Dragon Age - Impressions @ 1Up

magerette

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1Up has posted an E3 preview feature article for Dragon Age, and it's a bit meatier than some we've seen:
Managing your party uses the classic BioWare pausable combat, where you stop action to queue up attacks. The party AI also allows for you to have multiple battles at once. We saw two party members in one room fighting off a beast while two others carried out another fight elsewhere. Parties will have a maximum of four players -- two fewer than the six possible in "Baldur's Gate II," which Zeschuk says is a compromise that enables them to achieve maximum "graphic fidelity" while also giving players enough "chess pieces" to move around the board. It's not, however, a result of the game design being dumbed down -- an understandable fear held by many PC enthusiasts, given BioWare's recent focus on console games. "It's a balance point," says Zeschuk. "You don't want to get overly detailed. In playtesting, we found that four was a nice number. You can mix it up with different characters but it's still easy enough to control, [yet] still detailed enough that people felt what they were doing was meaningful." Zeschuk also points out that by streamlining the number of characters players control, the team was able to focus on making other aspects of the game more epic: bigger enemies -- a room-filling ogre was shown during the demo -- as well as larger battles with dozens of combatants. "We're going to be mixing it up a little more," he says.
Conclusion:
But really, breaking new ground is not what Dragon Age is about -- and the tactical use of party-based combos, a hallmark of the Baldur's Gate series, looks amazingly fun. We saw a mage drop a grease spell across the floor of a room, which then was lit up by the group's flaming weapons, causing a stunning conflagration that engulfed the enemies. In another spot, one party member paralyzed the baddies while his cohorts picked them off one by one. It's these tactical opportunities and multitudes of different combat possibilities that gave classic RPGs such depth and replayability, and Dragon Age looks to be a truly worthy of the tradition.
More information.
 
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Well, I really hope the gameplay is good, because I'm very disappointed in the new Goth-looking, dark, bloody, colorless approach the art style is taking, and the storyline of "darkspawn" demons rising up every few thousand years (Mass Effect's "Reapers," anyone?) sounds horribly cliché. *sigh* I was really hoping for something different.
 
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If only it had been turn-based...
and didn't have a half-baked plot everyone had seen 10,000,000 times...
and wasn't an NWN clone, but without the editor...
 
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Well, I really hope the gameplay is good, because I'm very disappointed in the new Goth-looking, dark, bloody, colorless approach the art style is taking, and the storyline of "darkspawn" demons rising up every few thousand years (Mass Effect's "Reapers," anyone?) sounds horribly clich?. *sigh* I was really hoping for something different.

Thats the most good part of it? I really like how it look.
________
Homemade vaporizers
 
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Both looks and sounds amazing. Definetly at the top of my most wanted list, along with a few other titles (the new one from PB for example).
 
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Is this game straight D&D, with the same levels, feats, and classes, or is it something new?

I find the D&D system stale, so I hope they changed it up a bit.
 
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Saber-Scorpion, I had the same feeling when I looked at the trailer, but newly released screen shots have put my mind to rest. They are definitely coloful rather than looking like the new Goth-looking, dark, bloody, colorless approach the art style is taking.

I have to agree with you about the whole demons rising up, blah, blah, blah cliche'.

* It also looks like Bioware has heard the desire of many people for more Baldur's Gate type party based game play.
 
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