First Impressions

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It still says "Available this holiday season" hopefully we'll get to play it soon.

@Phoceen: being able to use the hold command sure makes a difference.

 

I didn't notice the "hold" command at first either. It wasn't until I was doing the puzzle at the end of the Stone Prisoner part of the game (downloadable content), and burning all my party members on the fire, that I thought, hey, there HAS to be a better way. I discovered the hold function shortly thereafter. I was playing a thief at the time, and yeah, this command is a requirement for anything stealthy you want to do in game.

 

Well, I just finished my first playthrough. The game is very enjoyable - enough to make me try it out several times, I think. That doesn't happen very often nowadays .

 

So I got the game through Steam, the super package or whatever it is at least I am supposed to have the two dlcs. I still think it is obscene that I pay as much for a digital product as for a disc with a box and stuff.

Anyhoo, I just started a mage and I think I played through the intro. Now I may be damaged after five years of WoW but will the pace pick up? I have spent 60% of my time in various cut scenes and I have never been fond of cut scenes. You get a five minute speech for every quest it seems like. Now I like a bit talking and mood generating cut scenes but I want to play a game not watch a movie. Will I get to blow stuff up a bit more as the game progress or am I going to be stuck in cut scenes half the time I play it?

 

DAO is about 50% movies. Seriously there are a lot of movies. You can by pass the movies as your journal is updated with the most important information. I personally like watching the movies. The personalities of each character in the game really makes it worth it to watch the movies.

 

Once you finish the origin and Ostagar and get into the game proper (when you have the world map) then the cutscenes drop a lot. Mainly on account of the dungeon crawls. There still are a lot though, especially if you like talking to people.

 

So everytime you want to talk to people to fish for information or whatnot they will keep talking and talking sloooooooowly? I will give it a go. I like how the combat is pretty much identical to WoW. Whatever you think of that game it's influence is widespread.

 

Regarding cut scenes, you can always turn on subtitles and read what's going to be said at your own pace, then just hit escape to forward to the next line of dialogue. I happen to enjoy the cutscenes, for the most part, but when I reload a conversation or something similar I will sometimes fast forward my way through it in the manner I describe.

I particularly like Leliana's cut scenes. She makes me... happy.

 

Ooh, escape works? I have been looking for fast forward button. For reload times, for quick chats with farmer5 and so forth.

 

Ok, my first impression of this game and I am at Warden's Keep and got dammit, Dragon Age is WoW with a story. Simple as that, the influence is quite blatant. Playing the game is like playing WoW except you control the entire party but when you focus on a single character it is nearly exactly as WoW. Heck, half my fights my party went down and then I finished it myself as I am very used to handling multiple enemies and kiting with a lone spellcaster. The game even has threat and taunts as I said, Dragon Age is single player WoW with a story. That is a good thing though, praise even but it is fun that when a company wants to create an RPG with depth and story they more or less rip the mechanics straight off from a game that many labels to be completely without depth and story but as they say, if you can't beat them, join them and it is pretty damn good mechanics.

 

I haven't played Wow, and the plan is to never do so, so I can't comment on that. But I do agree that the interface does make things pretty easy to manage. One feature I particularly appreciate is the select all party members function. After a fair amount of frustration with games like NWN and NWN2 in controlling your party, the ability to select everyone in DA and set them in the same direction or against a common foe, is a breath of fresh air. I haven't played many RPGs since the Infinity Engine that give me this control.

 

No offense but you do sound like a Wow fanatic.

Wow fanatics tend to see similarities between any game they'll play and Wow. I even read posts that compared Heroes V to Wow. Wow enthusiasts also seem to believe that Wow is the alpha and the omega as far as games are concerned. I'm not saying that it's your case Joacqin (I thought twice about typing this I hope you won't be offended by this remark as I don't mean it in a bad way).

Anyway, from what I've been told about Wow (by fanatics that I know irl) it seems pretty obvious that they stole from the best and put everything that would work in such a setting into the game. I haven't played it but according to what I've seen it doesn't look like Wow invented anything. We were talking about buffs, tanks and DPS long before Wow. People used to play D&D long before anyone came up with the very idea of MMOs.

When it comes to DA, I'm pretty sure that the similarities may be obvious to a Wow player but it would seem that using a bar with commands to issue orders is the easiest and most sensible way to make such a game (was NWN influenced by Wow?) It's probably true that some of the DA devs have played Wow. It may have influenced them (probably for taunt and threaten) but that doesn't change the fact that they are completely different games.

An MMO can't compare to a story driven CRPG even if there are similarities in game mechanics (I haven't played Wow and I don't intend to so I'll take your word for it). They're really not in the same category.

Since Wow seems to have borrowed from every sources known to man I guess it's only fair.

 

I'm gonna have to agree with joacqin here, and if anything I'd be classified as a WoW-hater (well, WoW-disliker would be more accurate). I've obviously not played WoW anywhere near as much as anyone who liked it (for the obvious reason), but I played enough to immediately see the influence. Unlike joacqin, the design similarities to WoW are what I dislike the most about DAO (that and the awful encounter design): the combat system, the cooldowns, the whole "aggro-threat-taunt" thing which, not being an MMO player, is completely alien to me. In terms of the way DAO borrowed from WoW's UI, it's not so much that there is a bar at the bottom of the screen (for example), but rather how the bar works, how it looks, how you place abilities on it, the cooldowns, the colour scheme, etc. WoW didn't invent the quickbar (hell even BG had the ability to place spells in quickslots) but the particular look that DAO uses is lifted straight from WoW.

