Dragon Age: Origins…
… the game that has been the talk of many of my fellow friends and of the NWN Community. I started playing about a week ago, and I believe I’m almost finished with the game now. There is really only one word to describe it: Awesome. If you haven’t gotten it yet you should. There’s no point in me doing a review (as is Maerduin’s very suggestion as well), so I’ll just mention of few of my more major nuances.
I’m very impressed with the world BioWare has created, although there’s been a few parts of the game I wasn’t fond of. The going back and forth in Orzammar with their huge load times was ridiculously annoying, not to mention there’s about 6 dungeons to go through and 3 very tough bosses to fight. The three tough bosses wasn’t as much of a complaint, but they certainly added to the amount of time I had to spend there.
The area design of some of their exteriors, however, leaves something to be desired. I suspect it has something to do with the console versions, but who knows. The only areas I thought were decent looking were the two snowy areas in the game. From what I can tell in the game also, there are no DayNightSettings. Not sure if this is true with the toolset yet, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
And my last nuance has to do with mages, in particular, that of Morrigan. If you don’t know about it, you might find out. I just thought it was sort of a letdown, but maybe BioWare has something planned for DA2, who knows. And my biggest gripe: the mage hats. They make any mage you have look like a jester. Come on, there has to be at least one cool looking mage helm out there…. BioWare?
And I remember reading that there’s supposed to be some very difficult decisions to make. Honestly, haven’t found one yet, unless its still to come. The line between right and wrong is still there, and its easy to tell who has been right and who has been wrong (unlike The Witcher where they’re both just wrong). Well, enough about that.
I haven’t really decided if I’m going to do anything with Dragon Age yet. Probably will, but unless I’m in a group, I probably won’t have the time to do a full-fledged module unless I plan it a few years in advance. So we’ll see. I have yet to crack open the toolset.
On another note, I found this video the other day. I can’t wait for this game, but I do hope they change his haircut… it looks aweful:
http://g4tv.com/videos/41458/The-Witcher-2-Assassins-of-Kings-Gameplay-Trailer/
Can’t wait!!
Really? No daynight settings? That is a bit…odd. I’m hoping that’s an oversight on the modders part, because that’d be quite an omission by Bioware.
And you hit the nail on the head. DA simply seems like far, far too much work for an individual to mod with. NWN2 is quite insane, but it walks the fine line between total insanity, and amusing craziness. It’s workable, if not a bit absurd. That reason alone is why I’m sticking away from DA modding.
I’ve cracked open the toolset a few times, and it has some pretty nifty tools in there. Unfortunately, I don’t think all those nifty tools cancels out the pain you’ll put yourself through to learn the toolset and then make a mod from it.
In my opinion, its no better than the Djinni toolset since it has no multiplayer and some of the controls are flat out awful (why make the controls for navigating an area and a level different? And why make it so that the only way to rotate a level is if you have the middle mouse button?). There’s also another nuance with the camera I saw. Zooming is extremely sensitive in some occassions and non-existant in others. For example if you wanted to zoom in at a small part on the terrain to texture it. You can’t get as close as you want because the Zoom tool will slow down to a crawl before its at the right distance! 3DS Max suffers from the same nuance there.
Again, love the setting, love the game and I’m sure the toolset is capable of doing great things. I just don’t think it’s worth the amount of time you have to put into it.
I just wrote a long entry about DA myself http://middleforest.blogspot.com/2009/11/dragon-age-some-impressions.html
To sum it up – from a builders point of view I’m unimpressed if not disappointment. Bioware was never great at area design, and once again they proved that fact. Sometimes it’s just boring, sometimes it’s sloppy. No detail like in the Witcher, no nifty NPC schedules or day/night cycles – everything appears quite outdated.
As for the story though, since you mentioned it: I love it. The character depth, the storyline and yes, the decissions. All is wonderful and there’s all the detail in it you miss on the technical side of the game. If you haven’t run into the tough decissions yet, be sure they’ll come. Some of the results of decissions you considered easy will surprise you too, Bioware learned a lot from the Witcher here. Often if you decide for the obvious good the result might not be as good as you thought.
All together, the storyline is an emotional rollercoaster and I enjoyed it more than any ther Bioware game yet. I love the game as a singleplayer campaign, but building and modding is another thing. The toolset is quite intimidating, but apparently quite powerful too. Last night I discovered the functions for lipsyncing voiceovers…. nifty! However, the general artwork (and of course the lack of multiplayer) rules it out for my stuff at the moment.
Wow, I made some bad typos up there… sorry.
I finished the game two days ago, and there’s really one decision that I thought could be considered hard, and even then, it wasn’t too difficult.
*Spoilers*
Morrigan gave you the choice of I leave with or without your baby.
Alistair acts like Anakin when you try to spare Loghain. Not a very convincing argument on his part.
Werewolf quest was pure black and white.
Dwarven quest was like choosing between apples and oranges.
Branka or Caridin. Another black and white quest.
*End Spoilers*
Personally, they weren’t difficult. The only difficult choice that I had was in Mass Effect when choosing which companion to save assuming you actually cared about both of them. It’s a matter of opinion really. Not to diss on anyone, but I just don’t see the difficulty in choosing
I was much more frustrated trying to figure out how 5 votes out of 7 was considered losing. BioWare’s math on that one is just wrong.