Dragon Age

If you're an RPG fan then you HAVE TO GET THIS GAME! :)

If you enjoyed Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights then you HAVE TO GET THIS GAME! :)

IMO the graphics are awesome. I've heard people say that they're not overly amazing (good, but not amazing). But IMO on my rig which lets me crank all the settings to max, they're awesome. The story is very absorbing which brings you in and makes you want to learn more about what's going on. The game play is fun and as usual Bioware has made levelling, equiping and managing multiple party members at once really cool. There are loads of good cut scenes that I presonally always enjoy with games like this.

It rocks.

Go get it and I challenge you not to enjoy it after giving it a chance for a few hours.
 
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DA is awesome. Best to get the PC version though - for me the console version doesn't pull it off as nicely as the PC version.
 
Smooth Criminal said:
DA is awesome. Best to get the PC version though - for me the console version doesn't pull it off as nicely as the PC version.
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I agree, go for the PC version if you're undecided. Only the PC version offers both the over the shoulder and tactical view points where you can scroll between the 2 depending on what works best at the time. I've also read reviews saying the console versions just dont look as good as the PC version. That would maybe depend on what computer you've got,...but again based on a few reviews, even with a mediocre machine the PC version will still look better.

But once again, to your original question, the game is awesome.
 
got it on xbox and wow is it ****.
All i seem to do is skip cutscenes and constantly press A when they talk.
like OMG shutup! never seen characters talk so much!
 
The game is awesome , got my RPG juices flowing again.
However some other ppl i have introduced the game to think otherwise
Just know that there is alot of dialogue in the game and this seem to bore some

ME on the other hand ,im totally enjoying the story- very engrossing and the combat is freaking awesome. I cant wait to play it through a second time on a more difficult setting as it really tickles the tactical bone :P Which hack and slash RPG have left somewhat dry;)
 
dpkyle said:
never seen characters talk so much!
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Lemme guess, you never played the older Bioware RPG's? They don't make action RPGs, they make deeply story driven games. It's what makes the games so awesome!
 
Modern gamers are just lazy. CRPG's are suppose to have tons of dialogue. DAO also doesn't come close to planescape torment as far as this goes. Still plenty of content. I think some modern gamers are just lazy.
 
I am a little more cynical with bioware games as of late, but to put it bluntly

Dragon Age got nothing on Baldur's Gate ;) . It's not even AD&D / Forgotten Realms. Bioware made their own little world this time round [probably trying to get away from the Wizards of the Coast licensing etc etc] . So just when you expect the complicated class configurations/abilities/types/rules as found in Baldur's Gate, you quickly get "snapped" out of it realising this is not AD&D rules ;). They even removed the number crunching from the whole thing, i don't even think you can clearly see a damage log.....so it's definitely alot more "mainstream" to include a less hardcore player ;). This is not necissarily a bad thing, this is probably what sells the game in the first place, but i'm not convinced if you seriously played Baldur's Gate , that DA:O actually remotely comes close to the functionality and depth of BG :).

As cool as it is of Bioware to dream up their own fantasy world/theme, i don't think their world is as rich as the Forgotten Realms setting found in Baldur's Gate.

If i can compare Dragon Age with other Bioware games, i'd rather compare it with KOTOR and Mass Effect than BG. Slap a fantasy setting onto those, and you got Dragon Age.

Either way, Dragon Age is pretty much THE single player RPG to get right now, no doubt about it. Anything else pales in comparison. In fact i can't even think of a solid RPG since Mass Effect.......possibly The Witcher [which fyi also used Bioware's engine] .

I guess Bioware is in the same spot as Blizzard. They got the engine, they got "formula" [story telling] and can bring out basically anything and it'll be great. There's no one else with any kind of "consistency" in the Single Player RPG market other than Bioware.
 
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Not sure why the fact that its not Forgotten Realms makes it a sub-par game? I personally got a little tired of the fact that most good games originated from Forgotten Realms. I say kudo's to Bioware for creating original content. Its certainly a riskier choice on their part, and in their case it worked beautifully.

