By John Walker on June 10th, 2009 at 10:00 am.
There were surprisingly few disappointments at E3 this year. Most trips behind a closed door revealed something new and exciting, or reinforced enthusiasm for an ongoing project. EA’s demonstration of Dragon Age sadly did not. If the content shown was indicative, it seems reasonable to worry about with the forthcoming old-school fantasy RPG. I’m just hoping it was not.
Rumoured to have been in development for around a decade, the project has been described as a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate, and a fresh approach to traditional fantasy ingredients. Not using any D&D ruleset, but rather an infrastructure of their own creation, it sounds like it has the potential to be the triumphant return of a lost art. But I’ve yet to see anything that’s been convincing of this. Previous videos have come and gone, and almost every time I’ve thought, “Well, maybe it was just that voice actor,” or, “Well, it was just a dialogue scene.” I’ve made excuses. After the poor footage shown at E3, I find myself making more.
It’s important to be fair: this is an epic game, intended to last around 80 hours before planned DLC adds dozens more. I’ve seen minutes of it. It’s hard to have a sense of perspective for the game in full. But at the same time, those minutes have so far consisted of clodding dialogue, embarrassing voice acting, and peculiarly awkward combat. Oh, and of course, the rawk music.
The behind-closed-doors presentation of Dragon Age promised to show us two things: The nature of romance in the game, and the first reveal of a combat scene featuring a dragon. Let’s deal with the “romance” first. I don’t know whether it was a deliberately ironic choice of wording to introduce the clip. What we saw went something like this:
Our hero – one of the Grey Wardens, the group to which players will belong in an effort to fight back against the Blight, and the evil Arch Demon bringing it about – has a present for a lady, Morrigan. It’s a magical book that she has been looking for. She’s going to be very pleased to receive it. Once it’s dragged from our inventory to hers, she responds with some of the most excruciatingly dreadful flirtation I’ve ever seen. The acting is very weak, my face screwed up as I wrote the word “AWFUL” on my pad in the dark. She’s dressed as you might imagine a girl would appear on the cover of a 1980s D&D book, wearing what appear to be a couple of straps of material, most of her breasts hanging out. We can respond to her elephantine attempts at flirting by suggesting we’re open to her ideas. Once we’ve ambiguously agreed to her advances a couple of times, it cuts to a glimpse of an awkward sex scene that saw everyone in the room burst out laughing. Possibly not the desired reaction.
This all took place in a camp – something you can create at any time while wandering the game’s open spaces, a place to recoup, get some sleep, and chat with your companions. And indeed fuck them all, apparently. Because as we emerged from our night with Morrigan, we went over to chat with the slightly more modestly dressed redhead Leliana, who it turns out is apparently our girlfriend. Leliana’s voice makes Morrigan’s seem Shakespearian. The delivery is so deeply weird, stunted and childish. Unsurprisingly she’s upset at our bedroom antics, and protests. But not with any vigour or passion, but rather damply complains that it’s not particularly nice of us to go sleeping with other women right in front of her. Acknowledging that she can’t necessarily stop us from sleeping around, she meekly asks that we either stick just with her, or have the grace to break up with her as we continue our conquests. We choose to tell her that we love her really. She immediately capitulates and welcomes us back into her arms, before you’ve washed the smell of the last woman off you. So romantic! Here my notepad reads, “Pathetic.”
Next we’re shown the battle that led to our having the magical book gift for Morrigan. (I should note here that it became a gag for the rest of the week to say things like, “I wouldn’t mind giving her a book.”) This began with a meeting with Flenneth, the Witch of the Wild. Hundreds of years old, she is the witch of fairytales that have scared generations of children, and an enemy of Morrigan’s. We’ve been asked to kill her. During the conversation we’re offered dialogue choices that wouldn’t result in a fight, but for the purposes of the demonstration the violent choices were made. Also during the conversation I noticed that Flenneth was Captain Janeway off of Voyager, Kate Mulgrew. I asked about this and was told that the cast wasn’t being announced yet. Her having Kate Mulgrew’s voice did seem a bit of a give-away. Her acting was very good. After declaring our intent to kill her, she transformed into a giant dragon.
The combat that followed showed off a number of the special attacks and spells that will be available. Combat looks like it will be involved, using the various abilities of your party members collaboratively, the game letting you take over any member at will. At one point a member of our party changed into a venomous spider, who poisoned the dragon to weaken it – having shapeshifting playable characters sounds like a fun time. But for the most part, people seemed to be just slashing and chopping at the air, while the shapeshifting sorceress cast multiple heal spells to revive the frequently falling melee fighters. We were told the dragon was able to perform attacks like sweeping her tail at our party, but mostly people just fell over. However, there were also moments when the dragon would pick a party member up in her teeth and thrash around. This all finished remarkably quickly after our main hero jumped on the dragon’s head and wedged his sword into her temple.
And that was that. I want to stress once more, the above depicts only the few minutes we were shown, and there’s no way of knowing how it reflects on the overall game. I stood in line for as long as I was able to play the 360 hands on, but unfortunately ran out of time. I watched others playing, using the completely different interface the console version will sport, and it looked fine. Pretty enough and as you’d imagine a fantasy RPG would appear. Context presumably adds a great deal, and of course this isn’t an action game – RPG combat with multiple party members has rarely shown full contact fighting. The chances are, this being a BioWare game, that there will be a large, involved and decent story, along with elaborate and intricate role-playing.
But the problem is BioWare are concurrently developing both Mass Effect 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. What we’ve been shown of these is bloody brilliant. It’s mystifying how the same studio can be drawing us in with such exciting prospects for those two, while having Marilyn Manson declare that Dragon Age is to be “the new shit” over every recent trailer, and showing us nothing that gives us evidence for being positive.
I desperately want this to be good. Well, I want ALL games to be good, because then how great would gaming be! But I especially want a BioWare fantasy epic to be good. They’ve been so brilliant at them in the past. But the E3 clips ranged from juvenile to mediocre, which isn’t the impression I want to have at all. I look forward to being proved embarrassingly wrong.
*sigh*
I’ve waited for this game lord knows how long now.
But…
Bioware
I am disappoint
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Seems like most of the E3 reactions to Dragon Age are middling-to-bad. Disappointing.
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Wow. That was a sobering read.
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“I wouldn’t mind giving her a book.”
I have a sudden urge to make use of this phrase at any given opportunity.
I think it’s the larger setting of Dragon Age that bothers me most, in the Baldur’s Gate series matters were a lot more personal or oddly mundane – Find out what’s happening to the iron supplies, find out who killed your mentor. But presenting this large threat in the form of the Bane just doesn’t have much impact on me. Its a great big evil that isn’t trying to conceal itself or anything. I may be wrong and the nature of this evil is far deeper than that, but right now as far as I can tell, the major villian of the story isn’t very interesting.
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Well
Question is. How good is the gameplay ?
Dungeons , fights , spells , strategy ?
Cause this is what Dragon Age is really about.
You can compare it with Mass Effect. But Mass Effect is nothing more than interactive Movie. And its good at that.
But it was very Slim RPG. So comparing these two is probably not very appropriate. And this is perhaps what you have been doing.
Instead ,if DA will be slim at acting sequences , but great at RPG goodnes…
Than Bioware has mission accomplished…
Mass Effect for more Story driven RPG
Dragon Age for more strategy and combat RPG.
