Monte Carlo

SPOILER.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I wasted Wynne after I decided to slay all the mages, just to be on the safe side. That meant Morrigan for that entire quest, and having played it with both NPC mages it's easier with M rather than W. Cheers MC

^ Hmmm, you release a toolset, you create organic support. It's smart. Games companies know this. Bioware OTOH support their games more or less ad infinitum, I can still get BG2 patches there. What I think the EA suit is saying is the 12 month premium sale lifespan (i.e. GotY, DA Gold and other iterations). If an industry pro would correct me if I'm wrong I'd be obliged. Then again, this is EA so I take your point. Personally, I'm feeling quite good about the modding that is likely to come out of this game, I'll be playing it for more than the next twelve months and would buy extra DLC if it was substantial. Cheers MC

I remembered one other bug, the "skateboarding warrior" in Redcliffe Castle, but it was so minor and fleeting I didn't even consider it a bug. I've not had one crash or any other bug-like issue, although I am running on the first patch so, again, well done. And I am on Vista, which has... issues. Shame you missed how broken the rogue was, though

You know what, I've thus far failed to mention how stable and un-buggy this game is, and for that alone Bioware deserve a little bit more credit (damn it, three Bio plaudits in a day, I must return to the lab and put this right!). The only bug I've discovered is minor but supremely annoying. Alistair says something along the lines of "Can you get a ladder? So you can get off my back." It's one of the most annoying NPC lines since Ira in JA2 ("You got my ear!"), difference being I could switch it off. Am currently in Soldier's Peak and he's not even in my party but I'm still getting it, as if the ghost of Alistair is always with me. It's bloody annoying, probably a minor bug that will be squished in a patch. Cheers MC

Alan next time you get to ask (unless it would be difficult) can you ask at what point the Conan feel of the early concept art changed? I remember DA concept 1.0 and it definitely felt more low fantasy / Hyborian age than the Dark Age / early medieval vibe in the end product.

^ Yes, the spirit of IWD2 is strong in this one.

BTW, I take it all back about romances. I got to make out with Morrigan and laughed so hard at the whole thing that beer shot through my nose. It's this sort of jollity that lengthens your lifespan, thanks Bio!

Gromnir said it better than I did (damn his eyes!), it's almost as if the developers won't allow optimal NPC builds as not to steal the glory from the PC. Which is rubbish, please give me optimally built NPCs to give me a clue how to build a good character for myself later. It's not as if the rules are particularly transparent or anything, are they? 8.40 damage? Huh? I want a rogue who can open locks, lob grenades, be a half-decent mage-attrition archer and lend a decent hand in combat. Purkake - I am now committed to my Human Noble Warrior game, am 22% of the way through and want to finish. Also, now have Dragon Armour, that makes me look like a Cylon. Ha ha ha.

I think I'm going psycho Dwarf commoner rogue next play through, just to see if I can do something interesting with the class. If we ever get our tactics thread then maybe we can post some good rogue builds.

In other news, I spared Zevran because he knows six different card games, twelve massages and is good at parties. And he sounds like Zorro. You see, I don't care if he's about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike in combat, he makes me laugh so he's in. What gifts does he like?

Stop it. My ribs are splitting.

As I said in another post, it's about as dark as the ending of White Christmas.

Who urinated on your cornflakes this morning? Anyway, I thought I'd go back to Lothering to see the merchant, but, dah-dah-dah! T'was a skull on the world map, razed by the Darkspawn. So they do advance... Have got my first NPC to adore (+90), 'tis Morrigan, this was achieved by spamming her with presents and behaving like the Lawful Evil stud-muffin my character clearly is. Sten also thinks I am the best thing since sliced bread, achieved by giving him dodgy paintings found in barrels and telling him to STFU. Cheers MC

Despite my usual Bioware sentiments, I am pleased for them, it's good to see developer's work credited and jobs secured.

^ No that was at my friend Virumor, who kindly corrected the issue. Mods: apologies for my lapse in language. Oh, and can we have a tactics thread please? There is clearly demand and I suspect it will become the main DA thread anyway. Cheers MC

Dude, you are ****ting spoilers, could you tag them please?

Mate, I never lived in Ancient Rome, 17th Century Britain or Depression Era America but I could give you a quick rundown of their economic models. Are you telling me Russia in the 1960's didn't have a command economy?

