Dragon Age is out

[Xon]

I will give this much, the game needs MORE MONEY. I can deal with levels becoming absurdly hard to get because after a point you can obliterate anything...but buying that shiny necklace? Better save your pennies...

Pickpocket apparently helps with this, I've got a friend who is using pickpocket on this main character (mage) and it is a massive early game start. Making your own potions saves a fortune as well. Clensing aura (spirit healer level 4 spell) purges wounds on party members, so two overlaping fields of those means you don't need to worry about wounds ever again.

Buying potion incredients at a fraction of the cost and not having to worry about wounds saves a lot of money.

[charlemagne]

That's true, but there's still plenty of high-end items that cost 80 what's-it-called Sovereigns and more, and I really doubt that you'd ever be able to buy all of them - especially because there's also lots of skill/talent-books to buy.

My bad little Elf mage just did the circle and killed Wynne in the process - it'll be interesting to see how I'll manage without a spirit healer for the rest of the game. Or maybe I'll make Morrigan into one. But I think I'll try to get by with crafted potions and out-damaging/cc-ing the enemy. I noticed during my first playthrough that Wynne wasn't that helpful overall, sure battle-rez and her cleansing aura make things a little easier, but during bossfights my people where jugging down health potions all the time, anyways.

[Serafina]

Grabbed the game, playing an Elf Arcane Warrior on Level 9 right now.
Medium armor and two-hand sword.

I'm focussing on non-damage spells - particulary because most damage spells force you to sheat your weapon.
Good healing capabilities, and i can take a single enemy out of the fight with forcefield - and if its just a single enemy left (say, a boss) it's great for regenrating mana.

However, i still get hit waaay to often, and my party takes too much damage - i'm constantly weak on healing potions.

I think i will invest in dexterity for the next levels - it does the same for hiting like strenght, but adds defense, too - and since i dont need strength for damage and requisites, its the better deal.

[Ghost Rider]

That's true, but there's still plenty of high-end items that cost 80 what's-it-called Sovereigns and more, and I really doubt that you'd ever be able to buy all of them - especially because there's also lots of skill/talent-books to buy.

This is pretty much what I am meaning. Potion making, stealing, etc. they are all nice and make things easier. But it's the 80-100G item that grants huge bonus...and hell is needed on things beyond Normal is what's pissing me off in terms of "Not enough gold". Literally I've been greedy, evil as fuck in gold responses and in general to maintain the most gold. And the most I've hoarded is close to 400.

[White Haven]

I think that's rather the point, and it's an interesting element. In most, games with a moral-choice system, they money-grubbing-bastard responses feel petty, because you always have enough cash anyway sooner or later, so whatever. Those super-expensive 80-130g pieces are there so that there's a reason to become a greedy Wall Street executive, but I repeat myself. It makes going for gold a viable path towards defeating the Darkspawn. Those items are leaps and bounds better than anything else, but you'll never be able to get more than one or two and probably not even that if you don't pump the unfortunate for money at every opportunity and then rob them blind to boot.

Basically it all ties back around into the persistent question asked through the game, 'How far do I need to go to safe the world, and how much of that is want rather than need.'

[White Haven]

Having cleared the game, I hereby give it a postmortem.

Ability costs and mana/stamina regeneration are still all the fuck out of whack. When the game's planning on throwing a dozen or more things at a time at you, under no circumstances should it take significant amounts of a glacially-regenerating supply pool to kill a single enemy. Area effects are far more efficient, but swiftly result in the mage having to dance for his life due to aggro pull. 'Mana regeneration' items/active abilities/passive abilities seem to do shit-all. They'll provide a tiny, tiny trickle of mana back, enough to cast an occasional low-level spell after maybe 20-30 seconds of combat. New flash, the battle's OVER by then, or if it's not then it's serious enough that you're popping potions like a junkie. Check me, but wasn't an IV feed from your potion belt directly to your heart irritating back when Diablo did it? Give characters meaningful regen, either passive of reactive to kills or something else, maybe a mode, and put a longer cooldown on potions to compensate. Now your characters feel stronger AND the game's less obnoxious to play.