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wow i was really looking forward to this when it was first announced but that has soon gone down everytime I see a trailer and read about it. For shame Bioware.
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I too thought the dialogue and acting was stilted and badly done (from the various videos released). Set off alarm bells. Although it was not something many people have commented on.
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Maybe is not that bad, maybe the audience like the game like that.
Also, you guys are journalist. And gamers have a interest on different things. So of course, the more “yellow” part of the game has show to you guys. Because “yellow” sells newspapers. I mean… life is not just political debate and watergates, but If you turn TV on, is all you see on the TV. The world that journos show, is not the world where we live. So the game dev’s have show to the journos the part of the game more like…. political debate and watergates. Probably to spawn “debates” about showing pretending sex scenes in videogames. Is a irrelevant debate, but it sells newspapers. In real life we don’t care about these things.
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Damn, I’m a big Bioware fan, and this looks like something of a downer.
I too have been telling myself things like “The first mass effect trailers had some dodgy voice acting too like”.
We’ll just have to keep hoping.
Also, the acting would have to be pretty bad for Kate Mulgrew to be a welcome releif.
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…
Unless the reviews come in declaring this to be the second coming of the elder gods I think I’ll be putting the NZ$100 on some books instead.
I know they’ve declared that they’re trying to get back to their roots, but there are some aspects of the classics we don’t need to go back to. Like clodding dialogue, bad voice acting and crapola sub-plots.
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@ Tei ‘Yellow’?
I’m sorry, but I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say.
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I just want two things: A good, Baldur’s Gate style combat system and a campaign that lasts over 50 hours.
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I think the bigger problem is the parts where they aren’t getting back to their roots.
There was a great deal less shagging in Baldurs Gate.
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That was a scary read. I honestly don’t think I’ve seen John so…despondent before =(
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I lost all faith in Bioware after Mass Effect, yeah there was a good story in there somewhere but the awful combat and terrible use of HDR killed the game for me.
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I’ve gone from entirely disinterested in this game to thinking it might be pretty decent and back again.
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I thought the ‘sex’ scene in that ‘sex and violence’ trailer was rather awkward already, and it’s not like Bioware is new at sex scenes. What the hell is going on with her neck? Why is she crawling like that? Is that how they fuck in Canada and they’re only now showing us the sobering truth?
I would call this less sensationalist or ‘yellow’ journalism, and more a bit of honesty(not that the RPS crew seek to lie to us, but clearly the author here wanted Dragon Age to be great and succeed and is admitting he’s legitimately concerned for its future). I could tell Dragon Age was really looking ‘meh’ months ago. Doesn’t mean it might not be good, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have bought it already if they hadn’t delayed it for the console release, but everything I’ve seen about it has deflated my hype a little further.
A couple months ago I was complaining bitterly about the lack of Mass Effect 2 coverage, I worried maybe it had been cancelled in lieu of other projects.. Now I’m left wondering if Bioware’s spreading their talent a little thin? Personally I’d much rather Dragon Age failed than ME2, for all its flaws I really loved Mass Effect, but I have no reason to care about Dragon Age one way or another. If it’s a good game, I’ll enjoy it. If it’s a bad game, I’ll pass. Of course Mass Effect 2 probably won’t see a return of Tali, maybe not even Wrex, so I could maybe pass on that too. I’m sentimental like that.
I just don’t expect anything good from a company or developer after EA buys them. Usually it’s true, and if a rare gem escapes that hell of beancounters and board rooms, it comes as a pleasant surprise.
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At least we know Dragon Age has dragons in it now.
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The characters seem awfully generic and uninteresting. However, still hoping this to turn out more than half-decent.
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When was the last time a Bioware game had anything other than average combat? Baldur’s Gate 2?
If their usual standard of storytelling is there, I’ll be happy.
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Bioware have never really been good at romance plots. KoToR, NWN2, and Mass Effect all follow the same “Being nice to someone = instalove!”
It’s a shame the setting sounds so generic given they built this world from scratch. It feels like they pitched this as a DnD game and didn’t get the license. That said, hopefully the gameplay will be the strong point, since that opens up the possiblity of many interesting mods.
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So you’re saying we get to kill Captain Janeway?
Sold.
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Interesting stuff!
Even with the slightly negative vibe from John, it’s still hard to know if this will be worth the wait or not. Not to keen on the idea of camping – never been a fan in real life let alone wanting to emulate it on my computer – even if it includes the opportunity to *gulp* copulate.
Anyway, I agree that it’s one to wait and see about.
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Bah. Bah. Bah.
Dragon Age had been one of my most eagerly anticipated titles, and this held up even through the initial few trailers. But recently my impressions have been dropping rapidly. I’m sorely disappointed.
Already Bioware seem to have U-turned on some of the more promising comments they made. ‘No rapid, easy healing’ for instance. Whereas on other points they’ve just been disingenuous, ‘no chainmail bikinis’ for instance. Something that may technically be true, but is a statement which somewhat misses the point when you just end up making them out of cotton instead.
It may sound like an odd comparison to make, but I’m beginning to think of Dragon Age in the same light as Torchwood. They’ve taken the admittedly slightly campy Baldurs’ Gate and promised to make it more adult, and instead seem to have ended up with something that’s going to be far less subtle, and as a result far less interesting. I was hoping Dragon Age would somewhat be following in the footsteps of something like Being Human instead.
I’ve not written DA off completely, and part of me is still hoping for the game I wanted to see, but this is one I’ll certainly be waiting on more information. (Previously it had been a pre-order.) I find it slightly ironic that had the game not been delayed, I’d have almost certainly purchased it on day of release.
Bah.
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As awkward as the “romance” sounds, on reflection I realise that it seems light years ahead of anything else they’ve done. Mass Effect’s romance plotlines were very tastefully done, but incredibly simplistic. BG2 had brilliant writing for its romance scenes, but again, it was rather basic in its execution.
What John described, while cringe-inducingly juvenile, sounds a hell of a lot more interactive than previous efforts. As much as I would like My Perfect Fantasy RPG right now, these things can take a few games to get right. Bioware have fouled up royally in the past (NWN campaign, anyone?) but generally get things right, so I’m reserving judgement until I hear something from people I trust who have played the actual game.
Anyway, there’s a precedent for this sort of thing. Haven’t you ever read any Conan?
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@ James G: “This is Torchwood. Which is a bit more FUCKING adult than Doctor Who, okay? I mean, shit! Those people are having some fucking sex right there!”
I like some episodes of Torchwood but the first series they were trying too hard to be adult, and now you relate Dragon Age to it I can’t help but think that and agree.
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I’ve always preferred the idea of imply then fade out as far as sex scenes are concerned. If people really honestly want sex in games, they can go mod them in, game development surely has more important things to do with its time. That and there is more often a focus on the actual sex rather than intimacy, which may be where they are going wrong.
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I can’t help but think that the uncanny valley is a very uncomfortable place to have sex.
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Maybe it’s more a case of CRPG’s being a bit undemoable. Admittedly the Knights of the Republic stuff all looks good, but most of the good will came from a CGI presentation, it’s pretty hard to show off an 80 hour storyline and a fiddly tactical combat system to full effect in the same context.
RPG’s are all about sitting down and immersing yourself over a long period of time, making your choices and playing the game how you want to play with the guy or gal you created. The fact that the sexy-time is a bit cliche doesn’t really bother me, because examples of well done romance in games are few and far between.
Or maybe i’m just deluding myself because I really want this game to be good.
