Dragon Age - Preview @ Play.tm

Play.tm has a preview of Dragon Age after seeing Dan Tudge demonstrate the title in Leipzig:

Beyond character and story specific choices, ambiguous moral decisions will also have to be faced - will you do the right thing but potentially miss out on something key to your central quest? Or will you do the wrong thing to get what you need, regardless of how other people in the game regard you? One such decision was faced when dealing with a captive prisoner in a town being defended by the Grey Wardens from the Blight. Kill the hapless chap and you might get a useful key, feed him and you've made an ally, but at the expense of a useful item. As BioWare point out, this is a simplistic example, but later on in the game the choices will be more complex; the morality cloudy. The first two to three hours will be unique, and based entirely on your character and their actions, we're reliably informed.

More information.

I think being faced with morality decisions that has significant impact later in the game is one of the best elements of an RPG. It brings a game well beyond the hack & slash garden variety type.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
will you do the right thing but potentially miss out on something key to your central quest?

Thats never going to happen, but I'd love to see a game that did something like that.

Originally Posted by V7
Thats never going to happen, but I'd love to see a game that did something like that.

Why not? I completely mask of the betrayer without getting one of the key fragments of the mask first time around. Sure, the ending was different, but it was possible.

Originally Posted by kalniel
Why not? I completely mask of the betrayer without getting one of the key fragments of the mask first time around. Sure, the ending was different, but it was possible.

Same here. I was a bit bummed at the ending, actually.

Originally Posted by kalniel
Why not? I completely mask of the betrayer without getting one of the key fragments of the mask first time around. Sure, the ending was different, but it was possible.

You could still finish the game though, hence the fragment wasn't key to the main quest by definition.

… frankly I was disapointed by the end.

"ambigous moral decisions" aka dilemmas annoy me to no end in an RPG. I like the use of morality in a game but dilemmas are just distracting. I prefer to deal with life's dilemmas or even as an ironic twist in a story but I think they are ultimately meaningless in a game and usually just "bleh" because the writers tend to think they are cleverer than they really are.

What do you look for in a game, then, LD?

I think choices like these are great for any CRPG, because it is another form of non-combat gameplay, it adds variety to the well worn path of explore/get quest/combat/explore/combat/cut scene ad infinitum…

And Bioware games need all the non-combat gameplay they can get, the more the better. But, they need to involve dialogue and choices like these as gameplay more, not just reading if possible. Iron Tower Studios is doing a great job incorporating dialogue and non-combat gameplay in Age of Decadence. One example is using dialogue gameplay like text adventure games.