Glyph of Repulsion. Have every mage you ever have get it as soon as possible. Two people with the spell can keep it perma-up in one spot, and that is the only way your casters will ever be safe from the million and two melee out there. Plus it's fucking hilarious to watch it drop and eight darkspawn go sailing across the room in all directions. P. S. Effective sorcerous defenses against melee are good if you want to allow people to play magi. Arcane Shield is not one of them. Please hang up and try again.

Levelling. Having a power-per-level system in which the majority are activated attacks only makes sense if Exhibit A, mana/stam costs and regen, aren't suuuper out of whack. At least 50% of the crap I trained never got used, because after the first few seconds of a fight all anyone's got the energy to do is white-damage anyway. Oh, and the white-damage equation is ridiculously skewed towards melee, staffs never seem to do more than twenty-odd damage and often less, and they're never enchantable. My Arcane Warrior was swinging for ~40-60 on most enemies, plus Ice, Fire, and TK weapon, PLUS three enchant slots. Even with Staff Mastery, the same character shot for perhaps a quarter to a third of that.

On a graphical front, overall very good, there are a couple oddities that distract but not cripplingly so. Only one of them is unique to Dragon Age, to be fair. Transparencies do very weird things to glows and depth-of-field effects. producing soft, blurry areas that suddenly turn crystal-clear for a moment around a character's hair or through the bars of a cage, then go back to being blurred. On a more general note, and perhaps the 3D modelling crowd can chip in. Why, in any engine I've seen, do characters fail to pick things up. Specifically, they pick an item up, and the engine seems unable to keep a frame of reference between the character and the item, so the item jiggles wildly about in the middle of a cutscene. The example that most comes to mind is that of a certain...hat, to avoid spoilers, in Orzammar. It's put on in one scene and wiggles all over the guy's head. In the next scene, once presumably it's part of a unified model as a helmet, it's perfectly steady. Another comes when the main character has a greatsword stabbed through something large's neck, and is struggling to pull it out. The sword weaves all over the place, even the tip of the sword, which is supposedly buried in the aforementioned neck and as such difficult to remove. Lastly, off the cuff, on level design as it relates to graphics. For fuck's sake, if you're going to give a closeup of an item, make sure it's got a high-res texture? They avoided this for the most part, but I definitely noticed it on one of Andraste's statues during a cutscene. Muddy as all hell.

Voice acting was overall decent, but there were frequent pacing issues where you could hear the break between two voice clips. The character's inflection changed suddenly, giving them the appearance of wild mood swings, and the break was often too long or to short. Alistair in particular often stumbled over his words. Also, and I understand they probably did this for space reasons given the console versions, but having every single line voiced except for the main character is a step backwards. Mass Effect voiced the main character, and it brought me more into the universe as a result, and it's by the same company. It's especially jarring given SWTOR being planned as 100% voiced.

Overall, I really, really enjoyed it, and I was quite happy to see that Bioware has learned how to do a system of proper choices this time around. They've figured out that you can be draconian without kicking puppies; it took them most of a decade to do it, but it bodes well for future games if they manage to retain the lesson. Playable mages felt a bit like the redhead stepchild of the game, particularly with their single weak attack animation. That's especially visible given how much time you spend white-damaging once you've blown your load on spells, but the melee combat animations were quite well-done. I still want to know where the heads of decapitated enemies land, though.

4/5.

[Ghost Rider]

I think that's rather the point, and it's an interesting element. In most, games with a moral-choice system, they money-grubbing-bastard responses feel petty, because you always have enough cash anyway sooner or later, so whatever. Those super-expensive 80-130g pieces are there so that there's a reason to become a greedy Wall Street executive, but I repeat myself. It makes going for gold a viable path towards defeating the Darkspawn. Those items are leaps and bounds better than anything else, but you'll never be able to get more than one or two and probably not even that if you don't pump the unfortunate for money at every opportunity and then rob them blind to boot.

Basically it all ties back around into the persistent question asked through the game, 'How far do I need to go to safe the world, and how much of that is want rather than need.'

