Okay, that’s my cue to stop playing. I haven’t gotten to that point yet, but when in the first meeting with the king, he was all “There’s not even an Archdemon leading the Darkspawn!”, and I literally rolled my eyes and went “So, there’ll be an Archdemon”. :smack:
I think I’ll go back to playing Torchlight. It has even less of a plot, but at least it doesn’t pretend to have one. And you get to play with guns, and a dog that summons zombies…
I think my personal problem with DA’s combat system is that it supposedly does much more math behind the scenes than the D&D based games, but tells you much less about what’s happening. YMMV, of course.
At least we don’t get to “enjoy” a lockpicking mini-game.
I’ve definitely stopped worrying about it after the plot reveals I got from your post. I’ve been playing fantasy RPGs since the early eighties, so I guess I’m just to familiar with all the tropes to derive any enjoyment from them.
It’s just that there aren’t that many large scale single player RPGs being released anymore and I was kind of hoping that Bioware would use the opportunity of making their own setting to create something original. I guess what we really need a spiritual successor for is Planescape Torment.
I do have to say that the end of the Mage Origin actually managed to surprise me.
I expected it to be yet another RPG “trust your friends.” Thing is, I actually accidentally reported Jowen the first time, trying to see if I could reason with Irving. I was actually surprised he was a blood mage. I probably shouldn’t have been, but I’ll admit I actually didn’t see that coming until… oh… the second he has his creepy as hell speech when he smashed the phylactery. Granted he made up for it.
Well, they (Bioware) did say that this was Baldur’s Gate’s spiritual successor - and BG wasn’t so much a grand original take on generic fantasy as as a celebration of what made it cool in the first place. Of course, if you think generic fantasy epics are lame to begin with… :p.
FWIW, I don’t think the story itself is particularly original, nor is the setting, but I do think it’s rather well handled, and you don’t see every twist coming from a mile away as was the case with recent Bioware titles (Kreia is a bad guy ? Who’d a thunk it ?)
BTW, the game is called Dragon Age, and you’re eyerolling the fact that it has dragons in it ?! What’s the matter with you ?
I guess I’ve always had a soft spot for Forgotten Realms, since I used to DM pen&paper campaigns there. But it’s miiighty generic of course.
Well yeah, there was one point in DA where I was fully expecting to be betrayed, but the betrayer wasn’t the one I was suspecting it to be. I guess that’s something.
Nah, I was eyerolling the fact that it has yet another “Brash young king who ignores the advice of his elders in his search for glory”.
Loghain’s betrayal was a shocker. mostly because I read the first book set in the world (The Stolen throne). That’s your friend’s son, your king, you bastard!
One thing I REALLY, REALLY don’t like as a fan of their previous D&D based games and as a fan of D&D in general is the utter lack of details to the combat system, feats and spells.
I know they did this to appease the masses who, if they were to see actual numbers and calculations, would whine and cry about how “complex” a game it is.
::sigh::
I don’t want to just know that shield cover defense “provides a chance of deflecting missile attacks”. HOW MUCH? Give me the numbers! And just what is the difference between that and shield defense? I NEED to know if I’m going to make smart decisions about what talents to choose and when to use them!
I died recently at a bandit ambush in Denerim. I was arrowed to death by 10 archers, despite having shield cover activated. Should I have chose shield defense instead? Bugger if I know!
I’m enjoying the story so far. Yeah, the Darkspawn are basically the “not-orcs” and Ferelden is basically “not-Middle Earth,” but it’s still interesting enough to keep me reading all the Codex entries. Some of the voice acting is pretty laughable (did you know you can skip lines by pressing ESC?) but overall done pretty well. The combat is fun, though occasionally unfair. I’ve been through Redcliff and the Circle Tower with the sloth demon, and thus far the hardest enemies have been packs of wolves. The graphics, while not amazing, actually have nice little touches that I appreciate. I have a screenshot with a fight with some bandits on the road where one bandit is falling to his knees with his head cut off while Alistair is finishing a sword slash that killed the bandit leader and sent a spray of blood coming out of his chest as he falls to the side. It was a sequence that could have come out of the television commercial.
