Dragon Age: Origins Catch-All

CptGlanton wrote:

There was a consistent vibe in the pre-launch discussion that EA put together an ad campaign that was designed to lure people in with a promise of sex and violence. Certis himself, I recall, commented that he was ignoring the trailers completely because he felt they were in no representative of the real game. I feel that my comment is an accurate reflection of the community's attitude toward EA's hype campaign. I would like for you to find comments from the pre-launch discussion of the game's ad campaign that indicates otherwise. Thank you.

You're right - the marketing campaign most certainly was "trash EA threw together" - but your comment basically equated the game to the marketing campaign, so Jeff was basically responding to you calling the game "trash EA threw together" by extension.

Well they did get one thing right: Dragon Age IS the new sh*t!

Citizen86 wrote:

Well they did get one thing right: Dragon Age IS the new sh*t!

I see it as The Old sh*t: Remastered.

Old is new?

Jeff-66 wrote:
CptGlanton wrote:

I feel like I'm playing the game that was promised to me by the ad campaign that we all said was just trash EA threw together to fool non-gamers into buying it.

Thing is here, in no way do I think you're just trolling, but damn ... 'trash EA threw together' ??

I'm kind of speechless on that ...

I think he's saying that the ad campaign was trash EA threw together... and I'm inclined to agree.

CptGlanton wrote:

When I say that it's bad, what I really mean is that it's got a tin ear. A very, very tin ear. There doesn't seem to be any style or craft to the character design, your interactions with NPCs, the music, any of it.

I find nothing whatsoever tinny about the game. Let's see if I can describe my impressions without spoiling anything...

The characters are deep, both in background and in range of expression. In my second playthrough I have not bothered to make buddy-buddy with Alistair. His responses are markedly different from my first playthrough, both in tone and in emotion, as conveyed by the out-freaking-standing voice acting. I'm struck by little details like how he acknowledges you. "What can I do for you?" and "I'm here for you" when he is friendly, and a brusque "Yes?" or even a somewhat annoyed "What is it?" when he's not so friendly.

The game has a wide variety of character archetypes as well. Though some of them fall along fairly standard fantasy lines, others have some interesting twists. You have a former slave now enslaved by his career and seeking freedom both physical and emotional, a servant of the priesthood with a checkered past, a home-schooled girl in an adult female body who gets along better with creatures than with people, a stolid barbarian scout dealing with the consequences of his battle lust, and one of the most powerful mages in the land who is at the same time doling out advice and full of self doubt.

Even the villains, usually the worst drawn characters in fantasy settings, are interesting in Dragon Age. We mostly meet the human bad guy only in cut scenes and second hand dialogue describing his dastardly deeds. Yet, in the end, you can still see his point of view, understand his motivations, and given context, some of his actions may even appear rational.

I'll admit that the large, nebulous Darkspawn enemy is a bit one-dimensional, but I think they're drawn more as a plot device than as a character or group of characters. Even their leader seems a fairly mindless beast through most of the story. Elements of the story try to make up for that lack of character by depicting the darkspawn and the archdemon as almost alien beings. Men, Elves and Dwarves (and Qunari) couldn't hope to understand their way of thinking or their motivations.

I'm curious how you could make it through the Mage Tower part of the story and still call the depiction flat. There's a lot going on in there. Political intrigue, allegiance, betrayal, bravado, cowardice, deception, a unique take on magical power, and an interesting dynamic between the religious and the magical, both in the large (the relationship between templars and mages) and in the small (the relationship between Gregoir and Irving).

I don't mean to be rude, but have you read the story-related codex entries at all?

Actually the Landsmeet is not the point of no return.

Spoiler:

You can do any side quest until you've recruited all four armies. I believe the order doesn't matter but doing the humans last makes it seem like the Landsmeet is the point of no return. Once you've recruited all four armies then you can do any side quest except those in Redcliffe. Going into Redcliffe Castle is the real point of no return and starts the end game.

Do monsters respawn in a level if you leave it and come back? I'm a level 8 and I'm trying to fight through a dungeon. I've just come across a very tough part and I'm low on potions. I want to stock up and come back, but I'm mid-way through the dungeon. I'll keep going if all the baddies respawn.

Nope, there is no respawn.

Also, back to the question about enchantments (before the rage kicked in ): Weapon enchants all stack, they don't cancel each other out. But remember, they only affect the dmg of your normal attacks.

BadKen wrote:

I think he's saying that the ad campaign was trash EA threw together... and I'm inclined to agree.

