Dragon Age - Best RPG Ever? @ GamerZines

When we've done polls (yes, not a scientifically valid test), they always come back overwhelmingly in favour of straight fantasy. I think a lot of people talk about fresh settings and innovation but don't like it when it's delivered (not talking about anyone specific, so no need to disagree individually).

For modern BioWare, this is a relatively brave title. Who honestly thought they'd make it fairly difficult? There was no way they were ever going to make a relatively hardcore titled and take an additional risk with the setting. Anyway, for my money, it's got enough of a tweak here and there to keep me happy.

As an aside (and, yes, this is a flawed example) we have another thread about Beyond Divinity. While not a great game, it was never as bad as made out to be. Many people really missed the pretty, green, fantasy setting of Rivellon more than anything else.

Dhruin said:

As an aside (and, yes, this is a flawed example) we have another thread about Beyond Divinity. While not a great game, it was never as bad as made out to be. Many people really missed the pretty, green, fantasy setting of Rivellon more than anything else.

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Here ! Me !

Looking ONLY at the game mechanbics, Beyond Divinity was imho a decent game. It showed many interesting … ways … developments … away from the first game.

It played through it, and I actually LOVED the Im Village ! It was the thing that came closest to the "pretty, green fantasy" of Rivellon.

As a side-thought, BD was in a way much more "mature", and "dark & gritty" than many games (read: RPGs) of this decade; everything was dark, devilish, demonish, so to say, and very, very gloomy, even tragic. THe worst point in that respect was the destroyed academy near to the end … It had written TRAGIC all over the place … It was a gread setting of destruction and of losses, meanwhile Dragon Age - as far as I can tell from the advertising and marketing - just goes a *different* path of "being dark & gritty" : It is about other aspects of life than BD.

I think only few games have been able to catch the athmosphere of tragic loss, of sad destruction, of despair and of severe melancholy better than BD, imho. It was in my opinion partly because you could witness the doers almost at first hand, so to say. How they do their deeds, and what kind of motivations they have : Radical genocide (of the Raanaar).

In my perception, BD has always been a very sad game - but that could be influenced by the death of a good forummember at Larian also, around the time when I played this game. It just added to the athmosphere of tragic, overall.



There are different ways/paths to show a world how it actually is like "dark & gritty".

skavenhorde said:

Unoriginal….this is the most commonly used complaint in any rpg or even novel and yet the novels/games that sell the best are the ones that would be considered the norm in our genre.

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If I'm reading a novel I really enjoy some of the more original takes on the genre, particularly a lot of the new weird type fiction.

In terms of what would work in a game though I'm less sure, it's nice to have a few moral grey areas and more adult themes but unfortunately there are limits.

Ultimately your character will help people because they want rewards and additional experience, and they won't actually feel any pain from fighting the monsters and can always reload if anything goes wrong. Of course you take the quest, the risk-reward relationship for a character being played in a game is one that just leads to an "epic hero righting all wrongs" playstyle, so why wouldn't most games be built around that?

And many attempts to deviate from it only upset people . . . sure it's nice to have the option to just slaughter my way through the world like an utter bastard and take what I want, but . . . but . . . what if I might have got a quest from that person I've just murdered? What if I've missed out on content? THere's something to be said for the feeling that if you play a certain way you'll see everything.

Plus it's clear that bioware are looking to build a re-usable and expandable brand. Planescape & MotB worked well stepping outside the usual plot and having a story that pulled you in, but they were stand alone products really.

Anyway, I've been VERY impressed by the mage tower atmosphere & storyline, all of those little journal snippets IMO really added depth for me (I even found myself recalling some of what I'd seen when picking conversation options later as my mage).

Benedict said:

Anyway, I've been VERY impressed by the mage tower atmosphere & storyline, all of those little journal snippets IMO really added depth for me (I even found myself recalling some of what I'd seen when picking conversation options later as my mage).

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One of my favourite moments/areas also even down to the monster designs.

Agreed. The Mage Tower is awesome, and the Sloth Demon sequence (trying not to spoil here) is not shockingly original but very well-executed. It's still a combat slosh and I don't like that part of it (but honestly what part of DA isn't? Even the cities are combat-trudges), but it is one of my fav parts of the game.

As I play it more, the more I like it. It's like listening to a new cd a few times. At first, it's ok and there's some catchy parts, but later on is when you really "get it". I'm sitting here at work thinking about rogue strategy, and where I want to go and what to do next. What party members should I take? Should I really use the Mabari war hound long term?

I'm sorry, that's the mark of a good game, when it pervades everyday thought. Here risking getting nailed on company time because I'm surfing the Bioware forums and DA sites!

A lot of games, the further I progress I realize that I'm just trying to get to the end. I dont feel that way w/ this game, i'm content to take all the time I need to explore it. Maybe not best rpg ever, but one of the greats imo

Brother None said:

Agreed. The Mage Tower is awesome.

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That one was my favorite as well. I played the mage origin and it reminded me of the Wheel of Time and Harry Potter (school). I was yearning for more -- I'd love there to be an RPG in the style of Raymond Feist's Magician: Apprentice / Master, i.e. fully commited to actually learning how to be a mage. Usually in RPGs it's like this: "You are a mage. You can cast spells." ... Great. I never get any grasp on what that actually means. I loved the magic in the Wheel of Time, Magician and the other Midkemia books because it was wonderfully explained.

Sadly, while there are still minor references as to your heritage from the mage Circle in Dragon Age, after the origin stories you end up as a Grey Warden and that's it. Still, while I found the origin stories too short, they seem very nice and I hope more games use something like them. I've only played the mage and dwarven noble ones so far.

What I also liked a lot was Ostagar. It felt a lot like the Wall and the Night's Watch from SoIaF. However, other than Ostagar and the Mage Tower I have to say that I found the game lacking in atmosphere. You were literally pushed from one encounter or diaologue to the next with hardly any breathing room left. And the Codex can only do so much to give some more depth to everything.

I too found the mage Origin excellent…but I'm now level 15, deep into the game (in the Deep Roads as it happens ;-) having done all the other plot requisites…) and it's become tedious. I still feel too weak for my level and feel absolutely no sense of achievement when I level up - unlike the BG games of yore. A large part of my dissatisfaction stems from the new gaming system with those bloody timers which mean as a mage I stand there uselessly firing pathetic blasts from my staff because all my damaging/useful spells are 'waiting'. And as irritating: level scaling means that even peons have huge amounts of hit points, feat-chains which are as 'potent' as mine, can resists my most potent spells etc. grrr. Maybe Atari can still do something with the DnD license if they are clinging to it…or someone can try some other innovative gaming system that has a similar flavour. The Witcher (apart from a lull of two) kept my attention right until the end. Hopefully Witcher 2 will be as good as or better.

Rumour is that Atari have Cryptic developing a NWN MMO.