A bloody mess
Friday, November 6, 2009So I’ve had the opportunity to play some Dragon Age: Origins, and since I’m a massive fantasy-crpg fan, I have looked forward to this game for a while. One of the main things about the aesthetics in the game is that it’s very dark/grim and with lots of blood and I mean lots. One of the first thing you get to do as a human noble is to kill some rats that has made their home in a kitchen. Me and my trusty dog didn’t just kill the rats, we frickin slayed the rats.
It wasn’t a long fight maybe around a minute long and we still got our whole bodies covered in blood. Blood was everywhere, It was a frickin mess, I actually got quite surprised the first time I saw it and I couldn’t stop laughing. Even though I like blood and gore in games that might have been a bit over the top, though once in a while your character executes these really sweet finishing moves and it really makes the battles worthwhile. The game itself is pretty sweet, I like it a lot it might be the RPG to play this year.
I started out as a human noble, a basic choice since I wanted my character to look like me during my first playthrough, and I’m quite happy about the fact that you can start as every other race and start at different places. I’m a typical Human Warrior, carrying a two-handed sword with focus on strength and constitution. It turns out that it wasn’t a great choice though, mainly because most of your allies you get during the game are either warriors or rogues.
Right now I feel like I’m missing a good ranger or a healer and the game doesn’t seem to provide me with one. It’s getting kind of frustrating. As the game progresses it seems like the game doesn’t offer many tactical choices for warfare, much of the time the enemy outnumbers my party by 10 and it gets way overpowering when I only have melee characters with no chance of taking out groups of enemies except with my mage. It wouldn’t be a problem if the AI doesn’t focus on the character that makes the most damage, you might have thought that it would be the three massive warriors but no it’s may spellwavering mage. When she does enough damage all the enemies turns around and starts attacking her, and it’s a quick way for her to die. So much for the warriors acting like tanks while I run around with my mage trying to do some major damage.
Oh well, the next playthrough I’m gonna be a mage or an archer and kick some major ass. I’m about 20 hours in and right now it’s the only thing I want to play, great game so far. (sorry Borderlands you’ll have to wait)
Hype!
If you like CRPGs you’re gonna love this one.
(Är det tillåtet att kommentera på Svenska?;) )
I just got the game the other day and as always with BioWare the dialogues were nearly perfect and all of the main characters and most of the worlds really feel alive. Although i must say that it feels kinda old. As i wrote in my blog about it it is almost an exact copy of both gameplay/camera and dialoguesystem as in 2003´s Knights of the Old Republic. Its almost as if the game came right after Jade Empire and not after Mass Effect
Well, I like the old feeling to the game, you can really see and experience all the story that Bioware has put into the game. Compared to Mass Effect yeah the game looks a bit outdated, but you still see those glimpses of Mass Effect in there, such as when some NPC characters walk in and walks away from the dialogue-screen. Nice touch.
Though the problem with these games is that they don’t feel alive, compared to action-rpgs where many of the NPC characters actually walk around in the town you got Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect etc, where all characters just stands there. It really makes the environment feel, stiff.
The lack of a day-and-night cycle bothers me somewhat as well, since all the NPC characters often stand on their spots the developers can actually take some real shortcuts when it comes to shadows.
Well. About that it doesnt “feel alive”. In a way i see your point there but in comparison with for an examle ¨Fable 2¨ where there always is people everywhere – walking around and such i still believe that Dragon Age feel more alive. Because when you interact with people they have something to say and not just staring at you with nothing to say.
@ DANIEL
That’s true I guess, most of the people in Fable 2 are stupid and mute. There still exists some unnecessary NPCs just to fill out though in Dragon Age. I’m going to go through the game one more time soon. Maybe I’ll start tonight.