newc0253

i think so - there was an article over at Rock Paper Shotgun by some guy who'd used a mod for something like this: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11/23...-in-dragon-age/

it keeps me awake at night. and not in a good way. and, several posts in, i think we're still missing the distinction between (i) a character who acting nuts and (ii) the reason for that character going nuts. yes, Alistair's tantrum is nuts. it's insane that, after everything he would quit the fight and go home because you (although it's easy enough to imagine him wading into the darkspawn by himself, in a last futile gesture to honor Duncan and the Wardens). otoh, it's entirely plausible that your is the trigger for Alistair's insane decision. at least, for me it is. you're welcome to go another sixteen rounds arguing i'm wrong but i doubt i can assist the court further at this stage. it's funny that there are other, slightly-less-visible instances of railroading in DA that i do find pretty egregious that we aren't discussing. i also wouldn't disagree with the possibility of dissuading alistair from his rash decision on a really high persuade check. but of all the instances of the events you can't control in DA, i actually think alistair's is plausible even while i find it (in-game) every bit as maddening as others do.

the first one was distinctly underrated: nothing truly groundbreaking but it was a great looking game, the gui was a thing of beauty, and who don't like stomping and cutting space zombies? i'd definitely play a sequel so long as it was made by the folk behind the first one.

except, in the context of Alistair's reaction, he's not going nuts for no reason. he goes nuts for reasons that have been amply built up throughout the game: i.e. he (i) loved Duncan as a father and (ii) hates Loghain. you can persuade him of other things, but these are the dealbreakers. complaining about Alistair's reaction to is like complaining that Hamlet killing Claudius is out-of-character. it ain't ooc. it's so in-character, i'm bewildered that anyone would seriously bother to argue the contrary. Even on the internet, the home of pointless arguments. yes, that's right. that's me. i'm the apologist for every stoopid thing the devs did. apparently. if only they'd pay me, this whole thing would be worthwhile.

I have a bridge on the Thames to sell you. I'm not even gonna begin to address Grom's whole "it's not irrational if you're already crazy" argument. one of my first clients ever was a guy who was thousands of dollars in debt and was facing repossession of a stereo he bought on hire purchase/an installment plan. he had fallen waay behind on the payments and had no money to make new ones. but he still wanted to keep the stereo. okay, that's not irrational, if you grant the premise that he has good reason for keeping the stereo, i.e. he likes to listen to music. but it's surely irrational in the broader, you-can't-seriously-expect-to-keep-a-stereo-you-can't pay-for. yeah, Alistair's reaction to Loghain is stupid for all the reasons Grom lists. i agree 100%. but is it realistic? sure, in my experience. i've lost count of the times i've seen folk loose all perspective...

a new crisis? You mean, like another blight? what do you suppose would be the odds of that happening?

hmm, I dislike 'epic level' games on principle. And given how easy it was to kill hurlocks footsoldiers and even ogres by the end of DA, it'd be kinda dull to start out that powerful in a second game. That said, BG2 did a great job of building a sequel on top of an already moderately strong character. And ToB was an exception to the 'epic level' rule: a game that your near-godlike status its central theme. I think ME2 will probably answer most of our questions about if and how DA2 would continue the story of DA1. I don't think the DA story is over by any stretch: for a start, it would be decidedly odd if the 'spiritual successor' to BG played out as a series of standalones (i know they say that about every game that they do but i think they meant it with DA). secondly, there's too much left hanging at the end of DA ( ). obviously they intend to make more games set in Thedas: regardless of whether your PC lives or dies at the end of DA, obviously most folk buying the game are going to want some recognition of how their actions changed the face of Thedas...

are Alistair & Morrigan's decisions in the final act childish and petulant/selfish and whatever? sure, whatever. seems to me that that's an entirely separate issue from whether i can dissuade them in-game, though. . as for Morrigan's final deal: I think part of my problem with Morrigan's proposal was Bio's failure to

You meet Oghren in . Shale you have to shell out for (literally, he's in the DLC).

I have no problem with <that event> being a dealbreaker for Alistair. Every second exchange with him seemed to involve him getting misty-eyed over Duncan's death and his love for the Grey Wardens. He was ambivalent about the throne and - as for sex with Morrigan - . But . I was taken aback by the strength of his reaction on the first playthrough, but i have absolutely no problem with it being a core tenet of his being.

