Dragon Age - Hands On @ Eurogamer
 

Very positive hands-on from Dan Pearson at Eurogamer.
More information.

Once again, this sounds pretty good.

If they managed to make the game fun for both BG veterans and WoW players… I see nothing to complain about.

Dumbed down shitbox RPG!!! Just kidding. :P

Well, if you can succeed either by managing the whole party or letting NPCs be controlled by the AI, doesn't party control become rather moot? To a degree, Mass Effect (PC) did the same thing. You could let the AI take over or give the orders yourself. It turned out that giving orders was more like something you did to not get bored, because no input from you was necessary even on the hardest difficulty setting. I wonder whether player input can be meaningful if it's completely optional.

I kinda like the way that sounds. :)

I think they mentioned that in the easy difficulty setting this was fine, but in normal and above you would need to be more involved in the tactics.

Exactly! Else, it would be as in NWN2 OC and I would completely agree with you, Grandor Dragon.

Or spend some points on AI tactics, as the article suggests.

I read the article entirely to know what you are talking about. I guess you are talking about this :

Personally, I'm against this sort of automation. Call me "conservative" if you want but the nice thing about battles in a game such as DA is the tactical aspect. Making your group to cooperate together and react to different situations. When I want to play something for the «action thrill», I play a game such as Mount & Blade.

That was one of the bad thing about NWN2. Overly repetitive and tedious fights. After that, no wonder some people wanted to play it the same way they play Guild
War.

By the way, I wonder about this (found in the article under a screenshot):
What? In Europe, Duncan sounds wussy?

Yes :) (this is here so that i can answer a simple question without pissing off the forum rule checker!)

I'm a little concerned at the WoW or Baldur's Gate play style comment - you can't be everything to everyone. Surely they had a target audience in mind - and that is who/what the game should have been designed around. I don't think BG had pretensions to by anything other than what it was (phased turn-based yadda yadda yadda…) You really *needed* careful tactics and that made the game challenging and fun. If the game can play itself (a la DSiege, where you could sit back and watch) - what is the point? May as well be a single player game. I want a BG, full party-based experience - that was kind of what was promised: 'spiritual successor' and all.

Strange. Because what comes to my mind when I think «Duncan» is this :

http://www.dvdrama.com/imagescrit2/h…ders1int01.jpg

And you know what's the most shitty thing about this - you let combat tactics do the job OR you manage all characters yourself every second if you want full use of their abilities.
Why is that you ask? Because biowhore decided you can't cue actions/abilities…

Sounds better. Let's hope it turns out to be like that!

Yeah, I agree this is also worrying me. But so far I have no indication that they have not managed to create a game that require careful tactic (medium, hard setting) or not (easy setting). I guess it’s possible by designing the combats for medium setting right away but also create an easy setting that enable you to fight most combats without using much tactics.

This game is gonna be a win,mark my words.

I think with BG and WOW "style" they just mean changing the game camera.. which as we know is a new revolutionary thing every review of this game will mention.

As far as controlling characters is concerned, I always enjoy doing a bit of both. Controlling and letting AI take over. In most minor battles in DA, Planescape to NWN I would let AI take over (mostly cause I HATE DnD crap they have for no reason ruining the whole experience) and only in tougher fights would I bother targeting powerful foes with all my units manually. I am pretty sure this is how I will end up playing DA.

I am just looking forward to their much hyped story and characters. Considering that they couldn't even be arsed to get rid of Elves and Orcs in this revolutionary title, I won't be surprised if the story is as predictable as.. umm.. predictable.


PS: After the RISEN review on Eurogamer I can't really take that site seriously with anything they do anymore (actually, that includes Witcher review, among other moronic reviews there). The only thing that place is good for is the funny captions under thumbnails.

That's better than this at least…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/feature…_grove_gal.jpg

And what is it?

PJ & Duncan.

I hope they can get the balance right so I can micro managem characters and also let the AI take over.

Some battles I like micromanaging things until it becomes a work of art and everything comes together perfectly.

Other I like playing one character and seeing what the rest of the group does. Sometimes they are surpisingly smart and others it is nearly a constant /face palm.
Hopefully DA has a lot more AI settings than NWN2. By SOZ it was passable but there could be a lot more options. I imagine I will have a lot of fun tailoring the AI of characters until they can do there own thing. Hearing this made me a LOT more likely to pre-order.

I think the glorified scripts that are Tactics will be an awesome feature. To me it sounds like more fun to come up with optimal tactics between fights and then see how it plays out while mostly controlling my own main character, than to give all those orders manually every time. That way you can have the party fighting like you want it with your mind focused on the unique things in different fight, rather than the generic.

Yeah, the ai scripting, if comparable to FFXII's system is a big plus for me. I like planning things out ahead and setting things into motion. I just hope its advanced enough not to feel cramped. The "ai settings" in NWN was completely useless.