Dragon Age - Four Ways to Play

EA/BioWare senior product manager David Silverman talks about the four ways Dragon Age can be played in an article at Kotaku: Gamers can play BioWare’s next epic as if it was an action-role-playing game, an MMO, like Kingdom Hearts or like Final Fantasy XII.
Again thanks to Omega for spotting this.
More information.

I think it's important to note that this is a presentation to console (PS3 in particular) players. They omitted the 'Baldurs Gate' style, isometric tactical view with pause combat, since I believe the console versions don't have it.
EDIT: My bad, the isometrical tactical view was removed from console versions, not the pause combat

I rather like the ability to script ones followers (the fourth way they describe) and let them do their thing. Hopefully we can have some of the power of those games that allowed us to directly customize the AI scripts (BG was that way, right?) but with more ease and without exiting the game. NWN had a rudimentary bit of that, more pronounced with certain mods, where you could set up some basic combat preferences.

What, no Civilization-style? This game sucks.

Well, I looked at the scripts of BG, didn't understand them, and that was it for me.

Unless someone does some kind of scripting even an idiot is able to understand, then that won't be for me.

Or at least a proper documentation, down to all of the details.

*shrug*

As far as I'm concerned, the fun part of the battles is coordinating all my characters so they make the perfect team. If I'm controlling only one character and having the ai control the rest, unless the fights are overly easy and/or repetitive, I feel like I'm missing a good part of the fun.

Sure, the ai can do its small part. I wouldnt want my fighter to just stand there if a goblin is banging on his head with a stick, but for anything like using one of my precious potions instead of waiting for the mage to heal him, *I* want to decide.

I don't understand why they would remove the ability to pause from the console version and removing the isometric view wouldn't be a reason since you can pause in any view. The 20 minute game play video from before wasn't done in isometric and the guy used the pause feature.

Originally Posted by wolfing
I think it's important to note that this is a presentation to console (PS3 in particular) players. They omitted the 'Baldurs Gate' style, isometric tactical view with pause combat, since I believe the console versions don't have it.

"I was tilting the right stick back to get a different camera view and then…blocked.

Dragon Age: Origins is being billed by publisher EA and developer BioWare as a spiritual successor to the studio’s beloved Baldur’s Gate games. But the ability to back the camera out and up, to go from behind-the-back action-gaming perspective to top-down strategic-perspective has been dropped from the console versions of the game. A BioWare rep told me that players who will want to zoom out will need to do so via a mouse scroll wheel. Then they’ll get that Baldur’s Gate look."

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/10/onl…s-gate-camera/

Originally Posted by guenthar
I don't understand why they would remove the ability to pause from the console version and removing the isometric view wouldn't be a reason since you can pause in any view. The 20 minute game play video from before wasn't done in isometric and the guy used the pause feature.

The ability to pause combat has not been removed from the console version. (Imagine if that were the case; it would completely destroy the game.) No, Bioware has said repeatedly that the only difference between PC and 360 versions (can't speak to PS3, not paying attention) is the lack of an isometric view and the toolset. And it'll undoubtedly look better on a high-end PC, of course. Otherwise, same features.

Originally Posted by vanedor
As far as I'm concerned, the fun part of the battles is coordinating all my characters so they make the perfect team. If I'm controlling only one character and having the ai control the rest, unless the fights are overly easy and/or repetitive, I feel like I'm missing a good part of the fun.

I enjoy micromanaging like that as well. But it's the more common route since good AI is hard to come by. But controlling one directly and the others through commands is far more immersive to me since I like mentally stepping into the shoes of my main character. It also feels more like pen & paper RPing to me. The downside is that the AI is usually not up to the task.