Dragon Age:Origins

BelgarathMTH

Hi, is anybody else playing DA:O while waiting for BG:EE? I started playing with it again, and I'm having a really good time. It's got good tactical combat as long as you keep the difficulty slider turned up, an interesting character skills progression, and good npc relationships.

I can really see the "spiritual successor" thing now.

It's quite an epic game, even though I don't think it's got quite the replayability of BG. Too bad they ruined it after DA:O with the successor expansions and games.

If you're playing, what party configuration(s) are you using, and why? Do you use mods? Who is your favorite romance interest?

HaHaCharade

The game gets on my nerves...Never finished it. Maybe cuz I started at Max difficulty and in the Dwarven beginning, got owned.. Ha.

HaHaCharade

I'm running through IWD as I waite for BG:EE

SapphireIce101

I think I may play DA:O again someday, I mean, I need to finish my F!Surana playthrough, and re-do my M!Tabris and M!Mahariel playthroughs. Then it will be time to move onto DA2.

My Party Configuration for my Surana (Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage) is Zevran, Alistair, and Wynne. Why? Magical Bosoms. Other than that, I need a trap person, a tank, and a healer. I use a lot of mods. My favorite romance interest is...Zevran. Hah.

Tomoko

I really enjoyed Origins though I haven't played it recently. I think I used some more cosmetic mods because I am vain enough that bad hair on a character annoys me, but I don' think I modded beyond that. Romance wise I loved a little bit of Alistair... he's too cute!

BelgarathMTH

Yeah, I've got several cosmetics mods including "white teeth" and "dark beard shadow", as well as expanded hair colors and skin tones.

I've also got better-looking versions of Alistair, Zevran, and Leliana.

I've got one that lets you bash open chests, and one that lets you respec if you want to. I've also got one that lets you skip most of the sloth demon Fade sequence in the Circle quest.

SapphireIce101

The Fade and The Deep Roads are quite tedious, which is probably why I haven't finished my Surana run as of yet.

I have better looking versions of most party members except for Alistair, Anders, Nathaniel, and Sigrun.

Tomoko

Oh yeah that's right the Fade. I think I did have that mod, that DID get tedious. I didn't mind the Deep Roads so much, I remember the first time I played and you could hear the voice of that dwarven woman... *shiver* creeeepy.

sandmanCCL

I loved the Fade. It's not a terribly long section of the game if you know what you're doing.

The Deep Roads is the part that slogs the most to me. By the time I get around to doing it, my guys are usually powerful enough to just roll over every encounter but it still takes foreeeeever.

I loved the expansion. My biggest deal with DA:O is trying to connect with my EA account ends up crashing a lot and so I can't access any of my DLC. Loved the game. Want to replay it. But I just can't seem to get it to run.

Tomoko

Different people like different things I suppose, the Fade to me seemed tedious, though I knew what I was doing...

I agree I liked the expansion, not the sequel though. I didn't have the EA account issue (with DA) but I used to issues with downloadable content mysteriously disappearing mid game and then returning. I would have been annoyed but I got on the DA boat late so all the content was already included so it's not like I particularly paid for the content.

I really hate the EA account system, I have had quite a few issues and the support is really crappy, like unless you give them remote control of your comp they won't help you. Seriously? I work at a large law firm that deals with highly confidential contracts, I cannot allow another company to have access to my computer.

Kukaracha

DA was good, but the backround is mostly a patchwork of European late antiquity / middle-ages. The DLCs introduced too much fan service, too (thinking about Morrigan).

junk11

DAO is really a "spiritual successor" in some ways...but DA2 failed in the hands of EA and Mass Effect series
not saying Mass effect sucks, i like it a lot...but..the elements in mass effect ain't suitable for DA series
(eg. the circle of choices...)

I bought the collector's edition as well as the ultimate edition to show my love to the game (and of course for the DLCs... :P ) but DA2..well...not so much, its a good game but kind of went the wrong direction...

anyway I love Morrigan's personality and Alistar's..huh...mmmm...stupidity?
Ah..and don't forget the DOG...Mabari war hound is the best companion you can ever get..
well maybe after Shale..

EDIT: O, I also like the fade, never skip it with the mod on replay..also the choices in dwarven politic questline, well done in terms of old and new in grey zone

BelgarathMTH

My problem with the Circle quest Fade sequence is that it interrupts the momentum of the story - there you are in the mage tower, fighting demons left and right, just had to defeat a desire demon and an army of charmed templars, worried to death about saving First Enchanter Irving, you're almost there, one floor to go! And all of a sudden - poof, you have to spend two or three hours of your gaming time getting out of a crazy dream. I think it was a bad idea, even though it was a very creative sequence, and fortunately, enough people agreed that "there's a mod for that".

@junk11, I think the word you're looking for to describe Alistair is "goofy". "Lovably goofy."

ryuken87

Never really understood why DA:O was labelled the spiritual successor to BG (other than marketing reasons) I didn't see it at all, it just felt like another Bioware RPG. It was decent but I felt it was hampered by some attrocious sections. The dungeon under the dwarf city was a seemingly neverending grind of essentially the same battle over and over.

