Dragon Age Origins: SUBMIT YOURSELF TO THE TAINT

Can this conceivably live up to the hype? It's a day one purchase for me (which has kept me away from Borderlands and Brutal Legend) and a serious commitment, so here's hoping.

yeah I'm kind of buying this immediately

it looks good but will it be DUMBED DOWN FOR CONSOLE

fuck console for this IMO

fuck pc for anything imo

but yeah you're right I fear :*(

^_^ yay PC wins

i'll be playing my (preordered) copy on 360 and while I'm generally of the opinion this'll play better on PC; it'll DEFINITELY look better on my HDTV.
We can contrast and compare. The suggestion that this is a more epic less otaku FFXII has me a bit excited.

I'm excited enough for this that I spent an afternoon playing Dragon Age Journeys; and really, if you're willing to waste time on a shitty flash old-school tactical point & click rpg just for some cheesy special items, then you're as big a loser as me.

Will get on PS3 because my Mac is too crappy to make into a dual-boot gaming platform.

finished demon's souls just in time for this as planned but couldn't fight the compulsion to start a new game of demon's souls with a different type of character. i am genuinely at a loss for what to do now. i will probably buy DAO next week and then sit at home just staring at the two boxes, paralyzed with indecision. why could one of these assholes released their game in the summer?

last sentence is an affront to written communication but you get the gist

i'm a bit aghast that I have this en route on Tuesday and have not yet even started demon souls.
Being an active video game hobbyist requires lots of money time and devotion these days.

holy shit @ everyone's worlds being pushed to pure black all day halloween. pure genius and pure evil.

don't know anything about this. my brother is responsible for modeling the dragon in the ads though. also did the big spider that one of the characters turns into in the longer promotional cinematic.

this game is just gonna be 100 hours of "tis it St Swithin's day already?", right

Weird Eurogamer review, where they say it's fatally flawed, then talk about all the things that make it great, then reiterate that it's flawed, then give it 8 our of 10:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/dragon-age-origins-review

game critic thought process: 80 hours? Okay, B+, 8/10, whatever, I gotta play COD:Terrorist Sim II.

im kinda more prone to believe bad reviews these days cuz so few people actually give them haha

I bet videogame developers (who from what I understand generally have metacritic bonuses tied in to their deals) must fucking hate any review site that doesnt use decimals in their reviews.

This game makes me wish I had a decent PC. I really dont think I'd be able to run this game through bootcamp on my one year old imac. =\

metacritic chooses decimals themselves when they dont

Not with sites that use numbers instead of letters or nothing. It just translates to 80. Its probably just a drop in the bucket of averages, but still.

But yeah Im with u s1ocki. It makes more sense to read the bad reviews these days since most reviewers are lazy or too beholden to the publishers/developers for precious access and give any aaa title a 80+ no matter what.

this is sitting in my mailbox right now and i have work + class until 9pm ;_;

just came in the mail; can't imagine I will crack the wrap for at least another month. oh, demonsoulspaws

stfu u ps3 pusher

i'm still just a hopper; not entirely sold on the system yet. just that one game.

what is this oh __paws crap

I'm old here, so what is... 'Oh, Wrinklepaws'?

dot dot dot

oh, nhexpaws

don't you have a password to look up, webinar

: (

i admit i did get a good laugh when i was rifling through my junk mail and finally realized when your username was referring to

I bought this today. Even got the "Collector's Edition" because I'm a sucker for cloth maps for game worlds. Have not played, but the packaging is very nice. I'd give the packaging a 9.4 out of 10.

hmm sounds like a must-buy

early part of your review made it sound like an 8.3; i smell a sellout

played an hour last night. immediate thought: my 12-year-old Dungeon Master circa 1990 wrote better dialogue.

Demon's Souls certainly ain't free of groanworthy sub-Tolkien/AD&D malarkey, but at least it doesn't immediately drown you in it.

isnt malarkey-drowning the point of playing games like this?

The dialogue is cringe-worthy yet apropos; absolute Tolkien-esque schlock. I haven't played Baldur's Gate 1 or 2 in a decade, but I don't remember them as particularly noteworthy in the dialogue realm either. However, this has much better dialogue than Sacred 2.

By the way, if you've seen the intro to the Fellowship of the Ring you've seen the intro to this game.

dialog is fine, i don't know what people are expecting. the voice acting is decent so far too. it's a nicely presented game. bashed thru the dwarf commoner origin last night and am enjoying.

This armor you can get for mass effect 2 is mighty shitty looking

dialog is fine, i don't know what people are expecting. the voice acting is decent so far too. it's a nicely presented game. bashed thru the dwarf commoner origin last night and am enjoying.

― aarrissi-a-roni, Wednesday, November 4, 2009 7:26 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

^^same on all that. as I always do on rpg's, made a stabby/sneaky thief (female dwarf lol). Only thing that really bugs is her arms are too long so she looks like e.t. :(

Did we all play as dwarves last night?

I played for an hour whilst being drunk so I might have to revisit some of my decisions at some point today.

http://i34.tinypic.com/2eow8s3.jpg

"Dude, I got so drunk last night I created the UGLIEST character class..."

Still can't decide whether I want to play this on PC or 360.

that girl on the right looks like this face-tattooed homeless lady i see by the train stop some mornings.

I finally got a chance to play this for multiple hours and got really hooked. I'm an Elf Warrior (city version) because I'm boring like that.

I'm as far as The Joining, which was pretty sweet. Lord of the Rings vibes left and right, not that I'm complaining.

