Dragon Age Origins

[Bos_hybrid]

IGN Choices and Consequences of Dragon Age

[Guest Slinky]

IGN Choices and Consequences of Dragon Age

Cool. I noticed one not so great thing in the Bella video; the PC is apparently wearing some magic armor, and there is some purple effects raising from it during conversation. If the helmet is always removed automatically in conversations, why not magic effects like that? Not a game ruining flaw, far from it, but little stupid in my opinion.

[Monte Carlo]

...regardless of either option, I managed to conquer the enemies, which resulted in a celebratory cutscene the following day.

 

And therein lies the rub. All the cutscenes and 'choices' and influence points with NPCs resulted in... the same outcomes. Which is what Bioware does.

 

How about... "I chose not to seek help, and despite fighting valiantly we were forced to retreat from the monstrous horde. From our vantage point we had to watch the villagers slaughtered, their houses burnt, their crops despoilt. We could not return again to seek aid or succour or +5 magical swords from the blacksmith or indulge in puerile dialogue asking a barmaid for a kiss."

 

 

Why, Bio? WHY?

 

P.S. Re. the interview... I've always liked Dave G. A lot. But if he gets any smugger he'll actually warp the space / time continuum. Mate, your making a video game, not capturing the Higgs Boson.

 

Cheers

 

MC

[Monte Carlo]

^ Actually, I was a bit harsh on Dave. He's clearly a lovely bloke and really into what he does, it's just that I get the sense that he thinks he's writing LotR, not a video game sometimes.

[Guest Slinky]

And therein lies the rub. All the cutscenes and 'choices' and influence points with NPCs resulted in... the same outcomes. Which is what Bioware does.

Yeah, I too would like to see an RPG which truly has big choices that truly affect to the story and game, but I'm fairly sure making something like that would need craploads of time and money. Bio has been making DA now for what, 6 years? And I don't want to even guess how much money they have spend for it. I don't expect to see an RPG without a somewhat linear story unless some indie studio have lots of time and passion, and the game would almost certainly use 2D engine or a very simple 3D, which sadly means low sales.

 

How about... "I chose not to seek help, and despite fighting valiantly we were forced to retreat from the monstrous horde. From our vantage point we had to watch the villagers slaughtered, their houses burnt, their crops despoilt. We could not return again to seek aid or succour or +5 magical swords from the blacksmith or indulge in puerile dialogue asking a barmaid for a kiss."

Actually, I think you can leave redcliffe on their own against the darkspawn. You don't have to help them.

[Oner]

I chose to search the town, looking for these characters and any other people that would be willing to help in our defense. The first place I went was in search of Dwyn, who I hoped would be amenable to a Grey Warden's requests for help. The dwarf was a stubborn man who'd holed up in his house, refusing to help anyone left in the town. The conversations quickly broke down to a) bribing him to help the townspeople out with their defense, b) trying to intimidate him into serving with the militia, or c) leaving him alone. Owen, by contrast, was argumentative for completely different reasons: He'd refused help to Murdock and the town because his daughter had gone missing and the surviving townsfolk refused to send out a search party to find the girl. Again, I had a few options

[Monte Carlo]

Actually, I think you can leave redcliffe on their own against the darkspawn. You don't have to help them.

 

Yep, I take your point, indeed you can leave them to it. But what you can't do, it would appear, is choose to help them and lose. Not without re-loading. So all those choices affect only the conduct of the battle, you might have to glug a few more healing potions (etc).

 

Hey, even the battle at the redoubt at the start of IWD2 had all this.

 

Cheers

MC

[Starwars]

Well, those sure weren't particularly exciting examples for choices & consequences. And having them be the highlight for a C&C feature/article? I really hope they're hiding the juicier ones because those were certainly not very interesting.

[Monte Carlo]

^ To be fair, I'd rather they just showed off minor / mundane ones to show us how it works.

 

From watching that what I do know is that I'm going to get bored / annoyed by the approbrium of my Tamagotchi NPCs very quickly.

 

Cheers

MC

[Guest Slinky]

I really hope they're hiding the juicier ones because those were certainly not very interesting.

Seconded. We will know what's the deal with the maturity only after the game gets released.

 

 

From watching that what I do know is that I'm going to get bored / annoyed by the approbrium of my Tamagotchi NPCs very quickly.

From what I have gathered, DA is mostly build around the idea of "living" and talking companions. Thats the reason why I cant wait to get my hands on the game

[Monte Carlo]

^ Horses for courses - it's why I'll be wandering around with a dog and a golem.

[Guest Slinky]

it's why I'll be wandering around with a dog and a golem.

Those too will be interacting with you. Have fun tamagotching

[Maria Caliban]

For those of you who mentioned Sten's voice actor, it's Mark Hildreth, the husband in

. There's some violence at the beginning.

[Monte Carlo]

Whenever I hear Sten this is what I immediately think of...

 

Cheers

MC

[HoonDing]

Guess he's called Sten because of the pace at which he spouts dark & gritty one-liners.

Edited September 19, 2009 by virumor

[alanschu]

...regardless of either option, I managed to conquer the enemies, which resulted in a celebratory cutscene the following day.

 

And therein lies the rub. All the cutscenes and 'choices' and influence points with NPCs resulted in... the same outcomes. Which is what Bioware does.

 

How about... "I chose not to seek help, and despite fighting valiantly we were forced to retreat from the monstrous horde. From our vantage point we had to watch the villagers slaughtered, their houses burnt, their crops despoilt. We could not return again to seek aid or succour or +5 magical swords from the blacksmith or indulge in puerile dialogue asking a barmaid for a kiss."