DA:O is a great game supported by great lore and background. Gameplay is a tad unbalanced at the moment, with specific setups needed for the higher difficulties.

All in all, I see myself playing this game for months (if not years) if the community is as great as it was during the NwN 1 games (tons of user created content and scenarios).
 
dakeyras said:
Not sure why the fact that its not Forgotten Realms makes it a sub-par game? I personally got a little tired of the fact that most good games originated from Forgotten Realms. I say kudo's to Bioware for creating original content. Its certainly a riskier choice on their part, and in their case it worked beautifully.

DA:O is a great game supported by great lore and background. Gameplay is a tad unbalanced at the moment, with specific setups needed for the higher difficulties.

All in all, I see myself playing this game for months (if not years) if the community is as great as it was during the NwN 1 games (tons of user created content and scenarios).
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Well to put it this way, Bioware created their own world, except they were totally unoriginal at the same time. So it's quite evident even THIS little world originated from Forgotten Realms/Tolkien, minus all the years of depth and backstory found in FG.

They still stuck to the classic "dwarf,elf,human" + "mage,warrior,thief" thing and left the juicier parts found in Forgotten Realms/AD&D out of it, i.e. Drow,Orc,Half-Elves,Halflings,Gnomes [as playable races] and more pure classes like the Cleric,Monk,Druid and the whole Mage Schools of Magic concept. It feels like a condensed Forgotten Realms instead of an "alternative new world".

Then there's all the Forgotten Realm religions/gods [Asmodeus/Mystra/Lathander/Tempus/Tyr] . So far i've only encountered ONE religion [the chantry] which resembles your typical Roman Catholic church. This scenario however might hit more closer to home resembling a real-life Christanity vs. Pagan/Atheist thing <---- which makes players get more 'involved' with the particular setting as it is more familiar than a bunch of Pagan gods ;).

So i'll grant Bioware's latest tale this. DA:O excels in this grey morality/ethical theme [religion , racism , nobility etc] , where in AD&D you had the more strict "Lawful-Good" and "Chaotic-Evil" arch types. It's actually the interactions between your own characters that drive your curiosity to find more , NOT the "must beat the evil darkspawn " cliche main plot ;).

And sure, one may say "meh i'm tired of AD&D/Forgotten Realm settings". But let me ask this? When last did anyone release an RPG Game using that setting? According to my record it was 2006, Neverwinter Nights 2. That's it.

So i'm willing to say a proper new Forgotten Realms RPG is long overdue to be honest.

Anyone remember a character called Minsc?
Minsc has a strong desire to uphold good and be heroic, though with an extreme fervor that causes those around him to regard him as possibly insane. His animal companion is a hamster named Boo, who he believes is a "miniature giant space hamster" and consults for advice. Boo's actual nature is left for the player to decide.
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How interesting is DA:O characters compared to a party member like Minsc? ;)

I think people has forgotten Baldur's Gate's Depth....
 
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diabolus said:
I am a little more cynical with bioware games as of late, but to put it bluntly

Dragon Age got nothing on Baldur's Gate ;) . It's not even AD&D / Forgotten Realms. Bioware made their own little world this time round [probably trying to get away from the Wizards of the Coast licensing etc etc] . So just when you expect the complicated class configurations/abilities/types/rules as found in Baldur's Gate, you quickly get "snapped" out of it realising this is not AD&D rules ;). They even removed the number crunching from the whole thing, i don't even think you can clearly see a damage log.....so it's definitely alot more "mainstream" to include a less hardcore player ;). This is not necissarily a bad thing, this is probably what sells the game in the first place, but i'm not convinced if you seriously played Baldur's Gate , that DA:O actually remotely comes close to the functionality and depth of BG :).

As cool as it is of Bioware to dream up their own fantasy world/theme, i don't think their world is as rich as the Forgotten Realms setting found in Baldur's Gate.

If i can compare Dragon Age with other Bioware games, i'd rather compare it with KOTOR and Mass Effect than BG. Slap a fantasy setting onto those, and you got Dragon Age.

