DA:O Dragon Age - First Impressions

:lol:


Besides, many people criticised Drakensang, because one could not go back to areas to revisit them.

What many people don't seem to see is that Dragon Age is none the better. You can't re-visit "Lothlorien", for example, or the Kaucari (?) Wilderness, or even Ostagar (except within the DLC called "Return to Ostagar", I heard).


Also, I have encountered a few bugs by now. Or what appears to me as bugs.

- "Cammen's Grief" - he would just stop talking at one point. This is not what I'm used through playing Adventure games. Just imagine an Adventure game where you couldn't proceed, because one NPC refuses to talk with you, suddenly.

- The proverbial "mad hermit" in the area next to that (the "Brazilian Wood") is a similar case. At one point he just refuses to talk.

- In 2 cases I have seen sub-titles differing enormously from the spoken word. I don't know why this is.

- Shale doesn't always work like he should do. Either his ffighting-behaviour is buggy, or I messed too uch with his tactics fields/scripts.

- Within the Werewolf's Lair, there is a stairway which can only be accessed by one person - with the others sometimes *not* following. This stairway is market in my map as the one before the "Lair Of The Undead [Ones]", within the ruins, after the encounter with "The Lady".
And I don't know why it is called "Lair Of The Undead [Ones]" anyway, because there weren't any undead ones there.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

What many people don't seem to see is that Dragon Age is none the better. You can't re-visit "Lothlorien", for example, or the Kaucari (?) Wilderness, or even Ostagar (except within the DLC called "Return to Ostagar", I heard).

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Lothering, Korcari Wilds and Ostagar, respectively.

You can't go back for a reason, though. Those areas are completely devastated by Darkspawn. There'd be no reason to go back to Lothering - Everyone would have fled, or they'd be dead. The lore is that the Korcari Wilds cannot be navigated successfully without a guide (It's mentioned as being so in The Stolen Throne) and Ostagar is really the only place you can return to, although I (Personally) feel that's a fairly silly idea.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

- Shale doesn't always work like he should do. Either his ffighting-behaviour is buggy, or I messed too uch with his tactics fields/scripts.

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Shale is a she

There isn´t a character named Forgrim in DA.
Closest name of an existing one is probably Gorim.

You can and often have to revisit most of the areas in the game.
Lothering makes sense and I think the game would benefit from more of such events.
Return to Ostagar is an abysmal DLC.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Besides, many people criticised Drakensang, because one could not go back to areas to revisit them.

What many people don't seem to see is that Dragon Age is none the better. You can't re-visit "Lothlorien", for example, or the Kaucari (?) Wilderness, or even Ostagar (except within the DLC called "Return to Ostagar", I heard).

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There are reasons in the story why you can't go back to those places (and just a handful of them) in Dragon Age. There is no reason you couldn't return to places in Drakensang (everywhere) except the game just doesn't let you.

Dwagginz said:

Shale is a she

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Yes ? Interesting. The voice sounds … relatively neutral in my ears, but … I thought it sounded rather male. As a rather young person, though.

But … I could be wrong as well. I just had this impression, and I've heard very different kinds of voices in my life.

Or maybe my ears aren't as good as they were anymore. However, the sub-titles alone (I prefer to read them, although I have sound turned on, too) give no sign of any gramattical or othwerwise sex of this Golem … not that I've noticed.

Perhaps I was also confused by the fact that in German language it is "der Golem", which means that the word "Golem" has the grammatical male sex, so to say ?

By the way, my party is now in "Ork-Grammar" - the Dwarven Halls.

The first time I got into the main hall (past the Halls Of THe Heroes), I thought that someone hd been trying to kind of transport the halls of Atlantis from Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis into ... this fantasy universe. It looks very much like it, only, that this is a dwarven culture.

As a second thought, I think, the more I play this game, the more similarities I find with Drakensang. In terms of style, not in setting or story.

Golems are technically gender-neutral, i.e. they're not male or female. Shale's voice actress is female, and to really get the story you'd have to do Orzammar and Shale's personal quest.

Don't want to spoil it too much

Yes, I already figured that out. It is, however, a bit difficult for me to find the best "gifts" for shale ... Every person has a special "set" of gifts, which have a special meaning to them. I couldn't quite understand what Shale's could be, and Sten, too.

Although ... There are a few Gems out there. I'll try it with them.

