Dragon Age - v1.05 Patch
 

You may want to skip the latest patch for Dragon Age: Origins. The v1.05 patch barely addresses anything and from reports at the forums and GameBanshee it seems to cause more problems than it fixes. Here are the patch notes:
More information.

Never expected another patch for DA:O. Bit odd to have an experience like this with an EA game :rolleyes: Not needing this patch anymore since the game is not installed but still nice for the people who are still playing this.

Did it patch Morrigan's "seductive" walk to bed in the luv cutscene toward the end of the game?

I don't think anyone can patch my extreme disappointment with this title.

Best RPG ever. Sorry Torment, I hate to actually say it, but it happened. It's too bad it's the last of its kind. =(

Patch 1.04 added a ton of shitty bugs and broke Quinns Fixpack, though, which led to him apparently abandoning the project. Patch 1.05 sounds like it doesn't fix anything at all. I want to replay this but I want someone to fix the fixpack so I can enjoy restored content and less bugs. >:|

Personally, I get the feeling as if Dragon Age 1 has already been fully abandoned by both Bioware & EA. They're only updating it because of this "Origin" thing.

I think a hint/clue that I might be right is that there hasn't been any patches in the past since the "Ultimate Edition" came out.

Yes, which is why I want someone to fix Qwinns Fixpack!!! =)

It's refreshing to read something like that out of yet another Skyrim thread.

DA:O was good, but best RPG ever? I have a hard time taking that comment seriously. It wasn't even Bioware's best game.

While I wouldn't call DA:O the "best RPG ever" (in all honesty, I think it's impossible to give one RPG that title anyway), I think a strong case could be made that it was Bioware's best effort.

it's one of the best in the last 5 years, let's just settle on that ='.'=

As far as I'm concerned, it is the best Bioware game. To be fair, though, I've not played Jade Empire, Mass Effect 2 or MDK 2. Or Sonic Chronicles or Shattered Steel I guess. Maybe Sonic Chronicles is completely awesome! BG 1 and BG 2 honestly never did it for me. As much as I like NWN as a platform for some fantastic user content, the gameplay mechanics are wonky and the OC and the addons were far from inspired storytelling. Knights of the Old Republic was alright but never really hooked me and I never finished it. Probably my distaste for Star Wars kicking in.

I've been contemplating skipping Mass Effect, after failing to get into it about 30 times, and giving ME2 a go. That's what I did with The Witchers and was quite pleased with the second game after loathing the first. I hear ME2 doesn't rely on horrible space car driving mechanics that I simply cannot do. That might just do it for me.

You mean Bioware's recent best effort. Their best game was released back in 2000.

For some people perhaps ;). Honestly, it's a really close call for me. At the end of he day, it's choosing between two games that I really enjoyed playing. I guess playing BG2 for the first time this year made some of the annoyances more noticeable (such as party formations that are completely useless in dungeons thanks to the incredibly cramped, narrow passageways and tiny rooms). Also, while I've finally become proficient with the Dn'D system (thanks to playing Icewind Dale and Temple of Elemental Evil a few years back), it's definitely not my favorite ruleset in the world for crpgs.

Then again, some of the side-quests in BG2 were longer and just as fleshed out as some of the main-quests in DA:O, which made for a really epic playthrough. Six-character parties are a godsend, and this is something I wish was in DA:O…it really feels like you have a small army with you on your adventure, which is great for customization purposes and allows for a wide range of different party setups.

So while it's a bit of a coin-toss for me, it's not something I think too hard about…They're both great games in my book, and they each do certain things better than the other.

No coin-toss for me :). Dragon Age wasn't even close to either BG game in my book. Just too generic and repetitive. Even though I enjoyed it for the most part, I had to actually force myself to continue towards the end.

I think that's partially the nostalgia talking ;). The Baldur's Gate setting is no less "generic" than Dragon Age's setting, imo.

I'm pretty sure it's a little more than just nostalgia. :)

As far as the setting, I don't think you can really compare them, due to the fact that one was based on an existing IP while the other was (un)original.

