Dragon Age

[KvP]

Hooray!

So it's Bioware's new quote "dark fantasy" unquote RPG, under development for about 5 years now. They had some screenies years ago, but chances are the game looks considerably different now. Looks like it's coming out in '09, probably late in the year.

So... Gametrailers will have an official "trailer" on Friday. Maybe we'll learn something. Or maybe this thread will remain useless for another 6 or 7 months. We'll see.

[est]

* The story is dark-much darker than the usual BioWare fare-and influenced by “realistic” modern fantasy like George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.

Sign me the fuck up, srsly.

[Spluff]

I've been excited for this since it was announced. It's been constantly pushed back because other games take priority, but hopefully it'll be worth the wait. They have described it as the spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate series, which is a damn big claim.

They're building the world from the ground up. A few interesting things that I remember reading-

-It doesn't contain gods, like in the usual fantasy game (or at least, it doesn't contain proof of gods, much like the world we live in now). This means clerics/priests etc. are out.
-It has combat that utilizes the environment. Apparently cover plays a big part.
-The character gets to take part in epic, large scale battles.

[Storm Rider]

As much as I love Bioware, I find it hard to get excited about this because it's been the 'spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate' for five goddamn years now. People bag on Too Human for being in development forever, but that game basically was completely different each time they scrapped it and moved it to another engine/platform. I have no idea what has been taking Bioware this long considering all the games they've announced and released in the interim. Plus, since it's a PC game, I probably won't play it unless it has system requirements low enough that it can run on my laptop. I really want to see them make another game that can live up to Baldur's Gate, but until we see something concrete, I can't get my hopes up too high.

[ackblom12]

It's just like Spluff said, other games have taken priority for the last few years. As excited as I am for this game, I can understand that as a company, Mass Effect and the other projects they've been working on are much more important to get done.

I'm really goddamn eager for some solid info on the game though. It's a CRPG by Bioware and they haven't steered us wrong with that genre yet.

[Dimmukane]

It is supposed to have a pretty big presence at E3, at least according to EA.  I would definitely expect more news in the next couple of days.  Speaking of which, someone should probably get around to making an E3 thread. 

[Storm Rider]

I was planning to do so on Monday after the first round of press conferences and so forth. Figured I might as well wait until we saw some news so that there was something to discuss at the beginning, rather than start it and then wait until Monday until having anything to talk about.

[Zombiedude]

Bump

I'm planning on preordering this, anyone else?

[Wasteroo]

do you realize that you don't have to say quote-unquote when you have quote marks literally right there

[KvP]

I'm glad you pointed that out because I obviously gave a shit when I made the post.

[kemon]

my friend has been going on about this for a couple months now.  so either way i don't think i'm going to be able to avoid sitting down with this game for a few hours.  i think he's literally going to tie me to a chair and make me play it.

[Dimmukane]

stop reading my secret thoughts i want this so bad

[satsugaikaze]

The 2009 E3 announcements I heard of this game centred around seducing some of the women in the game.

They call it a "romance option" but we all could just call it "dating sim without the R18" rating". If it doesn't serve a purpose to the game significantly, I would be angry at the game for implementing this for no reason.


That said, everything else I've seen and heard about this game up until this point looks pretty good. Bioware at the very least don't seem to be cutting any corners for this game.

[Headwoünd]

Literally been waiting for years.
All we had back then were some official posts on Bioware's board, not them fancy trailers you gosh darn kids yell about. D|

Seriously, I've avoided almost every trailer, it's a blind must buy I want to experience as fresh as possible.

They call it a "romance option" but we all could just call it "dating sim without the R18" rating". If it doesn't serve a purpose to the game significantly, I would be angry at the game for implementing this for no reason.

I assume you've never played Baldur's Gate 2. They implemented romanceable NPCs there as well and it rawked (because it had depth due to great writing), but they knew where to make the cut (no Haer'Dalis romance for the ladies) when crunch time came closer.

[Alex C]

If it doesn't serve a purpose to the game significantly, I would be angry at the game for implementing this for no reason.

I strongly disagree. PC-NPC interaction is at the core of what bioware does and not all of it has to affect game play mechanics for it to be worthwhile. If the romance options deeply affect the storyline, that's neat, but if it doesn't that's fine by me as well. I rarely enjoy playing evil PCs, but that doesn't mean that acting like a bastard isn't an option worth offering in a genre that prides itself on providing a small degree of non-linearity.