Also, I love how important the taint is in this story. I only managed to grab one screenshot
http://i36.tinypic.com/2jg7y9x.jpg

There was one part where Duncan was like "You will learn much more about this in the months ahead..." that kind of snapped me back into the reality of the time I'm going to end up sinking into this.

looool at title change

Sorry to post over and over, but how's everyone else doing? I'm guessing that everyone's been sucked in, so that's a sign of good things to come for me..

I have a little bit of buyers remorse for picking this up on the 360. Then again my computer cant really handle it (Mac running on bootcamp) which is the reason I switched over to consoles in the first place.

But I do miss the old BG way of playing.. =\

what's bad about it on the 360?

This is my first real time playing a game like this, where it's semi-real time but you can pause at any time and issue commands. I played BGII for a few hours once, a long time ago, but immediately gave up on it.

I'm worried that I kinda suck, especially in battles with 5-8 enemies at once. It seems like if I split up my party, then each section ends up getting wailed on, while if I keep them together and focused on one cluster of enemies, they do fine for a bit but then slaughtered by archers or long range attacks. I also haven't figured out how to effectively use my own archers. They always tend to fire from 100 feet away, missing over and over. I'm not sure how to get them to consistently shoot from ~10 feet away without manually moving them repeatedly.

360 perspective is different from PC and its not as easy to pause the combat and issue a bunch of commands. The textures are also totally shitty. Since the dialogue gets close up on the characters you can see how janky they look.

thread title otm. the tactics/a.i. is a little annoying. I do not like that you are given more tactic choices via talent points which is like punishing the player for your shitty a.i. design. It seems worthwhile to dedicate one slot on each char to using a potion when their health gets below like 20%.

I had an archer who would constantly switch back to his handheld weapons every fight. Or he would stand outside the fight doing nothing. the ranged a.i. seems screwed up. Also had the game drop a couple npc's into the ground a few feet.

my fighting strat is basically: sneak in with my main, throw some traps. bring in the crew to start things and then gank an archer. the game is fun and I will definitely play it through at least once. overall impression is that its a more talky version of diablo. closer to hack'n'slash then a true point and click rpg.

a more talky version of diablo.

ouch.

i also don't like the fat ass dog :(

i would never had suggested so

i am hoping I have an old save I can use to name it "k-lo"

Has anyone got to a point where you can specialize your class? I keep wondering when that will pop up.

DUUuuunnncaaaaannnn!!

I'm only at level 6, but doesn't the specialization screen say something about getting a point at level 7? I'm not sure.

Man, I'm 8 hours in, and apparently only 10% of the map, and 7% of "the game". fuuuuuuuck, man.

Platform indecision still killing me! Um, might torrent on pc and buy on 360 then see which grabs me.

Haha, I love that I haven't been on ILG for a while, but I come and see the DA:O thread and it's about submitting one's self to the taint. Two things in the first few hours struck me most:

1) Submit yourself to the taint
2) There was a tutorial-ish bit that had me kill some little rats and from the first strike my party and I were so blood-spattered that I couldn't help but laugh out loud. Seriously. Could there have been that much blood in the first rat? Jesus. Anyone else have this reaction?

Yep. There is waaaay too much blood. Actually, I haven't even looked in the options to see if it can be toned down (not removed) just a bit.

So now I'm at the point where I have a small assortment of people to throw into my party and I'm suffering from choice fatigue. Some people seem to really dig having a dozen characters to choose from in filling out your party, but I don't. It sucks because I feel like I'm supposed to switching them out, learning all the different character arcs and special abilities, etc, but I just don't have the patience. Same thing happened in Chrono Cross and the FFTactics games; I end up just sticking with my same boring crew all the way through.

Yep. There is waaaay too much blood. Actually

I read that there's a setting you can turn off called "persistent gore"

So which treaty quest did you guys do first? I went for the elf quest, got stuck in the tombs and headed out someplace new. On the way I think I doomed the people of Redcliff to death once I decided I didnt want to do that quest either. Where did y'all start?

the Blight has been very accommodating, waiting for me to finish dicking around in Redcliffe before taking over Boletaria or whatever.

Started in Redcliffe but am now at the Mage's place. Had fun in Redcliffe.

my hoarding instinct kicked in so i bought that warden's keep dlc and decided to hear straight in that direction. i've stopped off to do some side quests in Denerim en route and i'm currently enjoying getting my ass handed to me on the regular. i love that this game incorporates the old school rpg mechanic of presenting you with a mysterious object and asking if you want to fuck with it, and every time you end up unleashing some badass monster.

dammit this is good isn't it.

my poor credit card/sleep schedule

I bought the DLC too. It seems kinda shameful to make you pay for storage, but mission accomplished EA. You did it.

it was in you all along

when i bought the game it had a free code for the more expensive dlc campaign in the box so i couldn't really grumble at paying for warden's keep.

Troof. I kinda dig shale. He is my lead guy to absorb all the damage. Also simple to use and has more character than that dog.

i got shale code too but haven't seen him. I executed the assassin who wanted to join my party which was nice.

main party:
me/gnat rogue
morrigan
alistair - tank who dies every fight
fatty dog - better tank w/ lots of stuns

the harder fights that I have won usually end with fatty tanking and morrigan kiting and the other two dead

alistair is such a useless asshole. i want to jettison him for the oversized murdering immigrant guy from lothering, but i feel like i should keep him in for story purposes.

that murderer is a dick. nothing I do makes him happy. he just lurks behind me, silently disapproving my every move.

i told that guy I don't give a shit about him in camp and gained his approval. I plan on using him my next time through.

