Dragon Age: Origins
One of the things that I got for my birthday this year was a new computer game called Dragon Age: Origins. I never played a single-player RPG before, and purely based on the official advertising I saw for this I wouldn't have felt inspired to give it a try either (as the advertising campaign mostly seemed to consist of "Look, blood splatter everywhere!"), but I saw a lot of positive reviews of it on a WoW blog I read and eventually decided that it sounded like something that could be fun.
Until yesterday I thought that I was getting quite close to completing the game by now, until Graham spotted a little piece of info on the achievement page that claimed that I hadn't even completed a third of the story yet. Uh-oh. Talk about a long adventure.
The roleplaying sections most of all strike me as really well done. There'll always be limits to how much you can do with pre-made dialogue trees, but the game at least tries to give you some options as for how to react and you can often achieve a variety of different outcomes, none of which result in problems for the overall flow of the game.
Your companions in particular are quite interesting to interact with, and you can even romance some of them. I decided almost from the start that I wanted my elven mage to woo Alistair the templar, but I did something he didn't like relatively early on and he's been rather crotchety towards me ever since. The elf rogue on the other hand would be quite happy to share my tent, and I'm starting to get a bit suspicious of the female bard as well - she keeps wanting to have personal conversations with me, and not just about how much she loves pretty shoes. I wish people in my roleplaying group would come up with interesting in-character behaviour like that more often.
On the combat side of things, I set the game to easy difficulty from the start since I knew I didn't care much about that side of the game and didn't want my story progression to be held back by possibly not being that good at it. I think it was for the better because so far the more prolonged combat sections where you fight your way through room after room full of bad guys have been boring me a little. Then again, maybe part of the reason for that is the easy difficulty itself, which means that a lot of the time I can get by just flailing around mindlessly and attacking whatever. Though there've also been enough fights by now that forced me to think at least a little more strategically or I died even on easy mode, but that still didn't make things that much more fun.
Progress I've made so far: I've tried out the mage and the city elf origin stories, and liked the mage more. Ostagar didn't excite me that much, but after that things got interesting.
I thought the zombie invasion at Redcliffe Castle was very atmospheric, even if the actual battle was quite dull in my opinion (on easy difficulty anyway). In the castle I allowed the arlessa to sacrifice herself to save her son - which was the thing that Alistair got all pissy about. I read later on that going to the Circle of Magi would have been the optimal, "everyone is happy" solution, but I just don't think it would have been very realistic to just wander off and leave the town with a possessed demon boy for days and weeks, considering how much havoc he wreaked before.
The search for the urn afterwards was a bit tedious and I got a tad cranky when the old temple seemed to go on forever. The three trials before we could get to the urn were interesting, though the bridge puzzle threw me a little. I don't exactly mind puzzles like that, but considering the way the rest of the game had been going, I didn't expect to suddenly need pen and paper to work out a riddle. I have to admit I looked up the solution online to at least get a bit of an understanding of what the hell was going on before then figuring out the exact sequence myself.
I returned to the Circle of Magi next and rather enjoyed the whole shapeshifting adventure in the fade. Do non-mages get to play through that part too?
The wood elf plot was another very interesting one, and I enjoyed slowly getting to the bottom of it all, even as both sides of the conflict were withholding information from me. I was just a bit baffled that the game gave me the achievement for "siding with the elves" at the end, after my party had violently forced the elf leader into submission to make him lift the curse...
Right now I'm working on the dwarf bit of the story - I didn't like that one as much so far, mostly because I didn't like being forced to choose sides without actually knowing much of anything about either of the candidates. I'm just waiting for some big revelation that'll make me regret my choice any moment now.
I thought that the game would be approaching its end after that, but as I said apparently there's a lot still to go after I convince everyone to join forces and the landsmeet decides who should lead. Can't wait to find out!
Until yesterday I thought that I was getting quite close to completing the game by now, until Graham spotted a little piece of info on the achievement page that claimed that I hadn't even completed a third of the story yet. Uh-oh. Talk about a long adventure.
The roleplaying sections most of all strike me as really well done. There'll always be limits to how much you can do with pre-made dialogue trees, but the game at least tries to give you some options as for how to react and you can often achieve a variety of different outcomes, none of which result in problems for the overall flow of the game.
Your companions in particular are quite interesting to interact with, and you can even romance some of them. I decided almost from the start that I wanted my elven mage to woo Alistair the templar, but I did something he didn't like relatively early on and he's been rather crotchety towards me ever since. The elf rogue on the other hand would be quite happy to share my tent, and I'm starting to get a bit suspicious of the female bard as well - she keeps wanting to have personal conversations with me, and not just about how much she loves pretty shoes. I wish people in my roleplaying group would come up with interesting in-character behaviour like that more often.
On the combat side of things, I set the game to easy difficulty from the start since I knew I didn't care much about that side of the game and didn't want my story progression to be held back by possibly not being that good at it. I think it was for the better because so far the more prolonged combat sections where you fight your way through room after room full of bad guys have been boring me a little. Then again, maybe part of the reason for that is the easy difficulty itself, which means that a lot of the time I can get by just flailing around mindlessly and attacking whatever. Though there've also been enough fights by now that forced me to think at least a little more strategically or I died even on easy mode, but that still didn't make things that much more fun.
Progress I've made so far: I've tried out the mage and the city elf origin stories, and liked the mage more. Ostagar didn't excite me that much, but after that things got interesting.
I thought the zombie invasion at Redcliffe Castle was very atmospheric, even if the actual battle was quite dull in my opinion (on easy difficulty anyway). In the castle I allowed the arlessa to sacrifice herself to save her son - which was the thing that Alistair got all pissy about. I read later on that going to the Circle of Magi would have been the optimal, "everyone is happy" solution, but I just don't think it would have been very realistic to just wander off and leave the town with a possessed demon boy for days and weeks, considering how much havoc he wreaked before.
The search for the urn afterwards was a bit tedious and I got a tad cranky when the old temple seemed to go on forever. The three trials before we could get to the urn were interesting, though the bridge puzzle threw me a little. I don't exactly mind puzzles like that, but considering the way the rest of the game had been going, I didn't expect to suddenly need pen and paper to work out a riddle. I have to admit I looked up the solution online to at least get a bit of an understanding of what the hell was going on before then figuring out the exact sequence myself.
I returned to the Circle of Magi next and rather enjoyed the whole shapeshifting adventure in the fade. Do non-mages get to play through that part too?
The wood elf plot was another very interesting one, and I enjoyed slowly getting to the bottom of it all, even as both sides of the conflict were withholding information from me. I was just a bit baffled that the game gave me the achievement for "siding with the elves" at the end, after my party had violently forced the elf leader into submission to make him lift the curse...
Right now I'm working on the dwarf bit of the story - I didn't like that one as much so far, mostly because I didn't like being forced to choose sides without actually knowing much of anything about either of the candidates. I'm just waiting for some big revelation that'll make me regret my choice any moment now.
I thought that the game would be approaching its end after that, but as I said apparently there's a lot still to go after I convince everyone to join forces and the landsmeet decides who should lead. Can't wait to find out!