But that's not entirely my point. Even if you go the ultra penny pinching greedy fuck route...you do not get enough. I've played it twice and so far going the regular good route and the penny pinching route grants no difference barring one maybe two of the items...if you're lucky. Thus why ever go the route if at the end the bone is half eaten and slobbered upon?

Worse still the DLC grants not only better shit...it gives you the one thing I despised they didn't do in the regular. A storage place. The game has you either lug around the junk in some vain effort to go maintain a inventory when it forces you to grab junk ad infinitum. To say nothing that it grants the best sword, some of the best armor, an immense host of better weaponry and an added warrior that is better then most of the rest of the cast.

They had some good ideas but the ending execution was poorly done in parts for items and money. As for the rest of the game, it does give a varied choice department that isn't EBIL DAK LAWD or SHINING PARAGON OF JUSTICEGOOD!!!, which is refreshing and sad at the same time.

[charlemagne]

Specifically, they pick an item up, and the engine seems unable to keep a frame of reference between the character and the item, so the item jiggles wildly about in the middle of a cutscene. The example that most comes to mind is that of a certain...hat, to avoid spoilers, in Orzammar. It's put on in one scene and wiggles all over the guy's head. In the next scene, once presumably it's part of a unified model as a helmet, it's perfectly steady. Another comes when the main character has a greatsword stabbed through something large's neck, and is struggling to pull it out. The sword weaves all over the place, even the tip of the sword, which is supposedly buried in the aforementioned neck and as such difficult to remove

I seriously never noticed that in DA - are you sure it's not a "personal" glitch on your system?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I seriously never noticed that in DA - are you sure it's not a "personal" glitch on your system?

No, it definitely happens in the game. The Orzammar scene is particularly noticeable.

To answer the question, well - 3D graphics programming is hideously complicated, and rather demanding on the system as well (hence, dedicated GPUs). Without seeing the code I couldn't tell you exactly why our friend in Orzammar's hat wiggles around like mad, but I can tell you that the reason it's doing that is about three times more byzantine and indecipherable than you can probably imagine it being. Fixing it likely entails a good deal of calculus and might be more trouble than it's worth in terms of processing power.

[charlemagne]

No, it definitely happens in the game. The Orzammar scene is particularly noticeable.

Ok, then it probably just didn't bother me enough to remember it

BTW I don't agree that not voicing the PC is a step backwards. Judging by what I remember from maybe 30 minutes of ME playing, the dialogue in ME is way simpler than in DA. Isn't it just a wheel giving options like "yes", "no", "maybe" etc.? I guess it's cheaper/less space-consuming to voice that for 2 different player types - male/female - instead of voicing the myriads of options given in DA for 2 sexes of 3 races.

[Tolya]

BTW I don't agree that not voicing the PC is a step backwards. Judging by what I remember from maybe 30 minutes of ME playing, the dialogue in ME is way simpler than in DA. Isn't it just a wheel giving options like "yes", "no", "maybe" etc.? I guess it's cheaper/less space-consuming to voice that for 2 different player types - male/female - instead of voicing the myriads of options given in DA for 2 sexes of 3 races.

Yes, that is true. ME dialogues where simpler and the game wasn't as long as DA. However, as someone noticed, voicing the main character (even despite less complex dialogue) added much more depth to the game.

I can only guess that Bioware's recording studio is working full time on SWTOR, but I would still appreciate the main character not being a mute whose expression is limited to an occasional raise of an eyebrow.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

In ME you played a predefined character though, a la Torment or the Witcher. All you did was pick gender and an unused first name.

DA is a bit more classic CRPG in that you create your own character, complete with traditional "voice sets". It's not so much a step backward as it is just not taking any steps forward from the style of that specific subgenre.

[charlemagne]

Yes, that is true. ME dialogues where simpler and the game wasn't as long as DA. However, as someone noticed, voicing the main character (even despite less complex dialogue) added much more depth to the game.

I can only guess that Bioware's recording studio is working full time on SWTOR, but I would still appreciate the main character not being a mute whose expression is limited to an occasional raise of an eyebrow.