I gave the bard/rogue a flower as a gift and got this cool unlock of some abilities because it was her moms fav flower or something like that. Pretty cool. I feel bad after giving away a bunch of shit arbitrarily when I was trying to reduce inventory slots that could have been useful.

i dunno if that bard woman even does anything, but i keep her around to open chests. i used her to fool around with poisons for a while but they actually seem kinda crappy, and are somehow not available in the tactics menus.

i got morrigan the bear shape-change spell which was not as awesome as i had hoped.

i dunno if that bard woman even does anything, but i keep her around to open chests.

so misread this

So which treaty quest did you guys do first? I went for the elf quest, got stuck in the tombs and headed out someplace new

uh oh. I chose the elf quest, but I haven't started it. Hopefully I won't get my ass handed to me.

I like Alistair, especially for his shield bash skillz, but he always ends up getting beat up on every battle. I equipped some sort of item on him to make enemies stay away from him, and use an item on my main warrior dude character to attract enemies, but still he ends up mad bloody all the time.

Im about to go back to the elf mission after gaining a level or two and getting some better gear. Its also possible I got slayed because Im still learning tactics and might have used a bad strategy going on. The learning curve is pretty steep I find.

I'm not sure leveling will help, because don't the enemies level along with you? I guess it's more like how badass your equipment is compared to your level. Co

*slayed by ogre in the middle of sentence*

also helps ability wise

do enemies gain abilities as they level up? Probably not, I guess.

This game gets 10x easier once you add a healer to your party..

Shit, I'm deep into the Elf Quest, cruising along pretty easily, and then a dragon comes out of nowhere. I must be a tactical idiot, because I tried it three times, got him down to 1/4 health once, but otherwise just getting slaughtered.

AARGH!!

Somehow my saves on the PS3 got hosed - I can't load ANY of the 6 saves for my character I put 15 hours into honing into a not quite completely useless rogue.

Dangnabit, tried ditching my settings to see if that would help but no go. All trashed.

Decided to build a dwarf tank. The dwarf commoner origin is pretty fun - liked it better than the human nobleman.

I hit a total brick wall fite last night in 'the gauntlet' :( have to cross like 3 maps in shame to get out now.

o shit thats where Im at. theres a shortcut on the mountaintop that will let you shamefully exit faster.

I hilariously tried to fight the dragon on the mountaintop and got summarily pimp slapped. I will be back for u, dragon.

wait is "the gauntlet" the dwarf treaty quest? Or are you guys past all that nonsense? I'm not sure how to defeat the dragon other than have the mage freeze it repeatedly and have everyone quaff potions over and over again.

Man, I'm not even managing to see off the Redcliffe zombies. But I can't quite bring myself to switch the difficulty down to easy.

so like the wildly varying reports of the 360 version piqued my curiousity and I bought it and then I read the manual and Jared Leto's band has a song in it

and made you wonder why you waited so long to pick it up?

i've now come up against 2 fights that i had to retreat from totally and it is killing my gamer ego. i've been doing the side quest with the blood mages in the abandoned house. it took me ages to patiently work through the numerous fights in the house, which felt maybe a level above what my party should've been facing. and then i finally got through to the last room and there's 5 dudes, including an orange boss mage and two yellow guys. the longest i have managed to hang in that fight is maybe a minute. i can take down the two regular dudes and that's as far as i get. i did it over and over for an hour before doing the walk of shame back outta there. morale is low.

It helps to make tactical changes. I had Wynne use a lyrium potion every time her mana got low and proceeded to steamroll anyone and anything for awhile before I realize I had left it on and used 95% of my potions. But it definitely helps.

i have been playing on hard since the start ^_^ but wtf at this gauntlet fight:

***********spolier************
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you fight your own party but they are clearly levels above you and bust out all these abilities that give you no chance. I have tried it like 10 times micromanaging the hell out of it and can only get 1 of the four down before I am dead.

Sometimes normal is a little bit easy for me, but if I had to play this game with friendly fire I would pull my hair out

This game is also taking over my life. I have discovered 45% of the map and put in 30 hrs and am already thinking about which character and class I will use when I replay. =\

same, i am avoiding the golem dude until run 2. I may give up on hard b/c apparently golem is the best dps and I have no healer :/

I pretty much control the golem 85% of the time

Finally got past the Dragon and to the door of the Werewolf Den (99% sure this would be the end of the elf treaty quest), only to get totally asskicked by the Arcane Horror. As in, I can't even touch him. Anyone else done this yet? I've 18 hours in and only 19% of the way through the game. Good lord.

ok no this is actually good, even on threesiddy

after the lame sad little american elves origin story the voice acting got pretty good, although everyone talks exactly like Radiohead's guest spot on South Park

whoever made the trailers and came up with all those "Prithee I suggest thou give me a wide berth lest I disembowel thee" character quotes did a pretty good job of making their game seem stupider than it is

after playing a bit more i am pretty sure that the difficulty of the enemies doesn't necessarily scale with your level. random encounters definitely scale, but any set main or side quest encounters don't seem to. i ignored the main quest to start with and found myself in a couple of scrapes that were too much for me, then as i got back towards the main quest i found the game got easier, then went back to where i had been stuck before and those parts were surprisingly straightforward all of a sudden. now that i am progressing more on the main quest i have caught up with myself again and notice the difficulty going up again.

i am really enjoying this a lot. some very entertaining set pieces so far. i had all of my core party approving me to the point where they were developing special skills, and then that goddamn douchebag alistair got all pissy at me cos i got that lady to kill her kid and he dropped 32 points back down to neutral. i hate that guy but the story seems to be more about him than my guy so i feel compelled to leave him in, whereas i should actually bring along someone who doesn't die 30 seconds into every fight.