[Johnny C]

It's not fine by me, and I'm not alone on that.

[LTK]

I almost never play RPGs and I know next to nothing about Dragon Age, yet somehow this game strangely attracts me. I'm totally buying it, and being able to buy it with ME2 discounted as well as many sweet bonuses only adds to my unexplainable gravitation to it.

[Spluff]

I assume you've never played Baldur's Gate 2. They implemented romanceable NPCs there as well and it rawked (because it had depth due to great writing), but they knew where to make the cut (no Haer'Dalis romance for the ladies) when crunch time came closer.

Are you kidding, I wanted to kill Aerie and Jaheira every time they interrupted my massacre of whatever creature I found at the time, to whine about their lives in the romantic storyline. That said, there was nothing inherently wrong with the romantic plotlines on a moral level, just an annoyance level.

[KvP]

The article that Johnny kind of linked makes some cogent points about how "romances" tend to work, in that they really don't. Their function is an extension of RPG narrative and quest design, and sex is often the payoff at the end of a long period of making the right dialogue choices time after time. It's something of a minigame in that. Especially in Bioware games since KOTOR there really is the sense of "keep talking to me until the end of the game and then we'll have sex". In The Witcher it's actually a trading card game, not far removed from the sort of thing that you'd imagine a frathouse setting up.

Thus these game romances, like all mass media, play into the idea of sexuality, particularly female sexuality, as an exchange of power, a competition over who can control the commodity of a woman's virtue. By placing sex at the end of the character's story arc they (perhaps inadvertently) play up sex as something that you're rewarded with for making the right choices, something that you earn. The problem with this is that it creates an expectation. I remember when Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines came out, and for all its faults it was actually pretty progressive in having several outwardly sexual female characters, only one of which it's possible to have in-game sex with (mostly because she's bored and does things on a whim) Anyway there was a sizable amount of griping on the part of gamers who felt that these female characters who were dressed provocatively and often teased PCs should have been available as potential conquests. Their contention was that it was pretty obvious that these characters were interested and it was dishonest to not actually make them interested. Attitudes like that are common inside and outside of the context of the game, but they're reinforced by the way that games usually play out. Games obviously aren't solely responsible for these expectations, but they're part of the apparatus that encourages them.

The article was brought to the attention of the Alpha Protocol guys (the article is ostensibly about that game) and their counterpoints tended to be either A. the writer had not played the game and thus couldn't make judgments or B. It's an incomplete criticism to say that male characters have a tendency to dominate female characters in games when male characters have a tendency to dominate anything and everything in a game world, including the laws of physics and other male characters. There's something to those arguments but they don't quite seal it for me.

Anyway, game romances don't seem to serve any clear purpose beyond titillating players. The way games are structured makes naturalistic progression of relationships more or less impossible to portray (actually The Sims, with its elementary school level of understanding of sex, inclusion of mundane life and freeform structure, comes closest) and thus I don't think there's a good reason for them to be in games at all, besides the fact that they appeal to common fantasies (particularly about the type of women who seem unattainable) and move units.

As for BG2, it doesn't have romance, it has extensive rehab therapy with sex at the end. I never tried Anomen's arc with a female character because Anomen's VA and writing were generally pretty annoying.

[Ikrik]

Ok I'm totally not responding to that whole romance tangent thingie but this being Biowares first PS3 game I am incredibly excited for it.  I've been wanting to play a Bioware game for quite some time.

But I have a very quick and what might be a stupid question.  Is this going to have local co-op?  Is my girlfriend going to be able to sit with me on the same couch and pick up a controller and play...or no?

[Storm Rider]

Apparently the console controls for this game don't totally blow, so I may end up playing this after all. It's got Tim Curry and Captain Janeway in it too, so... that's something.

I still have trouble really getting excited about this game in comparison with Mass Effect 2, and frankly from the way Bioware's publicizing the two games it seems like they feel the same way. Still, I'll probably buy it shortly after release, unless reviews are unexpectedly negative.

[Zombiedude]

And they'll be released a couple of months apart. argh hard choice.

[Alex C]

Are you kidding, I wanted to kill Aerie and Jaheira every time they interrupted my massacre of whatever creature I found at the time, to whine about their lives in the romantic storyline.