No, I was responding to this:

"I feel like I'm playing the game that was promised to me by the ad campaign that we all said was just trash EA threw together to fool non-gamers into buying it."

Dysplastic was correct. I was reading it that he was equating the game to the ad campaign, as he said "I feel like I'm playing the game that was promised ... [by the crappy ad campaign]"

Again, I respect his right to his own opinion, but I am perplexed at how he arrived at it.

What CptGlanton describes is a nice depiction of KOTOR and ME for me, and would seem to have nothing to do with the game I'm actually playing right now.

Last night I meant to quit and go to bed, and was just wrapping up some things in camp...I ended up spending over an hour just talking to the characters, especially Wynne and Morrigan. This is something I usually find supremely boring, but this was actually interesting and served a gameplay purpose because there are benefits to raising what my team thinks of me.

I was quite surprised at the amount of totally optional content wrapped up in those discussions. Of course, they might want to put extra into the camp conversation knowing you are likely to get to it at some point, but in the Mage Tower there was this Desire Demon I had a tough time with and so had to do her conversation tree multiple times. This is a one-time character, and there were tons of dialogue options and different ways the dialogue could play out, and again, it was actually interesting stuff they had put a lot of work into.

But people react to games however they react, and that's fine. There are numerous 'total classics' I've never been able to get into (heck I felt like people had played some better game than I had when they described KOTOR). The only annoying thing is when such a person keeps coming back to a topic to say, "Whelp, this game sucked for me." I assume that won't happen here, and it's a downer because there's nowhere to go with that conversation.

Oh, and may I say the camp was a brilliant invention? Dunno if they did this first, but it is SO MUCH BETTER than the BG sleep mechanic, and really does make for a nice break and good place to sell, etc.

I'm not going to pick apart Glanton's argument, but damned if I didn't have a near-religious experience with the final 3 hours of this game today. I think it has cracked my top 5 of all time. Final Fantasy VI, Symphony of the Night, meet Dragon Age. Get to know each other.

Deadron wrote:

Oh, and may I say the camp was a brilliant invention? Dunno if they did this first, but it is SO MUCH BETTER than the BG sleep mechanic, and really does make for a nice break and good place to sell, etc.

I agree. The only complaint I have is borne from my own lethargy. I wish my strongbox was relocated there, as I don't like going to Soldier's Peak to retrieve things.

That said, I found that despite all the hullabaloo about paying for storage space, I didn't use it very much. I mainly used it for storing gifts for characters I hadn't gotten yet.

Blind_Evil wrote:

That said, I found that despite all the hullabaloo about paying for storage space, I didn't use it very much. I mainly used it for storing gifts for characters I hadn't gotten yet.

I also haven't used it too much and am annoyed and having to do an extra trek...but the reality is you can extend your carrying capacity pretty significantly and there are lots of opportunities to sell (especially with the camp vendor), which means that so far I've run out of space exactly once (though I did have a few things tucked away in Warden's Keep).

I figured out something interesting in the last couple of days. The merchants are very sneaky. It seems that there are two parameters to each merchant. How much they will give you for your goods, and how much they will charge you for goods. They seem independent. In other words, each merchant may give and ask for different percentages. When they tell you they'll give you a discount, they may actually give you a better price on your goods, rather than their goods.

If you examine an item in an inventory (by using a radial menu), it will list its true cost. Compare that to what the merchant is offering for it and what merchant is asking for it and you'll see how they differ. Most merchants will give you 1/4 of the true value for an item. But in my current playthrough I have a merchant that buys stuff from me at 1/2 the value. That's 100% increase in gold income if I sell stuff to him, instead of other random merchants. I've read somewhere that asking price can also vary from like 120% to 300% of the true value.

In other words, educate yourselves about the merchants if you want to have extra money.

MoonDragon wrote:

That's 100% increase in gold income if I sell stuff to him, instead of other random merchants. I've read somewhere that asking price can also vary from like 120% to 300% of the true value.

In other words, educate yourselves about the merchants if you want to have extra money.

Good lord I have zero interest in going through this hassle, especially with loading times.
Playing Drug Wars on my TI-83 graphing calculator? Sure, that's the game I powered it on to play, and it takes ~20 seconds to go to a new city and sell.
In Dragon Age, with loading screens, very limited inventory, and a game that's already (very) long? No thanks.

Just finished my first play-through, 54:56. It was excellent overall, despite a few areas that were not to my taste. This is one that I will definitely play again.

Although I did not to do this but one time, I did replay a sequence toward the end to see what would happen if I did something differently and the results were quite a bit different: your dialog choices really do have an impact and are not just window dressing.