I think I persuaded him into only hating me -10 points after that, but I got the lady to die to save the kid; also his mother's amulet is in a desk in the refurbished castle straight after you do that bit so you can kind of pre-emptively cancel out his hissy fit by giving him that for +10. Not sure if the third option suggested at that bit (go off to get mages or some shit) is like an actual option you can pursue, it seemed impractical

Also funny that if you leave Redcliff thinking you can come back and do the siege whenever you like it just gets eaten

it just docked me the number of points necessary to take him back down to neutral, so because i had given him the amulet before then it was totally wasted.

Oh, I get it

Some of the Alistair / Morrigan whining shit does just make you want to have the option to shout I HAVE TO DO THIS TO GET FURTHER IN THE FUCKING GAME

I just played through the prologue/tutorial piece of this. It's fucking awesome. Can't wait to be an elf or a dwarf.

btw, if anyone is not sure about the dlc, the warden's keep quest is pretty awesome and you get access to some cool stuff. i think everyone gets the free code for the shale dlc in box, but i would've felt stung if i had paid $15 for that.

I think Im at the end of this just in time for new game Tuesday

enemies scale to a certain degree depending on what type. if you really want to rpgeek out ---> http://dragonage.gulbsoft.org/doku.php/

also urgent and key was learning that daggers are currently gimped for rogues so ditch them for dual swords.

Really? That would explain a lot.

yeah they are supposed to be 50/50 b/n your dex and str except the dex part is screwed and gives nothing.

that site is v interesting indeed, thx

This is gonna be absolutely next on the docket once I can put down Demon's Souls. How do they compare?

This is WAY more inviting than Demon's Souls IMO, although part of that is just because I'm biased towards PC games.

I'm kind of annoyed because I realized I was supposed to get the dog from that first town. Is it worth throwing a few hours down the drain? I keep getting overwhelmed by huge packs of enemies and my dudes just got slaughtered. I am still in the first little village you go to after meeting what's-her-face.

apparently the impractical third option in the Redcliff mother/son choice actually really works, even though it takes ages and the game makes it seem as if you don't have time to leave and go and do loads of other shit

Ok, why the fuck doesn't the AI think that running into a fire trap is a bad idea? Do I have to use a tactic slot for that? IF fire visible, DON'T run into it.

man every dungeon in this basically ends up turning into another dungeon until something you thought was straightforward has spiralled into some insane eight hour long wormhole of serious injury and cultist murder

http://gza.gameriot.com/content/images/orig_320200_1_1257581825.png

one of the scrns available on the dragonage official website is of a horned chick wearing pasties and a dust ruffle demurely covering only her kness. her head is spouting some kind of magic purple flame. i cant tell what its effects might be

i can imagine playing this for 30 hours straight over winter break

ha, my thoughts exactly!

alistair, man. no matter how much he levels up he always seems to stay terrible. i really regret sticking with him out of sentimentality. i should've jettisoned his ass at the first opportunity. maybe it's not too late to switch to shale. i haven't done the elf quest yet and the deep roads keep getting deeper so i figure i have a lot left to play.

you have a lot left. he sucks ass and can't even hold aggro for the 5 seconds he's alive.

i have been using the same 2 warriors, rogue and mage for the majority of the game, and every time the load screen with his stats comes up and i see contribution to party damage: 18% i'm all smh. i want to sit him down and do a 30 hour performance review. "alistair, i've been looking at your numbers and they are not good. not good at all."

i think he is supposed to be a tank and soak up damage. problem is no matter his armor or hit points he dies right off. stuns and magic are the best way to keep dmg off you and he has none unless you level him way way up. in retrospect I should have just made him a dual weap berzerker.

woah, submit yourself to the taint indeed

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/12/hot_gay_human_dude_on_swarthy_elvish_dude_action.php

lolz at bioware going equal opportunity.

Theres also lesbo action with Leliana if youre a female character.

And now I just read that you can go to the Pearl in Denerim and have a foursome with Zevran, Leliana and the duelist trainer. wau.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrqPM1yKmn8&feature=related

i won. the last fight took like 10 attempts. I think the one vs gahzkang (sp?) was actually harder. will have to kill Lilith next time thru.

my obligatory sex scene was alistair and morganna :(

wait, how the hell did alistair and morganna get it on?

i don't know who "gahzkang" is but i can't have far to go and now i am concerned. i killed lilith but it was way too early in the game for me. it cost me about 50 assorted health potions and all of my fancy arrows :(

being ranged will help you a ton in the last fight. i was able to make a deal with morganna right before the end that involved her getting it on with Al. I spent all game sucking up to her hoping for some lesbo action but it never happened.

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Unbound - gazkang qust

so this basically sucks on consoles, right?

time to lol at mac dude, basically

i played on 360 and it worked pretty well. froze up like 3 times. really didn't notice a huge graphics diff from the pc vids I've seen besides the menu system.

i am on ps3 and it is just fine, great in fact. there are occasionally some lame graphics glitches like clipping and so on, but tru confessions: i don't really care. at this point, i like my console set up and tv so much that a game would have to be straight broken to make me play it on pc instead of ps3.

ah fuck, i have that gaxkang dude open already then. something to do this weekend is suppose. at least i have a ton of healing again. might as well use it on something.

