Dragon Age

[joetbd]

My first impressions with Dragon Age is that it is much more linear and fixed than previous Bioware RPGs. (At least for the first few hours).

It is also very cutscene heavy (I doubt I will want to play through the game a second time) because a lot of my time with Dragon Age is spent "watching" rather than playing. And most of the dialog choices all lead to the same conclusion.

Do you want to join the order of super knights? No? Than your drafted. Its been a lot of that so far.

Graphically, the game is far less tile based than the traditional RPG. And there are little animations like flags flapping in the breeze, those are a nice touch but the fire animation is pretty weak. And the characters are very traditional, very NWN.

All in all, its solid. But at this stage, it doesnt look like something I will play repeatedly. Like I did Baldurs Gate 2. Maybe I will change my mind, when the game opens up (if it does). Right now, it is playing out like one of those game movie based games, where you get to kill some story-free goons between cut scenes. I dont think I have made one story based decision, since the character creation screen (when I picked my characters history).

[abfackeln]

Originally Posted by joetbd

It is also very cutscene heavy

Hopefully the massive amount of cutscenes are only at the beginning of the game to set-up the story and the world.

One thing that bugged me was how all of the trailers for this game, leading up to the release, have been made up from the cutscenes and not the actual gameplay. A lot of console gamers are not familiar with Baldurs Gate or Never Winter Nights and were expecting a hack n slash. That kind of marketing can have a bad effect on a game.

It seams to be doing well so far.

I bet it was EA's decision to port this game to consoles.

[joetbd]

The introduction is very cutscene heavy with no choices. But after that, it opens up into more standard RPG fare.

But it took me about 2-3 hours to make it through the "introduction". This is not a 10 minute tutorial, or even a 30 minute story setup. This is pretty much the entire first portion of the game.

Its not bad (once), I am just not looking forward to playing it a second time. Since it is so linear and fixed.

[joetbd]

The cutscenes are all done up close with decent looking characters (like Mass Effect , only without the fancy dialog system). In this one your a mute.

[joetbd]

One thing I was not expecting, was the ONE fixed choice of overhead camera views. If you use the over head cam, your view distance and angle are both fixed.

Its just like the console Baldurs Gate games (dark alliance). You can rotate the camera, but you can not change the distance or angle.

If you use the over head camera, every archer in the game, will be shooting you from outside your camera's range.

-update (about 5 hours in)

To sum up Dragon Age Origins in one word its... Solid. It might seem like Im down on this game. That all my comments are negative. Its not because DA is bad. But that is because I can sum up all of the games good points, by simply calling it an old school bioware/BlackIsle RPG.

But it is missing any sort of "hook". That one new wrinkle that every game developer throws in, to make themselves standout. Almost everything about DA is good, but there is no big feature or element that separates it from anything else.

after the 10 billion guns of Borderlands
after the the original Diablo team making TorchLight
after the movie quality of Uncharted 2

it seems strange for a big developer working for EA, to make a game that does not even attempt to have a hook.