The setting wasn't the biggest factor for me though. The repetitiveness of DA's environments and enemies is what annoyed me most, and even most fans of the game won't try to deny those points. DA would have actually been a better game if it was about 20% shorter. There just wasn't enough variety for a game that could stretch close to 100 hours.

Still, I think it's a very good game considering when it was released. It was the closest thing we had to an "old-school" party-based RPG in a long time, and will probably be the last of that type of game we see from Bioware.

Ah, a perfect sample of completely objective voters who were in no way affected by the warm pull of nostalgia :). Again though, I only said that a case could be made that DA:O is better. Playing BG2 so many years after its release (and after playing Origins first), I can say that it has aged very well and is highly enjoyable - I only wish some of the improvements from DA:O were in there as well (such as more interesting melee and archery, a far less annoying magic system, better party path-finding, cross-class combat tactics, slower, more methodical pace to combat which makes it easier to manage, etc.) The same could be said of Dragon Age…there are elements of BG2 that I really wish were in that game (way more classes to choose from, multi/dual classing, six person party, owning your own keep, longer and far more involved side-quests, more possible party setups, etc.)

Hmm… well, the length of Dragon Age seemed just about right for me, and the one major area that most complain about as being too long - the Deep Roads - was really enjoyable for me, and made sense within the setting as to why it would be such a long journey to finish. Playing through BG2, most of the complaints of repetitive enemy encounters and overly long sections of "filler combat" could also apply to that came as well. Micro-managing the spell system becomes extremely tiresome after 40+ hours, and is a bit of a headache overall. I would say that BG2 had more diverse enemies and encounters overall, but it still suffers from the same issue of drawn-out combat that isn't completely necessary.

Now that I can certainly agree with without question :). I added in the "anybody" part, because I don't think we'll ever see a game of Baldur's Gate/Dragon Age's nature ever again.

My total play-time for DA:O, including Awakening and all the DLC except Darkspawn Chronicles was 72 hours. I liked the deep roads parts, myself. The lack of a third option in the dwarven questline was the only real thing in the game that I found infuriating, especially with the presence of wider variety in every other quest-line. It all made sense, I just wish there was something else to do there.

My experience with Baldur's Gate is the opposite of everyone else in the worlds, though. I upgraded my computer in anticipation for it. I pre-ordered the game (the last time I did that until this year). I was so excited! I was actually a pretty big Forgotten Realms fanboy at the time. I ran a number of FR campaigns, owned just about every FR D&D book published. I even read the bad novels. I had stitched together the maps from a dozen products on my bedroom wall to plan epic scale adventures for my high school/university pals. But Baldur's Gate failed to resonate with me on every level. I never got into the game, no matter how hard I tried. I've even tried again recently, after finishing DA2. I still can't do it. All the NPC's are horrible and the writing is gratingly flippant. The engine is really poor, it was hard to manage back then and I still find it to be a mess. I've never gotten further than the gnoll settlement… Despite all that, I spent 100+ hours, easily, struggling with the same engine in PS:Torment. That felt rewarding though. I never got that feeling from BG. :(

Of course, everyone else loves it. People also seem to love driving the Mako, though. I just can't figure people out. ;)

So every time an older game is overwhelmingly favored over a newer game it's automatically nostalgia? I think we're both smarter than that.

Maybe Gothic isn't actually better than Arcania. It could be that nostalgia is simply twisting our perception. ;)

I don't think they're even close in that aspect, but obviously some people have a higher tolerance of repetitiveness than I do. :)

You basically fought the same 4-5 enemies over and over again in DA, regardless of where you were in the world, with very few exceptions. Both games had filler combat, but the difference is that BG at least displayed a large variety of enemies, rather than just having you slay an endless supply of Darkspawn for the most part.

I'll admit that the BG series did have the advantage of being created from an IP that already had hundreds of monster types to choose from. If you look at it that way, then it's probably not really fair to compare them.

My playthough of DA:O by itself, with only the Shale DLC, was 70-something hours.

