Among the residual Leipzig footage was a few minutes of Dragon Age cutscene, and a it’s a pretty good barometer for the kind of acting we can expect from the new Bioware RPG. It’s looking like splendid ego-action from men in armour discussing the Fate Of The Kingdom, not unlike the RPS chatroom every morning. Sadly, it does not feature much acting from the Big Blue Toothface Of Doom (pictured) although he does a good growl.
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Kalin/Kealen/Kaelen/Karin or whoever has the worst voice over i’ve heard in a while, his face looks like putty too.
“I like to pretend silent player characters are just really shy and whispering so quietly that we can’t quite hear.”
Heh, I’ll have to try that. Nevertheless, I’m a little saddened that Bioware haven’t taken the conversation system from Mass Effect – by far its greatest asset. Even if the acting quality was to be below-par (in voice or animation), the simple pleasure that comes from not knowing /precisely/ what your character will say until after you select it is a great boon (and yet the fact you know /approximately/ what you’re going to say makes it more satisfying than, say, the obtuse system used in games like Sam & Max Hit The Road).
That being said, the game does look pretty, and I haven’t enjoyed a heroic-fantasy themed RPG since Morrowind, so I’d like this to be good.
Yann you didn’t play the Witcher? What’s wrong with you?
Must say while i normally don’t care much about “standard” high fantasy settings, this video did pique my interest … there’s some nice touches and detail put in there that make thing overall more mundane and immersive. A little like the Witcher, although without Sapkowski’s sarcastic twist. But that in turn makes it something different enough to want to check it out.
Anyone interested in this game should check out the interview GWJ did with the lead writer, he covers a lot of the points brought up in this thread.
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/40693
Isn’t it somewhat the point of the King character that he still thinks he’s in a children’s book?
I thought the voice acting was pretty okay – King Yellowarmour is convincing as a young dickhead king who thinks he has all the answers.
I’m more worried by the shear volume of generic fantasy bullshit on display. I’d had the impression that Dragon Age would be a bit more modest on this front, but the amount of references to demons, dark spawns and Apo’Stro’Phe is rather galling.
As for silent PC characters, I’ve always preferred it because it helps put me into my character’s boots. As good as the performances of the Shepherds in Mass Effect may be, I find myself treating them like other people’s characters rather than my own.
Psychopomp:
Most of the absurd things people did with 3.5 were due to power creep in books, the unbalanced wizard spellcasting, and the somewhat-broken class system itself. My group was totally fine with it until it expanded a bit and people decided it was actually a good idea to use those forum-created nonsense builds on characters that were total ciphers. My point is that these things can be more artfully restricted in a single-player game by the design itself, rather than by something as blocky, for lack of a better term, than a class.
I understand the preemptive strike about the old “it’s not roleplaying anymore” line, I wasn’t about to trot it out. 4.0 is pretty much an even mix of good and bad for me, but the game I’m in that uses it is going pretty well.
As for Dragon Age: I would love for that to be true. I can’t say, as I couldn’t find any articles that would commit to something other than the party attacks, the spell interactions, and the whole Origin idea. I’ll certainly give them the benefit of the doubt, but I’d really like to see more specific news about the mechanics. Does it use weapon skill or attack bonus + weapon proficiency for attacks, do the spellcasters uses slots or spell points, etc. I suppose that more waiting is in order.
Anyone else notice the lady going into battle with a miniskirt and no helmet? I seriously hope that is a hint of some kind of suicide battle cult and not just Bioware exploiting tiny digital ladies.
Also I think the kings voice would work much better if he wasn’t so buff. When I first him doing the voice over to the last trailer I was hoping for a frail Paul Atrieds style boy king. Not Fabio.
Still Baldurs II had almost no voice acting and was fairly ok. Well one of the top 10 games ever made.
The graphics have nothing special about them, the voice acting is specially pooor, the ambient sound is non-existant, since they can easily move in full plate armors without a squeak, and the story is more than cliché – it’s just stupid by now. Totally dismisseable.