I have just ordered the second one though since it's cheap.

elminster

Dragon Age:Origins sucked the hope out of me for Bioware coming up with a new BG like RPG. Such a limited spell selection, a campaign where some seemingly important aspects get largely ignored somehow (the civil war going on). In that case you seem to somehow avoid the civil war with the exception of one battle and I think it being briefly brought up in one of the DLC's, but basically even though there was supposed to be this big power struggle in Ferelden it did not seem like it was going on from the perspective of the player character.

The Deep Roads was very tedious, especially on higher difficulties because almost every battle is the same. I actually don't even mind the fade, I find it less tedious than the Deep Roads.

The characters were generally pretty well done I thought. Alistair for instance is pretty lovably goofy. Morrigan was great.

But basically the game to me has very limited replay value beyond maybe the second playthrough. I played through it probably three times, once for each class I believe (though I'm not sure if I played through the whole game with a warrior or not). However, since you basically can get access to all of the abilities you can get as your own character through your companions (who are all conveniently at camp) it takes the need to replay for the purposes of trying different ability/spell combinations out of the equation (for the most part). Especially given that your companions all level up with you even if they are not used (if I am not mistaken).

I ended up being disappointed in how little your origin impacts the experience. Given that that is the title of the game, I guess I presumed it would be given greater importance than it is.

I only briefly have played awakening. It is supposed to be good but I just never was committed enough to play it. I won't be playing Da2 given what I've heard about it. Sorry for the rant... this is just a game that grinds my gears.

BelgarathMTH

@ryuken87, one of the ways I've started to get the Baldur's Gate feeling from playing DA:O is to turn off the AI tactics. I think the combat portion of the game starts to become no-fun after you get the tactics screens so fine-tuned that the game starts playing itself. So, try turning that off, maxing the difficulty slider, and manage all combat yourself for the whole party. It will make it feel much more like BG.

The other way they were trying to be like BG, with some success, I think, was in fairly well-developed npc characters with interjections and banters and personal quests. There was also an epic story where the protagonist's decisions influenced the world. And there was a complex, fully written political environment complete with plots, conspiracies, racial tensions, policing of mages, etc.

I've heard so many bad things about DA2 that I don't think I will ever buy it. I don't think I would play it if they started giving it away. I already see the beginnings of the dreaded "consolization" in DA:O, which manages to be a great game despite being written for consoles, but DA2 supposedly represents the complete downfall of story-based and tactics-based rpg's to the console.

mch202

Played it once... was nice, see no reason to touch this game ever again.

"spiritual successor"?? Never was, Never will be - just a marketing slogan to attract old RPG fans..



Not talking about DA2, the best part in this game was the Uninstall button.

benighted_starlight

mch202 said:

"spiritual successor"?? Never was, Never will be - just a marketing slogan to attract old RPG fans..

Thank you, I never EVER understood where this "spiritual successor" thing was based upon. To me it felt like [fanboy mode on] Bioware was insulting its own legacy by employing such a cheap marketing trick.
[..fanboy mode off]

elminster

Ohh the days of being a bioware fanboy. That brings me back... to the good old days of 2007 following the release of Mass Effect.

benighted_starlight

I think that company killed itself (in terms of creativity) right after Knights of the Old Republic.

Zinodin

I'm with belgarathmth.

Mods helped this game immensely. I didn't particularly care for the game in my first play-through.

The story is really good, but I didn't quite feel it because it didn't have the refined visuals. Armies didn't feel like armies, at least not different ones. Two different factions could wear the same armor set, just slightly different colors. The Grey Wardens, who you join, don't even have their own armor set as they do in the second game. And you would have a hard time telling your party member apart when everyone wore the same armor, and had huge ugly helmets covering their face. I'm not complaining that it isn't realistic, but it doesn't have to look so boring. And rogues only had one armor! Well, different stats, but the exact same look, which is a problem when considering the length of the game and expansions. I'm sorry that I keep mentioning the word 'armor' a lot, but it bothers me immensely. Lucikly, they fixed it in the second game, but that one had another problem I'm not getting into now.

But basically, I installed a mod where soldiers wore cool NEW stylish armors appropiate to their factions. People had white teeth, and had better faces (not always prettier, but they didn't feel randomized in a tool-engine).

And for personal preference, which belgarathmth won't agree with, all the female NPCs had big boobs and tight mini-skirts (they were different styles and color, of course). I also gave my party members unique look. I could tell them apart, and they looked bad-ass in comparison to the un-modded game. Here's a pic from my party:

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/596981956757995028/E913D2839F36D3D1F59B09168FE56CCB50E56080/

Anyway, with my personal visual preferences satisfied, I could stop being annoyed and just focus on the story. Ah, what a fun campaign it was. Shame it had to end Dragon Age 2 just isn't as good in the story-department, and I just wanted to have more adventures with my main character from the first game. Oh well..