Of course not. Personally, I have had a great deal of fun playing classics that I missed out on when they were initially released, and there's something about some of the classics that is just…better. They have more character, and a lot of that can be attributed to their relative simplicity, which seemingly forced the developers to inject more personality into the games to make up for the lack of technological bells and whistles. It's unfortunate that so many newer games have lost that charm and creative spirit. In short, the classics are remembered as such for a reason, and they have not been surpassed in many ways to this day.

However, a lot of people never fairly consider that a newer game might be better in some aspects than the classics that inspired it. I don't like using the "nostalgia" argument very often, because that's been used as an unfair defense of games like DA2, but I think BG fans are a bit nitpicky when judging DA:O. Perhaps some people just don't want a new game to be better than an old favorite, so they overly criticize a newer game to justify to themselves why the favorite is "objectively better." I imagine the same thing will happen with Skyrim; Morrowind fans will come up with all sorts of wild arguments to justify Morrowind's status as the "best Elder Scrolls game" while completely ignoring its flaws and unfairly magnifying any faults of Skyrim.

Keep in mind that I don't think that you are blinded by nostalgia JDR, as I've seen enough of your posts to see that you mostly keep an open mind for newer games and I believe you when you say that for you, BG is objectively better. I guess I've gone off-topic into a "nostalgia analysis in general," so I'll stop here ;).

Ah, so that's why I didn't like Arcania! It was pure nostalgia for the older Gothics! ;) Games like Arcania and DA2 are why I hate using the nostalgia argument and try to avoid using it unless I really think it's necessary .


BG may have had more enemy types that the player could encounter, but many of them could be defeated using the same strategies. So I guess your point is more from an immersion/atmosphere standpoint? Again, I completely agree that BG was better in this area, with several unique enemy types that required new tactics (my first encounters while still early on in the game with invisible enemies, trolls, and a few others come to mind as very basic examples of encounters that required new tactics), but there were still a lot of encounters that didn't force you to abandon the tried and true methods of your basic party strategy and felt like "filler combat."

Combine that with the dungeons that are oftentimes a major headache to maneuver through - I can't for the life of me understand how the narrow passageways that a full party can barely fit through (don't even try using formations) weren't fixed - along with a magic system that requires constant micromanagement, and you get a lot of repetitive gameplay in BG too. Then again, I think both games have flaws that the other didn't have, and that's why I have a hard time deciding which is better. They are both great experiences imo, and I could go either way depending on which one I'm playing at the moment, with maybe a slight edge to DA:O.

Perhaps we can come to a simple agreement that Dragon Age was a welcome return to a gameplay style that had sadly been abandoned :). Unfortunately, it has abruptly been abandoned once again, and I don't see another Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age coming along any time soon. It's really unfortunate that the Infinity Engine was outright abandoned; it's aged well enough that I think it could absolutely still be used with great success today.

I seriously doubt there's very many people that don't want newer games to be as good, or better, than older ones. That's quite a rationalization if I've seen one. :)

Also, no one said anything about one game being "objectively better" than the other. In fact, you're the only person in this thread who has used that term.



So you're saying that most of the enemies in DA couldn't be defeated by using the same strategies? I find it odd that you would point out something that also applies just as much, if not more, to DA.

The micromanagement that you're complaining about is what many of us liked about the BG games. I'd rather have that than the streamlined simplicity of DA. - i.e. smaller party, fewer classes, no encumbrance, shared inventory, auto healing, etc, etc.

Not saying you're wrong for liking those things. I understand it's subjective. If you prefer simplicity, then more power to you. I'm not saying DA is a simplistic game compared to most modern RPGs, but it was definitely streamlined compared to a lot of older titles.

I don't quite understand some of your other complaints though. Would you really expect a party to be in formation in a narrow passage?

Anyways, the general opinions of both series' speak for themselves. I'd say the main difference is that DA:O was a great game, while Baldur's Gate was a great series. It's a shame because Bioware had an opportunity to have another great series, but they completely ruined it with DA2.