I can see that, and I wouldn't really object to a voiced PC - in the end I just don't like it. What bothers me about it is that for one it kind of cements a big part of a character, which doesn't really work for me in games like DA, where so much of what makes your PC is left to you, compared to games where you might even have a name and fixed appearance. And secondly, what would bother me even more would be that first you read trough all the possible answers, and then have the selected one read to you again - I'd be constantly skipping PC spoken lines anyways

[Serafina]

Wait, how can a voiced main character be a bad thing?

You already have predetermined answers in DA - they could just voice it for the about eight voicesets you have (four for each gender IIRC).

Of course, that would be a LOT of work - About four answers on average for thousands of dialoge choices for eight different voicesets. And since it's the main character, you would want good voice actors, too - multiple for the different vociesets (or at least one for each gender).

[charlemagne]

Wait, how can a voiced main character be a bad thing?

In the way I tried to describe... in that giving a definitive voice to the things your character says may work against what you imagined for your character.

But this discussion really is pointless, as there's no voiceover for your PC in this game. Since they did it in ME, which uses a different and simpler dialogue system than DA does, I guess we can conclude that doing voiceovers for player dialogue of a scale like DA displays is impractical for some reasons, probably both disc space and cost. And like I said, I don't really need/want voice acting for the PC in games like DA anyways, where there's no predefined PC.

[Stark]

I don't like voiced PCs in customisable character games. It's fine in Witcher; Geralt is whatever Geralt is. But if they're trying to allow players to create their own sort of character it's inappropriate to have eighteventy billion faces and 2 voices (one cockney, one thug).

Being able to choose what set of grunts and shrieks is one thing; dialog being voiced is even amusingly useless because who wants to wait for some guy to say it when it takes 2 seconds to read?

[White Haven]

I just find it jarring when everyone else is voiced and the character, who theoretically has the most critical things say, is not. It brings me out of the scene when it bounces back and forth between voice and text line by line. All or nothing, please.

[Stark]

So make it optional. Oh shit, 5s solution to non-existent problem! It's hardly an issue anyway; the PC side of a conversation is even more skippable than the NPC side. Frankly, the more 'storybook' the game wants to be the less real scope there is for customisation, so it's a bit moot. We can't all have Oblivion's top-shelf dialog system after all, and ME's attempts at 'dramatic scenes' were a) pretty uninteractive and b) unsuccessful.

[wautd]

Depends on party and did you do at least the flames and extra people. The dwarf and company helps as extra bodies and so does the elf. The flames don't do much but it's damage.

Flames? Elf? I must have missed those
I only got the upgraded militia and the knights and I killed the dward (tried to persuade twice but it always ended in a fight). On the bright side, you get a really nice longsword in the loot. I managed it by changing my party (dropping a rogue for an extra warrior).

I'm now in the mage tower. Spoiler

dream world

I had a hard time quitting the game during this sequence

I will give this much, the game needs MORE MONEY. I can deal with levels becoming absurdly hard to get because after a point you can obliterate anything...but buying that shiny necklace? Better save your pennies...

I noted that as well once I left Redcliffe. In most games you got enough money to buy one or 2 good 'uns at the start, nevermind you'll be swimming in gold endgame. Here not so much. I really wanted those skilltomes
Oh well, more satisfaction untill the point you do get to buy them I guess

[dragon]

Hum at the first fort that gets destroyed the quater master has a darven money making belt for sell it help get you a little more gold.

But by time I got to the final onslaught I had only 250 soverigns, 1 nice weapon, 2 sets of drake armor and 1 set of dragon scale armor. The Dragon Scale armor is very nice.

My mage was still using the same weapon she had 8 levels before hand.

[Ghost Rider]

Depends on party and did you do at least the flames and extra people. The dwarf and company helps as extra bodies and so does the elf. The flames don't do much but it's damage.

Flames? Elf? I must have missed those
I only got the upgraded militia and the knights and I killed the dward (tried to persuade twice but it always ended in a fight). On the bright side, you get a really nice longsword in the loot. I managed it by changing my party (dropping a rogue for an extra warrior).

There's a spy you can convince to defend the town and barrels of oil you can use.