I'm afraid I do, and you need to go back to economics 101.

Welcome to Russia circa. 1965. Those tractor production figures are looking great this quarter, Sergei.

^ Just to add - look at the 3E rogue. Can take combat feats to move around the battlefield, can use passive sneak attack etc. Rush past a rogue in battle to mob a mage - AoO and sneak attack makes the rogue feel like he's actually doing something.

I'm agreeing with Grom, in that the developers clearly couldn't make their minds up what a rogue is for. Even Vol agrees that a spellcaster / non-spellcaster divide would be OK. What is a rogue? Look to the source material. The Grey Mouser, Robin Hood, the weaselly little bloke who hangs out with Conan? All of them share the same attributes - guile, cunning, an aversion to wearing much armour, a reliance on agility and wit, archery, small weapons, stealth... the classic RPG rogue took this on board and added a discrete skill set suitable for gaming mechanics. From that you could build different rogues - the tech monkey with traps and locks, the light fighter a la Errol Flynn, the stealth-master assassin etc. But none of these things seem to transfer successfully across into the Dragon Age rogue. Dragon Age is still fairly vanilla fantasy, sort of late R/W Dark Ages / early Medieval with a sprinkling of Byzantine politics. I can't build the genuinely useful support character Volourn describes, nor the stealthy light fighter I'd actually like to play. The combat doesn't lend itself to rogues, either. A lot of it is mob / melee slogging, ideal for tanks and artillery but not skirmishing. In the scrum, the rogue is mediocre at best, like I say best placed to mop up mage-inflicted walking wounded. And as we've pointed out, as a challenge I'm sure the rogue will be fun. But I'm certain that this is an unintended consequence... the designers didn't want that seeing as a lot of players will be making a rogue with certain (perfectly reasonable) preconceptions then hitting the big red WTF button as, yet again, their character is slaughtered for daring entering the fray. Cheers MC

For the love of god Vol, think about what your saying with this "some classes should be crap it's just the way things are" schtick. Why would anyone play the class? Just think about it... imagine the character generation screen rubric: Warrior - Mighty champion of arms who launches himself into the enemy horde, a whirlwind of steel! Mage - Arcane master, besting armies with spells of fire and ice! Rogue - Well, someone's gotta be the gimp, go wake him up we need that barrel searched. Hmmm.

Vol, take your fanboy hat off for a second, the class balance is badly out of kilter. Your perceptions of what archetypical class should and shouldn't be able to do is fine, but it can't be applied to a game where you choose a class as a protagonist. All should have potent abilities. I've tinkered with all of them and the mage class is over-powered (OK, in a fun way) by comparison. The warrior is great. The rogue is... meh. I think the developers know this. As I've written previously, underpowered backstab, the ability to throw bombs and open containers full of old boots is trifling compared to the mobile artillery piece that is the Dragon Age mage class. I honestly expect a re-balancing patch, re-calibrating the stat requirements for rogue skills would be a start. Rogues need high STR (to wear armour, wield weapons... their most potent DW skills involve full size melee weapons), CUNNING and DEX. It's tough. Plus if they want to enjoy the bread and butter rogue skills they'll never have enough points for anything else, they'll only be average at everything (answer? Give rogues one point in stealing, traps / locks and poison at level 2 or 3 as a bonus. Warrior? point dump into STR and CON. Mage? point dump into MAGIC and WILL. Then race up the appropriate skill / spell tree. Rogue? Er... bit of this, bit of that unless you want to uber-specialise and still be a second rate melee fighter or gimpy archer. DA shows that making your own ruleset is tough, especially balancing. There are only three classes, there should have been none. Why, during the testing phase, didn't someone say to the lead designer, "look, this class is OK but compared to the other two it's.... crap." Or was there a bit of Emperor's New Clothes going on? Cheers MC

^ I think we can agree on something for a change, I hope so. Sadly, I think the five year development cycle might put a lot of people off! Personally, with the potential of DLC, I can see companies investing in game 'carcasses' you buy and add to as you wish, a sort of proto-MMORPG model applied to SP games. But to get there I think you need the fan base that a company like Bioware enjoys.

Money talks, bullsh*t walks... according to thison the Bio forums DA sold 450,000 console copies alone in D-Day +1 week. Blimey. Cheers MC