The funniest part was how their sappy theme music would cue up pretty much the absolute second you got done disemboweling people, so you're basically having a chat over a bunch of corpses. The therapy followed by sex analogy is pretty damned accurate too, particularly since you have to be kind of dickish to Jaheira if you want to nip the thing in the bud; there's nothing particularly romantic about any of it. Funniest part was that I didn't even know about the romance option when I first got the game; I just picked one of the nicer dialogue options since you know, her husband was recently dissected and that's not cool. Plus, she healed me a lot in the first game.

But like I said, there's people who seem to like this sort of thing, so I'm perfectly willing to tolerate the existence of such things in games provided that they aren't really required to move forward. Basically, I've made my peace with the concept that for many people games are simply a form of (often base and awkward) fantasy. That's not really my bag, personally, but I don't really disapprove of these things any more than I do Call of Duty or GTA. Such things simply make me uninterested, not "angry".

Ikrik: I'm pretty sure they said there was going to be no co-op. It doesn't really fit terribly well into what they do anyway, MMO plans aside.

[snalin]

As for BG2, it doesn't have romance, it has extensive rehab therapy with sex at the end.

Oh God so true.

As far as I can remember, the ending story for one of the female characters (Aerie?) turned out worse if you slept with her. Which is kinda sad. I'm not quite sure about the view on sex in BG2, though; you could see the whole thing as a minigame where you selected the right options to get laid, but the characters were well fleshed out, and it felt like the designers were trying to make interesting sub-plots.

The problem with romance in an RPG is that the main character (the Bhaalspawn from BG, Shepard from Mass Effect) are completely flat characters by themselves; you as the player are supposed to create the main character through dialogue options. The problem is that this does not create very deep characters, and the romance becomes a bit one-sided, the NPC you are romancing are madly in love, but you as a player don't have that kind of feelings, so neither does your character, and it all comes down to the reward, sex. I'm not sure how this can be fixed, though.


Actually, I'm just waiting for some of the not monogamous people in here to complain that you couldn't romance Aerie and Jaheira at the same time.

[look out! Ninjas!]

I am eternally angered by that, yes.

Anyway, thoughts on the article posted. Love is hard to show in any medium. Show well, anyway; purple prose and explicitly stating it aside. And especially so in an interactive medium where my character is supposedly in love with the guy or the girl or the Lovecraftian horror (I have not really played any of these games, don't judge me).
Sex? Sex is easy. Easy to show or imply in any medium, at varying levels of explicitness.
The correlation that often exists between sex and love can easily be painted as causation. Or not. Nobody's denying the huge amount of loveless sex that goes on everywhere. But that's beside the point. Any 'romance subplot' in a game will end with sex because it's easy to show, and with a little bit of dialogue you can bump it up into that elusive "love".
I'm not saying I like it, I'm saying it's easy.

Plus The Witcher almost ruined the end of Act 1 with the card thing.

[satsugaikaze]

I'm actually a little lenient when I play games with romance options, so long as the romance seems to have a point. Someone mentioned KotOR a while back, and I tolerated the romance options (well, mainly just the Bastila-Revan option) mainly because at the end the romance actually did something for the plot towards the end.

Although it was the pretty hammy "love redeems all" idea that seems to be in a lot of Star Wars titles (and other franchises but that's for a different thread to discuss), I respected it because it had a distinct purpose of advancing quite a bit of the plot towards the end. As a sidenote, the actual romancing sequences were a little unimmersive because your player character was mostly silent as if he was telepathically sending the selected lines of dialogue to the NPCs.

I'm confident that Bioware will make another great RPG, and I probably shouldn't have said "significantly", but personally I'd like for some of it to have some sort of meaning to the plot. It's great to flesh out characters, but I honestly couldn't give a two shits about Carth's killed family until I learned about his personal vendetta with Malak's right hand man.

[Headwoünd]

Are you kidding, I wanted to kill Aerie and Jaheira every time they interrupted my massacre of whatever creature I found at the time, to whine about their lives in the romantic storyline. That said, there was nothing inherently wrong with the romantic plotlines on a moral level, just an annoyance level.