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I just don’t get the developers’ insistence (in general, not just Bioware’s) to include “romance” in their games. Some of the most unpleasant memories I have from BGII involve my shunned flirty companions droning on and on, repeating the same “romantic” lines. What the hell, I just saved you from that circus twenty minutes ago, girl, wait a couple of hours before falling head over heels for me…
Romance is one thing, counting roof tiles (or tent stitches, as the case may be) the moment a stranger gifts you a book is quite another and, I’m sorry to say, is embarrassingly close to the “plots” of some of the masterpieces of the adult film industry…
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Larington, I agree about the actual sex itself. Anyone who really wants to watch some virtual nookie is better off downloading Second Life, spending a tenner on lindens to kit out their avatar nicely and boldly strolling off in search of the weird and wonderful stuff that people come up with there. It’s definitely an area where talented amatuers charging a couple of quid for bedroom-programmed who-knows-what are leading the market.
Now the option to have sex is a completely different matter. I’m the kind of guy who has this idea of RPG nirvana where you can do absolutely anything in a virtual world. Being able to do anything would logically include getting it on with some random witch in front of your girlfriend and then making up after.
Actually, isn’t that the plot for half of the episodes of Buffy?
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Maybe they looked at the sales success of The Witcher and decided they wanted a piece of that pie.
Sad times.
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<3<3 I love romances on RPG games <3<3. The ones of Baldur Gates where hilarious. Is just another thing that a *writer* can add to a game to make it fun. If you can have a Turret Defense game in Warcraft-RST game, and I don’t see why you can’t have a Dating Sim in a Baldurs Gate-RPG. LETS HYBRIDIZE!!!.. (have you see what i did here?).
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“But the problem is BioWare are concurrently developing both Mass Effect 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic.” Well I guess you can’t have your “A” team everywhere at once.
That’s the problem with developing multiple titles at the same studio, at one point the developer will have to compromise on who they’re hiring and won’t be able to secure “grade A” employees only. Not necessarily bad employees or stupid people, just not as good as the other geniuses who have worked on the titles that the company’s fans are accustomed to.
Just to make sure that my point is clear: If you hire only 100 people and have tons of money, you’ll probably be able to recruit only Top players in the industry for every key position. If you have to hire 400-700 people, you may lack the time, money, incentives and opportunities to offer, or even simple luck, to get the “best at what they do” for every single position in your company.
In the end, the company is still able to produce two VERY promising titles and one that seems shaky for the moment but that remains to seen, which is not too shabby, by a long shot, anyways.
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To me, the most interesting thing about Dragon Age is the tie-in RPG Green Ronin (IIRC) are making for it. It’ll come in a box and everything, with future boxed sets expanding it, like the old BECMI edition of D&D. http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/dragonagerpg1.php is an interview about it, which looks pretty interesting.
Of course, there’s no shortage of fantasy RPGs, but one with decent production values and a basic set to start with would be a welcome addition to the market.
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Yeah, Bioware was never good in the field of romance. The approach from “The Witcher” was – in my opinion – far better. I mean, Geralt was obviously some kind of guy that women find attractive and the whole game world felt more… I don’t know how to translate… slutty? Having one of the many sexual relationships with Geralt didn’t break the immersion for me. That was “casual sex” with no need to do a long romance plot beforehand.
NWN2 in comparison left me almost angry about the lame Elanee plot. I didn’t take her along in my party, I almost never talked to her, but suddenly – on the evening before the castle is stormed – she comes with her cliché stuff “I have feelings for you, but it feels soooo wrong”. It just felt misplaced.
I admit that doing romance in games is a difficult task, though. There’s so many factors at work in real life. I honestly have no idea how a good love story could be woven into a game. I can only say that “The Witcher” got it done best in my opinion. It’s quite telling that it was the most sexually oriented approach, leaving much of the difficulty of the romance untouched. Maybe that’s why it felt better than everything Bioware tried.
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Argh, edit not working for me.
I just wanted to add that romances should maybe be left out completely. Just think about how you got together with your girlfriend. Nothing of all the subtle flirt stuff or subtext-driven conversation can ever be put in a game with it’s relatively strict rules. Romance in RPGs have always been along the lines of “pick answer 1 to get her to like you, pick answer 2 for the opposite”. If life would be that easy, we’d all have “100% working relationship walkthroughs” by now.
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@Tei: The problem imo is that it is so rigid and predictable. Bioware sticks to the exact same formula for the romance subplots with every single game. I mean, surprise me! Where’s the option for a third party member to get jealous? Why do I never have to do more than
1: do a main story quest
2: talk to romance NPC
3: goto 1
And why is the “reward” always so goddamn predictable, and means absolutely nothing for the rest of the story? Why doesn’t my lover save my life by throwing herself in front of the otherwise lethal shot aimed at me? Or vice versa? Or hell, since we’re apparently that close, why doesn’t the game let me play as her for a bit? Romance plots in general have plenty of possibilities. It’s just the way Bioware have reduced it to a predictable checkpoint feature that bores me.
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Mass Effect has unimpressed me, feels like a bland Kotor mixed with Halo so far.
Aside from Bioware losing their edge a bit, perhaps with all these projects they have stretched themselves too thin? The mmo in particular is a huge undertaking, especially given the scope they have for it in terms of story.
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“and chat with your companions. And indeed fuck them all, apparently.”
They literally said that? What is Bioware smoking? Seems like we have to hope for another company to make an official BG III to get a good fantasy partybased RPG again after all.
I really hope they just thought “Ah, it’s E3, let’s show console kids what they want and keep the real meat out”.
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Schaulustiger says: “Just think about how you got together with your girlfriend.”
Does not comply.
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This game has had the worst ad campaign in the history of gaming since John Romero made us all his bitch, unless you’re one of those console-only monkeys (surely the target audience).
The concern I have is that the game really IS toned down for the aforementioned console-only monkeys. I find it unlikely that Bioware would make a sophisticated RPG and just dupe the mainstream into buying it without actually making the game itself more mainstream.
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I believe the best ‘romance’ plots are the most outlandish, at least they provide a bit of comedy – it’s a shame Bioware has moved away from resolving parallel romance problems by proposing a threesome, as in Jade Empire.
I suppose the best possible integration of romance/main plot lines would leave you with the option of beating the last boss or bedding it – I think only Bard’s Tale has done that .
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All that and they’re still holding off on calling it “Dragonage”, or perhaps “Total Dragonage”.
And the cover should be the title tattoo’d on a flexed bicep.
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My first thought was ‘Dragons! Could this be any more generic?’ before I remembered it was called Dragon Age and so Dragons would probably be in there somewhere. But still, this looks so generic fantasy it hurts. What’s the point in creating your own setting if it’s just basic D&D?
I didn’t mind the Mass Effect romance, I can’t think of many better examples in games (not that this implies a high standard). But here… yikes. Pathetic sounds the right word from John.
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What do you know, Kate Mulgrew getting work after the assault on television that was Voyager. Wonders never cease.
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on second thoughts I dont have the time for another mega rpg, ill just stick with mass effect 2…
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If ever you are in doubt this game will be trash, please, just visit their forums. I have no idea what’s going on there, but this is not in the same vein as Baldur’s Gate, or even any of the Infinity Engine games. It’s a bit like… Neverwinter Nights, stealing blatant elements from The Wheel of Time. It’s lashed together with some pretty particle effects and videos that show off nearly nothing new set to rock music, in a hope to kill any last functioning brain cells you may have left that are trying to lead a rebellion against this tripe.
