Dragon Age Origins

[Spaced Cowboy]

LOL, Elf Mage was my pick too. I installed it last night, but it went smooth?

The only issue I have right now is the camera. Doesn't seem to be a huge upgrade from NWN2, not an issue yet, but my biggest worry has not been explored yet. Mainly control of the other players in your party. Seems like these types of games have issues with them engaging combat before you are ready...we will see.

Finished the tutorial quest. But I did not mess with DLC or an EA account.

[Asher]

The install itself is fine. But getting the DLC (which if you ordered on Impulse or Steam, you got free DLC items) was a ****ing nightmare.

You need to sign up for an EA account, you need to sign up for a Bioware account, you need to link the accounts on a site that is VERY poorly designed and buggy, then you need to enter a code and then hope your DLC installer was installed right (which it doesn't on Impulse).

[snoopy369]

On Vista at least, DA:O installed a service to manage its DLC. I find that really odd ...

[vee4473]

Well, so far so good for me. My computer has some age too, but running on high everything at 1680x1050 or whateveer it is.

AMD X2 2.8ghz (5600?) 3 gigs ram, 8800 video card, windows XP.

The graphics are very good. My gripe visually so far is that the text for everything is quite small, even on lower resolutions ( i tried 1280x768 and the text stayed the same size). Nothing too bad though.

Started first character as a human noble warrior and the story, while typical rpg fare so far at least, is very well done. The story comes alive extremely well via the cutscenes and dialogue. The tactics system that controls party members seems robust, but I have to learn more about how to use it. The camera, at least to me, is better than NWN2. Much better. It behaves very much like an mmo when zoomed closer than tactical view, which is the maxed out view that locks it in place ala BG2 style, but you still can pan and rotate). I haven't gotten very far yet, so that's all I can say right now.

And the blood spattered on your characters is a nice touch although I suppose it can get old after a while. There's an option to turn off "persistent blood".

I do like that you can have your in game character linked to the bioware social site. Yeah, it's buggy now though. The game basically automatically takes screenshots of key moments and uploads them to your profile online along with your progress, stats etc.. Even the whole story up to where that character is is summarized on the profile. Kinda cool, but what the use is I don't know.

So far so good. Hopefully it doesn't let down the further in you get.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I played through the mage tower quest last night, basically, it is the quest to get out of the tower.

We should probably tag any spoilers from now on.

This will not be a big spoiler, but I LOL'd at the "mini-quest" to clear the cellar of vermin.

The story is well done as I'm still wondering if I made the right choices and how it would have gone had I chose otherwise.

The camera is less of an issue now, as I'm starting to get used to it.

I'm not sure I like the persistent blood either. Not that I've seen it on my character, but one of the traveling companions in the tower quest had it on here when I finally figured out that I need to give her a weapon (which seemed to magically appear in my inventory...strange). But we were fighting animated spirits and whatnot, seemed out of place.

Oh and one major gripe.

I pick a voice style for my character in the beginning, but during conversations, only the other people say anything, my character is a mute (or maybe a telepath?) The only thing my guy says is random stuff when opening doors and chests. So maybe he does not like to talk to people.

Look RPG company, don't give me a choice of voices, go ahead and pay a voice actor or two to do all my lines, adds to the immersion.

[snoopy369]

I turned off the online screenshot crap... don't have any desire to slow things down just to show people how I accomplished some feat in an RPG. Tetris, sure. RPG, not.

Not sure if I got the DLC I was supposed to get or not as a D2D purchaser... got the ring of +1, but I think I was supposed to get something else. Don't recall what, though. Not a big fan of having release-day paid DLC in a non-episodic [full price] game, but don't really care about the chest - I really like limited-storage games [Diablo was much fun for that].

Game isn't terribly hard, though I did die once in the initial castle scene (also human noble warrior) because I didn't pay attention to my health, and attacked one band too many.

[snoopy369]

I pick a voice style for my character in the beginning, but during conversations, only the other people say anything, my character is a mute (or maybe a telepath?) The only thing my guy says is random stuff when opening doors and chests. So maybe he does not like to talk to people.

Look RPG company, don't give me a choice of voices, go ahead and pay a voice actor or two to do all my lines, adds to the immersion.

Actually, that was an intentional choice, and I quite like it. I don't need to spend time waiting for my character to talk; I'm doing the talking after all. It takes a bit of getting used to. The reason they give you a choice of voices is that when you're in battle, your character will exclaim various things [like when you give it direction, or when it's hurt]. Standard Baldurs' Gate stuff, from what I recall.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Seems like there are two schools of thought then. You either turn on sub-titles and skip conversations (that is pretty much my MO), or you just sit back and listen to both sides of the conversation.

I especially did not like the "continue" only choice screens. WTF was that all about. I mean it was continue or...no just continue...LOL.

[Guynemer]

My impression so far:

[Asher]

My SO is really, really addicted into this game and loves it to death. He has no job currently so he's playing it constantly, so I've yet to play it.

[Asher]

Impulse pushed an update out to fix the DLC issue.

[Guynemer]

Holy

Mother****ing

****


That was some ****ed up **** right there.



You'll know what I'm talking about when you get to the part in question.

[Asher]

This game is so good that when I went to bed last night at 1am, my SO was playing it.

When I woke up this morning at 9am, he was still playing it.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Guynemer, which part? Put it in spoiler tags. (Grey Warden initiation?)

Seems like all the stuff I've done so far puts you at odds between your newly found friends (party members) and the established leaders.

[Asher]

1.01 is out today

Dragon Age: Origins 1.01

Patch details:

- fixed potential corruption of character statistics
- fixed portrait appearance sliders when importing a character from the downloadable Character Creator
- fixed import for preset face settings from the downloadable Character Creator
made Easy difficulty easier
- slightly increased attack, defense, and damage scores for all party members at Normal difficulty
- fixed video issues when running on a very wide screen display, including ATI Eyefinity displays