Maybe they were too busy making a good game rather than concentrate on the graphics.
While I agree it’s a great game that’s really just a cop out. There’s been a slew of great games recently, with much larger open boards, that didn’t skimp on graphics. Assassin’s Creed 2, Arkham Asylum, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Killzone 2, GTA 4 and of course Uncharted 2. If there were some huge routines running in the background or something I could understand but there aren’t. NPCs don’t move. They’re always standing in the same place. Monster encounters are plotted. They aren’t wandering around and following routines. It just seems odd. I laugh every time I go into camp and see that giant piece of octagonal cheese in front of the tent that is supposed to be round. Or all the octagonal tree stumps.
That’s Dwarf Fortress.
I think the graphics are fine, I think the game runs smoothly, and there are some definitely cool visuals and character animations. Pause and zoom in on a fight sometime to see what I mean.
Bethesda’s games might have beautiful landscapes, but that’s about the only thing they do really well. The combat in Oblivion and Fallout 3 is clunky and uninteresting.
If I recall reading somewhere, the game went through a very long development time. (I don’t know if there were several different companies involved, too.)
The early chapters were done with an older graphics concept, or something, and maybe your seeing this.
Seconded. I’ve never been much of a visual/detail observant person, and I’m much more focused on gameplay mechanisms, so I never really noticed it. To me the graphics were neither good nor bad, just fine. However, my SO would regularly squee when she paused the game midfight to issue orders, because whenever she did, something insanely cool was being snapshotted. She’d twirl the camera this way or that, or do Matrix-style rotations around the scene, and squee’d some more. After that, I started to notice it too.
Well, the combat systems are completely different so that’s a tough comparison. I personally loved the combat in Oblivion and really, really loved the combat in FO3. They are completely different beasts though. DO:A is old school dice rolling behind the scenes combat which actually removes some immersion from the game in my opinion. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve moved a character but because someone just attacked me I exploded into a cloud of blood ten feet away from them with nobody around me. Arrows are the same way. They just appear in you. In Bethesda games your making contact is the deciding factor. You can dodge an arrow because it is a physical missile traveling through the air that you can see. Same with most spells and all the gunfire in FO3.
Another thing I love about Bethesda games is you can see the armor someone’s wearing or the weapon they are carrying and if you want to kill them for it you can.
All that I said, none of this is a real detriment to DA:O, as displayed by my inability to stop playing the game for the last week. 
I’m sorry if this has been discussed in spoilers, I haven’t wanted the story spoiled so have been very careful about what I click in this thread.
Anyway, I’ve recently had two opportunities to fight a High Dragon. Luckily both of them were optional and I saved prior to battle because I got my arse handed to me on a platter in no time flat. My squad (we’re modern thinkers here) was not ideal for the battle, consisting of Wynn who pretty much is only good for healing at present, Alistair, Lillean or whatever her name is, and my main dude who is a Dwarf Warrior.
Basically all four of us are getting killed while only being able to do maybe 10% damage to the dragon. The characters are all around level 11 to 12. Is my lack of success primarily an indication that I just haven’t progressed far enough in the game to be competitive against the bigger creatures, or does indicate more that I have really bad builds for my characters? The latter wouldn’t surprise me as I’m not using much science in the character building and have no RPG playing background to build on.
Level 12 is maybe a bit early to try the dragons, but then apparently they’re level scaled, so you might have a shot.
Here’s what I do (or try to do, in any case) : Switch out any melee fighter besides the one tank before the fight. The battle team usually consists of Wynne, Alistair/main character (depending on whether or not I’m playing a melee toon), Lelliana and another archer. If I’m loaded with mana pots, then Morrigan replaces the second archer.
Before even popping the dragon, I shut down autofollow, and place my ranged fighter in a wide triangle, centered on where the dragon will be. The tank obviously goes there too. All tactics disabled, except :
- any armor-bashing skill (whenever ready),
- healing (Wynne uses Heal at 75% health, Regen at 50%, Group Heal at 25% ; Alistair drinks small pots at 50% and big ones at 25%) and
- taunts (the tank uses it whenever ready, plus the fighting stance that deals aggro with every hit). Meanwhile, the archers equip the biggest crossbows they can, with special bolts if available, and Rapid Shot active.
The whole game consists in keeping the tank alive, while the archers slowly plink away the dragon’s health. That is because between the tail and the breath attack, no melee fighter is safe from a dragon, which would force Wynne to use her spells to heal other people than the tank, possibly having a critical spell be on cooldown when the tank really needs it. I rarely risk putting a forcefield around Alistair in those fights, because if he loses the dragon’s attention for 5 seconds, the whole team dies extremely quickly.
I use pretty much the same tactic when fighting those giant wraiths with the damage aura, BTW.
Thanks.
Does anyone know if a weapon can deal say frost and fire damage simultaneously? For example I have an axe (of course, I’m a Dwarf) that has a fire rune for fire damage, if I use Morrigan’s Frost Weapon ability to enchant all the party’s weapons with frost damage will my Dwarf’s axe do both fire and frost damage or does the enchantment over-ride the weapon’s native ability?
Try going for some runes; Topsider’s Honor from Orzammar has 3 slots, if I remember correctly. So does Yunsari (the Dragonslayer sword) from The Circle Tower, and the Edge, the free promotional download
Seemed to for me; even got a nifty “frozen but glowing red” effect on my dagger.
Sure. Not only multiple runes, but if you are running more than one mage you can run multiple weapon buffs ( one per mage ). You can see it working if you have graphical damage enabled ( which I think it is by default on the PC ). As the damage numbers rise above the struck opponent you’ll see multiple numbers in different colors, representing different damage types ( white for physical, orange for fire, blue for frost, purple for spirit, etc. ).
Yeah cool. I’d been letting my main character do his own thing and couldn’t see what damage he was doing in the confusion of spells, ice, grease, fire, etc.
What’s nice is to cast freeze and paralysis area effect spells on groups…THEN hit one of them with virulent walking bomb. Everyone’s frozen and taking hits from the cold—then the bomb goes off causing a chain reaction.