Dragon Age Origins

[Gorth]

Start of old thread

End of old thread

 

Here be dragons, here be origins, here be discussions...

[HoonDing]

There's a bruhaha at the BioBoards over a bit of information that's been dropped about the nature of the Grey Wardens.

 

 

During the Joining, you drink magically manipulated darkspawn blood. This gives you the ability to sense darkspawn and it means you won't succumb to the blight... for awhile. While most people catch the blight and die in day (or become a ghoul) a Grey Warden infects themselves and can live for about a decade before the disease overwhelms them. Traditionally, Grey Wardens end their lives by walking alone into the Deep Roads.

 

 

A number of forumites believe that this forces a 'bad ending'

[Guest Slinky]

This bit of information will make it hard for me to play a 'lawful good' character...

You could take it as "one for the team" or something.

[alanschu]

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.

 

 

This isn't just about making it a few more darkspawn you'll need to fight (especially since it isn't darkspawn attacking Redcliffe). I'll concede the game could give players the option of skipping the fight for the town, skipping Redcliffe entirely would effectively destroy a large chunk of the main plot.

 

I am trying to not play spoiler so I won't say much more, but avoiding the conflict in Redcliffe altogether would require significant amounts of additional story work to allow the player to continue to play through the game in any sort of a plausible manner.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Nice, of course there's no way to refuse the joining for the player. Unless the joining is involuntary for the character also, that pretty much says what kind of character you are. "Ooh, I'm so incredibly evil,

but of course I have no problem sacrificing myself for the common good!

Edited September 20, 2009 by Wrath of Dagon

[Oner]

Nice, of course there's no way to refuse the joining for the player. Unless the joining is involuntary for the character also, that pretty much says what kind of character you are. "Ooh, I'm so incredibly evil,

but of course I have no problem sacrificing myself for the common good!

Most(?) origin stories end with "join or die" scenarios.

[Wrath of Dagon]

I guess that's OK then, but do they really expect me to be a good Grey Warden in that case? Seems like even a normally decent character would try to sabotage them as much as possible.

[alanschu]

Nice, of course there's no way to refuse the joining for the player. Unless the joining is involuntary for the character also, that pretty much says what kind of character you are. "Ooh, I'm so incredibly evil,

but of course I have no problem sacrificing myself for the common good!

Most(?) origin stories end with "join or die" scenarios.

 

 

 

Not exactly. And never

are the "die" scenarios at the hands of Duncan

.

 

Ultimately though, the ability to avoid becoming a Grey Warden doesn't exist. Which makes sense, given the story that BioWare wants to tell. Just like how the ability to avoid becoming a Jedi in KOTOR doesn't exist.

[Oner]

Nice, of course there's no way to refuse the joining for the player. Unless the joining is involuntary for the character also, that pretty much says what kind of character you are. "Ooh, I'm so incredibly evil,

but of course I have no problem sacrificing myself for the common good!

Most(?) origin stories end with "join or die" scenarios.

 

Not exactly. And never

are the "die" scenarios at the hands of Duncan

.

I know,

but you still aren't in a position to refuse, that's what I'm saying.

 

 

Ultimately though, the ability to avoid becoming a Grey Warden doesn't exist. Which makes sense, given the story that BioWare wants to tell. Just like how the ability to avoid becoming a Jedi in KOTOR doesn't exist.

Well, a short cutscene about how the world gets destroyed, and then load game, wouldn't be bad.

[Niten_Ryu]

I am trying to not play spoiler so I won't say much more, but avoiding the conflict in Redcliffe altogether would require significant amounts of additional story work to allow the player to continue to play through the game in any sort of a plausible manner.

 

Yeah, I understand this in Dragon Age as the game is designed to from the start to have certain linearity. You're Gray Warden and you have to do certain things. In Bioware writers seem to be in very much in control how things work and it's their story, you just happen to take part of it. I look things from complitely different angle. For me cut content (for schedule reasons or financial issues) is same as players choosing to skip content. I'm not asking for full sandbox game, but for example I would have skipped many fights in Torment and Baldur's Gate saga if I could have done it. I just finished Throne of Bhaal (again) and I think game would have worked just fine if you'd meet some (or maybe even all) of the five in Abyssal Plane in the end if you didn't kill 'em earlier on.

[Guest Slinky]

Well, a short cutscene about how the world gets destroyed, and then load game, wouldn't be bad.

And then people would complain about it because the choice is completely pointless

[Volourn]

"Well, a short cutscene about how the world gets destroyed, and then load game, wouldn't be bad."

 

So you would want it to be like FO1 when you join the Master, get turned into a Mutant, and then get a game over screen? Sounds kinda lame, and a waste. Might as well just say game over, then.

 

That said, I wish BIO would have a way that you can play the game and not be a Grey Warden. That be my ideal. there is no story reason why it should need to be forced on you. Period. The only reason it is is because BIO says so, and they made the story with that in mind instead of using imagination to deal with it. Plus, it avoids extra work.

[Monte Carlo]

None of this would amount to a hill of beans if it weren't for the fact that Bioware are trumpeting, as usual, a vertiable revolution in meaningful decision-making.

 

Which it palpably isn't. Your decisions are marginal when compared to the critical path / story arc.

