Top 5 of 2009 - #1 Dragon Age

Yeah, not a lot of mystery to that. Somewhere I still have an issue of Games for Windows Magazine (the first issue where it changed to that name instead of the old Computer Gaming World - RIP) that had Dragon Age on the cover:

That was over three years ago. I’ve been looking forward to Bioware’s return to fantasy ever since and Dragon Age, amazingly, did not disappoint. It's every single bit the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate that I wanted it to be. True, the narrative does occasionally get clumsy and yes, the world is far too restrictive (especially if you're a lover of open world RPGs like Fallout 3), but that doesn't stop this game from being an all time favorite.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or have zero interest in such things), you know Bioware has already announced the first full-on expansion for Dragon Age to be released in March: Awakening. Here’s the trailer:

Video Games | Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening | Expansion Debut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Sold.

Dragon Age: Choice and Consequence

Last week I promised to write up something about choice and consequence in Dragon Age and have yet to follow through. That’s largely because I’m still not sure I have a grasp on the scope of these things in the game. I’m about 30-40 hours in, have only completed about 30% of the game, and I still don’t have a very good handle on the full scope of the game and how your decision making affects the world.

I find that very impressive. (With regards to Bioware, not myself. I’m never impressed with myself. Well, I looked damn good as Indiana Jones on Halloween, but that’s pretty much it.)

I will say that I like the extent to which the localized characters react to the events around them. This was a huge problem for me in Fallout 3 because too often critical events would occur and characters would go on like nothing had changed. (The town sheriff in Megaton comes to mind. If he dies only his son seems to notice.) This is not the case in Dragon Age.

***Begin Vague Spoilers***

There is a sequence at one point in the game where I attempted to rally the locals to fight in a dangerous battle. When it was done, several of the townspeople, including one prominent figure there, were dead. I was never able to fight this battle without losing these characters, but my impression is that it is possible for them to survive. Afterward, a cut scene began in which bodies were being sent out on boats to be lit on fire and the local chantry priestess noted the name of the one major town NPC who had died. Judging from the rather rough cut in audio dialog, I’m pretty sure this list can vary based on how many more (or less) you lose.

In one of the boats was the body of another whom had fallen. When I later went to place where he ran a business, one of his employees had taken over and there was an in depth conversation about her decision to stay in town rather than leave. In another area of this plot thread a brother and sister who had lended to me a family heirloom insisted that I keep it, a fairly routine sort of occurrence in an RPG. What made it unique was that I had options for how to respond that included just accepting it and choosing to give them variable amounts of money for it. The amount given directly affected what they would decide to do next. (I think I could have still refused it too, but my memory is hazy.)

***End Vague Spoilers***

I love this aspect of the game. The jury is still very much out on how some decisions affect long term events in the game, but certainly the sense is that in each of the major quest lines there are multiple ways for it to unfold and that your choices there will directly affect the end game. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out because there are choices I’ve made where I was genuinely trying to do the just and noble thing and those choices do include the possibility of generating less than ideal results in the end. I hope that’s the case because more games need to do that.

These sorts of games shouldn’t consistently reward you for endeavoring to take the virtuous path. Sometimes you should be penalized for doing so because trying to “do the right thing” should result in you having to walk a more difficult road; a road that is more disadvantageous to you as a player. I’m really hoping that when I do reach the end game (sometime before the end of the world in 2012) that my attempts to play the ethical character have mixed results. Say, less overall individual power to work with, but perhaps more allies.

Is This What's Known as Motivated Salesmanship?

*Bonus points for you if you correctly pegged the title of this post as a line from Mallrats.

If you haven’t seen today’s Penny Arcade, you’re forgiven for not having heard about this. It’s… well, I guess it’s most generously described as a new standard in DLC pimpage. Many of you will feel compelled to replace “standard” with “low.”