 

 

Why, Bio? WHY?

 

 

What games actually do that though?

 

How much branching for a several hour long plot do you allow before you realize that you're really just making two separate disjoint plots?

[alanschu]

IGN Choices and Consequences of Dragon Age

Cool. I noticed one not so great thing in the Bella video; the PC is apparently wearing some magic armor, and there is some purple effects raising from it during conversation. If the helmet is always removed automatically in conversations, why not magic effects like that? Not a game ruining flaw, far from it, but little stupid in my opinion.

 

 

Probably because the magic effect has been applied to the armor specifically. They're completely removing the helmet (and any effects attached to it) for conversations, which is a pretty easy thing to find on an actor in a conversation. To worry about spell effects would be digging down more layers.

[Monte Carlo]

^ They've made a hell of a fuss about choices and consequences, they've cranked the hypometer up to turbo. Yet the consequences article makes it clear that the 'consequences' aren't particularly consequential: I might need six or seven more healing potions. Wow.

 

Maybe I'm missing something.

[alanschu]

Just because you still end up going through and killing the same horde, doesn't mean that things play through exactly the same.

 

 

I don't follow BioWare's marketing various much, but most people seem to say "ho-hum same claims as always" so I don't know if they've necessarily cranked up the hypometer up to turbo.

 

 

Given that particular plot point, you could decide to not try to fight the horde to get to the end of it, but it'd be akin to just quitting the game and saying you're not going to bother.

 

I know we all have this pipe dream of how awesome it would be to have this game that literally let us do whatever we want in any of the game situations, as well as have the game appropriately react in distinctly different ways for each of our decisions, but that's not going to happen. I'd love for it to, but I just can't see how that would be feasible if the game wanted to have any hope of being anything but a huge time and money sink.

 

Besides, as a fan of the original Baldur's Gates, I wouldn't think that this would be an issue for you.

Edited September 19, 2009 by alanschu

[Niten_Ryu]

Given that particular plot point, you could decide to not try to fight the horde to get to the end of it, but it'd be akin to just quitting the game and saying you're not going to bother.

 

To fight or not to fight? Let's assume that you'd have option not to fight. Village falls and is burned to the ground. What would happen after that? Few extra members for darkspawn, minor moral blow for the kingdom and probably not much more. In strategy game you'd shrug once and move on. In Warhammer Dark Omen you could do those kind of "save the village" missions but in the end it meant that you did reach later to the final conflict and thus opponent had larger and more powerful force in there. In game like Dragon Age it could work other way around. Less you save, more powerful the enemy will be at some point.

 

In NWN2 you were accused of destroying entire village. For my evil party there was great line.. something like "I would have burnt down that village at some point anyway". It means you didn't care about that village or even worse, you were happy that it was destroyed, even if it meant that you were accused of doing something that you didn't do.

[~Di]

...regardless of either option, I managed to conquer the enemies, which resulted in a celebratory cutscene the following day.

 

And therein lies the rub. All the cutscenes and 'choices' and influence points with NPCs resulted in... the same outcomes. Which is what Bioware does.

 

How about... "I chose not to seek help, and despite fighting valiantly we were forced to retreat from the monstrous horde. From our vantage point we had to watch the villagers slaughtered, their houses burnt, their crops despoilt. We could not return again to seek aid or succour or +5 magical swords from the blacksmith or indulge in puerile dialogue asking a barmaid for a kiss."

 

 

Why, Bio? WHY?

 

P.S. Re. the interview... I've always liked Dave G. A lot. But if he gets any smugger he'll actually warp the space / time continuum. Mate, your making a video game, not capturing the Higgs Boson.

 

Cheers

 

MC

 

 

If you read the article, you saw that if you didn't help the town it would indeed be crushed... which would probably eliminate your chance of getting help there later. So yes, it's a consequence and depending on what you might need in that town later, it could be a big consequence.

 

Also, I'd say that having to fight and kill your own comrades because they disagreed with your action is a rather significant consequence.

 

Will you inevitably have to follow the same plot to the same conclusion? Well, duh. But what resources you will have available to you in getting to that conclusion will obviously be drastically affected by the choices you make. Not terribly different that the BG series, actually. You always end up at the same place fighting the same villain, but who you have to help you and what you have available depended upon the choices you made throughout the game.

 

In reading your posts, it seems to me that Bio is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't, because you are determined to complain about every single detail you learn about the game even before you've played the thing.

[Maria Caliban]

I talked before about how nice it would be to have an RPG without XP or loot, and I think this village might show the consequences of those two systems. Does the player derive any benefit from letting it fall? You lose out on the XP you

[~Di]

I talked before about how nice it would be to have an RPG without XP or loot, and I think this village might show the consequences of those two systems. Does the player derive any benefit from letting it fall? You lose out on the XP you

[Niten_Ryu]

I talked before about how nice it would be to have an RPG without XP or loot, and I think this village might show the consequences of those two systems. Does the player derive any benefit from letting it fall? You lose out on the XP you

[Monte Carlo]

In reading your posts, it seems to me that Bio is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't, because you are determined to complain about every single detail you learn about the game even before you've played the thing.

 

You obviously haven't read that many of them because for the past few months I've said lots of positive stuff about Dragon Age, astonishingly the stuff I like. "The spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate" is nudging it's way to a 40/60 ratio of approval and despair.