Dragon Age Discussion

[WorstUsernameEver]

Finished Dragon Age Awakening... I'll try to list some pro and cons first and then explain what I thought about the plot, the characters and the new mechanics.

 

Pro :

 

- much, MUCH less filler-ish combat than in Dragon Age : Origins, this expansion was to the point;

- the new characters are almost all likeable and interesting;

- Vigil's Keep is what the Crossroad Keep could have been had Obsidian devoted more time to that section of the game instead of the stupid first act of Neverwinter Nights 2 ;

- the new Darkspawn are much more interesting;

 

Cons :

 

- crashy;

- the new levels (25-35) didn't really add much to the gameplay;

- Anders;

- most of the new companions are underdeveloped;

 

The Plot

 

Awakening's plot, if I may say so, is a LOT better than Origins.

While Origins felt mostly like isolated stories from different parts of Ferelden loosely stringed together by the threat of the Blight (no wonders that the ending felt anticlimatic for so many, IMHO), Dragon Age Awakening has a very tight plot, with an interesting twist of that freeform hub structure that has characterized all of Bioware's games after Knights of the Old Republic (with the exception of Jade Empire).

The Darkspawn are also a much more interesting enemy, though the moral conflict about their newly-gained intellect could have been expanded upon. The fact that the Architect, an interesting character with a quite interesting design, was so prominently featured in all the previews and appeared roughly two times in the game, with just a little bit of dialogue was... a letdown.

 

The Characters

Bioware has been praised a lot for their focus on characterization, and while I feel that this praise is sometimes excessive, you can't really argue that they did a bad job with Awakening.

Most characters have a compelling but not overly-complicated and melodramatic background (something that felt like a relief after Origins' JNPCs).

They also tie nicely with the already established lore, giving the player new point of view about some factions (e.g. Justice, Sigrun).

Not all characters are good.. I'm talking about Anders here. One of the most boring character I've ever had the pleasure seeing in a Bioware's game. OH I WAS LOCKED IN THE TOWER! OH I WAS LOCKED IN THE TOWER! All the WHOLE GAME. He had just a couple of more interesting conversation, but for the most part it was a meh character. Even Oghren was better. Yeah, I hated him, but, as deluded as I may be, I think that was the point. Oghren is irresponsible. Oghren is foolish and immature. The best thing you can do for Oghren is make him a Grey Warden so you can make use of his only talent (combat) for a good cause.

 

The Mechanics

Premise : Awakening is really just an extension of Origins. There's nothing that changes dramatically the flow of the game, nothing that changes tactics or alters balance too much (though I've noticed that mage seem a bit less overpowered compared to other classes).

So what can I say? I say that they could try harder. All of Neverwinter Nights 2 expansions had mechanic changes that altered the flow of the gameplay and made every campaign have its very distinctive flavour.

I have a feeling that Bioware was simply afraid of the backlash that could result from departing from the tried-and-true formula of Origins.

The Vigil's keep quests weren't exactly groundbreaking but felt well-integrated and well-executed, and I felt my choices ultimately had an impact.

 

In the end it's a short, enjoyable expansion that I'd definitely recommend.. though I'd suggest waiting for a patch.

[Gromnir]

any word on a 1.04 patch? we finally found the expansion at a more reasonable price, but am not feeling like playing a game wherein our rogue pc cannot detect/disarm traps, a joinable npc may not join, and at least 1 potential game-breaker bug... and a whole laundry list o' other minor bugs. we looked at bio boards briefly and saw no mention of 1.04 for more than a couple weeks.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[WorstUsernameEver]

any word on a 1.04 patch? we finally found the expansion at a more reasonable price, but am not feeling like playing a game wherein our rogue pc cannot detect/disarm traps, a joinable npc may not join, and at least 1 potential game-breaker bug... and a whole laundry list o' other minor bugs. we looked at bio boards briefly and saw no mention of 1.04 for more than a couple weeks.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Apparently no word on a patch, sorry Gromnir, at least as far as I know =/

 

I almost feel like Bioware has sneakily outsourced this expansion to Obsidian, considering how buggy it is.

[Gromnir]

any word on a 1.04 patch? we finally found the expansion at a more reasonable price, but am not feeling like playing a game wherein our rogue pc cannot detect/disarm traps, a joinable npc may not join, and at least 1 potential game-breaker bug... and a whole laundry list o' other minor bugs. we looked at bio boards briefly and saw no mention of 1.04 for more than a couple weeks.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Apparently no word on a patch, sorry Gromnir, at least as far as I know =/

 

I almost feel like Bioware has sneakily outsourced this expansion to Obsidian, considering how buggy it is.