***very mild spoilers ahead***

It seems in Dragon Age when you get your party camp there’s a certain quest giving gentleman there who begs you to help him with an errand that relates directly to The Warden’s Keep DLC quest. I got to this point last night and, having purchased Warden’s Keep already, thought nothing of it. I assumed the guy just wouldn’t be there if you didn’t have the DLC; obviously, an incorrect assumption. In addition to the wonderfully mocking PA strip, a poster at the GWJ forums was good enough to get a screenshot of it.

That’s just… I mean, wow. It’s one of those things that probably should bother me, but since I’m in Dragon Age’s thrall I think I’ll just whistle as I walk by and pretend I know nothing about it. I love the game too much for righteous indignation about DLC hocking and will instead leave that to petition-making death nerds still upset about Diablo III rainbows and Left 4 Dead sequels.

Anywaaaaay……

At some point in the next couple days I’ll be writing some more about Dragon Age, in particular about the nature of choice and consequences in the game, which is something it’s handled incredibly well, so far. I’m about 10-12 hours in, have made the journey to Redcliff, and if there’s a point at which the game derails I have yet to reach it. As Bill Harris likes to say about Torchlight, it’s like drinking candy.

And now, just because it’s Friday and there’s a Mallrats mention in this post, I feel obligated to embed this. (There’s no language or skin, but still, it’s probably not worksafe.)

Dragon Age!

First thing’s first, for those who’ve so kindly expressed concern and since I don’t know when Bill will get around to posting an update (such a slacker): Talking to him this morning, it sounds like Mary’s been doing much better the last couple days. Hopefully that trend continues and all will be well.

As for Dragon Age, the Collector’s Edition I ordered did arrive yesterday. That’s a huge relief given that my supposed review copy is nowhere to be found (and will evidently be on the 360). To be fair I get there’s a lot of schlub sites out there trying to get free review code, but it’s Gameshark. No, it’s not IGN, but it ain’t Skippy’s House of 2nd Grade Game Reviews either. Ah well. I shouldn’t really complain. The people doing the PR for this game are incredibly nice and I’m sure they’re doing their best. I’m just disappointed that it means I (probably) won’t have a Gameshark review ready for about two weeks and that does impact how much it gets read. This isn’t something that can be played in a couple of nights, after all. (Plus, I’ve got my kids with me for the next seven nights which severely restricts my gaming time; this is not something that I should be playing around a four and five year old.)

As for my first night with the game -that sounds so taudry!- I stand by the assessment that it’s just incredibly great. I won’t speak for the console version, which does play much different even if the story is the same, but I played through the human noble origin for the second time and it just snares me. It only takes about 90 minutes to complete and I was emotionally connected to my character’s family inside of 60 minutes. I really should play through the other origins right away, but I’m torn because I need to start progressing in the game.

Some other spoiler free notes:

- I’m running a Intel Core 2 (2.x GHz) PC with 2GB RAM, GeForce 8800 (GTS, I think) graphics card, and Win7 64-bit. I’m running at 1680x1050 with details set to High (second best) and no anti-aliasing enabled. The game runs just fine. There’s an occasional hitch here and there, especially when adjusting the camera distance, but I think that’s a product of running 64-bit Windows with just 2GB of memory.

- The Dragon Age website is a mess, or at least it was last night. I’ve got two codes for custom items and I didn’t even mess with entering them because the site would not let me stay logged in when I tried to move from page to page. (And it’s definitely not just me.) This morning it seems to be working better, so I did go ahead and enter the codes (hopefully content will be filtered down to my account by the time I get home), but my game’s data from last night still isn’t all updated to my online account either so I’m not sure the site is over its release day meltdown just yet.

- I do feel gipped that buying the CE doesn’t also give you either of the release day DLC packs (Warden’s Keep or Stone Prisoner), yet the Steam digital deluxe version gets you both. I know I get the DVD and cloth map, but come on, I paid $60 for an extra $5 worth of goodies (if that). Give me one of the DLC quests, at least!

EDIT: I take it back. I did get a code for Stone Prisoner. It was on the back of the Blood Armor card and I didn't see it. Yay! :)

- I do so love the cloth map. It’s getting framed.