I don't mind that a story has locked-in components, and that includes some of the NPC choices & fates. Maybe it's inevitable that Morrigan leaves, regardless of whether she loves you or hates you (I dunno, i haven't played every ending). What matters is that, whichever way it is played, it's as plausible as any other.

i'll concede that Sarel was one of the few characters in the Dalish camp that stood out. So did the armour-making guy. The No2 also stood out, but not in a good way. I couldn't tell whether she was badly-written or just badly-acted, but either way she grated.

yes, the treaties blah blah. but there's not much of a sense of 'if it weren't for the treaties, we'd have skinned and gutted you before now'. particularly given that the dalish are obvious analogues of, well, most indigenous peoples who have been frakked over by The Man, it'd be nice to have some sense of this. I was expecting getting the Dalish to honour their treaty obligations to be a major challenge. Instead it was, 'sure we'll help if you help us with wolfie'. Given how much attention the game gives to the idea of the Dalish, their execution was suprisingly weak. by contrast, I thought being able to get into the dwarven city was much more plausible.

eh, so here's my take: DA is the best Bio game since the BG saga. DA is the game that NWN should have been but wasn't. DA is a game worth waiting 5+ years for. that said, it wasn't perfect. my main complaints: - not all races were created equal or, at least, equally well written. DA does a fanstastic job of creating a world with its different mileaux, from dwarven society in Orzammer to the mages (magi) of the Circle Tower. unfortunately, the Dalish get the short end of the stick. The concept of the Dalish should have been great: the proud remainder of a once-great civilization living on the outskirts of human society, fiercely hostile to their former human overlords. Except that when my PC went to see them, they weren't so much fiercely hostile as they seemed mildly cautious and kinda grumpy: it didn't take much to talk my way past the guard, and i had virtually no problem convincing them to help me in principle. Then i was free to roam their camp. None of them seemed the slightest bit put out that here was a bunch of armoured humans wandering around. Probably the most crippling was the voice acting. The voice acting in DA is, generally speaking, superb - some of the best i've ever heard. But for some reason, the Dalish were all voiced with hopelessly generic american accents, as though i wasn't meeting the feral remnants of an ancient civilization but the residents of Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. In a game in which gave such careful thought to so many little details (the Orlais sound French, the Antivans Spanish, etc), it's bewildering that they thought the Dalish should sound like an after-school special. So there's that. - not all areas were created equal either. there's many great instances of side-quests & level design in DA. but not all of it is great and, consequently, when you run into the occassional mediocre patch, it really stands out as bad. see e.g. the haunted orphanage in the Alienage. this should have been compelling, like the whole murdered kids storyline that was one of the strongest bits in Jade Empire. Instead, it was just a lacklustre fight-the-demon, no-real-explanation-why hackquest. - maybe Denerim is a little more developed in the other origin stories but, playing a human noble, it seems to be one market district, a brothel, a palace & a couple of alleyways. Don't get me wrong: the areas themselves were well done. But it felt a little on the small side for what was clearly the major city of the game. - . but otherwise, it were great. i can't wait two years for the sequel (except, obviously, i can, but you know what i mean).

I think I'd be a lot more into all the Fallout DLC if it weren't such an enormous pain to install via Windows Live. Not only do you have to log into Windows Live to download it but you've also gotta log in to play it. It's a frakking grind.

will there be casinos with blackjack and hookers? ah, forget the casinos and the blackjack.

i just realised STALKER is the one game i wanted to finish but couldn't. i ran into a game-stopping bug at the reactor, couldn't find a bug-fix and didn't have any saved games to get around it. i always just assume that i would have beaten it.

i've never not finished a game i enjoyed. i've even played through to the end of several games that i ultimately wished i hadn't bothered with: e.g. Assassin's Creed i have, however, ditched on a number of games that were initially fun but eventually became supremely boring: e.g. Diablo 2, Titan Quest and Lionheart. and then there are the games which were spectacularly bad from the get-go, but which i stuck with for several hours before qutting, out of some misplaced hope they would improve or because they had pretty graphics, e.g. Dungeon Siege. but the most interesting category is the games i almost quit on but then came back to: Planescape and Morrowind. Planescape i gave up very early first time round because i was irritated at the lack of character choice, but came back to because the setting was too intriguing. Morrowind i gave up on initially because it was just too damn big. i decided to give it another chance and stuck through to the bitter end. the contrast is this: Planescape is a game that i initially underrated but came to love. whereas Morrowind is a game whose faults were more or less immediately apparent but i came to tolerate.

it disturbs me to say it but i agree with what the muppet said.

is sarcasm, right? how could you tell? this i agree with. origin stories look interesting and possibly fun but i think Bio is already overselling them: DA will likely have the same storyline bottlenecks as most other 'story-driven' CRPGs. origin stories will at best disguise this a little. at worst, the bottlenecks will show how thin the veneer really is.

what are you talking about? there is obviously a low end for computer game reviews - i believe it is currently somewhere between 7.6 and 8.5 out of 10.

wait, are you saying 'parents killed by orcs, fueled by burning desire for vengeance' ain't original??? oh well, fortunately i still have 'good drow outcast, hated by those he has sworn to protect' to fall back on... experiment? i think Temple of Elemental Evil proved origin stories could work successfully...

okay. i liked the origin stories. makes me look forward to the game more. there. happy?

yeah, that's about on par with 'a wizard did it'.