Disgusted.
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Just an aside; NWN2 wasn’t by Bioware. Though I do seem to recall Mr Walker loving it (giving at a score in the 90s) and IMO it has some brutal voice acting and that romance with Elanee was one of the worst things I’ve seen on my monitor.
The voice overs I’ve seen for Dragon Age haven’t been bothering me (So long as Carth Onasi doesn’t show up again I’m happy). Though Morrigan is slightly distracting ’cause I can only ever picture Claudia Black in my head getting torn in half by bioraptors in Pitch Black.
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I misread that as “Cilla Black” and got confused.
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Am I the only one that liked the romance in BG2? Yes its unrealistic, but the voice acting was great (all the voice acting was great) and it was enjoyable. What was that I heard in your voice? Emotion? Eeh, gads!
What happened to quality voice acting (and writing)? Would we be so bothered if DA:O had good voices?
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Ahaha train wreck. so awesome.
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Mass Effect’s romance plotlines were very tastefully done, but incredibly simplistic.
Simplistic?!? It took me what felt like forever to bed the damned xenophobe chick.
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Bear in mind Walsh you did populate your spaceship with (awesome) aliens. Miss Human Supremacist may have found this killed the mood a little. You should make more “How many Quarians does it take to change a lightbulb?” jokes next time.
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I think RPS just squashed the last remainders of my optimism regarding Dragon Age. And I thank you for it. Now I won’t be terrible disappointed when it turns out as shit as I’m expecting it will be. Or just average, which will be almost as bad.
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Frankly, I’m not at all surprised. Ever since the big make-over several years ago, from a NWN-style game to this consolish blockbustery look, I haven’t seen anything interesting about this game. The graphics look bad, the story looks bad, the acting looks bad. Maybe I’ll buy it if it goes on sale for $10. So many smaller developers are doing work that is so much more interesting than what Bioware does any more … to me, they’re not really a relevant game house any more.
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romance is a big deal in some crpgs because, well, i guess it sells. if it’s not in there, someone will mod it in there. damned if i know, but fanfiction is a demon with a mirror for a face and teeth made out of poor taste.
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http://weblogs.variety.com/the_cut_scene/2009/06/ataris-secret-weapon-neverwinter-nights.html
one may dream.
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Baldur’s Gate top down view along with the earth-toned look left room for ones own imagination, whereas Dragon Age just presents me with some shrunken heads in uber mega massive shining armors. I find these and all the obnoxious nakedness to be the epitome of bad/soulless games. I’ll guess it’ll be Run 6 of Baldur’s Gate for me then.
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I think the best romance I’ve seen in a videogame yet has to be your relationship with Alyx in Half Life 2. It’s slow, subtle, and she isn’t jumping down your pants an hour after you first meet her in the middle of fighting for the world. And she’s a genuinely likable character.
Is it sad that a FPS gets this more right than any RPG?
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My anticipation for Dragon Age took a monstrous decline after it was announced they would be taking the PC version hostage until console release and the subsequent Marilyn Manson trailers.
That they focused on ridiculously stupid romance scenes on E3 only confirmed my dark suspicions that the Marilyn Manson trailers weren’t just a fluke but actually a representation of the direction they were taking to appeal to the lowest common denominator of console gamers.
I feel like I lost a brother. After so many years of looking forward to it.
CD Projekt Red won’t have much troubles beating BioWare at the RPG game this round either. Bring on Witcher 2.
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Anticipation level … diminishing. From Pre-Order absolutely there Day 1 to Marilyn Manson fueled querys of what direction they were actually going with this game to this. Oh well. The beauty of commerce is that things inevitably go down in price and the super edition will probably have the DLC added as well.
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It’d be nice if it turned out that Dragon Age was just a huge windup by Bioware, wondering how many of the stalwarts who hark back to the days when games were as good as Baldur’s Gate 2 would actually ditch their standards and say that this looks good too.
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Ever since the rawk trailer Bioware released my opinion of this game has been severely tainted. It makes all their claims about a return to Baldur’s Gate extremely disingenuous. This article simply solidifies my fears.
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Well. Fuck.
That’s about all I can muster. Life is not good for RPG fans. Shame all the genres I love are nearly dead or indie only now.
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Oh, how disappointing. Well let’s just wait and see rather than writing it off. The best previewed games can turn around and be awful, so let’s hope the opposite is true.
Perhaps DA:O will stand on it’s construction kit more than the out of the box story?
The thought occurs to me that perhaps the people who create the “Sword of en-withering +1″ aren’t the best people to write about compelling human relations. Perhaps they could have found a hard cover writer or two for the dialogue and left the Witch-slaying to the fantasy writers.
Oh also: “I wouldn’t mind taking her to the library”
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CD Projekt Red won’t have much troubles beating BioWare at the RPG game this round either. Bring on Witcher 2.
Amen to that, brother.
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I am really hoping this doesn’t turn out badly, I’ve been looking forward to it. The problem with the “adult” themes here are that they seem to be written from the viewpoint of a 13 year old boy. Being an adult does not mean killing and screwing everything in sight.
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Word up, Nick.
That said.. I do get the feeling that their marketing department is hugely out of whack. Where is the demonstration of their epic story, their successor to the NWN toolset and demontrations of the essence of their game? Instead we get awkward sex scenes, contrived dialogue and Marilyn Mason soundtracks. There seems to be something seriously wrong here.
Are they trying to woo the console audiance? Have EA made the marketing for DA an intern project? Who knows- I’m still holding out hope, but there seems to be something seriously ill with how they’re presenting the game. What do you guys think?
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I’ll still buy it because even a cup of piss that might be water is drinkable to a man on the verge of dying of thirst.
If it turns out like ME or Jade Empire I’m done with Bioware for good.
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Indeed, it also means being able to legally purchase alcoholic beverages.
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They aren’t showing any of that for Mass Effect 2, either. Just a dialogue cutscene, some running around with guns blazing and a guy getting pushed off tall building. And yet, the audience laps it all up.
Go figure.
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“I wouldn’t mind giving her a book.”
Ha HA! And I’ve been using ‘I wouldn’t mind performing sexual intercourse with that well-developed human female!’ this whole time!
…Psychopomp’s right though. And he LIKES Manson. How should the REST of us feel?
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I’ve been using ‘I’d let her sleep with me’.
Am I doing it wrong?
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So the main character can sleep with another character only id he/she finds a SPECIFIC item the other wanted/searched for, and people have to “investigate” to learn of it? Is that how it works, then? I thought it was like a score BAR to fill or something, to be roused with any donated shiny item.
That’s sort of good news no?
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maybe all this is a new marketing strategy, instead of shoving hype down our throats until we pass out and finally understand the game sucks during our hangover, they will shove disappointment down our throat, lowering our expectations so much that when it comes out being “average or below average” we will all think “well, it was much better than what i was expecting” and all that while making sure we don’t forget the game exists (thats what they mean when they say there is not such thing as bad publicity) by constantly slapping us with crappy trailers and teasers that makes us feel physically sick
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This captures a lot of my mixed feelings about the DA:O, John. I liked the fact the 360 version seemed to function and the epicness was certainly there. But man, that romance stuff just made me cringe.
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Maybe everything seemed dumbed down(both the combat and the fornicating) because it was set at easy difficulty, to please the console kids.