Well I didn't say it was implemented perfectly. :>

Regarding KotOR (SPOILER!): It's beyond me how anyone wouldn't have wanted to shred Bastila into tiny little ribbons towards the end. I usually play the good guy, but hook up with her in order to save her? Nooohohoooooo.
Sometime I beared with her codependant catharsis kinda thing and couldn't help but reload to commence with said shredding.

And Carth is Anomen put into overdrive. :S

[Alex C]

I've never had any real particular beef with Anomen, Bastila or Carth. Probably just because I typically ran with HK and Canderous.

[satsugaikaze]

Oh, HK and Canderous were gold.

Pity there can only be one wisecracking emotionally disturbed droid in this universe.

[KvP]

Actually when you play KOTORII you discover there are several dozen at least.

[satsugaikaze]

Oh, that's right.

But... are the copies as wise and as emotionally disturbed? (From what I heard, the original HK wasn't too happy about the copies.)

[LTK]

What a coincidence, KotOR just showed up at Steam. Might be worth a shot one day, but Dragon Age comes first. I pre-ordered it at Amazon for the goodies you get with a physical copy, like the armor also for ME2. I looked around on the website, and it looks like the different classes you can play actually have huge variety, not just in appearance and skills, but also in terms of backstory and motivations. Do you start at a different point in the world with each character? Maybe this is a game worth replaying after a full exploration run.

[KvP]

I think there are six backgrounds and they alter the context of the story slightly, more than Mass Effect but less than, say, Arcanum. If you think of the game as having an A story and a B story, the A story (main plot) remains unchanged but the B story (peripheral quests, minibosses and the like) is affected by what origin you choose. As for class, as far as I'm aware you can only be a spellcaster if you take the mage origin, since Dragon Age is supposed to be a "low fantasy" game (it won't be, really). I'm not sure if other classes are also tied to origins.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

i've avoided reading/watching/listening to any info on this game for a while now because i had no idea what it was and the name "Dragon Age: Origins" sounds like some straight to dvd bullshit. however, now that it's gotten harder to avoid information about it i'm starting to realize that this game looks pretty fucking sweet.

which sucks because i do not need to more games to buy, damnit!

[LTK]

One month until I get it! 

[LTK]

Also: Ten days until the character creator is released!

[KvP]

20 minutes of gameplay, accompanied by inane chatter!

[est]

The only funny thing the "humour" guy said was the "did you have to unlock that moustache?" bit.  The rest was just annoying.  When he was saying that he died a lot when he was playing I immediately figured that it was because he was a moron.

[est]

Oh, it was pretty good footage though!

[KvP]

The character creator should have hit about 20 minutes ago.

[LTK]

Wow, looks like the server is overloaded. Must be gaining some pretty heavy popularity, this game.

You can read the forum posts here, look for stickies.

[est]

From what I have read so far I am not sure the character creator is helping.

[KvP]

Yeah I know a QA tester or two who worked on this game and from what they say the program isn't half as functional as it is in-game. Basically the entire point of the program is the make-your-own-forum-avatar thing at the very end of the process.

[Be My Head]

20 minutes of gameplay, accompanied by inane chatter!

Looks pretty standard as far as Bioware RPGs go. Pretty sure the learning curve will be pretty quick for veterans of these games.

[KvP]

Shale, the golem CNPC. Included as free DLC with new copies of the game. Not included with the game proper, to discourage secondhand purchases.

[LTK]

Oh hey, if you're especially eager for the game there's a Dragon Age flash game out now:

http://www.dragonagejourneys.com/

After a few quests it will ask you to fill out a survey which rewards you an in-game item for DA: Origins.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

I'm thinking about switching my Assassin's Creed 2 preorder to this instead but I can't make up my mind.

ah decisions, decisions


I mean, I'm playing Demon's Souls and Borderlands right now and Modern Warfare 2 comes out next month as well (preordered already) and I put five bucks down on Assassin's Creed 2 just for the fuck of it but I just can't decide what to play now and what to wait and play later.

sway me one way or the other, please. give me something to help me decide.

[Nutsaur]

I'd switch to Dragon Age - no lame-assed Sci-Fi sub plot there.

[Storm Rider]

I just read a spoiler for this game that I don't know if I can fully describe without completely giving away what it is. It's definitely... a new frontier for games, at least. I'm not sure whether it's a really brave thing to do or just a bad idea that will backfire horribly.

[Dimmukane]

What, the tranny hookers?