I think Bioware did a good job. Anyone who played NWN2 can see what an improvement the gameplay is. And I agree that not doing this as a D&D game was a good idea. I find myself thinking back to Baldur’s Gate and having to sleep after every big battle just to recharge my spells and recover my health and mana, and remembering what a pain in the ass that was. Gradual health and mana recovery between battles just might be the best improvement. Also, let’s be honest, many aspects of the D&D 3.5 rules are pretty useless in a computer game.
Also (missed edit), even though a true butterfly effect is probably unobtainable in an RPG, Dragon Age does provide some nice consequences for your actions. For example, I couldn’t convince the Revered Mother to release the qunari from his cage in Lothering, so I left him there, thinking maybe I’d come back later, but I would receive word that the town had been overrun by the darkspawn, and he had presumably met his end.
Small nitpick, NWN2 is done by Obsidian and they have a reputation for messing up sequels (NWN2, KOTOR2)
The game system is okay, though a lack of numbers is annoying and some of the talents can be described more specifically. I’m sure with the tool-kit up you can peek at the scripts that control each talent and see what they do exactly.
Something rather grating is how is damage calculated? All there is a weapon’s value, so I have no idea if there’s any advantages an axe has over a sword.
I never got all the love for NWN. NWN 2 was better (for me at least) in every respect. I’m sure KOTOR2 would have been great had they actually finished the game instead of having it rushed out of the door.
Yeah that pisses me off. I bought a talent to boost my attack power and it was only like 5% or less for way too much stamina. I had to reload so I could relevel. Why can it not just say boosts attack by x%. It really looks like they were trying to get away from raw numbers in the descriptions which is dumb for a game this complex.
Well I’m pretty sure you have to at least put one point in the trap skill (or maybe be controlling the rogue of your party?) but anyway once it’s spotted you should be able to just right click it like a chest. The rogue will go and it will kind of sink down (which seems to switch it off so other people can pass by without being hurt) and after a couple of seconds it’ll be gone.
I just checked Steam and suddenly I have a third Dragon Age key
Deluxe Edition
Pre Order Key
3 Another Deluxe Edition Key
I put the third one in the bioware site and it finally let me register my game. I don’t know if anyone else had the same problem (as far as I’m aware it’s only the UK Deluxe Edition that was having this problem) but if you were you might want to check.
I spread my archer-rogue and Wynne out, while Sten and Alistair tanked. He’s hard to mez, but anytime any mez came up I’d try. Lots of micromanaging tactics. Save the lyrium vein, and when he starts the blizzard count-down, move away.
I also had a paralyzation rune on Alistair’s sword, which infrequently activates.
I generally horde potions, as I hate running out, but this was one of those battles where I finished with nothing left.
And now I’ll have to do it again. I re-rolled, wanting to do the same origin but to get it right, as a dual-blades rogue (was trying to do both blades and archer previously, and sucked at both). Got a really sweet kill on the ogre in the tower, similar to Duncan’s kill.
At least the enemy AI in this game is dumber than Icewind Dale II, where everything would come at you if you tried to pull just a few. With friendly fire, and so few AoE controls, I need to face enemies only 2-3 at a time.
For Farscape fans, Morrigan’s outlook on life seems very Peacekeeper-like. Must not have been much of a stretch for Claudia Black.
Developer’s console seems a little difficult to enable, but one of the codes I saw was for increasing party size. I’d like to do that, just so I can keep my puppy around.
I need help with a boss. This is grinding my gears badly. The boss is in the “Orzammar/Dwarf” phase of the game, and I beleive it’s the ultimate challenge there.
It’s the rotating-face stone guardian boss
OK, I know how to beat it; this does not mean I can. The problem does not lie in the boss, but in the act that my party is a pack of suicidal lunatics. Even Wynne seems dead-set on pulling every enemy in sight. Any way to focus them just on the target I attack and not initiate combat? I can choose to have them hold, but I can’t beat enemies on my own.
