As Bill noted my Dragon Age preview is online. I tried to convince him it was a feature because, well, it just sounds better and I think big (for such a small mind), but the guy is a stickler for the little things. Can’t believe I had to sit on my hands for two weeks before we could post this. Ah well.
In the preview I don’t talk that much about the gameplay so much as I do the game and the property as a whole. On the plus side that means hardly anything remotely spoilerlicious, on the other hand if you want to know how the console version controls or what types of characters you can collect for your party, you should look elsewhere. I’m sure plenty of other previews cover that ground.
This game fascinates me. Sure, it just looks damn good. With the 12 hours or so I was able to put into playing it, it is pretty much exactly the game I wanted it to be when I first heard it was in development. What I find more interesting, though, is the number of different plans Bioware is putting into place to branch out with it, practically right from the start: Books, a pen & paper RPG, board game, card game, and who knows what else (not to mention the module-making community, DLC, and sequel).
For an IP that’s only just being born that’s insanely ambitious. I can’t name another game property that was launched with these sorts of plans already laid out. Warcraft is as big a property in this space as there is, but it didn’t launch as an RTS, MMO, board game, card game, blah, blah, blah. It grew into all that over the space of years. It’ll be interesting to see, over the next five-plus years, what Dragon Age, as a property, becomes.
