Dragon Age - Human Noble Hands-On

IGN is going to preview each of the Dragon Age starting origin stories, starting with the Human Noble origin in this article. The piece tries to avoid major spoilers but the broad story outline is covered. On the rules system:

BioWare designed the rule set from scratch, and D&D veterans might need a while to adjust to the different feel of the rules. Character abilities are divided between strength, dexterity, willpower, magic, cunning, and constitution. Strength affects the amount of damage you inflict in combat, dexterity lets you dodge attacks, willpower improves your stamina (which power your skills), and magic is important mainly for mages, though it has its uses for other classes. Cunning is a bit unusual, as it's mainly for rogues, but it's important for combat tactics as well. Then there's constitution, which mainly affects your health points. Each time you level up you get three points to distribute between these abilities, which sounds like a lot but you'll quickly discover that to use some of the best gear in the game often requires a particular ability score in the 20s or even 30s.

There's also a batch of new screens at Blue's.
More information.

Ouch, the spoilers are TOO big, don't even read this unless you don't care about story. If you have to read it DON'T read/look at the last paragraph, better yet beyond the last picture, i.e. last two paragraphs.

Thanks for the warning

Originally Posted by Acleacius
Ouch, the spoilers are TOO big, don't even read this unless you don't care about story. If you have to read it DON'T read/look at the last paragraph, better yet beyond the last picture, i.e. last two paragraphs.

That's par for most 'Hands-On' articles, I avoid them like a plague

It is hard to do a non-spoiler hands-on and give any reasonable details … but I'm glad I avoided this one!

I'm avoiding all previews and revies of DA; I've already decided to buy it, and I don't feel like reading spoilers.