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This game just looks really generic to me. Like they took the LotR movies and added a layer of slime.
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“”humm….So the main character can sleep with another character only id he/she finds a SPECIFIC item the other wanted/searched for, and people have to “investigate” to learn of it? Is that how it works, then? I thought it was like a score BAR to fill or something, to be roused with any donated shiny item.
That’s sort of good news no?”"
I wish where that easy in real life :-(
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@cullnean
Really? REALLY? An online wankfest full of 13 year olds powerlevelling, trading “phat l00t” and teabagging each other is what we should be dreaming of now? All of this MMO-faggotry really has to stop someday.
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The “romance” options have been terrible in the majority of games, I think Viconia in BG2 was probably the only one I felt worked. That was mostly because she didn’t fall all over you from the moment you meet her, which was slightly more believable. Mind you, you can have hints of the beginnning of a relationship with Aribeth in NWN, but that doesn’t exactly work out!
My main problems with post-BG games has been the lack of choice with companions. In ME and NWN2, you get a diverse collection of people following you around no matter what choices you make. In BG/BG2, there were a wide variety of people you could recruit, with varying personalities. Barring a couple of storyline driven examples, you weren’t forced to take anyone along.
Possibly this problem is a mixture of voice acting (which I feel has stunted dialogue) and a “show don’t tell” film imitation obsession.
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They did postpone the PC release as it was too awesome. I guess they’ve achieved what they set out to do and turned it into a bad (con)soulless game.
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I’m not to modest to say…I told you so. Dragon Age is going to be “the same old new shit” (by which I mean the weaksauce Bioware crap starting with Jade Empire) to borrow their own marketing phrases.
On another note:
“Being an adult does not mean killing and screwing everything in sight.”
Absolutely – Baldurs Gate 2 was adult, (slavery, serial killer, prostituion, corruption – the good stuff you find in every rich country) but it didn’t shove it down your throats. What’s called adult now is just juvenile.
In short, which is more adult:
Having you wade knee deep in blood as your character kills thousands of enemies
or
Giving you the option of wading knee deep in blood as your character kills thousands of enemies – with all the ramifications such actions have attached.
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daamn rps tearing shit up
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Sad to hear. But it’s Bioware so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. I’ll see if I’ll buy it once the first reviews come in.
In the meantime, i’m just playing through Jade Empire :)
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80 hour game.
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Maybe I’m in the minority on this, but there’s never been a Western fantasy RPG (besides PS:T) that has ever provided an interesting story or characters for me, and its my favorite genre. I don’t care about any of the story elements in DA:O. All this game needs to be is a solid party-based RPG with good loot and satisfying tactical combat. BioWare would really have to struggle to not to achieve that.
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Dear Gamers,
Please never use the term “goodness” again. Especially, and this is important, while commenting on an internet blog.
Offenses include phrases such as, “RPG Goodness,” “Gaming Goodness,” “Titty Bouncing Goodness.”
It makes you sound like a fat kid at a candy store (in a bad way.)
Use better words,
Gabe-
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It’s weird because I thought Mass Effect covered sex in the best way I can remember a game doing it. That sounded a bit weird actually.
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I’m not even all against having those kinds of options out there, I simply choose not to engage in them. However, the way it seems to be presented is, as DK was saying, kinda shoved in your face. Even if you choose not to have sex with every party member (which as a sentence incredibly depresses me), if they’re constantly asking me to hop in and have a go every time I bring back a wand or rare gem, it’ll seriously take away from the immersion and enjoyment of the game.
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Dear Gabe,
Please never comment on threads again. Especially, and this is important, while commenting on an internet blog.
It makes you sound like a patronising idiot (in a bad way.)
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Baldur’s Gate 1/2 are incredibly overrated. Yea I said it, it was generic top down real time combat RPG, the story was boring and the scenery did not look that great.
I argue that Planescape Torment is the gold standard for CRPGs of that era. Beautiful artwork, intriguing/complex characters and goddamn what a story.
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I’ll argue that Fallout is since it came out a half year before BG 1. And it was mature without self-consciously saying it over and over again to itself like the little engine that could.
And the DA site apparently got a new makeover I wasn’t aware of. Ugh.
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You are entitled to you amazingly wrong opinion on the first point Walsh.
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So here is a thing:
I have really enjoyed ‘romance-y’ aspects of videogames, in the past. I’ve enjoyed them in roughly inverse proportion to the degree the game shoved them down my throat. Fire Emblem is maybe the perfect game for this – it’d never be so unsubtle as to actually suggest two characters were, y’know, dating, but it offers a load of clearly well-written dialogue which isn’t all totally resolved in what it means and what’s going on?
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I think this is my problem with post BG-1 Bioware games (I liked 1 far more than 2) – I always feel that the game is dictating to me how my character feels, which, unless you’re a really good DM, isn’t going to work. And a videogame can’t be a really good DM, because it has to cater to everyone, and most people are 15.
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So here is a question we can argue about: why do mainstream games, in order to make money, have to assume that everybody is either 10 or 15? Does anyone older just pirate everything? I find it really hard to remember the last new I.P. that was created with any intention of getting my money (the way, Civ or Championship Manager were).
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Blood, tits, and explosions. Works for Hollywood.
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I might admit that since I played Fallout probably a month before I first played BG1 and Fallout was so incredibly awesome that it colored my opinion of the generic D&D fantasy world, Baldurs Gate.
Baldur’s Gate didn’t do enough to differentiate it from the gold box D&D games of ye olde. It was the same crap stories with, what I thought at the time, stupid real time combat.
I remember the glorious arguments between Fallout and Baldurs Gate fanboys over whether turn based or real time RPG combat was superior.
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@ Tei,
“Watergate”? Uh, what?
That does give me an urge to roll up a rogue named Tricky Dick, though…
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Captain Janeway is awesome.
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@Walsh,
Ah, a fellow traveler who felt let down by the BG series. I followed it from the time it was in early development as Iron Throne, and I thought the final product was “meh” at best. I liked TOEE much better. No accounting for taste.
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Jon Irenicus was not boring.
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@TheNewShizz : Yeah, but there’s a difference here – Hollywood makes dumb movies yes, but lots of them are genuinely for dumb adults, not for dumb teenagers. Why is that 20 years after the NES, gamers over 15 are still a minority so small as not to be worth marketing to?
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Wow at first this game looked good when the very first videos came out, but the combat looks incredibly boring.
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For those starving for some good RPG – NWN2 can be had for next to nothing now, and while the original campaign was too railroad for me, you can get lots of good gaming from the expansion Mask of the Betrayer, and the add on Mysteries of Westgate. Storm of Zehir was…ok. Impressive when you think it was created by a 5 man team, but a little light on the stuff I find important (plot, character).
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And once again it’s time for Mr. PJ Considerashuns
1 – LMAO at the folks and YOU noble Sir John Walker, Earl of Southern Rockpapershotgunshire for laughing at their face. I hope that they were enshamed to the point of not being able to sleep that night.
2 – Now. Why is it that is so difficult to do a simple romance WITH GOOD SENSE? We know that people in game development get around, and heck, some even marry. Apparently there is some collective fetish of a female going “OMG I HAEV THIS PSYCHO LUV THING FOR U GIMME SEX” in this industry that needs treatment.
3 – Can we blame EA for all that? I don’t believe that for a single moment someone in BioWare didn’t say at least “waaaaaaaait a minute” to the folks at marketing/PR of this game.