Load times on my 360 are like 7 seconds, which is pretty good compared to what I've heard some people say for the PC. PS3 might have a slightly longer load time than 360. PC allows top-down view but it isn't really necessary. I enjoy my console version a lot.

You guys!

I submitted myself to the taint (and I LIKED IT)

I killed Flemeth last night. Was surprisingly easy with a gang of archers and a dude in a flame retardant suit absorbing all the damage.

I can't imagine aiming the cones w/ a controller with the ease I do it with the mouse. I think there's only one real way to settle this debate: BRAWL ON THE SCHOOLYARD.

Also I beat it yesterday and started a new game immediately. Is this healthy?

Going to start this really soon -- what kind of character should I make? I was all psyched to start it but cgen was a bit overwhelming. Someone just tell me what to make?

Unless you don't play much video games, I suggest you start playing on the hard difficulty level (one higher than normal and on lower than nightmare).

I suggest that you play a Dual Wield Rogue. Pick a Dwarf or Human. A Human would get a bit more damage and a Dwarf would get a bit more survivability. Mages are fun but I wouldn't want more than 1 in my party because they require a lot more battle pausing to cast specific spells. However, I did read that a party full of mages is practically unbeatable.

some nice things to know that aren't spoilers

-your main character can get a specialization starting at level 7 and a second specialization starting at level 14. your secondary characters (teammates) can get one specialization at level 14. the cheapest way to get a specialization is to have a character that likes you to train your character or party member. this works for most specializations. (I'm at lvl 13 with my characters and I haven't chosen to get a specialization yet). Eventually you might want to look at this page of specializations to see which ones you want to choose

-you probably want to buy backpacks so you can hold more stuff in your inventory (unless you have the special edition Dragon Age with Warden's Keep which has a chest that lets you store stuff in). make sure you hit up the quartermaster in Ostagar both before and after you enter the Wilds. Each time you do, he will have a backpack for sale for a little over 50 silvers

-when your inventory is almost full or if you are about to go to an area that doesn't offer backtracking to a merchant - sell a lot of your items to make room in your inventory. I would sell all the weaker weapons and armor first. Then I would sell some usable items, crafting materials and maybe some ingredients (some side quests want you to collect ingredients). It might be wise to hold off on selling the stuff in the last inventory category called "useless items or something" because some side quests require you to collect the useless stuff (and eventually you can donate that kind of stuff for a good cause as well). I imagine that some of the stuff I have been saving from the "useless items" inventory tab really are useless and aren't worth keeping on to, but I never bothered to look up on the internet whether they might come up in side quests or not. Seems like cheating a bit.

-you can get some good experience if you buy 'Archivist's Sash' from a place in Denerim early in the game. (It gives you experience points for when you main character finds codex entries)

-there are only so many ways to get experience in this game since enemies usually do not come back to places you have visited (and if they do it will be once or twice at most). one way to make sure you are getting experience is to make sure that the npc's that occasionally join your party do not get the final hit to kill off enemies (by adding an option in their tactics menu that says 'if enemies health is <25% then wait). you can tell whether or not the character that joins your party is a npc that is just gonna leave eventually if their experience meter doesn't go up when you are fighting baddies. or if you want you can just google the list of characters that will eventually join your party. I don't think it's much of a spoiler but if you want to be surprised then forget about it.

-if you want to get the most experience in the game you will eventually want a 4 party team to stick with instead of swapping out characters all the time. However, I'm not suggesting you have to keep the first characters that join your party to be in the final four. Whenever a new character joins your party they come in a level higher than your own. If you are not sure which final four characters you are going to use then don't waste money on buying Tomes (which grant you extra points to spend on talents, skills, and attributes) because you wouldn't want to waste a tome on a character that isn't going to be with you for the final four.

-the 'Dwarvern Merchant's Belt' is good to have early in the game because it increase monetary gain whenever the character wearing it loots a corpse or treasure chest. I play with two rogues in my party so I can have the extra rogue be the stealer, lock picker, and trap detector while my main character can focus on getting coercion off the bat (and some other things). It's up to you whether or not you want to play two rogues though. If you just want 1, that being your main character, there are better things to put your points in than stealing.

-herbalism isn't a good choice for the main character

-shapeshifting isn't good

-here's a good thread on which talents are useless? (no spoilers). For instance someone said that the 4th lockpicking talent is useless because by the time you consider it you should already ave enough cunning to open all the locks anyways.

-when your characters level up you will have 6 attributes to put points in: Strength, Dexterity, Willpower, Magic, Cunning and Constitution.

Rogues need Dexterity, some Constitution, and either Strength or Cunning depending on what type you of rogue you want (ultimate guide for building the DW rogue can be found here) (and your rogue might want a little bit of Willpower eventually). I've read that there is a limit to the amount of Dexterity you should eventually get for your characters (it stops being helpful for most character types at some point). But you do need a lot of dexterity to be a dual wielder in general.

Mages need Magic and Willpower (more Magic than Willpower) and I'm not sure about how much constitution they need (I heard they can be fine without having as much as close combat characters).

I don't know much about warrior builds but you are pretty safe putting points into Strength and Dexterity.