Perhaps you're right, but it just seems that way at times. Using Fallout 3 as an example, I noticed many people who already decided before the game was even close to being released that it wasn't going to be as good as the originals. Reading some of the comments people make about how Bethesda "ruined the Fallout name" is an example of people being close-minded to a new game and not being fair, likely thanks in part to being protective of the classic game and the memories they had of playing it; "FO3 isn't exactly the same, therefore it's not as good" seems to be the sentiment for some people. In all honesty, I do think that FO1+2 are the superior games, but the extremism of some of the big-time FO fans who claim that FO3 is a terrible game and an insult to the series seems absurd. Hmm…it appears I'm going way off-topic again…I don't think Fallout has anything to do with this discussion, so I'll get back to the BG/DA topic :)

Yes, I'm aware of that…that's why I noted that I had gone off-topic in that post. Sorry for that :).

I agree. In fact, I already said in my previous post that I completely agree that BG was better than DA in this regard :). I just didn't find it blatantly repetitive to the point that I found myself getting bored or tiring of the gameplay before the game was over. Overall, I thought the encounters were handled well enough to keep me engaged throughout the game, even if some of them could be considered "filler combat."

I was just making the point that some elements of BG could be considered repetitive as well. And those things you listed - "smaller party, fewer classes, no encumbrance, shared inventory, auto healing, etc" are actually things that I liked better in BG and are part of what I wish was taken from that series and put into DA - especially the six-person party, more classes, multi/dual-classing, more creative use of party combinations instead of one standard grouping, etc.

Now that's definitely not what I'm saying; I don't want "simplicity," as that line of thinking is what leads to games like DA2. In DA:O, I see improvements to areas such as melee/archery skills (where the player has far more abilities at their disposal than the previous "go here and attack" approach), better interface and general party control, a magic system that still has a diverse range of spells but without the sometimes tedious Dn'D rules that seem better-suited to pen and paper instead of crpgs (I'm aware that is a highly controversial statement ;)) etc.

Actually, I'm a bit torn on the issue of magic…I like that the BG system is great for balance and planning, since you have to be careful with using spells and making sure you only use them when necessary, but I think a better method could have been used than the "resting to replenish" approach. DA's magic was more "fun" for me, but BG's was more tactical, which I like. But that's a topic for another day.

BG had elements that were certainly better than DA:O, as I've already mentioned. Again, I just personally feel that each game does specific things better than the other; combining the two would probably lead to the perfect party-based RPG ;).

It's a dungeon-heavy game, so I absolutely expect formations to work; why include formations if you can't use them? Not being able to use formations in a lot of dungeon combat scenarios took some of the tactical enjoyment out of the game, at least for me. Not only that, but regardless of using formations or not, party-members would sometimes get stuck, fall behind the rest of the group forcing you to sit and wait for them to catch up, etc - all because the passageways were simply too narrow for a full party to navigate. I consider that to be a flaw in the level design, albeit not a game-breaking one by any stretch. Not sure how at least that part can't be considered a valid complaint.

That's certainly something we can agree on without question. DA:O certainly had flaws (as every game does), but it was a great foundation for something that could have potentially become truly special. Considering that the common opinion is that BG2 surpassed BG1 in just about every way, I imagine the same thing could have been said for DA2 if the approach had stayed the same and the effort had been focused on improving the solid foundation laid by DA:O. At least the Baldur's Gate series is concluded; I'd hate to see its name tarnished in the same way if a BG3 was ever made by the current Bioware.

Er.. the formations do work. Your complaint about them not working in narrow passages is simply unrealistic, and quite frankly doesn't make much sense. How can a party be in formation in a "narrow" passage? It wasn't meant for you to always be in formation.

As far as everything else is concerned, it looks like we actually agree on most things. I think the BG series was better and will have a stronger legacy, but I understand not everyone feels the same way.

I wonder which way this argument would go if they would have made da2 more complex rather than simplified.

Added classes, monsters, skills, more exploration, choice and consequence and continued the story allowing you to actually import your save game, while keeping the same core gameplay intact.

Then it would have been a whole different ballgame. I think the bg series was better than da:o i'm not sure just bg alone was. da:o falls just short for me but had they improved and added to da:o when making da2 then it very well could have surpassed bg imo.

Disclaimer: I play bg2, iwd and iwd 2 almost yearly so it's not just nostalgia here. They are still great game today.