Dragon Age - New Teaser Page!

BioWare has kicked up a teaser page for Dragon Age with a simple message: "More, July 9 2008".
Let the speculation begin!
More information.

Can I get a "amen"?

This is great news! Can't wait to play another mediocre game from BioWare!

I hope they keep the game for just PC, console oriented games are pure evil when get ported to pc
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Bmw x5

It's going to have a great story, a beautiful yet somewhat linear environment to explore, and clumsy real-time-with-pause combat.

I've never understood how people that claim to be fans of the rpg genre, can ever be satisfied with anything resembling real-time combat. That's just so counter-intuitive to me.

Bioware writes some of the best stories in the business… but they're at least as responsible as Blizzard or Bethesda when it comes to ruining the modern crpg.

Dragon Age will be more of the same. I'll buy it, enjoy it, and be glad I bought it. But I'll still be a little annoyed with the lack of true, strategic turn-based combat. Which in my opinion is what almost completely defines the true rpg experience.

Being able to sit back and ponder your next action… that moment is where the role-playing takes place. The luxury of being able to truly think before you literally roll the dice on a forthcoming action, a luxury so definitively absent in real-life, is what makes playing these games so fun in the first place.

Would it really be so hard to take a dash of Fallout's combat, a pinch of Heroes3 combat, and a healthy dose of TOEE's combat… and mix them altogether into something wonderful?


2c

I remember before BG1 came out and this company Bioware was saying grandiose things about their upcoming game and how it's going to be all that. It didn't seem arrogant but it did seem rather confident for a company which hadn't done anything I was interested in. They seem to be saying the same sort of confident things about DA. Bioware hasn't made a game which I haven't liked a whole lot since BG so I'm looking forward to this to the nth degree.

Real-time pause is great, very intuitive for me. Turn-based can get boring depending upon how it's done but full real-time is generally also not my cup of tea so real-time pause (with the ability to give orders during pause) is the way to go for me.

"Real-time pause is great, very intuitive for me. Turn-based can get boring depending upon how it's done but full real-time is generally also not my cup of tea so real-time pause (with the ability to give orders during pause) is the way to go for me."


I'll be honest, my two favorite crpgs are BG1 and BG2. I replay IWD yearly. Mass Effect is a great, great game.

My primary gripe with real-time pause is the lack of FULL control over what's going on.

There's a better way of doing it… something that flows better. I hate to say it, but an example of really good real-time combat can be found in WoW, in my opinion. The only thing lacking there is that your choice of spells is pretty limited, and combat gets quite repetitive in Azeroth.

It's mechanically fun to play WoW. My toon always does EXACTLY what I want, in real-time.

I myself don't find it mechanically fun to play BG2, although I still consider it a much, much better crpg.

Originally Posted by Dyspaire
…ruining the modern crpg.

What you're talking about isn't "modern" anymore.

Dragon Age will be more of the same. I'll buy it, enjoy it, and be glad I bought it. But I'll still be a little annoyed with the lack of true, strategic turn-based combat. Which in my opinion is what almost completely defines the true rpg experience.

Being able to sit back and ponder your next action… that moment is where the role-playing takes place. The luxury of being able to truly think before you literally roll the dice on a forthcoming action, a luxury so definitively absent in real-life, is what makes playing these games so fun in the first place.

Yes, nothing defines an rpg like being able to sit back and ponder whether to cast a fireball at a bandit or shoot him in the groin.

I don't mean to offend you, I'm just having a little fun.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the 9th now!

Dyspaire, turn-based combat is good for combat-centered RPG. TOEE combat could be really amazing in some sort of dungeon crawler - I'll probably even play that one although I normally hate dungeon crawlers. But fact is majority (or significant portion at least) of RPG fans wants non-violent quest solutions available. And having diplomat running away from monsters in turn-based combat mode is really, really awkward.

Alright! Can't wait to see the media barrage on this one. We've been waiting a long time to be teased--hopefully they'll end this informational dry spell with a slew of interviews, videos and screens.

Originally Posted by Dyspaire
Being able to sit back and ponder your next action… that moment is where the role-playing takes place.

Huh? Chess is the quintessential turn-based tactical combat system, yet there's zero role-playing involved in any sense of the word. Combat mechanics are just combat mechanics; they have nothing to do with whether a game's a role-playing game or not. Not that there's anything wrong with preferring turn-based over real-time.