Also, I tried to play with each of the party members in the party (for the various interactions) but came to carry only the same 3 for the last half to a third of the game because I actually liked the characterizations, not just the stats/skills they had (actually, the 3 I had were probably not optimal for the style of game I was playing).

I think this may be on level with Baldur's Gate 2 for me; certainly this is the best RPG I've played in the past five years; better than Fallout 3, and even better than Oblivion.

MoonDragon wrote:

I figured out something interesting in the last couple of days. The merchants are very sneaky.

What the hell... that bastard dwarf in the camp Feddic isn't offering a discount at all! Even though he says so every fricking time you talk to him, he has a significant markup on everything, and pays crap for items.

This makes me a little bit angry with the game, seeing that I saved his ass in the first place and have been very nice to him all along. :-/

BadKen wrote:
MoonDragon wrote:

I figured out something interesting in the last couple of days. The merchants are very sneaky.

What the hell... that bastard dwarf in the camp Feddic isn't offering a discount at all! Even though he says so every fricking time you talk to him, he has a significant markup on everything, and pays crap for items.

This makes me a little bit angry with the game, seeing that I saved his ass in the first place and have been very nice to him all along. :-/

Another example of DA having a lot of ambiguity,maybe? I think that's pretty much in character with what a merchant would do, right?

Ok, so because of the recent Steam sale and everybody talking about this on the podcast I've broken down and picked up this bad boy. Here's hoping that my dislike for Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 doesn't carry over. From what I've played so far, the combat seems to function a lot better and is a lot more forgiving, so it's looking good so far. Anything that I should know that isn't described in the tutorials that would help any potential frustration in the future?

Datyedyeguy wrote:

Anything that I should know that isn't described in the tutorials that would help any potential frustration in the future?

Tom Chick wrote up the seven things he wished he had known.

My additions:

- Start as a mage

- Buy all the health you can in the early game

- Restart the game after a few hours to get a benefit from what you learn

- Give each mage one point in healing so you never get stuck without a healer (and for use before you pick up a kickass healer)

- Give each warrior/rogue one point in poison so they can use poisons (though I keep forgetting to do this)

- Be willing to replay combat to get a better outcome. With thought, a total wipeout can turn into a cake walk.

- Realize that character placement during combat matters a lot, and that a character being whomped on can usually "Run away!", and in fact kiting (running around so the monster follows you while others smack it) is a viable strategy

- Everyone can use ranged weapons and you want to make sure everyone has a bow or crossbow for when that is useful

I would add... if something is completely kicking your butt, leave it and come back to it later. In my current game, I started a particular group of baddies a bit earlier than I should have, and it was just impossible to kill them. I came back a few levels later, and while it wasn't easy, it was at least possible to deal with them.

Backpacks are worth it.

Deadron wrote:

My additions:

- Start as a mage

- Buy all the health you can in the early game

- Restart the game after a few hours to get a benefit from what you learn

- Give each mage one point in healing so you never get stuck without a healer (and for use before you pick up a kickass healer)

- Everyone can use ranged weapons and you want to make sure everyone has a bow or crossbow for when that is useful

- Be willing to replay combat to get a better outcome. With thought, a total wipeout can turn into a cake walk.

*shrug* Meh. All characters are viable and there is no need to restart. If you're unsure as to what you should put points in, don't. Wait until it's apparent what you need the points for. On my first playthrough I did not buy a single potion. And gave Morrigan (my only mage) a single point in healing only to lower the downtime between the fights. This was on PC-normal difficulty.

Deadron wrote:

- Give each warrior/rogue one point in poison so they can use poisons (though I keep forgetting to do this)

- Realize that character placement during combat matters a lot, and that a character being whomped on can usually "Run away!", and in fact kiting (running around so the monster follows you while others smack it) is a viable strategy

These two, I would agree with 100%. The poison one is subtle but a very powerful tidbit of information. As far as placement is concerned, I'd add that you need to learn to use the cover to your advantage as well. But this has been discussed in the past already so I won't rehash it.

MoonDragon wrote:

All characters are viable and there is no need to restart.

There can be multiple benefits to a restart if you aren't happy with how things are going. I had intended to play one kind of character and found that didn't fit, so my early skill choices kind of went the wrong way and I wasn't playing the kind of character I wanted (see Tom Chick's similar complaints). In essence, understanding the nature of the game (the kinds of characters you will get for your party, and how you want to focus your character) can lead to a desire to play it in a different way. Easier to do that early than to suffer through tens of hours with something you aren't happy with.