--------------------------- ---------- -------- ----- --- -- -

I wrote a lot of stuff but you don't need to know any of it to play the game and have fun. So if you don't want the extra tips just IGNORE ME!

most practical: dwarf warrior, tank type build (after the rest of my idiots died shockingly early, my main dude was able to do the entire end fight on his own)
more fun: dwarf/human rogue, assassin type build

would not recommend being a mage as you meet a couple of decent ones and the combat tactics system makes spellcasters more efficient to automate than to play.

practical party build will have 2 tank types, a rogue and a mage. try to resist sticking with Alistair out of sentimentality, because he is a fucking baby, utterly useless, and generally an all-round asshole.

all good info! i think i'm going to throw myself at valkyria chronicles rather than this, but I should start up dragon age in very early '10.

Also supposedly the dwarf noble origin story is the best.

Just beat this for the second time this morning. I am a huge nerd.

Wow! This is getting a Mac port, and it comes out in a week? Not two years after the original?! I almost want to get it just for Mac boosterism. If only I was more of a fan of Baldur's Gate and backpack shuffling.

yeah maybe i will buy one for mac and donate it to underprivileged kids on macs Q_Q

Ubbawha? Man, I was just about to start back with this on PS3, but maybe I'll get the Mac version to go with the new iMac I ordered today.

Bioware's dubbed and dated its first official expansion pack, Awakenings, shipping worldwide for Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows March 16, 2010.

$40 ow

http://www.pcworld.com/article/185885/dragon_age_first_expansion_named_dated_priced.html

i might give this a chance once there's a huge Gold edition bundle with all the DLC and expansions included sometime in 2011

finally put in three hours on this last night, first as a city elf (more like SHITTY ELF mirit?) and then restarted as a dwarf commoner. Just made my way out of the caves; not crazy about the combat initially but the DEPTH this game exudes is both impressive and distressing.

i've been thinking about buying this to break my addiction to MW2. great plan right.

Sounds like you're trying to replace heroin with crack.

ok that's one vote in favor, anyone else?

lol does that make WoW meth, because I can't tear myself away from it to get further into Dragon Age (although I did at least SUBMIT MYSELF TO THE TAINT)

WoW is some kind of new designer science fiction drug. Like those goggles everyone wore on that one episode of TNG.

haha terrible

ehh i dunno about this.

i'd give it a B in gameplay, B in story so far. jesus, give me more HOMEWORK why don't you, really getting sick of flipping back to the codex every other minute

Do not disagree with any of that. And the boring fantasy bullshit does nothing to distract from the kinda lousy mechanics.

Appropos of nothing, but I was at the used bookstore today, and saw that Wizards of the Coast/Forgotten Realms had actually put out a novelization of Baldur's Gate II.

I did not purchase it.

That novelization has been out for... 9? 10? years? However old Baldur's Gate II is, that's how long that book has been out.

Yeah. I couldn't see the point in purchasing it, as more than half the fun of the dialogue from the game was the voice-actors delivering it.

I was home sick yesterday so I got around to playing this a little bit more; I love this fucking game, it turns out! Kind of torn though because I want to keep the dog, Alistaire and Morrigan but really, really need a thief character (I'm also a meat shield).

alistair is a complete tool. i promise you you will have nothing to regret and everything to gain by getting rid of him as early as possible.

aw, he's the only one I've built influence with so far

ah yes, but without revealing too much, you will likely lose all of that in one fell swoop well he decides to out himself as a whiny, inconsistent douchebag.

well=when

haha you realize you are just encouraging me to keep him in my party, right

http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/mistakes/

The dog is good early on but gets eclipsed by Shale in a big way.

In my second run through I made myself a thief so I didnt have to make a second run through every dungeon because I refused to take Leliana or Zevran with me on crawls because they suuuucked.

fuck, just realized that by walking into redcliffe the first time w/o alistair in my party i've completely cut off the "i'm a bastard royal" plot line.

sorry, spoilers.

THANKS A LOT, JERKSTORE

^_^

yr the one in looooove with alistair, how did you not hit that plot point?!?!?!?!

I've only just gotten to the little outpost town just north of the Wilds because I've done nothing but play WoW for the past year.

ok well, just between you and me, make sure you walk into redcliffe with alistair, let's just say it's ~interesting~

This is a semi spoiler but not really:

The first time I went into Redcliffe I realized I didnt want to be there just yet, so I bugged out and left the entire town to be overrun by the undead. Woops.

i am in my usual rpg turmoil where i have restarted abt six times because i can't stick to one character. At least i've got to do a lot of that origins stuff.

The last time I played this, well I've been on hold for a month, whenever I talked to Morrigan or the other girl, Lilianna? they get pissed off and say things like "do you like me or the other girl?"... I had been given them both presents but I thought it was clear that my character liked Lilianna (whatever her name is)... oh well

So basically, no matter who I talk to, one of the girls is gonna get pissed and drop about 26 points... I think it was 26. I don't care so much because I figure I can just do more things to Morrigan back up to 100% happy with me even if I have to make her cry for a while. Yeah, there is no way she will be my character's gf, what a bitch.

But if I don't talk to either girl I can have them both be happy with me. So I decided I just won't talk to these girls for a while.

I guess the only reason my relationships with them matters is because I am going to beat the game using only those girls and Allister. I already had too much invested in Allister to go with another guy.. anyways he isn't personally as annoying as some other characters.

I quit playing the game because the bugs started to get to me. I just need to update my 360 version but I can't do it at my place because I can't connect to the internet here (it would be a hassle)

Ugh, I gotta come back to this at some point. I kinda got exasperated at it because of the tedious combat. I should give it another try with a different group or something. Maybe make my main a tank? Who are the characters to use for an easy party makeup?

