Dragon Age: Origins Expansion Coming In March 80
ishanjain tipped news that BioWare has announced an expansion for Dragon Age: Origins, called Awakening, that is due out on March 16th. Awakening "is supposed to run about 15 hours and will allow for players to import and edit characters they've broken in from the core game," and it will take place "in the in the role of a Grey Warden Commander who's been tasked with rebuilding the order of Grey Wardens and finding out how the darkspawn survived following the death of the Archdemon dragon." A trailer is available at the official site, as well as some information on a new bit of DLC that will be out shortly, entitled Return to Ostagar. (It was originally due for release on January 5th, but was delayed.)
Slashvertisements. (Score:2, Informative)
Because your life wasn't short enough.
Slashdot is not your personal blog. (Score:2)
How is the game industry doing in these hard times (Score:3, Insightful)
I am amazed at the resilience of the game industry in this time of massive unemployment and layoffs.
In hard times when most of the economy is tanking, there are some products which see a heyday. Bologna, for example, seems a dramatic rise in sales during economic slowdowns. Now too, I think it might be possible to say that the game industry is a contra indicator of economic success. Not only does it hold that game sales goes up during downturns, but that the people who play them are more likely to be affected negatively by the economic environment.
It'd be an interesting phenomenon to research, I think.
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The cost of a game is worth it sometimes, especially one that has player written stuff and DLC. One good example was NWN1. Probably by the time I did the original campaign, both expansions, all three paid for modules, and an insane amount of player written stuff that was as good (or in some cases better) than the included campaigns, the cost per hour would be insanely cheap.
One of the reasons why MMOs are selling so well is because their cost per hour played is very low, so it doesn't break the budget. A
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Starcraft (Score:2)
How do you think Starcraft got its start in Korea?
Unlock the camera in Dragon Age please (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Unlock the camera in Dragon Age please (Score:5, Insightful)
They should have just made the camera control like the same as what was used in Neverwinter Nights.
Give me top-down isometric view, 6 characters and real clerics, and get off my lawn!
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It does have isometric view. Indirectly this is what the grand-parent is complaining about. When you zoom-out the camera zooms up and changes perspective to finally end up in top-down isometric view.
So get back on the lawn young man!
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The camera in this game often made it difficult to see what was going on. From the top down 3rd person view, You can't see far. You also can't control all your characters if they are spread out very easily.
From the first person view, you can't see all directions.
I rarely see all the cool graphics, because it's usually tactically better to watch the situation top-down.
I had occasionally problems with the Neverwinter Nights 2 graphics engine, but not as often as with Dragon Age.
I occasionally had problems wit
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From Top Down 3rd person view you "can" see very far if you have a 3x1 24"LCD Eyefinity setup in Portrait Mode. I love being able to scroll 3 rooms over to get an idea of the positioning of the enemies that I'll be fighting soon.
Controlling the characters is also quite easy in DAO.
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+1
I want the NWN camera as well. This one suffers a bad dose of consolitis. Yeah I know less restrictive than the console, but it is still crap.
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IMO the scroll limitation in the isometric view is the most atrocious of all.
A character must remain on the screen at all times, which means the most you can scroll is half a screen-width, which means you can't see shit.
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That's not fair. Dragon Age had a frustrating camera that you occasionally had to fight with (I found), particularly when trying to use magic or otherwise plan around enemies not in your immediate vicinity. This is quite unlike a fixed-perspective game which will generally not have camera issues because they are trivially solved.
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Morrigan with Claudia Black's voice is pure fanservice - of which, I'm very thankful.
BTW, Leliana's voice is also really sexy.
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All the voice acting rules. They really did well on that front.
It's fun to walk around with Alistair, Morrigan, and Leliana. Good cross section of bickering, mostly Morrigan's fault :D
Morrigan and Leliana certainly get into some good Intelligent Design debates.
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It's been a long, long time since banter was so much fun. In fact, the last time banter was so good was on another Bioware game - Baldur's Gate.
I love mixing and matching the characters and trying to spark their comments just to listen in to their chats and comments.
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All the voice acting rules. They really did well on that front.
It's fun to walk around with Alistair, Morrigan, and Leliana. Good cross section of bickering, mostly Morrigan's fault :D
Morrigan and Leliana certainly get into some good Intelligent Design debates.
Try sha^W romancing both Morrigan and Leliana. You can do it, and the bitching between them is priceless.
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Oh god... I've got to do that. I've already initiated Leliana, didn't know you could with Morrigan. But I do have Morrigan in the "Warm" status so almost there.
I've noticed their attitude is both visibly and audibly different depending on your state. For instance, Morrigan actually greets me cheerily now, and smiles when doing so.
I like all these subtle things. They really did make this game for adults.
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I liked it when Sten asked Leliana why she's trying to be a man instead of doing what a woman's supposed to do...cook
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Dragon Age camera is full of fail. It more or less caused me to stop playing the game.
IMO the scroll limitation in the isometric view is the most atrocious of all.
A character must remain on the screen at all times, which means the most you can scroll is half a screen-width, which means you can't see shit.
