends' character and go, 'That's a cool helmet, how the hell did you get that?' Or 'You completed this quest and I didn't even see that.' " The joy will be discovering that these nooks and crannies even exist. Melo said that some are deeply hidden, such as a sequence that gets a player thrown in jail if they fail at a certain kind of combat -- and then have 52 ways to extricate themselves from the predicament.[hr][/blockquote][/color]
Sounds like this is gonna go [i]Fable II[/i] ten times better. Also, they're saying that the console versions will probably be getting the PC web browser down the road.

Human Noble Templar. That's my starting Origin. I'm ready to go. I wanna put my sword through some Blood Mage faces.

 

I second that motion.

 

I'm doing human noble warrior-> champion. Templar might be the second specialization at 14 for me.

 

Oh noes! I just realized that I'm going to see Rob Zombie in concert on Nov. 3! I guess Dragon Age will have to wait a day.

 

So many options...

I'm going for a Dalish Elf - Rogue - Ranger/Assassin for the first character.

 

elvish female sorcerer. already know the character type and everything. she's gonna be a real *****.

sadly i'll have to wait a month longer or more than the rest of you.

 

That sounds fun. Might try that for my second character.

I usually pick humans in big RPGs like this, but for some reason I don't have the urge this time. I think I'll try a noble dwarf after the elves.

 

Some new Xbox 360 gameplay vids off GT.com (with possible spoilers):

Dog and Bandits 360 Gameplay HD

Bridge Ambush 360 Gameplay HD

Animal Slaughter 360 Gameplay HD

From what I've read from reviewers, the game is going to be extremely challenging. PC Gamer in particular addressed exactly how hard it can really be, due to the game taking away the initial problem of an unlevelled battlefield. The game is not going to be for casual gamers (they even speak of massive difficulty spikes in Easy mode). Each character's role is vital (also stated in PCG), as an unbalanced party will often be felled easily.

They also mentioned that button-bashing only works for the most part in Easy mode, while in the harder difficulties, they had to line up their characters' attacks, position them so they wouldn't get hit by AoE, and a whole lot of other things. I think it's a good idea to move away from PnP mechanics. They don't necessarily work well for computer games. Some of these concepts are pretty silly, because they tend to be a simple abstraction in most cases. And you can't simulate more complicated things, like flanking, or the subtle angle of a given attack.

However, I also think that the mechanics should be largely deterministic, and visible for the player. Hiding all that information or expressing it only in vague terms isn't a good idea. But there is a middle ground between hard pen-and-paper rules, and an invisible ruleset. A game doesn't need to be situated at either extreme. This one seems to find that middle ground, from what I've seen.

See, I was damn near about to go with a Dalish Rogue Assassin for my first runthrough, but I'm absolutely dying to get into the religious politics of the Chantry and the Templars and the other related organizations -- they've constructed incredibly rich backstories for the human kingdoms and factions in this game, and I suppose I'm hoping for some of that gritty "George R.R. Martin" flavor.

Also, I was wondering: How do the Templars know where magic is located in the world? Once mages are inducted into the Circle of Magi, their blood samples (phylactries) provide a way of tracking them down. Before that, though, do they just take surveys to record unusual occurrences (flying houses, humongous fireballs, etc.)? I've heard that the prequel novel The Calling mentions in passing that people are able to inform the Chantry about someone possessing the ability to use magic, but I haven't had the chance to read that one yet.

That would explain how Morrigan wasn't hunted down in her youth (that we know of -- it's totally possible), since she basically lives out in the middle of nowhere. Of course, her mother seems to be known from legend, since the web-comic shows Templars hunting her, and so did the Legend in the Codex.

And there are now several DA premium themes up on Xbox Marketplace:

"Blood Dragon" Premium Theme
"The Stone Prisoner" Premium Theme
"Warden's Keep" Premium Theme

The Blood Dragon theme looks amazing in HD.

 

could you please quit finding more stuff that makes me want this game even more?