- I am such a geek.

- When I got my first look at the game in Edmonton I didn’t spend much time looking at the tactics stuff. Last night I did and it’s great. Depending on your character’s cunning attribute you get a set number of tactics slots to configure how that character behaves in combat (if left to his/her own devices). You can tell them which enemy to attack (nearest, ranged attacker, strongest, weakest, same guy you’re attacking; the list goes on), when to use their special abilities, when to use health and whether to use the weakest or strongest available potion, etc. etc. etc. Taking the time to set these options really makes a difference.

- It seems like, on Normal difficulty, a lot of people are struggling not to get murdered in combat. I definitely ran into problems last month when I first played it, but last night I didn’t lose my party once and only one character took injuries form being knocked unconscious (this is up through the quest to become a Grey Warden). My suggestion is not to overly divide your party. Don’t send all four guys after different opponents. It just takes too long to bring adversaries down and if ranged attackers outnumber you badly enough they’ll slaughter you. I tend to put three melee guys on one opponent at a time (making sure one of them is flanking for extra damage) and then let a ranged/magic character try to keep ranged attackers busy. This seems to minimize the amount of ranged damage my guys take, while allowing them to really mow through the grunts.

- One thing that some may not like (I don’t) is that I don’t think there’s any way to get at the numbers game going on in the background. What separates a 20 Dexterity score from an 18? I really don’t know. What kind of success am I having with hit rolls in combat? No idea. You get enough info on skills and attributes to get the idea, but if you really want to know numbers and try to maximize the math, I don’t think there’s a way to do that.

- I love, love, love this game. But you already knew that.

If anyone does have questions leave ‘em in the comments and I’ll answer what I can. Tonight I finish out the Ostragar section of the game, which is where it really starts to open up.

SON OF A- (Dragon Age Delayed)

Yes, Bill already posted about this.

No, he didn't say enough, so as usual I have to pick up his slack.

If the best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup (a claim I find dubious), then the worst has got to be waking up to find out that Dragon Age has been put off until the second half of this year. Delays happen. As gamers we're all pretty used to that. So it's not the delay itself that chaps my ass nearly as much as the fact that it's being delayed to release alongside the console versions.

This was the one we PC wonks were supposed to get first. I was supposed to be enjoying Dragon Age on my PC while the consolies were all busy doing... whatever it is they all do when, for once, they don't get the "cool" game first. It was going to be glorious. A reminder of a happier, simpler time when all the great games (ie - stuff that I like) really were only on the PC (Ultima, Baldur's Gate, Elder Scrolls, etc.). It was going to be like rainbows and flowers in Diablo: Perfection. Instead the console playas get the last laugh.

Again.

My world is shattered and I will spend every waking day from now until the fall... well, doing other things I suppose. Ah well, at least MLB '09: The Show comes out soon and I'll be able to use my PS3 as something other than a dedicated Blu-ray player/Hulu viewer. What I'll be using my PC for, I have no idea. Porn will probably be involved, though.

Dragon Age Nuggets from Greg Zeschuk

The MTV Multiplayer blog has a new interview up with Bioware's Greg Zeschuk about my #1 most anticipated game of the next year or so: Dragon Age. It's full of juicy nuggets and worth the read if you have even the smallest amount of interest in the game. Here's a snippet:

Multiplayer: You guys are always big on choice in video games. That’s one of the fundamental things that BioWare does. How does choice function in this game and how does it differ than it did in “Mass Effect” which is a lot of people’s last point of reference for BioWare?

Zeschuk: We always think of choice as one of the key things we do. The concept of non-linear fiction or narrative that branches is one of the things that sets videogames apart. We believe it is fundamental to making it an emotionally impactful art-form. “Dragon Age” is similar to our other games in the sense that you are making a lot of choices. They’re big. They’re impactful. I think we may have amped up the emotionality of it a little bit. We feel players will have a very personal experience with the game. .. Because of the way the game works you’re going to have a different feel depending on how you started and the choices you made [in the origin].