Personally, I very much like the Dragon Age camera. It's not quite as good a The Witcher camera, which gives you a choice of modes, but the DA:O camera is most similar to the 'over shoulder' mode I prefer in The Witcher. Overall, though, if you want just one immersive RPG, The Witcher has better story, better development and better scenery. DA:O seems to be very much Neverwinter on steroids (although to be fair they've fixed some of the problems with Neverwinter, like the implausible amounts of loot you use
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So wrong it hurts...
You can select one of your party (stealthed rogue for example) and run them half a map away to the middle of the enemy, then select a 2nd party member (mage) and then scroll all the way to the rogue you ran half a map away and plant your spell right there on top of him/her.
Do you people not know how to play this game or what?
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You sent back the game or the console?
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At least they are doing DLC the right way... (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm normally not a fan of DLC but at least the are doing it the right way...the game is complete and at 18% completion (hey I just got it for christmas and have a job) i have already put nearly 10 hours into it. From what I have read its around 45-60 hours for most people, decent value for the money IMHO. It appears they plan to support it for quite a while, DLC is affordable and offers a good amount of content for the money. I have the Wardens Keep and will likely buy them all. It was a bit obnoxious t
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>>From what I have read its around 45-60 hours for most people, decent value for the money IMHO
It took me about 80 to 90 in-game hours to beat it, with about 120 total spent in the game (I restarted and played through every pathway twice so I could see all the dialogue options and combats). Hours isn't an especially good way of measuring how fun a game is, and it did manage to keep my interest through the first three quarters of the game. But by the end, it was so easy that the combats went from being
Indeed, but 15 hours more? meh (Score:1, Insightful)
I first began playing with rogue but hardly passed Lothering. I then chose a mage, and got through the game first time around 60 hour mark, add or take 10 hours, not sure. After that I decided to play it through again (this time with elven rogue) and complete every minor sidequest I can. Nearly finished this, too. Though I will need another playthrough: I realized that I should try playing it through with a female character, just to see how the ending works (Those who have gotten through with a male charact
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At least they are doing DLC the right way...
Having Day 1 DLC and having in game characters doing sales pitches to you about it are NOT the right way to do DLC.
Here's PA's take on it [penny-arcade.com].
You might have warned us. (Score:4, Funny)
"the darkspawn survived following the death of the Archdemon dragon."
Thanks a lot for the spoiler, you insensitive clod.
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I'm only a couple hours in and that was already a given for me... Of COURSE you're going to kill the archdemon eventually...
The real spoiler is what happens at Ostagar... I didn't know about Return to Ostagar when I first played that, and the twist actually surprised me a little.
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Actually it normally does, or at least causes them to go insane and attack each other incessantly. This does not seem to be the case here, when means they went with the Morrigan God-Baby ending.
What Dragon Age needs... (Score:3, Insightful)
...is a Hot Coffee mod.
Scenes like this [youtube.com], this [youtube.com] and this [youtube.com] aren't doing the game justice without a Hot Coffee mod.
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I must be getting too old for this, because my god this is lame.
it is like they are trying desperately to be adult.
If you desire such a thing (Score:3, Informative)
You can have it. Dragon Age is highly moddable and has a very active modding community. No surprise nudity mods are among them. Have a look at http://www.dragonagenexus.com/ [dragonagenexus.com] that is one of the biggest mod pages.
PC version only, of course.
Another game with no options (Score:3, Interesting)
Dragon Age is another live-action roleplaying game where you have no choices, and the options you're given are all in dialogue trees that all lead to the same results to give an illusion of freedom. Why people keep buying these heavily scripted rollercoaster games, from Dragon Age to the hugely overrated BioShock, is beyond me.
Re:Another game with no options (Score:5, Informative)
PS - you obviously haven't looked too closely at this game as while the story is quite restricted in a GTA way, the options in the dialogue trees do give different results, even small choices early on will alter the possible endings.
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I did look closely at the game. I own it.
There isn't incentive to play again, because there aren't any real choices. The dialogue trees almost always lead to the same results, leading to the criticism that it's a LARPing game--a live-action roleplaying game, where you have to play pretend in real life that it has an effect on anything. It's another heavily scripted game on rails.
RPGs are supposed to have "choices and consequences." Look at Fallout 1 and its multiple ways of solving a situation, from com
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I agree. My brother bought the game, and became bored very quickly and gave it to me. I got bored, forced myself to try again just to prove him wrong, and still got bored and was forced to agree with my sibling (no easy feat).
I don't recall ever feeling so railroaded in gaming in all my life. This game represents some of the worst traits of a real-life dungeon-master.
-Jeff
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... and tons of other little things. Even things that don't show as quests.
For instance, my bedding two dwarven woman at once in my origin story (yep...) when I came back around in the main story... I had a son, and my being kicked out and all was looking to cause all sorts of issues. That actually turned into a "side" quest.
Yep. Didn't think that would matter, when I made the choice in the beginning.
Re:Another game with no options (Score:4, Insightful)
Because they're fun and engaging.