And last but not least
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yTVjUY9wMg
LEST WE FORGET
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“Quests says:
So the main character can sleep with another character only id he/she finds a SPECIFIC item the other wanted/searched for, and people have to “investigate” to learn of it? Is that how it works, then? I thought it was like a score BAR to fill or something, to be roused with any donated shiny item.
That’s sort of good news no?”
Haha, how does this sound to you as a premise?
No, Hero, you have saved my life it’s true. There was that time when you offered your life for my own. I have witnessed you give money to the poor, raise tiny orphan Tim as if he were your own and smite all evil in your path. You are the very best of men and I do indeed think highly of you. But I refuse to slee – WOAH! I’ve always WANTED that nice book. I’m all yours hot stuff!”
No, no, no, no, NO!
Airie this is not. Nor is it Jahera. (By the way, what I liked about those romances was that they COULDN’T happen too quickly. There were requisit time lapses and criterea to meet.)
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“I’d like to bury my nose in those exquisite passages.” Oh, we stopped that, sorry.
In The Witcher, despite the cries of misogyny. It does also give the option of settling down with a woman, adopting a child, and raising him. I liked this because it showed that the life of a Witcher isn’t the most compatible with being a tentative parent. You can return every so often, but usually you’re off slaying monsters for gold. He’s a man cursed with being loved by all women, yet unable to conceive. And when he does have a child, the reality is that he can’t be there to raise him, he would rarely see his child or partner. It’s there you can seek some sort of justification for the womanising, maybe he’s just unsuited for love.
Uhm, I think my point is that a well-written character can do these things. He can justify it. We don’t know how the main character in the Dragon Age is. Maybe he has his reasons. Or maybe it’s just a trashy, badly-written mess of an RPG. We shall see.
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Perhaps this cycle of disappointment inducing news about Dragon Age is really a Bioware marketing scheme!! When we’re all sufficiently despondent over the title, they release a fairly good game, and in an opposite reaction to the expectation of mediocrity, the web explodes in an orgy of adulation.
It could happen.
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I fail to see how this sex scene is any worse than the ones in, say, Mass Effect.
In fact bad writing, bad combat and bad sex scene sounds like every other Bioware game, to me.
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Happy to see thoughts like this on that particular E3 presentation, because everyone else I spoke to seemed to think Dragon’s Age looked amazing, and I was beginning to wonder if I was going insane. The people who were in there at the same time as me actually cheered and applauded when they showed off the sex scene. I believe I wrote “For fuck’s sake” in my notepad at that point.
Didn’t think the combat looked that bad and I’m willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt because it’s BioWare, but the more I see, the more I wonder.
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It pains me to say the, as Bioware has long been my favorite developer and BGII is my very definition of gaming entertainment. I levied so much as a whisper of criticism at any of his previous work, but times have changed, and digital actors require uniquely talented writers. This is Dave Gaider’s fault. He is a builder of tales, generating strong, nuanced plot after strong, nuanced plot; one would be hard pressed, however, to find less able a wordsmith. For your consideration, his novel based in the Dragon Age universe:
http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Age-Stolen-David-Gaider/dp/0765324083
Look inside. Read a page or two. Cringe. It’s like he took the English language and had it drawn and quartered.
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Edit: Oh dear. Josh, I just read the extract, expecting something poor but passable. I have much higher tolerances for bad writing than most people but that was just poor. It lacked flow, and structure and was loaded with clichés.
Great post on the Dragon Age forums which summarises my concerns, albeit with more optimism than I have remaining:
Direct link (Should be top post, I couldn’t find a way to link just a single post)
We want to believe that. We really do, but it’s just hard sometimes.
We have a history, ya know? We’ve stuck by you for years. And we’ve never been happier than we have been with you, even if we do go and play with some of the other boys while you’re working on your next big thing. We always come back, don’t we?
And that’s probably why it’s so hard for us to see you with that other girl. We don’t want to seem like a snob, but she just looks very “lowest-common-denominator” from where we’re standing. We just can’t tell what you see in her? Is it because she’s popular? She probably puts out, doesn’t she? A lot of sales I mean.
But it’s not just her. It’s the way you act around her. It’s like you become a completely different developer when you’re around her: loud, a little obnoxious and overbearing, and really just kind of juvenile. And we wonder what happened to the dev we fell in love with, the mature, funny, and profound dev who makes us wonder what we did to deserve the great fortune of having you around. You try to comfort us when we’re alone again, in our little haven that she probably doesn’t know about. You tell us it’s all just an act, it doesn’t mean you’ve changed. You’re the same Bioware we know and love. It’s just business, and all that.
And we nod and go along with it. It’s not like we’re actually going to leave you. How could we? But even if we shouldn’t, we do worry. It’s just in our nature, and this is a side of you we just didn’t know about, and aren’t entirely comfortable with. And it’s not like we want to change who you are. We love who you are. But this new face just…scares us sometimes.
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@James G: Could you link the thread, please? I can’t seem to access the post. :(
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Is it perhaps sort of time to acknowledge that Bioware haven’t made a really good game for years? And possibly ever?
The turning point for me came while playing NWN1′s exceptionally quotidian single-player campaign . I had been carried along for a while by my general enthusiasm for bog-standard fantasy narratives, when suddenly I noticed how formulaic the structure of the game was – all the way down to the actual layout of the levels. And once I’d noticed it there, I started to notice that other Bioware games were all sort of unimaginative too. I think playing a lot of WoW (and / or more or less any given MMO) also helps to sweep the veil from one’s eyes, because you become inured to the window-dressing and start to see the grind for what it really is.
Even going back to Baldur’s Gate 2 – which I’d remembered as being almost entirely fabulous – I found myself feeling rather disappointed. The art in that game remains often pretty sensational, but much of what lies beneath it is largely ‘go here, talk to NPC, get quest, kill monster, get reward, rinse, repeat’.
What strikes me further is that the games which transcend this sort of thing, which manage to genuinely involve and emotionally engage the player in the action of the narrative – here, let me list some of them: Planescape: Torment, Underworld 2, the spectacularly underappreciated NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer – come from the hands of a very small group of people. One suspects that this is because there are indeed really very few game designers who are seriously good at storytelling – leastwise compared to their peers – and once you get beyond your Churches and your Spectors, your Avellones and your Urquharts, the pickings become slim to non-existent. And Bioware simply are not and have never been in that class. Which is not to say that they suck – far from it (hey, in a world which contains drivel like Oblivion, we should be grateful for everything we can get) – it is just that they’re not quite as good as we sometimes think they must be when we are guided disproportionately by the scope and polish of their games.
And the longer Bioware go on making more or less the same game, the more we just … get … bored of it.
Probably am being too harsh. I just hope that Alpha Protocol ends up rocking much harder than it looks like it might.
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This reminds me of Dungeon crawl. Transforming into a spider.
You could sting an orc and run away before he could hit you miltiple times, and then you just waited until he was killed. It was a first spell from the book of transformations.
I also liked the shock when an executioner hit me by a sword and the sword chiped only few bits of surface. Then I tried to do stompa. While executioner was able to hit me five times as often than I was able to attempt to do attacks at him… When you are transformed into live stone statue the rules are somehow different.
Of course learning hand to hand combat, at least little, by practising on something less dangerous is advisable, luckily a stone statue can use sword.