 

 

too bad. given the discoraging reviews and rumors surrounding AP, Gromnir were gonna give da:a a shot. oh well. back to work.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Azure79]

I thought Crossroads Keep was better done that Vigil's Keep.

 

I enjoyed Awakenings and have played through it twice now. I wish the end game had been longer and the epilogue more polished, but it was good overall.

 

From the ending, it looks like DA2 will be less about the Darkspawn though, since your choice at the end has some pretty serious implications.

[Volourn]

"but am not feeling like playing a game wherein our rogue pc cannot detect/disarm traps, a joinable npc may not join, and at least 1 potential game-breaker bug... "

 

None of these bugs happened.

[WorstUsernameEver]

"but am not feeling like playing a game wherein our rogue pc cannot detect/disarm traps, a joinable npc may not join, and at least 1 potential game-breaker bug... "

 

None of these bugs happened.

 

I'm not familiar with the rogue bug but the JNPCs are bugged to hell and back Volourn, at least on PC.

Things like approval going to 100 because of broken triggers during side quests, impossibility of making a party member (

Sigrun in my playthrough

) do the Joining ritual if you break the sequence of events that the developers probably intended you to do (then again, if you give me freedom in the order to tackle different main quest mission I'm going to take advantage of it!), dead NPCs reappearing during the final sequence, etc.

Add to that the frequent crashes and Awakening is by far the buggiest game I've played from Bioware.

Granted, it is indeed awesome IMHO, and felt spot-on when it comes to story, interactions, feel and depth.. it's just that there is a remarkable similarity between this project's lack of polish and usual Obsidian games.

[Spider]

I didn't have problems with traps 8at least not big enough trouble for me to care). Pick-pocketing was borked though. Has that been fixed?

 

has anyone tried the new DLC yet btw? I'm considering picking it up, but haven't decided yet.

[Volourn]

"at least on PC."

 

Ahh.. That explains everything. I'm so glad I'm mainly sticking to the 360 for games now and use my PC mainly for spamming on the internetz depsite it being powerful enough to play modern games. Just less bugs to deal with overall.

[WorstUsernameEver]

"at least on PC."

 

Ahh.. That explains everything. I'm so glad I'm mainly sticking to the 360 for games now and use my PC mainly for spamming on the internetz depsite it being powerful enough to play modern games. Just less bugs to deal with overall.

 

Could very well be, true.

Still, I'm not that comfortable with the control system for XBOX360 when it comes to Dragon Age, and I also don't personally own the console, so buying the game for PC just seemed like a natural fit.

And even with Awakening's bugs, I don't regret this decision one bit.

[Atom523]

I didn't have problems with traps 8at least not big enough trouble for me to care). Pick-pocketing was borked though. Has that been fixed?

 

has anyone tried the new DLC yet btw? I'm considering picking it up, but haven't decided yet.

 

For the new DLC are you refering to the Darkspawn Chronicles? I picked it up, for the novelty, It was kinda nice for one pay through but i doubt i will play it again. Not sure it was worth the 5 bucks but i don't feel totally ripped off. Rather short but i didn't really expect too much more after playing through other DLCs like Warden's keep.

[Gorgon]

I'm not getting suckered into dragon age DLCs again. Not untill they offer me a full refund of Warden's Keep anyway.

[Volourn]

Warden's Keep was pretty darn good.

[Gromnir]

"but am not feeling like playing a game wherein our rogue pc cannot detect/disarm traps, a joinable npc may not join, and at least 1 potential game-breaker bug... "

 

None of these bugs happened.

 

I'm not familiar with the rogue bug but the JNPCs are bugged to hell and back Volourn, at least on PC.

Things like approval going to 100 because of broken triggers during side quests, impossibility of making a party member (

Sigrun in my playthrough

) do the Joining ritual if you break the sequence of events that the developers probably intended you to do (then again, if you give me freedom in the order to tackle different main quest mission I'm going to take advantage of it!), dead NPCs reappearing during the final sequence, etc.

Add to that the frequent crashes and Awakening is by far the buggiest game I've played from Bioware.

Granted, it is indeed awesome IMHO, and felt spot-on when it comes to story, interactions, feel and depth.. it's just that there is a remarkable similarity between this project's lack of polish and usual Obsidian games.

 

the trap disarming bug is, according to boards, extreme common on the pc... but it only affects player-character rogues. 'course, there is 'posed only a handful o' traps in the game, so most folks never even noticed.