There was a bug with Steam in general not displaying the key to register the game. It was still useable, and findable, just not shown through Steam. I had to go into the launcher -> configurations -> some tab or other and it showed the key. Steam just fixed the bug that didn’t show it.
I’ll grant you darkspawn being “not-orcs” (at least until more is revealed, but so far the minor differences make you pretty much right), but Ferelden is most definitely NOT “not-Middle Earth.” It’s more like the bastard child of Faerun and Thay that was delivered by Bran Mak Morn (sorry, couldn’t think of any other magic hating religious zealots…) and then sent to an orphanage with Geralt of Rivia for its own protection. I can see the plot being LOTRy, but the setting is much too high magic (for one) for it to be a good Middle Earth expy.
Have you tried the tactics slot? Enemy: Target Main character, Attack is pretty good on focus fire and perhaps add Enemy: Any, Wait.
Ok I tried that combo just before I posted. It seems to do mostly what you want. Alister stood there doing nothing until I was attacked. He then beat down that mob but went back to doing nothing until I targeted something else. I even ran around in a circle being attacked and he stood there like an idiot.
I don’t know why he attacked the first guy though. Perhaps because there was dialog before the fight he counted as targeted.
Missed the edit window. I did a couple of small fights. The behavior seems to be:
Attack anything that gets a hit on me even if I haven’t targeted it or am fighting back. (sadly I’m not near anything ranged so I’m not sure if he’d go after them or not. I’m sure if that was the case you could add a third slot to have him not target ranged)
Attack whatever I’m attacking
If he kills my target he swings a couple of extra times on the next closest mob before going back to wait. This is odd perhaps he has to finish his ‘round’ before his behavior is rechecked.
Not perfect but seems very close to what you want.
The easy way is to grab all 4 of them in a drag box, and order them to attack the guy you want. However you have to cycle through giving orders if you want anything other than a basic attack at that point.
Yes, that’s what I mean, sort of. I mean, let’s face it, high fantasy is a genre that has been explored to Hell and back. Every storytelling device that made it work has been done to death, and then the deconstruction of them has been done to death too, so that we’re now on retreads of the original tropes but with an irony to it, and maybe a twist. Or something.
I dunno, the game still keeps me guessing for now. For example, I’ve got three theories on Morrigan’s mother :
1) She’s the archdemon
2) She’s really Andraste or the Maker
or 3) She’s really the daughter, Morrigan is the real original Witch of the Wilds
Plenty of winks, winks and ominous portents to support either of these three “classic” big reveals… but I still don’t know which one it is going to be.
Another, more straight example would be the battle at Ostagar :
I did not expect Loghain’s betrayal at all. I always figured the twist would be that the brash young king gets in over his head in centerfield, is saved in extremis by the reinforcements, quips to his wise tactician that “see ? wasn’t so bad after all. Glory for the handful of survivors !” and then the Big Bad swoops in as a gigantic horde of not-orcs-at-all gets silhouetted on the mountaintops. Duncan and Loghain go for the synchronized Told You So, Dumbass dance.
Yes, but again, every king+councellor+underground magical mercenary order combination has been done. Wise king, ambitious vizir ? Check. Wise king, treacherous monster hunting caste ? Done. Silly elders, brash but right king ? Seen it. Etc…
The city elf racial prologue was a bit of a cliche too, although, I admit that that is because I will never have the guts to pick accepting the noble-sons offer of 40 silver. I suspect, though, that he’ll betray me in the end anyway. (My vulnerable little sister/cousin pleading to take her home. sniff)
I did not go to Redcliffe based on some of the comments earlier in the thread. Instead, after doing the obvious quests in Lothering, I went to the Daelish forest clan. (I gathered up some quests, and am just starting into the forest there.) It seems to scale the encounters to my level. That’s a relief, because that means I don’t have to worry about trying to do something programed for characters of higher level.