It looks like the Dragon age, wouldn’t have a combat as deep as the above. The spider didn’t run quite fast, the wizard didn’t try to attack after they drawn dragon’s interest, and the wizard didn’t desperately try to evade dragon attack after he jumped on him from hopefully blind angle and run away. The wizard also didn’t say: “He haf qwite tough fkin.”, and didn’t hold his mouth. The combat liked like NWN2.
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To be blunt, I had a feeling this was going to go terribly wrong from the start.
I’ll list the things I heard about this game, from Bioware (in the order I remember hearing them)…
1. We’re not going to have any really interesting races, it’s going to be standard, traditional races.
2. We’re not going to have any really interesting locations, it’s going to be standard, traditional locations.
3. Hmmm… we feel we need this to be a bit trendier, but w’re not sure how to do this without defying what we said about 1 and 2.
4. Let’s add a great, big evil! D&D never ‘ad the balls to do that, but we’re free of D&D now, free! (There’s a reason D&D never did that, it’s always boring.)
5. Let’s add lots of sex, sex is trendy, sex, sex, sex, more sex, and where we don’t have sex, let’s put in some graphic violence, and more sex. WE’RE NOT RIPPING OFF THE WITCHER!
And now the things I heard not from Bioware, later…
1. The game seems really very dull.
2. The combat looks a bit crap.
3. The sex scenes look terribly awkward.
The latter is the natural conclusion for the former, really. I already know this is going to be a huge flop, and in the vein of John’s article, it’d be interesting to be proven wrong, not so much in that I want Dragon Age to be a good game, but more that I’d be fascinated to see how they could pull a good game out of all this. Because right now, I find that inconceivable.
Now if they’d said at the start that they wanted a more interesting fantasy setting, with deep lore, interesting races and whatnot whilst still keeping it in a fantasy setting, they would have set out on the right foot, they might’ve ended up with something like a modern Avernum. But by hanging on the worst parts of ancient (80′s) D&D, and then making it ‘trendy’…
Well, yeah.
All I can say is that I hope Bioware learns an important lesson from this: Boring ideas are boring, boring settings are boring, adding awkward sex and great evils does not make them less boring.
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Morningoil: Er, no. Since they’ve made so many very brilliant games.
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“Even going back to Baldur’s Gate 2 – which I’d remembered as being almost entirely fabulous – I found myself feeling rather disappointed. The art in that game remains often pretty sensational, but much of what lies beneath it is largely ‘go here, talk to NPC, get quest, kill monster, get reward, rinse, repeat’.”
To be fair, every quest can be reduced to the above. It was the stuff around the basic structure – the drapes if you will – that made BG2 so fantastic.
They didn’t have to let you go ahead and attack whoever you felt like and not give you an instant “game over – stay on our railroad!” screen like almost all games now do.
They didn’t have to add sidequests with their own unique stories, locations, items and characters – some of which you aren’t even told about until figure out how to access them. Compare that to Mass Effects “side quests”.
@John Walker – one of which is the incredibly underappreciated Shattered Steel. Incidentally, they promised a Shattered Steel sequel/expansion literally on the credits screen of the game – they never delivered.
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Was it Dragon Age where you were controlling your character almost from birth, growing up in their native village and such before venturing off? That bit sounded great. Have we seen anything of that yet? Was it scrapped?
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Probably been mentioned but the KOTOR game is being developed by separate Bioware Studio, they’re not even in the same country so I’d not really expect much relation between them.
I was quite disappointed with the marketing recently but so long as the story is half decent I can endure the rest of the game even if it is crap, not that I think it will be that bad. I just hope whoever they have in charge of the marketing just now gets locked away in a small metal box and put somewhere no one will ever find them.
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Some of you are acting as if Bioware was EVER capable of writing a sophisticated plot since at least KOTOR. And, no, I’m not talking about good ones (I find lots of their stories rather enjoyable), but I mean actually having nuance, subtlety, or complexity beyond “ancient evil conspiracies,” “amnesiac protagonist,” “sliding scale of good vs evil,” etc.
As long as the gameplay’s solid, this one still looks like a good buy.
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I now challenge you to dismiss Ms Chaplin’s GDC rant about game developers being immature man-fools with quite the same bounce in your stride.
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I don’t know if this’ll be a consoler’s dream. Have you seen the combat interface? That shit SCREAMS keyboard shortcuts.
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I remember hyping myself up about this game before any media for it or Mass Effect has been released. I hadn’t expected much from Mass Effect, but it grew on me, despite its flaws, and I wanted to play more by the time it finished.
My excitement for Dragon Age has really petered out. If they manage to pull off an entertaining 80 hour campaign, it’ll be great news. From what I’ve seen, though, I don’t know if I’d want to invest that time.
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“I don’t know if this’ll be a consoler’s dream. Have you seen the combat interface? That shit SCREAMS keyboard shortcuts.”
I believe they are doing a control scheme specific for consoles. Some wheelish setup like Mass Effect. Personally I’m still very optimistic for Dragon Age. I think the late “rawk music” marketing ploy is aimed at a larger audience, since they know that their core fans will probably like Dragon Age anyway.
As for the game its self, there’s NO WAY they could make the campaign worse than NWN1′s. If they can surpass that (which I am almost certain that they will), that’s enough for me.
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It’s funny to see the PC purist crowd finally wake up to the fact that this game looks awful, and then blame it on the convienent console scapegoat.
Stop kidding yourselves. This game looked terrible from the moment it was announced. The only difference then was it was a PC exclusive made specifically for the PC crowd, and because of that oh of course it’s going to be amazing and too sophisticated for those console peasants!!
It was only a few months ago they announced it would be coming out on consoles as well, probably after someone at the company realized they would have to make it multiplatform if they wanted to sell more than 50 copies.
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The difference is mostly how they presented the game when it was a PC exclusive (Baldur’s Gate 3!) compared to now (300 meets Witcher meets Army of Darkness if Army of Darkness Took Itself Seriously To An Extent That Could be Considered a Bit Sad!)
To be honest, I have no idea what Bioware is thinking with this game anymore. The messages they’re trying to send with the marketing/what they show are positively schizophrenic and, if this article is any indication, the game will suffer quite a bit for it.
btw you’re a fucking dunderhead
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It’s easier to overlook less than stellar visuals when a game is first announced because, you know, they have another year to finalise them, yet.
“wanted to sell more than 50 copies.”
That reads like a trolling attempt, and sounds no better than the point your trying to make with the PC purist blather, frankly.
My only real concern as far as consoles is concerned is the potential impact on control interfaces, but if (For once) seperate control schemes are being implemented for the different systems, then it won’t be a problem. It’s when I’m playing a PC game, access the control screen and have a gamepad graphic shoved in my face that I get a leeetle angry.
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Oh well. Now at least we won’t be overly disappointed if this turns out to be shit. Hopefully Risen and The Witcher 2 will be better.
Why Bioware, why?
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Don’t be mislead by the change in marketing. DA:O most likely won’t be anything like the newest trailers. Bioware knows they already have all the hardcore Bioware and RPG fans hooked on the game, now they are trying to attract the more mainstream gamers. Most likely due to the game being released on PC and consoles at the same time.
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It looks to me like Bioware is rapidly losing hardcore rpg fans with this game. And I don’t know WHO the marketing is for. Did that many fourteen year olds buy Mass Effect? (Clearly not because the Mass Effect 2 trailer was actually appropriate for people who don’t have KISS action figures in their bedroom)
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@Pijama
Hmm, link works fine here, but the topic itself can be found here:
http://daforums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=679758&forum=135
However, in case you were missing the fact, the post in question is the block of text I reproduced below the link. You can find it on page 26, at the top.