It is kind of hilarious how playing WoW has made me better at these games. The ogre fight took me totally by surprise when he picked up my main character and basically disemboweled him so I ended up three-manning it with Allistair, the dog and the random mage with judicious usage of kiting.

I think Dragon Age is particularly good for transferrable MMORPG skills because i don't really remember many other RPG's having such good aggro management and mana/stamina management systems.

I kinda got exasperated at it because of the tedious combat.

i did too until i realized this is not anything like old-skool D&D, which i was used to. it's a lot more like WoW i guess (never played it) or the recent edition of tabletop D&D. your characters have to be developed into a given combat role or it gets way harder. i had no idea how to manage aggro either.

...anyway, i highly recommend reading thru a character build guide. my first game i got to a point where i kept getting my clock cleaned cos i'd wasted all my levelling on stuff that didn't really work. my second game is going much better. and you have to put on all the sustained buffs and make sure your characters' traits are playing off each other.

there's basically two 'games', the narrative and the combat. in the narrative part you have set-piece dialogs and you can work thru those however you like, but the other characters may or may not like it. in the combats you are just a collection of numbers soaking up numbers or dealing them out.

so i finished this! not bad! i have my complaints, like it do with any game, but this was pretty impressive. the system is pretty good, the combat abilities are fun to dick around with, but you kind of HAVE to get them all set up right to survive, esp with a 4-character team. automating the non-mages seems like a much easier task than automating a mage, too. a lot of moments were only survivable by getting the mage's crowd-control stuff fired off just right. paralyze/cone of cold/force field/crushing prison, u r a traet.

i played as a goody two shoes female elf mage, with alistair as tank, sten as a hitter and leliana (my boo) as an archer. peeps bagging on leliana for being useless don't know wtf they're talking about -- by the later stages of the game with cranked cunning and all the abilities she was dumping damn near 350 dmg in a single shot.

i guess my biggest complaint is that i don't really want to play thru it again. i don't feel the burning need to check out the content for deciding things differently. maybe i'll just rip thru all the intro stories, just to see? you can tell in each major quest what the "evil" solution to the problem is, but (like in fallout3) none of them make as much sense, motivation-wise. i guess each major quest has some extra juice if ur from that spot (the tower if mage, eg) but eh, maybe later.

hi, me again. just thinkin baout this again

the clothes and armor all look fuckin dumb. esp mage gear. esp esp mage hats.

ya know, i just couldn't get into this. maybe i need to try harder. or revamp as a mage.

Goole I was going to suggest that you loan this to me, and then realized that I still have a bunch of yer wire DVDs so uh never mind.

ha sounds like an ok trade to me

Awakening is out! i'm interested. $40 tho, damn

that price is pure bull. if you need the original game to play it, a $40 expansion should have as much content as the original game to justify its price, and i doubt there is 80 hours or whatever on awakening. i would buy this right now for $20, but that's my upper limit.

EA is testing to see the community's limits for high priced add-ons and it's annoying that no one in the gaming press is calling them out on it.

yeah, I think I'd rather have the evil corporation charge twice as much as they should for an add-on than have them obliterate the talent that made them truckloads of money in a hamfisted attempt to avoid paying bonuses, but that's just me

(re: Activision, I really never thought I'd encounter a publisher that would make me say positive things about EA as a corporation, but there you go)

I'm going to do another un-through of the main game before I buy a $40 expansion, even though I want it. Just costs too much - horse armor redux.

Run-through, obv.

i don't buy "EA is just charging enough to pay their employees fairly" argument; sounds more like they're trying to establish "full-size expansion should totally cost roughly the same as a game" to mollify share holders.

i don't buy "EA is just charging enough to pay their employees fairly" argument

no one is making this argument...?

$40 < $60

it's a lot, but it's still less than the orig game. a little bit.

I'll just wait for the inevitable GOTY edition, when I'm ready to play it in about 2015 or so.

"I'd rather have the evil corporation charge twice as much as they should for an add-on than have them obliterate the talent that made them truckloads of money in a hamfisted attempt to avoid paying bonuses"

You are drawing exactly the wrong conclusion from that statement.

EA price-gouging consumers as a scheme to make more money is more understandable and defensible than Activision promising bonuses, doing way better than expected and sabotaging/canning the guys in charge of developing their runaway hit as a scheme to make more money. There's no "they need to pay their employees fairly" defense.

it was a confusing post

well it dropped sometime in the wee hours of the morning, every last spoiler should be up on the dragonage wikia by now, i'll see if it's worth it.

i guess what i was trying to say is, you pay $60 for a game for which price you get the whole engine of the game plus the story or whatever. surely the engine of the game is the bigger part? if you are getting an expansion of the storyline that uses the same engine etc, and in fact needs a copy of the original game to work, then you can't be charging 2/3 the cost of the full game, surely?

i am just getting worked up about this because i am totally cutting my nose to spite my face on some lame principle that for no obvious reason i have decided to soil my underwear about.

then you can't be charging 2/3 the cost of the full game

welp, we'll see won't we

I think that if you remind yourself that this is a total luxury purchase, the relatively exorbitant price becomes more palatable.