 

I am a fanatic, or rather I used to be but blizzard can still almost five years throw stuff at me that makes me think, wow (pun not intended) this is a really really good game even if I play very little nowadays.

Of course WoW didnt do anything new, they just took all the best bits from all previous games and mixed them together in a way that worked and in my opinion still works better than anything else done. Obviously it isnt perfect but what is and it is as close to perfect I think it is possible to come and still hold mass appeal. I wouldn't have started this discussions if the similiarities between DA and WoW weren't so strong. In my eyes DA pretty much took a system that works and put a story to it. They also slowed it down, the sluggish movements and reactions of the characters can be a bit tiresome at times. The drawback as I see it is that there is a little bit too much micromanagement going on. It is fine for every member of a party to have several different spells and skills to use as long as there is a person controlling each character but if it is one person controlling it can be too much. I especially dislike that if I have to maximise my fighters/tanks I have to check in on them every now and then and tell them to use certain abilities. I liked how I in BG just selected my fighter, told him to attack the target and that was that and then I could fiddle with my spellcasters and to some extent rogues.

Oh and I do believe WoW is the alpha and the omega of games for reasons I have stated before, the very fact that I, a grown man have spent pretty much an entire year in game without regretting it or thinking I should have spent that time on something else is enough to convince me that it is a really really really good game. Right now I am playing Dragon Age and having quite a bit of fun as I have neither the time nor the inclination to do the things I have not done in WoW.

 

That's why there is a pause option. I don't mind the micromanagement as it's what makes the game more than a simple clicking contest. Using Tactics takes some getting used to but it helps speeding up the game.

In IE games the fighter class was the dumb class, the point and click class. In DA you can use different options. That increases micromanagement but that is not a bad thing IMO.

Just to nitpick: what do you mean by "how the bar works" how can such a bar work? I can't comment on the way it looks but it seems to me that it was used in the same way in NWN (and to a certain extent BG as you've pointed out). Except for the cooldown thing but clicking and dragging was already used in NWN.

 

Nitpick

Maybe I should have said "how it feels" rather than "how it works", which unfortunately doesn't make for a good argument. There's just something about the way I was using the quickbar that made me think more of WoW than NWN (and I've played NWN much, much more than WoW), but I can't really put my finger on it. It could be just a combination of the look and the type of abilities, rather than the way the actual bar works.

 

Does NWN seriously not allow you to do this? I know NWN1 only had 'henchmen' but doesn't NWN2 give you a full 6 person party?

I'd agree with Joacquin on the micromanagement. It is a bit much, particularly for the fighters. And as each fight is so hard you have to pay attention. Truth be told I liked exploring in the IE games while nibbling away at something. I only occassionaly needed to cast a spell so I could get away with playing one-handed.

 

Finished my first runthrough a couple of days ago with a Human Noble Warrior. I found it to be really good fun from start to finish. Took me a little while to figure everything out (Xbox version) and I felt my character was a bit of a wuss for a while until I worked out how to use more than one ability . All the NPCs were great, not sure how I feel about the approval system though.

One thing bothers me somewhat though

Spoiler

The choice you have to make concerning Connor really made me think about what I should do. There was no way my goody two shoes character was going to bin a child, but choosing between the other two seemed pretty tough. I felt sure something very bad would happen if I chose to go to the Circle as a solution, leaving Redcliffe to the mercy of Connor so I chose to sacrifice isolde to save the child. From a RPing point of view I was chuffed to bits, my character had to make an incredibly hard choice and I felt he was doing what was best in this particular situation. Apparently though, it makes no difference if you go as nothing bad will happen in your absence, I would have liked to have thought that trying to save everyone might have been the wrong choice in the end or at least had some kind negative consequence.

Currently considering my second runthrough. I like playing a human but an elf sounds interesting. I'm thinking a dual wielding rogue in either case so I'm looking about for a decent build as I'm still virtually clueless

BTW, I hear there is some kind of dexterity bug thing that makes it ineffective in combat but I'm not sure if it is just for the PC version or if it happens on all platforms. Does anyone know anymore about this?

 

You should give the City Elf a try. Dual Wielding you'll need at least 26 points in DEX, 20 points in STR if you want some armour (don't put points in STR if you don't want any) and max out cunning (lethality will allow you to use cunning instead of strength). That will give you the best backstabber and allow you to take only one rank in lockpicks and still be able to open all locks. Dual Wielding is good but you don't need all skills, pick Riposte and Momentum. Riposte and Dirty Fighting will save your Rogue and allow for some stabbing goodness, Momentum is simply the best ability in the Dual Wielding tree.

I don't know if the bug has been fixed on the 360. It shouldn't mess up this build (it will probably make the cunning rogue even better).

Regarding your spoiler:

Spoiler

I've had the same problem in my first playthrough in which I sacrificed Connor... It's a bit disappointing once you find out how easy it is to save Connor if you simply go to the Circle for help.

 

Thanks for the advice Caradhras, that looks like a fun build (and a handy way to dodge the Dex bug! ).

I hear dual daggers are the way to go for a dual wielding rogue but I'm not sure whether I'll use this yet as there were some tasty longswords I fancied using with my last character (a two handed weapon based warrior) and never got the chance to.