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Tim: “The people who were in there at the same time as me actually cheered and applauded when they showed off the sex scene. ”
E3 has always been a time for learning to loathe your peers.
KG
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I think a big reason for all the concern is the sudden crazy marketing tactics that bioware have attempted in order to drawn in other crowds. It’s putting the game in a different light to what it was even 2 weeks ago. If you went to the old website you found a completely different vibe to what the new website portrays. It wasn’t about sex, violence and blood. It was more about great story, focus on the origins, orchestral excellent music etc. And they’ve repeatedly said on the forums that the game hasn’t changed. The marketing has though, horribly to add :(
On the romance scenes, first of all you are not forced into them at all so you do not even need to near a romance scene according to bioware. Secondly, according to bioware, it takes a good few hours of ‘work’ to romance someone, not just giving them a book. For the sake of the new marketing style they showed it off as if that’s all you have to do.
When it comes to the dragon fighting scene I think that fight was really well done, and I can’t see why people can complain if that’s the kind of encounters we’ll get from a rpg.
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Considering the insane amount of free publicity Mass Effect got from the mainstream media’s brief and misguided obcession with the entirely PG sex scenes contained within I’m surprised Bioware haven’t hinted your main character will be going down on orks, dragons, giant spiders and elk.
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I’ve been trying to pretend I’m not worried about this game for some time now, i can say that the trailers are the parts of the game that they feel are polished enough to show people and that is worrying.
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This all took place in a camp – something you can create at any time while wandering the game’s open spaces, a place to recoup, get some sleep, and chat with your companions. And indeed fuck them all, apparently. Because as we emerged from our night with Console Gaming, we went over to chat with the slightly more modestly dressed redhead PC Gaming, who it turns out is apparently our girlfriend. PC’s voice makes Consoles’s seem Shakespearian. The delivery is so deeply weird, stunted and childish. Unsurprisingly she’s upset at our bedroom antics, and protests. But not with any vigour or passion, but rather damply complains that it’s not particularly nice of us to go sleeping with other women right in front of her. Acknowledging that she can’t necessarily stop us from sleeping around, she meekly asks that we either stick just with her, or have the grace to break up with her as we continue our conquests. We choose to tell her that we love her really. She immediately capitulates and welcomes us back into her arms, before you’ve washed the smell of the last woman off you. So romantic! Here my notepad reads, “Pathetic.”
Fixed it for you.
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Please, remove my post. It was a joke just for me, but the edit button for some reason was not here.
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“The people who were in there at the same time as me actually cheered and applauded when they showed off the sex scene.”
were they doing so in a “ha ha this is worse than a made for tv movie” way or a “oh man time to break out the good lotion” way?
either way holy fuck what is wrong with them?
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On the subject of “zomg, gratuitous blood and violence” — played BG2 just recently, and it’s right from the beginning hack and slash with swarms of goblins literally exploding into bloody clumps of pixels and cut apart with 2-handers. Much like Fallout with Bloody Mess perk on. Compared to it DA is actually pretty tame, just brings more fidelity to the graphics.
Suspect they’re trying to make “spiritual successor” to a game their target audience simply don’t remember all that well anymore.
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@tmp, BG2 had gore – but it wasn’t about the gore. Yes if you kill someone with Disintegrate they’ll be turned into dust, or they’ll explode when killed by a crit (actually, that wasn’t in my version of BG2 – possibly because it was the german one. Icewind Dale 2 had the explody-gib-crits though).
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I’m just saying it was as prominent part in the older game, to the point where it was given separate switch in the gameplay preferences marked as such. So the bloody bits in this new installment are hardly “dumbing games down for consoletards” or “ripping off the Witcher” as some put it. (and also hardly “the new shit” as the PR is trying to sell it) Ol’ grandpa BG2 could be as tasteless and more, if only the player felt like it.
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Before Baldur’s Gate, and maybe even before Shattered Steel, Ray and Greg (co-founders of Bioware) did ahve game called Battleground Infinity. It was an RTS, changed into the RPG we all know and love as Baldur’s Gate today.
My great guess is that Dragon Age: Origins actually does have the story, or at least some of the story, Battleground Infinity should have. And now they have the technology to make the game, they want to make.
And yes, even Baldur’s Gate could be very bloody, if you didn’t turn down the gore option or turned it off completely, like I did. The thing is, though, that characters exploding og being hacked to pieces by a sword in 460X640 pixels don’t look as bloody or gory as characters being hacked to death (in the game, I mean) in high 1280X1024 or higher resolution.
As a regular at the Bioware forums, the developers have said that the you need to play at least 30+ hours to maybe get the option to bed down with Morrigan after giving her a book. And no, she doesn’t just hop into bed with because you’re giving her a book…
I’m concerned about two things for this game a) the marketing and b) the fact that we’re apparently playing an elite soldier, a sort of equivalent (similar to) of the Navy Seals in the US military being send on a mission to raise an army that can combat an end? the blight….
For a) goes that I find the marketing horrible; it might attract new players, but how many old ones will Bioware lose in this process? And many new players will probably think it is like Diablo or Call of Duty where you just run around doing missions, killing things…
And they will complain, and feel cheated….
And rightly so, I find…
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Bah. It looks like the whole idea of (appearing) a deep, complex world with similar characters got squashed by other concerns such as the strategic part and how to bed as many females as possible. The problem with that is that (to me) a crappy world and story make for a crappy rpg.
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Ha!
A spiritual successor to Bauldur’s Gate my ass! Don’t get me wrong, Mass Effect was fantastic, and KOTOR wasn’t all that bad either. Bioware should be making fantastic games! But I mean come on; this title has generic-uninspired rpg written all over it. I won’t lie, my expectations were pretty low from the start. No cooperative play = a dick move if you ask me. The name is generic. This idea of a blight bearing down on humanity sounds like something ripped out of a Robert Jordan novel. But maybe I’m being unfair. I need to be honest with myself here: I’m expecting too much of Bioware. Mass Effect and KOTOR were good because their stories were good; the characters and the settings were really well crafted. In both cases, the gameplay was quite frankly lacking. But I didn’t mind because I knew after I got through the combat there would be more amazing story-telling. Dragon Age won’t have that; the gameplay will be garbage, and the story-telling will be abysmal. I say this not only because I’m bitter about the lack of cooperative multiplay, but because from what I’ve seen so far, that WILL be the case. I don’t care whether or not the game is good, but I’d rather that it were. I want to be wrong; and when the day comes, and the game is launched, if it pretty good, you all can all glare at me and say “I toll’ja so.” ; /
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Here’s the E3 demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1VBRe3XTYk
After watching that, I think most of the complaints listed in this thread are absolutely ridiculous and baseless.
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A horrible HORRIBLE game. only to be liked if you’re a fanboy who’s obviously blind to this game’s tediousness, last gen graphics, stale characters and milked out story.
20 bucks at frickin best. charging full retail for this… ‘game’ is a CRIME. This game should be given out for free to excuse it’s own badness, giving us REAL rpg players something to laugh about when a true rpg comes out that’ll be worth every penny like FF13!!! It will blow this game away and taunt in it’s underdeveloped, created by a ponytailed living with his mom douchebag creators – face
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Because “real RPG players” really like jRPG’s! Amirite?
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