There's nothing wrong with actually playing through a linear story that somebody else has written. If I get a bit of freedom to shape things to my own tastes along the way, then great, but I'm not going to demand even that.
The simple fact is that some people are better storytellers than others. And the people that the likes of Bioware and Square-Enix get to write their stories are generally far better than the average Joe. Everybody likes to think that they could write or narrate a wonderfully engaging story if they ever had the time and/or inspiration, but in reality, it's a gift possessed by only a few.
Dragon Age's story isn't great; if they were going to ditch the whole AD&D/Forgotten Realms setting that was at the heart of the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights games, then I would have hoped that they would actually do something a bit more... well... different with it. Compared to... say... Mass Effect, it felt very much like they were playing it safe and sticking to a well-trodden path with Dragon Age. If that's what they're doing, then a part of me would actually have preferred to have a more familiar Forgotten Realms setting (not least because of the potential for Miniature Giant Space Hamsters). If, on the other hand, they were trying to produce a genuinely different "dark" fantasy story, then I'm sorry, but The Witcher got there first and did it better.
That said, it's still a very good game with a very engaging story and fun play mechanics. The setting they've created is one I'd be happy to return to in the future.
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Dragon Age's story isn't great; if they were going to ditch the whole AD&D/Forgotten Realms setting that was at the heart of the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights games, then I would have hoped that they would actually do something a bit more... well... different with it. Compared to... say... Mass Effect, it felt very much like they were playing it safe and sticking to a well-trodden path with Dragon Age. If that's what they're doing, then a part of me would actually have preferred to have a more familiar Forgotten Realms setting (not least because of the potential for Miniature Giant Space Hamsters). If, on the other hand, they were trying to produce a genuinely different "dark" fantasy story, then I'm sorry, but The Witcher got there first and did it better.
Everything parent said. Mass Effect does the style of star wars, but uses every bit of the freedom they gained from leaving KotOR behind, both in mechanics and in the universe, to do bigger and cooler stuff that Lucas would never touch.
With DA Bioware put a lot of effort into getting away from D&D, in order to produce... a stat/skill/feat based fantasy RPG system. I love DA, but there's nothing in it that wouldn't have worked fine in D&D rules. And DA has some genuinely interesting good/evil/nic
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A morally ambiguous version: if it was clear in advance that neither Alistair nor Loghain has the leadership skills to stop the darkspawn, so the easiest way to save life was to seize power for yourself.
An even better morally ambiguous version: if Loghain did have the skill and sense to rally the army and stop the blight, and was the only one who did. Then the player would have to consider betraying their all
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Not only is there nothing wrong with linear story lines, some of us actual prefer them. I hate those vast expansive worlds where you can just run around doing anything. I got flustered and overwhelmed when I get near the 25 quest limit in WoW, for example.
Part of the "entertainment" aspect (for me at least) is playing a game like watching a movie or reading a book...you get to unveil the author's vision...not make your own. Some people want to make their own art -- some of us like discovering the artistry o
Re:Another game with no options (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Also, I mostly play DAO for the awkward sex scenes.
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Why people keep buying these heavily scripted rollercoaster games, from Dragon Age to the hugely overrated BioShock, is beyond me.
Because the cost to profit ratio of a game that provided much in the way of non-linear story is damned low. Believe me, I've tried. Unless you go for a relatively low 10-15 ending sequences, the story can branch into an unmanageable mess VERY quickly.
Can you identify some examples of games that really did give you a true roleplaying experience complete with branching stories.
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There are plenty of options for how you complete quests. Plenty of situations offer the choice of killing an opponent or persuading/intimidating them to cooperate. Party members will dislike you if they don't like your actions, although you really have to annoy them if you want them to turn against you. There are plenty of choices which you can make which will affect your game in some manner. If you regularly pickpocket people, you will occasionally be called out on it. How you choose to resolve some
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Wow. This is one of the stupidest comments I've seen in 10 years of Slashdot.
People buy such games because they enjoy them. If we didn't, we wouldn't buy them.
You might not enjoy "heavily scripted rollercoaster games", and that's perfectly cool. But others do enjoy them, and assuming your tastes are the only acceptable ones is both arrogant and stupid,
I personally don't like vegetables. I can easily see why others do though, and don't go around asking "Why people keep buying these awful tasting weirdly colo
No surprise (Score:5, Funny)
Having actually *played* DAO, this comes as no surprise to me.
I guess maybe it's because everytime I wandered into a tavern, there would always be a sneaky NPC who came up to me and tried to make me pre-order it!
Man, this one time, I slew a huge dragon after an epic battle; then after he died, while I was plundering the gold, he popped back up to life, did a little song and dance about this expansion and tried to sell me a magic weapon if I would pre-order it. To add salt to the wound my browser launches sending me to their website and I got some popups.
How does EA manage this? (Score:2, Interesting)
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No Pre-Oder for Mac OS? (Score:2)
Damm!
http://www.gamestop.com/browse/search.aspx?N=0&Ntk=TitleKeyword&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntt=%20%09Dragon%20Age%20Origins:%20Awakening [gamestop.com]