EDIT: And I had a mod that skipped the Fade. Best, mod, evar.

Brude

SapphireIce101 said:

The Fade and The Deep Roads are quite tedious, which is probably why I haven't finished my Surana run as of yet.

I have better looking versions of most party members except for Alistair, Anders, Nathaniel, and Sigrun.

Best mod ever released for that game was "Skip the Fade," hands down.

ST4TICStriker

I hate Dragon Age with a passion.

I've gotten about 6 character to the lands meet but I've only finished it once.

Just before Dragon Age 2 came out I decided to beat it for the first time. Over two weeks I went form loving the game and calling it the best RPG ever, to hating it with all my soul.

I don't know what got to me; the fact I realized my decisions didn't matter, the mind-numbingly easy combat (Played a mage on xbox with friendly fire off ) or how needlessly padded it was.

But I think the main reason was how annoying ALL the characters were!

So no........ I will not be playing dragon age while I wait for BG:EE

Gonna be playing Lost lost odyssey and IceWind Dale 1.

Razor

I think DAO is a very good game. But there are things that... idk maybe they are jokes, references to our own time and reality but I did not feel they should be there. I still felt that the world had been created with care and I enjoyed it even if I kept remembering the witcher. There were enough differences to keep it interesting. I thought some of the npc were just taking up space though, like zevran...
The Fade? It was long but I thought it was great, twisted and all.
DA2 is not as good. And the npcs are terrible.

sandmanCCL

ST4TICStriker said:

the mind-numbingly easy combat (Played a mage on xbox with friendly fire off )

"I hate a game for being too easy even though I played it on the easiest possible settings."

What.

You know what I find funny is the amount of people who loved DA:O when it came out. They loved it when the expansion came out.

Then DA2 came out and was a huge slap in the face, and all the sudden tons of vitriol came pouring DA:O's way by extension.

DA:O is not perfect, but it is easily one of my favorite games of the last ten years. I beat it on the hardest difficulty without my main character ever falling in battle (Alistair died like 27 times but that's another matter). Honestly I'm surprised by the amount of hate I've seen for it.

Cheesebelly

It's an ok game, played it quite a bit (completed like 13 times or something? Then again my average run was 30 hours so no biggie XD )
Problem as I see it is that I couldn't get into the top-down view of the game. Mostly because it feels clumsy to move characters around. VERY useful for spells, not for combat in general. That's why I never saw too much BG into it, although they did look similar in some ways.

Not too hard of a game for those that KNOW what to do, definitely doable on Nightmare difficulty without "injuries". If you don't know what to do though, then Normal difficulty can be punishing.

Was thinking about playing it, after seeing my girlfriend start up Awakening, but I am not sure. Too many games I want to play, sooooo little time.

reedmilfam

I really liked DA:O, but it's lower on replay value than some. At least, for me. As for DA2 - it was all glam, no substance. I'm worried about DA3 - quality seems to be falling now that EA is king of that castle. Sad, but it happens.

bigdogchris

DA:O was a good game in it's own light but fails to compare to BG in overall gameplay and story.

ST4TICStriker

sandmanCCL said:

ST4TICStriker said:

the mind-numbingly easy combat (Played a mage on xbox with friendly fire off )

"I hate a game for being too easy even though I played it on the easiest possible settings."

What.

You know what I find funny is the amount of people who loved DA:O when it came out. They loved it when the expansion came out.

Then DA2 came out and was a huge slap in the face, and all the sudden tons of vitriol came pouring DA:O's way by extension.

DA:O is not perfect, but it is easily one of my favorite games of the last ten years. I beat it on the hardest difficulty without my main character ever falling in battle (Alistair died like 27 times but that's another matter). Honestly I'm surprised by the amount of hate I've seen for it.

I hated DA before I even played DA:2

I switched halfway through the game to hard rather then normal and I still just had to mash "A", I was a Acrcane Warrior. It was Stuipdly easy.

Also one of my friends played the game parallel to me and also said the game was still a mash "A" fest as a Dwarven Warrior, So its not just my class.

The console version of Dragon Age was just boring to play because of the combat.
(Well....That and the characters. They.Never.Stop.Talking.About.Nothing. )

Edit: I have like 120 hours on DA so I don't hate it . I just never want to see it again

erathiel

Now im waiting for Dragon Age III: Inquisition, cant wait to play it. I feel as in heaven, BG:EE, project Eternity and now Dragon Age III: Inquisition. Yikes!

shawnppickett

I liked DA:O well enough but it wasn't a patch on BG. Bioware really lost the plot with Neverwinter Nights (only one NPC in your party, really?). Things got better with some of the newer games, but they've never seemed to quite get back to the greatness of Baldur's Gate. Frankly, after the mess that was Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 2 and 3 I doubt they will. That's not to say that they don't make good games, and I enjoyed all of the games I listed here, but they have all been kind of a let down compared to Baldur's Gate.