 

as for the expansion being similar to an obsidian product... we cannot comment as we have not played. however, for Gromnir, Obsidian's signature move is the patented Chris Avellone Conclusion of Disappointment. obsidian has mastered the crappy climax as not other developer we can name. too many other developers seeming ignore qa to single out obsidian. heck, we cannot think o' an obsidian release that were as buggy as any troika release... or bioware's nwn.

 

oh, and warden's keep were a short 1007fest that added very little quality gameplay content to the game. stone prisoner would garner our vote for the best da dlc to date. added two game areas and a quality/unique jnpc... though as it were a free day-1 release, am not certain if it should count.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps is not actual that obsidian releases has worse climax and denouement than other crpgs, but obsidian games has relative strong story elements with the Exception o' climax and the ever-after portions o' the game. makes horribleness o' their The End that much more glaring.

[Volourn]

"heck, we cannot think o' an obsidian release that were as buggy as any troika release... or bioware's nwn. "

 

I can. NWN2 for one. It wasn't super buggy; but it surely wasn't bug free. NWN1 wasn't that buggy in the grand scheme of things. I didn't find ARC buggy either.

[Gorgon]

Warden's Keep was pretty darn good.

Gesundheit

[HoonDing]

I never went beyond patch 1.01 and aside from the memory leak (which wasn't fixed in later patches anyway) never ran into serious bugs with the game.

 

I did have to install something to disable TLB on my Phenom processor, otherwise I can't play the game for 10 minutes without performance completely going through the drain.

[Guest Slinky]

Speaking of bugs, the guy who made the fantastic fixpack for Planescape: Torment started a similar project for Dragon Age a while ago. It's in version 2.0 and already fixes a good amount of bugs. Get it here

 

Unfortunately it only fixes bugs in Origins, not in Awakening because the guy hopes that Bio hires him to fix Awakening... like that's going to happen.

[Gromnir]

"heck, we cannot think o' an obsidian release that were as buggy as any troika release... or bioware's nwn. "

 

I can. NWN2 for one. It wasn't super buggy; but it surely wasn't bug free. NWN1 wasn't that buggy in the grand scheme of things. I didn't find ARC buggy either.

 

were nwn2 as buggy as:

 

arcanum: no

 

toee: no

 

vampire: hell no

 

as for vol's recollection o' the stability o' nwn... HA! bioware were excellent in terms o' patching the neverwinter nights(mare), but the initial release were riddled with bugs. to be fair, nwn bugginess were hardly surprising given that the various aspects o' the game were an awkward chimera o' features. scope o' nwn were enormous. thus, while nwn were a far better game than many folks recollect or admit, the only aspect o' the game that initially matched the scale o' bioware's ambitions for nwn were the bug list.

 

but this is 'bout da... so, we will note that the initial release were remarkably stable for a game of its size. sadly, the bugs that some folks suffered were often true game-killers... such as inability to enter orzamar. also, as nobody ever knew what the underlying rulez were for da, it were difficult to identify many potential da game bugs. every d&d geekling knows how much damage a fireball spell cast by a 12th level mage can do. d&d geeklings know how what creatures gots immunity to fire. d&d geeks knows the impact o' magic items on spell castings and defenses o' the fireball. if a fireball spell is implemented wrong in a d&d game, some geekling will know and post 'bout the error almost immediate after a crpg release. in da, we knew very little 'bout the hows and whys behind the simple fireball spell. were damage, range, and duration o' fireball implemented correct in da? how would we know if such were implemented wrong?

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited May 29, 2010 by Gromnir

[Gorgon]

What annoyed me about the PST fix pack was that it forced the resolution mod on you. I could barely see what was going on because the avatars were so tiny. Don't think the game was meant to be played in anything more than 640x800

Edited May 29, 2010 by Gorgon

[Guest Slinky]

What annoyed me about the PST fix pack was that it forced the resolution mod on you. I could barely see what was going on because the avatars were so tiny. Don't think the game was meant to be played in anything more than 640x800

What fixpack does that? Qwinn's fixpack doesn't force anything on you and it is the fixpack for PS:T nowdays.

[Gorgon]

As far as I can recall it had something to do with the high level spell effects. If you didn't install the wide screen mod they would have graphics glitches.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Are you referring to the Tweak Pack? I remember it was a Weidu mod that incorporated some big mods like high-resolution and Qwinn's fix pack, but it's a lot of time since I followed Infinity Engine's modding.

[Monte Carlo]

I've been unable to finish Awakenings, I was hit by a Greater Meh spell and just uninstalled it.

[WorstUsernameEver]

I've been unable to finish Awakenings, I was hit by a Greater Meh spell and just uninstalled it.

 

But it's just 12/13 hours!