Dragon Age story/plot discussion

[Oerwinde]

Played a Human Noble Warrior.

 

Does that being past tense mean you already beat the game once? If so, what is your overall impression?

 

Only real gripe so far is the loading times. Worst of any game I've played. At least give a status bar so we know how much loading is left. Average load times are about 1.5 to 3 minutes.

 

 

Holy crap! Thats go make a sammich and let the dog out amount of time. While the loading times are long, are they also frequent?

 

Past tense was a typo. I just got to the point where I can actually adventure on my own instead of it being on rails.

 

Loading times aren't too frequent. Loaded twice during my origin story, which took me about 2 hours to get through, but then there was a part during my trials to become a grey warden where

I went to get the treaties, and encountered Morrigan, she agreed to take us to her mother: 2 minute loading time. 30 second conversation with her mother in order to get said treaties and we leave: 2 minute loading time.

 

[HoonDing]

I've had a 5 minute loading time after the origin story ended. Then two minutes just to leave Ostragar.

 

I think it's a memory leak problem. When I restarted the game from scratch, loading time was around 10 seconds.

 

The game also uses an annoying depth of field which I can't seem to get rid of beyond toning down settings to medium. It causes juddering during conversations with my graphics card.

[Oner]

nvm

Edited November 6, 2009 by Oner

[Majek]

stupid game.co.uk. everyone is playing their game except me. :/

[mkreku]

Not me! Still debating whether to pick this up or not.

[Tigranes]

Apparently it's meant to be half dex half str but it's all str. So there are in fact no weapons that give bonuses based on dex.

Is it confirmed that the combat calculations are actually doing this, or is this just in the feedback you get on your character sheet?

 

AFAIK, yes, it is confirmed, and it seems it will be patched later.

 

Okay, so I've played a few hours with my male human mage, still doing the origin story

now in the Korcari Wilds with Alistair

. The game looks really, really good and can accurately be called a successor to BG so far, though with the small flaws that were as predicted.

 

• Plot is ho-hum Bioware stuff; nothing shocking, surprising or thought-provoking (yet) but well polished and delivered decently. The world and lore, on the other hand, is interesting, detailed and woven well into the game. I like the ways in which the Chantry, the Circle and such are described through various characters' biased eyes.
  
• Characters are all decent until now, with generally good voice acting. The King has a terribly annoying voice and an even worse personality, but I think I've heard that he's not as moronic as he appears to be at start. Dialogue is better than I expected, too - typical Bioware, but no real cringe-worthy stuff and quite a few enjoyable turns of phrase.
  
• Levelling and such looks good so far, could have done with a bit more variety but thats not a big deal.
  
• Combat is interesting - very much a NWN/MMO-ish evolution of infinity engine combat. On hard difficulty I have had characters die a couple of times but mainly through carelessness. I do imagine it becoming quite challenging once I get out of origins mode, though. There's a bit of a 'I don't know what's going on but the scripts are doing stuff for me wow this is fast' feeling, because compared to IE games' 6-second turns things happen a lot faster, and without an action queue the battle can progress quite quickly. I think I'll get used to it though, and that hectic feeling should combine well with the whole premise of waves of darkspawn.
  
• Auto-regen however is ridiculous. It only takes 5 seconds in early levels to get everything back and you get enough mana to spam spells anyway (it's the cooldown that stops you, rather). I'd imagine that something would have to give to balance it out though - i.e. I'd prefer potions to be a bit more common in return for half or less regeneration rate, or even more health and mana for you. i.e. you still have to deal with finite resources over the course of a dungeon or area rather than everything resetting after each encounter. I imagine mods wil be out soon enough, and it's not a game-breaker until then.
  
• Controls are horrid - and this is from someone who wielded the NWN2 camera with natural ease. I really have no idea why you have to right click on *everything*, and you can't change this - you can only swap mouse buttons and that changes the menu clicks too. I also ended up changing a lot of keys, but I'm starting to get the hang of it. I think once I get used to it it won't be so bad.
  
• The menu and interface are great, though. Maps have good markers, inventories have good comparison systems, selling items and equipping and such eliminate pointless clicks with good shortcuts, group inventory system works well, quests and codex are nicely laid out, character stats are still there, etc, etc.
  
• The game runs really well - I could run it at max settings on my laptop but I got some lag in areas with lots of particle effects, so I toned it down a bit. Loading is frequent but not very long.
  
• The game is really good looking as well. The art direction *is* pretty generic fantasy but is done well; the bloom is there but nowhere as nauseating as in 90% of all other games these days; most importantly, everything looks great together... with the blood off.
  
• The integrated DLC and such mechanics are very nice as well, though I haven't run into those 'ad characters' yet.
  

 

Overall the game really is good, perhaps better than I expected, very very fun. Auto-regen is my only peeve but the combat is generally very satisfying. Onward we go.