(this from the dude who will wait to buy this when the price drops and use built-up Amazon store credit to do it with, lol)

I spent wayyyyy too much time playing the main game, so I will probably hold off on this. $40? goddamn. And its dlc not a disc?

so, i bought this.

and my first impression is good! mostly because, in other rpgs, when you get to be super high level, i feel like the rest of the world should quit treating you like an adventurer and more like a leader, and your responsibilities should change too.

and that's exactly how this is working out, at least to start. you've got a land and people on it who are all asking you about what to do next and what they need. pretty interesting.

i don't know if it's worth forty bucks yet tho

The 360 version of Dragon Age has a million bugs that probably will never get fixed. The rogue is the most broken character.
Then there are things, that aren't necessarily bugs but are completely stupid: if you return to the chanter's board (or blackstone irregulars etc.) after completing 2 or more quests you will only be rewarded for 1, I can't set my rogue to auto-steal, there's no option for auto-revival spell casting if a player dies. etc. etc.

fter completing 2 or more quests you will only be rewarded for 1

this isn't true!

Says it's true right here. Happened to me on my 360 for both Chanter's Board and Blackstone Irregulars. I had to use a money cheat to offset this

oh. that sucks.

anyway, Awakening is ok but probably not worth the 40 bucks. some good ideas, but not fleshed out very well, and a few glitches here and there that show a rushed product. probably those will be fixed, but who knows. if you're on the fence, wait.

this game needs cooldowns.

I lied about passing on this upthread.

Im liking it, but I find it to be pretty goddamn easy. I've had some harder battles now that Im probably 3/4ths of the way through it, but the first half was a total cakewalk with an imported character. And one side-effect of this cakewalkery is that Ive barely dabbled with any of the new skills like runemaking or new armor, weapons etc.

Just started playing this. I'd forgotten how much western RPGs suck me in.

And I'm having a very difficult time not immediately going to gamefaqs and reading up whatever will let me increase my companion relationships as much as possible. I'll wait for the 2nd play thru, shoudl i do that, for it.

eh just go to gamefaqs, life is short

the gift mechanic is not very well designed. the conversations are worth going through blind tho, they're pretty well written

i guess it depends: is part of the enjoyment of the game is actually figuring out the systems and ddoes the game gives you a fair chance to do so, or is it so complex that you'll waste hours and hours putting in stats into a failed character forcing you to restart?

I did the latter and never came back. Seems like a game that I need to play on PC not console.

http://social.bioware.com/project/855/#details

So, are the licensed novels any good? I'd eagerly read any spin-off bits if the dialogue is as cracking as the game's.

so there's three dlcs for this since i last checked? anyone played any of them?

i have started playing this. hopefully i have not done a totally fucked character build, but i guess well see

use a guide. trust me.

well it's probably less critical than other games, but still.

if im just rolling over peeps so far (just finished that ogre tower deal) do i need to worry?

ok fine i imagine answer is yes, but eh if i have to graph paper stats ride this game im going to end up losing interest and shit-canning it soon enough anyway

and i did read some guides but unless im missing something most of the advice was kinda lunkheaded stuff like "concentrate on your main attribute dont spread everything out" whcih i thought was kinda duh and the idea that i should make a ton o damage dude and a tank dude and that was about it i guess?

― coz (webinar), Thursday, November 5, 2009 6:57 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Hahahahahaha, you get that from NeoGAF? That's my character. Her name was Ugmo. I was not drunk.

yay

I cleared out the mage tower

it's amazing how not playing WoW leaves you time to play other things

i was fronting like i wasnt gonna buy this but guess who didn't shower this morning so he could get a good 90 minutes in before work

this is pretty fun although i am tempted to start over and make a mage instead of double stabby rogue. Hard mode is genuinely >hard<.

who has played Inquisition? is it any good?

started it, am getting into it slowly. There is LOADS to do, like Skyrim amounts of stuff

pro-tip for inquisition: don't spend too much time in the first zone. you get access to more interesting places and opportunities to advance the story (which is important since several interesting events require story progress) pretty quickly

if you like intimidatingly huge fantasy RPGs and have a colossal amount of free time, go for it. i've ploughed 35 hours or so into it on ps4 recently and i'm enjoying it a lot, although I think i might need to take break from it for a while soon. the sheer size of it and the amount of stuff to do is actually kind of exhausting.

it's like the Far Cry games, every new area you open up has in the magnitude of 100 icons, each representing something you have to do. Gaming as a series of chores!

i'm starting to dread seeing the words 'new area unlocked'

Picked this up in a big Bioware sale and apparently this isn't playable on Deck. Can I play via keyboard + mouse?

If you haven't installed windows on your deck yet.. I'd highly recommend. a 1tb ssd from aliexpress, 15 minutes with a screwdriver, partition your harddrive to 500gb steamos 500gb windows, and your dreaming. Nice having the ability to play absolutely anything that the steam deck hardware can match. Currently playing Deadly Premonition, Resident Evil 0 and Catherine on Windows which all won't work on steam OS. That + gamepass, real great stuff.

Good call! I haven't looked very much into tweaking my Deck so I hadn't thought about adding Windows to it, though I'm kind of scared to open it -- I did find this guide which has instructions on installing it on a microSD card, which is a lot more palatable for me.

That was my first plan but l it’s not good for lifespan of the microsd, like apparently it just runs through the read/write cycles it can do in no time flat and makes the whole experience not very smooth. I’m not a technical guy at all, but I was still able to do it. Watch a YouTube video of an install. It’s just unscrew the back, unplug the ssd, plug in the new ssd, screw the back on again. Doing it myself, I think you’d really have to try mess it up, or do it very drunk to do any damage.

Windows is a joy on it, I thought I was going to have to jump through a new hoop every day with it but it’s been seemless since I installed and I would have no issues doing it as my singular OS (and would pick it if I had to choose).