And by the way, when looking for "presents" in the Gamebanshee database, I couldn't find them at first, becaue what I was looking for was labelled as "gifts", and gift" means in German languge "poison". Maybe my unconsciouness filtered it out, before my consciousness coul catch it.
Which is to me another hint towards my theory that the first language we all learn as children is much deeper stored than what languages we lern much later.
I think of it as being learned as children = [closer to] "hardware", and much later = [closer to] "software". And we all know that hardware is *always* faster than software ...
Which also means in my crusade ( ) against English-language-based programming languages ( ) , that programming languages which contain first-language words, programming is much more innate than with later-learned programming languages. As I always say : If programming language commands/key words are only "symbols", then why aren't they for example in Spanish languages, too ? Spanish is among the rather more distributed languages of the world.

I'll never understand why developers of programming lnguages are so conservative that they continue to stick with certain commands/key words and never uzse natural first-language words instead ...

BillSeurer said:

There are reasons in the story why you can't go back to those places (and just a handful of them) in Dragon Age. There is no reason you couldn't return to places in Drakensang (everywhere) except the game just doesn't let you.

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From Radon Labs I heard it differently : "there was nothing else to do anymore" in the areas one couldn't go back to.

This "there wasn't anything to do there anymore" means to me that what the pot required was done - and this would also be - to quote your own words - "a reason in the story why you can't go back to those places".

I belive that in the minds of the Drakensang developers, it was the same reason. The story/plot just didn't require anymore that one could go back.

However, the execution of this wasn't that good, because there was no hint one couldn't go back later. But on the other hand. Dragon Age didn't have this kind of hint, also.

I had the same thing with Lothering. I could have left without doing certain quests there. I actually did so with the Kaucari Wilderness. I cannot complete one or two quests there because I cannot go back anymore. Which of course leaves me unsatisfied.

Alrik, if you look on Dragon Age wiki, there's a gift guide there for all characters

Direct link to it: http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Gift

Edit:
Also, the main reason you can't always go back in Dragon Age is not because the character no longer has a reason to, it's because the area has now been overrun by the enemy. Every other area should still be open.

Ah, thanks, a great resource of knowledge !

Regarding "immersion-breakers" :

- Even innate Elven & Dwarven words and names have an american accent !

Okay, maybe these words have been invented by a race that has died out millennia ago, but taught these words and names to ALL races in Ferelvden before ... but everything of this race has vanished - except their accent ...

- The hero never opens his mouth. *Never*.

He must be talking during some kind of telepathy. Yes. This is the only way. A rare example/member of his species ... A really extraordinary trait. (I'm playing a Danish ... Dalish Elf ...)

If you're looking for immershun, DA is not for you.

Well, I'm right now on the DEep Roads, it it feels *very* immersive !

I'm positively surprised. Once you get away with all of this blood and gore thing they forced to applied to the game, you get a very nice and decent role-playing game.

Again, I can only say that I'm positively surprised. I only find this blood thing extremely annoying. Especially on the travel map. The travel is displayed as a series of blood spots. Looks as if they were hacking and slashing their way through, and literally wading through blood all of the time, only when I look at the "travel display" of the travel map.

This looks so … forced that it becomes more and more immature to me. All of these blood spots. Looks to me rather like the dream of a teenager of how a hack & slay game should look like, not like that of a sane senior designer. The more blood, the more tedious it becomes. Until to the point of outright sillyness.

They forced something upon the game that it just didn't have. Never had.


As a sidenote, I noticed that

Genlocks = Dwarves
Hurlocks = Humans
Screamers = Elves

Sort of. The resemblance is there. Intentionally.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

This looks so … forced that it becomes more and more immature to me. All of these blood spots.

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Didn´t occur as forced to me.
Literal blood plays an important role in the story (becoming Grey Warden) and on a more figurative level it ties to the origins aspect. Making it a sort of unifying aesthetic element seems like a logical and quite appropriate decision.
The exception are laughable blood splatters on characters, mainly due to lousy execution, but that can be fortunately turned off.

Okay, if you see it from that perspective ... then you are probably right. To me, Dragon Age ist just "yet another RPG" with too much blood in it.

It could be rather generic, if the developers didn't decide it should be so ... "dark & gritty". Perhaps on purpose.

Also, the bloodstains on the map show the progression of the Dark Spawn invasion.

They do ? I never noticed that ...

Yes, they do.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

As a sidenote, I noticed that

Genlocks = Dwarves
Hurlocks = Humans
Screamers = Elves

Sort of. The resemblance is there. Intentionally.

Click to expand...

That is actually mentioned in certain codex entries, along with the fact that Ogres are born from Qunari.