I agree with NFLed - BioWare still hasn't failed from my point of view. Sure, every title they make isn't a top 10 game, but it's always a good experience.

I also agree with PJ, combat mechanics has very little to do with whether or not a game is an RPG. I personally prefer a little speed, since full turn-based tends to lead to quite a few time consuming battles that shouldn't be time consuming (killing the weak enemies in Fallout for example). But really, it's all about personal preference.

That depends on the implementation. For an example of turn-based combat that's extremely fast, if you need it to be, see NetHack -- swatting weak enemies is just a matter of walking into them. There's no reason you couldn't make a turn-based combat engine that's exactly as fast, but with as much depth as anything out there should you need it.

The problem is that combat in cRPG's, generally speaking, tends to kinda, well, suck. Regardless of whether it's real-time or turn-based. There are exceptions, of course, but in most of my favorite cRPG's, actual combat has been the weakest part of the game.

Personally, if I had to choose between combat systems that kinda suck, I'd pick the real-time one -- the reason being that turn-based systems that kinda suck waste an enormous amount of time, whereas real-time ones tend to do that less. For example, Morrowind's real-time combat sucks like a tornado, but it's still way less tedious than spending a half an hour killing a dozen geckos in Fallout 2.

(OTOH if I had the choice between real-time and turn-based combat that *doesn't* suck, for a cRPG I just might gravitate towards turn-based. I have high hopes for Age of Decadence…)

I wonder weather the turn-based lovers liked KotOR -> That's a turn-based combat, but it comes over as realtime.
Personally I liked the way gothic 2 was. Realtime combat it is for me.

On topic: Does anyone has screenshots for this game?

I just notice that no-one does turn-based combat anymore. Period.

So, the lovers of real-time combat have won.

(And no, I don't call this pause-key crap "turn-based".)

I pretty much accepted that turn-based died years ago (to my displeasure), but equally as disappointing are these mostly linear, small uninteresting environments and the boring hub-and-spoke world design that Bioware has been using ever since Neverwinter Nights.

I'd be happy to play these Bioware or Obsidian CRPG's without all this hack'n'slash filler combat. For me, the real-time combat is just not fun, it seems to be there just to hinder my progress in the game (what else could be the point of squadrons of monsters around every single corner, just standing there waiting to be slaughtered in messy real time combat..?) . If (/as) there has to be combat, at least make it so that it requires thought, is interesting, and thus, fun! This was accomplished to almost perfection with TOEE (which, unfortunately, was otherwise lacking).

Of course fighting 20 goblins in TOEE style turn-based combat would take substantially more time than the same fight with real time (or RTWP) combat. But therefore the boring filler combat should be removed and replaced with fewer, more focused and strategic battles.

This would also allow me to have full control of my party, taking my time to think about combat options. No more frustration with idiotic AI controlled party members running chaotically all over, getting surrounded by dozens of enemies, stumbling on traps and getting themselves killed while I look the other way…

I think/believe that the "let TB die" thing in gaming development is just the result of the design decision to increase the pace oof "modern" C-RPGs.

Whereas ALL "modern" games become faster and faster. Fast-paced Action is the King !

There's nothing anymore to slow down - I regard this as an overall phenomenon of our living society. Everything gets faster, more stressful, more hectic.

There's nothing to slow down anymore., The wheel keeps spinning on and on, faster and faster.

Until it breaks.

We might see this "break" sooner than we want to in terms of traffic - gazoline beomes so much more expensive that people might feel forced to use railway, bycicle, everything else that doesn't use gasoline, instead.

The only "slow-motion" games that we currently see are those puzzle games. Companies even try to turn the adventure genre into some fast-paced action-mess.

Gone are the times where one could just wait, thinking. Over a problem. Like in good old Indy & Atlantis.

The markezting doesn't want that. They want - somehow - faster, and faster games, it seems to me.

What I REALLY wonder is, on what their wish to make such fast games is based upon.

Maybe it's just an exaggerated form of the "boring factor".

Originally Posted by Bartacus
I wonder weather the turn-based lovers liked KotOR -> That's a turn-based combat, but it comes over as realtime.

Well…no. Because it isn't turn-based in the sense most fans would use. KotOR's underlying rounds are completely changed by the realtime abstraction and it doesn't offer anything like the experience of a "true" turn-based system.

There are, of course, an enormous number of different turn-based systems out there but something like ToEE is the benchmark I'm using here.

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