Comments on: Within The Grey Wardens: New Dragon Age Trailers

By: TeeJay

TeeJay — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:47:21 +0000

Apparently they let the public play the game at the Comic Con. Anyone seen any reports?

By: tmp

tmp — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:00:27 +0000

In a Ninja Gaiden game, you know when you’ve been hit. There’s a visceral sense of impact there – you get that familiar noise, you get knocked back, you see a spray of blood that splashes against the floor. You may have only lost a tenth of your health, but it feels like you just got HIT.

I do see all these things in the final combat video linked in the article, actually. There’s recoil on getting hit, there’s knockback on strong hits and there’s blood splashes (to the point where some people are complaining about it) There is no silly chained spinning kick attacks and such while the character efortlessly hovers 10 m in the air like in DMC, but hopefully these aren’t part of what supposedly makes the melee combat in these games ‘look right’…

By: Mr.President

Mr.President — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:28:54 +0000

For a game with such great graphics and acting, those are some awful attack animations (or, rather, animation). Wouldn’t look too bad in Neverwinter Nights or Baldur’s Gate, but here we have highly detailed characters with facial animation, who engage in complex interactions, only to start whaling on each other with the same motion like wind-up toys a minute later. It started getting old by the end of the first trailer! Can’t wait to have to stare at it for an hour straight during a trek through some mine or a sewer level.

By: Mixmastermind

Mixmastermind — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:21:09 +0000

Man, these dwarves mean freaking business.

By: Dominic White

Dominic White — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:52:34 +0000

All I’m saying that fighting games actually have mastered the art of making it look like you’ve actually hit someone, even if it doesn’t kill them. There’s power and weight behind every attack, and a lot of RPGs seem to want to do that, but end up falling into the trap of two avatars playing attack animations, maybe synched up now and then, and having one falling over when they run out of HP.

In a Ninja Gaiden game, you know when you’ve been hit. There’s a visceral sense of impact there – you get that familiar noise, you get knocked back, you see a spray of blood that splashes against the floor. You may have only lost a tenth of your health, but it feels like you just got HIT.

By: The Hammer

The Hammer — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:37:39 +0000

@Dom: Hopefully you’re not suggesting that Medieval Fantasy combat should look like Devil May Cry, but rather that it has the same attention to detail? :P

By: Taillefer

Taillefer — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:22:58 +0000

Dominic,

Gothic does that to some extent. But the combat itself is still pretty weak. The moves don’t become particularly flashy, but as you improve your skill the PC can wield his sword better with slightly different moves.

I’d like to see it adopted more too.

Round-based needs to be disguised much more. And I don’t see why it isn’t considering the computer could “roll” several rounds ahead, or even resolve the whole conflict before a single animation is played (but allow the player to interrupt), it would be completely transparent to the player and they could be playing any sort of fight-scene they want, with all sorts of fancy animations.

By: OJ287

OJ287 — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:08:30 +0000

My interest chart shows positive growth.

By: bill

bill — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 13:50:15 +0000

Was the whole post being sarcastic, or did i miss something?

The voice acting was terrible, the joke wasn’t one, the combat looked incredibly dull (hit each other until someone falls over), the locations didn’t look that special, and without music there was NO drama at all.

the magic looked pretty powerful though… so maybe the whole post wasn’t sarcastic…

By: DK

DK — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:45:27 +0000

“I am looking for damn Baldurs Gate succesor”
I’m looking for one too – what a shame this looks nothing like one.
It’s utterly juvenile, looks abysmal, and is yet another in a long line of nu-Bioware “we want to make things cinematic!” drivelware. Deep games are not like movies – because they can’t be unless they loose their depth. Deep games are like books.
Baldurs Gate was a book, Dragon Age looks like Uwe Boll doing a fantasy movie.

By: Dominic White

Dominic White — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:33:29 +0000

The RPGs of today really need to look to the Ninja Gaidens and Devil May Crys of this world if they want melee combat to look right. You can’t just have two characters facing each other, playing their animations in turn. You need hitboxes and recoils and stuns and physics in play.

No, I’m not saying that RPGs should turn into action games. I’m saying that the better action games make hitting people look RIGHT, and an RPG developer could pilfer this knowledge and use it effectively, we’d get something much better out of it.

Something that springs to mind is development of character animation. The (sadly Japanese-only) PS2 game based on the famous Berserk manga does this excellently. Near the start of the game, your character swings his (HUGE) sword like it’s a sledgehammer, putting all his weight into it and skidding, tumbling and generally looking not the slightest bit graceful about it. As you level up and put more points into sword skills, he begins to hold onto the sword more confidently. His stance is higher, and his swings and faster and cleaner.

Near the end of the game, he’s a true master of this gigantic sword, and is bringing it round in one-handed arcs – he animates like it’s an extension of his body now, rather than the gigantic lump of steel he was throwing around at the start. If an RPG could do that, and make characters visibly improve their fighting style over the course of the game, that’d be awesome.

Seems exactly the sort of thing that Dragon Age could use.

By: Subject 706

Subject 706 — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:11:12 +0000

Well if 80% of the content is not dull and samey filler, then it will surely be better than Mass Effect at least.