Either way, Dragon Age is pretty much THE single player RPG to get right now, no doubt about it. Anything else pales in comparison. In fact i can't even think of a solid RPG since Mass Effect.......possibly The Witcher [which fyi also used Bioware's engine] .

I guess Bioware is in the same spot as Blizzard. They got the engine, they got "formula" [story telling] and can bring out basically anything and it'll be great. There's no one else with any kind of "consistency" in the Single Player RPG market other than Bioware.
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The character relations and story is much much deeper in DAO than kotor or me.

The only other game which has party banter that even compares to dao is the bg games.

I don't think a simplified ruleset makes the game less complex. The character builds still allow enough different options with the different specializations to build very different and varied characters.
 
Well while i sound negative about DA:O, i'm just comparing it specifically to Baldur's Gate. If we ignore BG, it remains the best RPG available to date. It is obviously a "step up" from KOTOR and Mass Effect [but that we expect since it's all bioware games] . I am certain Mass Effect 2 will again be a step up from DA:O , but at the same time not entirely different.

As for originality, not so long ago, someone posted this:

"Bioware Cliche Chart"
http://hellforge.gameriot.com/blogs/Hellforge/Bioware-RPG-Cliche-Chart
Direct Link to Chart : http://gza.gameriot.com/content/images/orig_320200_1_1257581825.png

And Bioware clearly got quite defensive at this, responding on their forums. This response [below] gives quite an insight on why they do certain things with their plot.

http://meforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?forum=144&topic=705597
BioWare said:
So I'm supposed to believe someone is smart enough to do a big Excel spreadsheet with color coding and stuff but not smart enough to know about Campbellian archetypes?

Yeah, guys, every BioWare game has the same plot! See, things are kind of normal, and then things change and you have to go out and do stuff, and you go to crazy weird places! Aaaaaand so yeah, totally the same story.

That's asinine.

The core idea isn't that bad -- I sense that someone started out with a good concept, like "Hey, you go to four places a lot," and then they just decided to add some more filler rows to try to make a real zinger, except that when you actually read the cells, a lot of them are stretches.

In any event, the "intro, four planets, finale" structure is something we have used often for a few simple reasons:

1) It's easy. It's not as easy as making the player do everything in order, but you can generally just treat each area separately except for a few variables, which makes logic-testing and QA work a ton easier. What happens on Feros stays on Feros. BioWare knows how to make these games, make them solid and workable, and ship them -- and if need be, we can always cut areas, which sucks, but we can do it if need be. Some structures don't allow for that, which is why you end up with games where it's clear that the devs ran out of time or money at some point.

2) Players can understand it. In usability tests on one project, we learned that players with more than four things to do at a time in any given area will feel frustrated -- they get overwhelmed and have no idea what to do first and get the names mixed up. So you don't dump twenty small planets on the player all at once. You hit them with a few big things that they can understand: "Go to Feros." And then once they're there, they unlock several different things to do that don't compete with the rest of the universe, because right now you're on Feros. "Kill Varren." "Get Power Cells." "Turn on Water Valves." "Go to ExoGeni." (And we even cheat a bit by giving you missions, which are big and obvious, and assignments, which we tell you are less important.)

In testing out our missions for ME2, the single biggest lump of story feedback we've gotten has boiled down to Information Flow. When a mission feels clunky, nine times out of ten it's because we either told the player way too much all at once and expected the player to keep it all straight, or we didn't actually tell the player enough and so the player is kind of lost. Dividing up our game into four or five large worlds allows us to control information a bit better.

(And to be clear, that four-worlds-and-out thing is a simplification that ignores major critpath events and makes it sound like you only visit four big areas in KotOR, which flat-out isn't true.)

3) There's nothing wrong with it. It's a structure, like any other. Humorously snarking that our games have a beginning part that is streamlined and introduces you to the game, a middle that allows you the freedom to go to several places and have adventures, and then a tightly focused ending is like riffing on how romance novels generally start out with two people being attracted to each other but having emotional issues, then gradually building trust, then having a complication that splits them up, and then in the end they get together and are happy. People who create fiction in any form use a structure appropriate to that form. They do it because their audience understands and responds on an emotional level to that structure.
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