 

Hey, before I get the usual barbs for my Bio-antipathy... consider this.

 

1. Bioware suggest that their game is a classic, massive, immersive, NPC-intense old-skool RPG. OK, the story arc is fairly linear in a roundabout way but everything else more than makes up for it. Hell, it's BG3 but with an original IP.

 

2. Bioware claim that their game is gritty, dark, ground-breaking. Your decisions really can make or break stuff. Admittedly, it ain't the longest game ever, but in terms of sheer originality and re-playability it's more than worth the price of admission (console gamers, I suspect, would dig this and I don't mean that pejoratively). To assauge old-skoolers, they hint at future XP / DLC to expand the franchise.

 

Either of these would make me perfectly happy, rather than the repeated claims (for which Bio has previous) that they've Done it All.

 

Cheers

MC

[Volourn]

DA > BG series

[Monte Carlo]

^ Thanks for your input.

[Pop]

How long is DA supposed to be in terms of hours per playthrough?

[Monte Carlo]

^ all the reviews / dev comment I've seen hasn't put an approximate hour cap on it, they've just said that it's their biggest game since BG2 (but not as long).

 

I'm reckoning, including inevitable re-starts and doing everything,up to 90 hours. I'd be well pleased with that.

 

Maybe alanschu can assist.

 

Cheers

MC

[HoonDing]

I've seen the amount of 100-120 hours bragged about. Would surprise me, though.

 

Then again, as a retarded casual gamer, I probably spent more than 100 hours on Mass Effect, so who knows?

[Purkake]

I'd probably die before I spent 100h on a game with a story. :/

[Monte Carlo]

The first time I completed BG2 / ToB all the way through easily took me 100 hours, mainly because I did everything and I was using a number of mods.

 

My first vanilla BG2 only game was about 80-odd hours, but I went critical path and motored through it. Like I say, in reality I'm expecting DA:O to be a sort of compact BG2 size, and similar interms of linearity (without the structural 'freedom' design flaw of BG2 whereby you could do most of the game then set off for Spellhold).

[alanschu]

"Well, a short cutscene about how the world gets destroyed, and then load game, wouldn't be bad."

 

So you would want it to be like FO1 when you join the Master, get turned into a Mutant, and then get a game over screen? Sounds kinda lame, and a waste. Might as well just say game over, then.

 

I agree with this. While the cutscene is important given that there's that specific choice in Fallout, the game could have functionally worked if you never had the option to join the Master at all.

 

 

That said, I wish BIO would have a way that you can play the game and not be a Grey Warden. That be my ideal. there is no story reason why it should need to be forced on you. Period. The only reason it is is because BIO says so, and they made the story with that in mind instead of using imagination to deal with it. Plus, it avoids extra work.

 

 

I'm not sure that you can say that without experiencing the story. Could they have done it? Sure, but from what I can tell it would have only really made sense if they'd make someone else be the "protagonist" and let the player play more of a backup role. That might sound cool at first, but at the same time, I don't know if people (myself included) would really enjoy a game where they aren't necessarily the focus of the story.

[Maria Caliban]

Either of these would make me perfectly happy, rather than the repeated claims (for which Bio has previous) that they've Done it All.

 

Cheers

MC

 

I'm not sure where you're getting the claim that they've done it all. In the last trailer I showed, it had Mike L saying that DA is a game about having a series of cool battles, Mike D saying that it's a return to BG days, and David saying that the followers were three-dimensional and would react to what the PC does. In the last article, it talks about choices and consequences, and then shows how this game differs from previous BioWare offerings. Even the 'sex and violence' trailer people like to rag on is nothing but footage from the game plus music. Go to the official website and it says Dragon Age is the spiritual successor to BG and an epic tale of violence, lust, and betrayal.

 

It doesn

[Monte Carlo]

^ The hype is there, we probably view it differently.

 

As for the length of the game, am I alone in incessant re-starting? I'll do ten hours then realise that my character build is wrong. Start again. Rinse and repeat. This is my first 20-30 hours of play time, and for this reason alone I'm sure DA:O for me might well be 100 hours.

[alanschu]

As for the length of the game, my first playthrough was about 60ish hours or so on the in game clock, with maybe a couple hours of idle time (leaving afk to go somewhere). The idle time is probably balanced by the "uncounted" time with loads due to dying. My playthrough was pretty complete, though missing the odd thing here and there based on conversations with other people at the office. I didn't stop to solve very many puzzles situations though. I also did complete one puzzle a lot faster than most people do, so yay me!

 

I didn't do any restarts or anything, and played through with my first character. I did fully listen to pretty much every line of dialogue in the game though.

 

 

 

Yesterday I beat the game in about 10 hours, doing the most critical path possible while skipping virtually every line of dialogue/cutscene possible, with my PC immortal and running scripts to instantly kill every hostile on screen. The only cutscenes I watched were the end game ones since I did stuff differently and was curious what the epilogue would be. This is probably pretty close to a lower bound on game time, and required cheats for me to do it.

Edited September 20, 2009 by alanschu

[Purkake]

As for the length of the game, am I alone in incessant re-starting?

 

Yes.

 

I don't know where you people get the time to do all this crazy stuff, I can barely finish games these days.