To be more politic, I can phrase it as, "Don't be afraid to restart a few hours in if you aren't happy with your early choices."

And if you are someone who gets more out of pushing through no matter what, then that works too.

Deadron wrote:

I had intended to play one kind of character and found that didn't fit, so my early skill choices kind of went the wrong way and I wasn't playing the kind of character I wanted (see Tom Chick's similar complaints).

A very good point. After all I have an abandoned character for that exact reason. And yes, I think my objection was purely on semantic grounds. Your "correction" is a lot more agreeable as a suggestion to new people.

Does Morrigan approve of *anything*? Good grief.

Katy wrote:

Does Morrigan approve of *anything*? Good grief.

Give her little trinkets, mostly silver stuff, and the Grimoire you find in the Circle of Magi quest. She's difficult to deal with sometimes but she has the most interesting backstory in the game I think.

larrymadill wrote:
Katy wrote:

Does Morrigan approve of *anything*? Good grief.

Give her little trinkets, mostly silver stuff, and the Grimoire you find in the Circle of Magi quest. She's difficult to deal with sometimes but she has the most interesting backstory in the game I think.

Morrigan is one of my favorites. Following her advice has changed the dynamic of my party, for sure.

I managed to make it with Morrigan, and was both humored by the "appearing bra" and that multiple shots of the sex scene looked just like the dolls having sex in Team Force America.

She asked me about the Grimoire and I don't have it...must have missed that loot. Hopefully it's still sitting around...

Also I really want Morrigan in the party, but now that I have Wynne and can seriously use the healing, and the new Rogue (was hoping there'd be a non-goody-2-shoes Rogue eventually!), and Shale as my tank, I don't have a space for her. I was building up her shape shifting abilities, but I didn't increase her tank attributes.

What's a group leader to do?

My friend started playing this yesterday, and we went and got Chinese food today to talk about the game. He told me he is going to use Alistair, himself as a rogue, Morrigan, and Wynne for the entire game, without any variation. Does anyone else feel like he's painting himself into a corner without need? There are definitely times when I feel an off-tank is a better addition to the team than a second dedicated damage dealer. A fight that a lot of people have trouble with at the end of Orzammar comes to mind. I just feel all the characters are too interesting to never deal with more than half of them.

Chris Remo was right. It's essentially the same sex scene that's in Mass Effect. And its the same one for each of the characters. When I played through as a female rogue and got in the sack with Leiliana, I kept looking at the T.V. thinking, I don't think you two are doing it right.

Blind_Evil wrote:

My friend started playing this yesterday, and we went and got Chinese food today to talk about the game. He told me he is going to use Alistair, himself as a rogue, Morrigan, and Wynne for the entire game, without any variation. Does anyone else feel like he's painting himself into a corner without need? There are definitely times when I feel an off-tank is a better addition to the team than a second dedicated damage dealer. A fight that a lot of people have trouble with at the end of Orzammar comes to mind. I just feel all the characters are too interesting to never deal with more than half of them.

I've played most of the game with a core group, so that I could concentrate completely on their stories, figuring that I would switch to a different group on another play through and find out more about those characters. My group has been myself as the tank, Leliana for a rogue, Wynne for healing, and Morrigan as a DPS/CC mage. This has mostly worked out well for me, generally when forced to use another character I would swap out Leliana and it didn't disrupt the dynamic of my group too much.

Having said that, I'm at the very end now and focusing on only a few characters has started to backfire on me for a few reasons:

Spoiler:

I chose not to go along with Morrigan's plan and she left my party, which has been a crushing loss for my party. She had most of the crowd control abilites, blizzard, backup heal, and a number of other abilites I had become very reliant on. I never bothered to get many of those abilites for Wynne, since it didn't seem necessary to duplicate them between her and Morrigan. It's making the final battles really rough for me, I just had to take a break after dieing for the 3rd time at the base of Fort Drakon.

The other problem was defending the gate, which really wasn't too bad, but I had never used Sten, and barely used Oghren and my Dog, so that was an adjustment. In fact, when the fight started I had something like 33 points to spend on Sten's stats, 4 skills, and 11 abilites I think.

Nightmare wrote:
AP Erebus wrote:

Ok, it's on Steam for 25% off...

SHOULD I BUY THIS?

NOTE: I loved Mass Effect, but didn't play much of Baldurs Gate

Dude - if you have to ask, the answer is "Yes!" :)

As it turns out, I didn't pull the trigger. Saving money and hoping another good deal comes up in the 5 day sale.