Dragon Age

[Walker]

So I've been following this game since it was announced with a single paragraph web page five (maybe six?) years ago. Neverwinter Nights 2, while feature rich, somehow still didn't capture the magic of the Baldur's Gate series. But surely the "spiritual successor" (read: we're sick of paying for the D&D license) to those lovely titles by the original studio would get the job done. Well, I'm 20+ hours in now...and this is not Baldur's Gate. That doesn't mean it's bad, just more commercial. I think the "chose your own intro" angle cost them the most crucial quality of Baldur's Gate: intimacy. And I don't mean sex. There's some of that, but it feels forced, only there to prove that it's a "mature" adventure. What I mean is that the subject of the quest is too broad, and therefore generic. Rather than unraveling a local iron shortage and your own sorted origin, you must save the whole land from a big army of orcs...I..um...I mean Darkspawn.

Why?! Why must we always be saving the entire land/world/galaxy? It's forced, unbelievable, and worn out.

The voice acting is good, though the dialogue choices predictable to anyone who's played any Bioware game since KotOR. It's pretty, especially from the tactical view (only available on the PC for some reason). Gear is lovingly textured and full of buckles....but not obnoxiously so.

The only thing that's truly prevented me from enjoying the game is it's absurd difficulty curve (again on PC only from what I understand). I'm no slouch at tactical RPGs, but encountered at least three un-avoidable and un-winnable fights in the first half of the game. If you don't have an offensive mage in the party...you lose. Eventually I was forced to lower the difficulty to easy, at which point the fights in question became jokes. I still feel dirty about it, though. Patches are on the way I guess, but I've had more frustration with this game than Spelunky...and that's saying something.

Anyway...decent game? Yes. The new hottness to drive RPGs for the next 10+ years? Not so much.

[Rial Lerum]

I think my biggest question about this game is NPC development. How "good" are your party members in terms of story quality and personality? My concern is that they are cliche with considering their classes.

[Walker]

The party NPCs are very archetypal: the reluctant heir, the outcast mage, the glib rogue, the tight lipped warrior. For the most part they're well written, however, and at their most entertaining when they gripe at each other while you run around. If you take the time to pamper them and sit through their dialog trees, some will ask for your help with an extra quest that they happen to care about. The warrior has lost his ancestral sword, for instance. If you help them, you get a big boost to their "love you" meter, and consequently a small-moderate boost in their stats from your "inspired" leadership.

Your dialog choices with other NPCs also effect the "love you" meter for each character...but only if they're currently in your party (you can have three at a time). After losing points for doing something one of them didn't like, I was always tempted to reload and swap them for someone who wouldn't care until I finished the conversation. The folks back at camp never learn of your choices, apparently.

This is the problem with...
1. Not letting you craft every character in your party.
2. Trying to give characters their own minds.

I might like the cute red headed bard, but because I need an offensive mage in the party to survive (and bards are useless), I have to work around the game mechanics to keep my bitchy wild witch happy. You can't have characters drive the game when, at the end of the day, all that really matters is whether or not you can kill that screen full of mobs.

If the difficulty curve is corrected, maybe this won't be such a big deal.

[Josiah]

You can't have characters drive the game when, at the end of the day, all that really matters is whether or not you can kill that screen full of mobs.

This is quite astute and probably a philosophy we would be wise to remember. This is something that has really bothered me in games before, where the character that matched my playstyle just happened to have the worst voice acting/personality of my options.

Puts designers and writers in a bit of a pickle, though. How do you give players gameplay options, and personality options, but also make sure the combinations are always appealing? Trying to stereotype the players by saying "All guys who love the warrior love the tight-lipped stoic type" is pretty stupid.

On the topic, Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate solved this in a couple of ways. While both are effective, they have their weaknesses. Icewind let you create your whole party and assign voice acting manually. Customization is always nice, but when you're talking about scripted conversations written elegantly by writers, pick-and-choose becomes less of a valid option. Then there's Baldur's Gate, where they had multiple redundant classes of characters, each with a unique personality. Example, there's a highly moral paladin in the game who is fatherly and wise, and a bit stuck in his ways. There's also a young, passionate paladin with brooding moral inner-turmoil about who he is.
This method is more successful, but requires more development time, and you can still end up with a party that's not what the player likes. What if you want a paladin who just really loves what he does for a living and is super enthusiastic about it? Sorry, no dice.

Something to think about.

[Brad]

so i've spent forty hours in this game so far and love it with my dying breath. don't get me wrong, i think there are issues in it, definitely - i probably fought *SPOILER* that dwarf chick *END SPOILER* thirty times before i actually finished the fight with someone alive (finished it twice where my character died at the same time they did...GRR) and there's definitely a difficulty curve to it, but as an overall experience i think it's great.

a lot of people complain that they can't keep anyone happy. i've got morrigan, wynne, and alistair as my main pary members, and i'm happy to say that all three like me a lot even if they don't always agree with what i do. i look at how hard it is to keep them happy about me during gameplay, and then i realize that there's nine hundred gifts to give them during the game to improve their rating. i think bioware included all those gifts to make the love meter easier to manage. to be honest, if i had to pick a team that wasn't based on 'i like these characters more', i'd have sten or (more likely) shale as my tank instead of alistair and the elf instead of morrigan. offensive mages are good for making the battle short, but you can't do an extended fight with them without having buttloads of lyrium to keep them awake. she's useless after the first flurry of spellspam.

of course, there gets a point in these games always where you just start housing anything in front of you, resulting in the game suddenly going from very hard to very easy. that annoys me. i've been saving up some boss battles for a while - kolgrim's horn comes to mind - and they're SO easy compared to some of the story battles that weren't intended (i think) to be difficult.

oh, and you honestly don't need an offensive mage to win most battles. i did several major battles that probably would have been pretty hard with a mage with a dps warrior (myself), a super-tank (sten), wynne (two offensive spells total), and the bard with very expensive arrows. it's hairy, and you kind of have to have a character with high potion-making skills go to the brecilian forest and go to town with elfroot and make a zillion potions, but it's totally doable. i finally beat the aforementioned female with a tank, two rogues, and a healer. rogues do ridiculous damage if they're careful about where they are, and having the ranger subtype allows them to summon free tanks easily.

[Walker]

Correction: When I said I had played for 20-25 hours, what I meant was 51.

[Brad]

finished the main storyline today. a little shorter than i expected, although i definitely didn't do the whole game (lots of side quests left over). not a fan of how they fagged out on the ending - lots of 'this will matter next game but not now' stuff - but that's just me. hopefully it'll be cooler down the road.

also, i can't wait for the new dlc to come out. i just love giving bioware money, you know?