 

Oh, a spoiler question on the mage origin:

I took the path of helping Jowan, then using coercion to lie and keep the staff... I guess I could have turned him in to the First Enchanter? Any other options? I also want to know if there were any side-quests that I missed, because for instance I found some private documents belonging to Greagoir that I couldn't do anything with.

 

[Humanoid]

Anyone with it installed on an SSD have a report on load times?

[Kaftan Barlast]

The loading times on a 10000rpm Velociraptor are very fast. Although it froze and crashed once when transitioning from an area

[Niten_Ryu]

Redcliffe

encounter have to be bugged or it's really stupid design.

It's basic design 101 to include mob counter like x / 50 mobs killed for such encounters. If developers don't do that, players start to wonder after 10, 15, 30 mins if it's just stupid design or is the encounter bugged. I definately didn't enjoy easy first phase and then unlimited (as far as I can tell) second phase swarm encounter.

This was on hard difficulty.

[Jaesun]

The loading times on a 10000rpm Velociraptor are very fast. Although it froze and crashed once when transitioning from an area

 

Are you playing a legitimate copy? I have had no crashes at all. Load time are damn fast.

[Kaftan Barlast]

No, Im totally playing a pirated copy. I dont know what caused it, possibly because I was alt-tabbing back to windows alot to answer messages. Hasnt happened since the origin story though.

 

 

 

edit: it seems to be a Win7 x64 nvidia-specific bug

Edited November 6, 2009 by Kaftan Barlast

[Majek]

Why don't you play windowed then? No need for alt-tabbing.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Why don't you play windowed then? No need for alt-tabbing.

 

 

You still tab between windows even in windowed mode. But fullscreen is the way to go, I have dualscreen so I can see whats going on in the background while I play anyway. Except when I turn that screen off because its distracting.

[kirottu]

This game is seriously hard on normal.

 

After first choosable plot place(mage tower) I meet a fake book seller who then attacks me and I couldn

[entrerix]

is it harder than normal on baldurs gate?

 

that mage assassin would usually kill me right off the bat with his magic missile scroll...

 

i eventually just stayed in the first area grinding wolves until i gained a level so i could handle it... (as far as i can recall, its been years and years)

[alanschu]

I find early level Baldur's Gate to be more difficult.

[Volourn]

That's largely because you cna die in one hit in D&D rules while that won't happen in DA.

 

Later on, I find DA a little more tricky. Just trying to fight 8 or so SPOILERS is enough tod rive me bonkers with all their stupid special abilities.

[Jaesun]

This game is seriously hard on normal.

 

After first choosable plot place(mage tower) I meet a fake book seller who then attacks me and I couldn

[HoonDing]

* fixed import for preset face settings from the downloadable Character Creator

Urgh. That came a day too late.

[Atom523]

ok I have a question hopefully someone can answer, I was playing the Dwarf Noble quest and well I have a bunch of special items that i got for playing dragon age journeys, preordering the game etc and

After i got set up and arrested for murdering my brother they took all my items away when they sent me to jail. Is there any way for me to get my items back or is this just a woopsy move by Bioware?

 

I was wondering if this happened to anyone else and if it did is there a way around losing my special stuff?

[kirottu]

I remember Baldurs Gate being more annoying than hard, because a random hit could kill you.

 

Dragon Age gets harder with time. Reasons:

 

1) My mage build became suddenly really really weak, because it has no crowd control skills(power over peoples is evul, chantry says).

2) My mage build became suddenly really really weak, because unlike enemy casters I don

Edited November 6, 2009 by kirottu

[Gfted1]

ok I have a question hopefully someone can answer, I was playing the Dwarf Noble quest and well I have a bunch of special items that i got for playing dragon age journeys, preordering the game etc and

After i got set up and arrested for murdering my brother they took all my items away when they sent me to jail. Is there any way for me to get my items back or is this just a woopsy move by Bioware?

 

I was wondering if this happened to anyone else and if it did is there a way around losing my special stuff?

 

 

You can follow this workaround until they fix it officially, although I have read you still lose your Memory Band.

 

EDIT: Another thread here with the same info but the addition of a dev confirming the bug.

Edited November 6, 2009 by Gfted1

[Oner]

http://social.bioware.com/playerprofile.ph...;game=dragonage

 

Playing it on normal,

just entered the tower of Ishtar

, I find the difficulty satisfying for now, hough I don't know how Bio expects me to kill

the ogre

without a single healing spell.

 

BTW, in Rugbys quest, what the hell am I

supposed to find under the old tree? I don't see any rocks with carvings.

 

Edited November 6, 2009 by Oner

[Morgoth]

so, what do people think of DA, compared with say ME or BG series? Is it one of the better Bio games, or rather disappointing?

[HoonDing]

http://social.bioware.com/playerprofile.ph...;game=dragonage

How do you get that Lucky stone thingie?