I'm now in the mage tower. Spoiler

dream world

I had a hard time quitting the game during this sequence

The Fade is loads of fun and getting the +1 stat builders are very nice.

I will give this much, the game needs MORE MONEY. I can deal with levels becoming absurdly hard to get because after a point you can obliterate anything...but buying that shiny necklace? Better save your pennies...

I noted that as well once I left Redcliffe. In most games you got enough money to buy one or 2 good 'uns at the start, nevermind you'll be swimming in gold endgame. Here not so much. I really wanted those skilltomes
Oh well, more satisfaction untill the point you do get to buy them I guess

It's an interesting trade off. I swear they give barely enough for you, and screw your party. Hand me downs ahoy!

[wautd]

Gotta love how you feel all big and awesome after not only saving Redcliffe from the Undead Hordes but also purging the Wizards Tower from the Demonic Spawn from HELL before getting soundly defeated by a garden variety of wolves
Eventally made it to Baldurs G... I mean that harbor city.

[Netko]

For all those having difficulty with the combat, I suggest two four settings in tactics:
- for stamina users, self->health->below 25% -> use least powerful health potion
- for casters:
self->mana->below 25% -> use least powerful mana potion
self->health->below 50% -> heal (you do have it right?)
ally->health->below 50% -> heal

Combine this with cheap essentially endless mana (infinite lyrium from mages tower) and health (infinite *root from the elves) potions, and the fights become significantly easier. For 3g or so, which is, what - 2 armor pieces later on?, you can make 99 lesser mana or health potions (infinite flasks are available from the camp dwarf merchant).

[Netko]

I accidentally posted the last post without this next part - by the time I edited it, I couldn't save the edit any more. Sorry about that. Anyway:

Each of the four sections used up ~60ish mana and ~30ish health potions in my case (party configuration: Alistair and me warriors, Leliana for lockpicking and Wynne for healing), which, again, is peanuts as far as costs go. The mana potions are more significant - Wynne is practically using them intravenously, the health ones are just backup in case she dies or cannot cover more then one member (group heal on cooldown or something). Once I adopted that configuration I didn't need to think much about health any more - occasionally there is a spike which you need to handle personally, but for consistent damage, Wynne or the other characters take care of it themselves.

Anyhow, I have to agree with posters that consider this the game with the most meaningful difficult choices out of Bioware so far.Spoiler

The tower and the elves don't present much of a choice if you play a good guy, but the dwarves have a pretty tough one in both the golem question - which represents an excellent practicality vs morality question, and with the succession. But the one that definitely impressed me is the Landsmeet sequence. I'm still deciding how exactly to resolve it. Lograin is great because hes just the exact shade of gray that you can't simply dismiss his motives - by the end of the sequence I did not want to kill him, yet if you don't Alistair abandons you - and there is no "[Persuasion]He's more useful alive" all-is-well button. And the question of who gets to rule is much more complex then I expected. The Queen is a scheming bitch archetype, but she isn't an emotionless manipulator, but instead cares about her dad, which makes her relatively likable. Yet you get the feeling that, while very competent, she might not look out for Feralden's, and especially the Gray Wardens', interests if she gets the crown. On the other hand, Alistair is a bumbling fool as king, with the only good thing being that he's Eamon's and your's puppet. And he's an emotional rollercoaster, definitely not someone that's your first pick for the crown. If you go for the compromise marriage, on the other hand, there doesn't seem (I haven't seen the ending yet) to be a happy ever after ending... And that is even without going into all the let-the-heads-roll combinations. Choices, choices... I like it

[Serafina]

Another good trick if you have two mages in the group (most likely main character + Wynne):

Let both of them cast rejuvination at each other, and throw in mass rejuvination, too (stacks IIRC). Add Spellbloom, and you have a pretty good mana regeneration.
It is not that much of a netgain, but it is great to keep mana up in longer fights AND it helps the two other character in the group, too.

I do not use that tactic all too often, since it is a lot of micromanagment (tough you propably could set up tactics for it), but mostly because i do not need it, since i wade trought everything but bosses without any problems on hard.
Arcane Warriors are pretty awesome