You can now download the Dragon Age character creator, letting you find out the range of races and looks available for your potential avatar. You can get it in English directly from clicking here, or if you’re after another language head to the official Dragon Age site, in the column on the right. There’s also a new and rather excellent CGI trailer, which you can see below.
You can also get the character creator from FilePlanet, but unless you’ve paid for an account you’ll be sat in a queue. The download rate from BioWare’s own site is pretty fantastic as it happens.
Once you get into the character creator (which is no mean feat – there’s an unskippable trailer you’ve seen before – if you know how to delete biks it’s worthwhile) you can, as you might imagine, create your character. But more significantly it reveals all the details regarding the available races, classes and origins. So you’ve got Humans, Elves and Dwarves. Noble or magic Humans, City, Dalish or magic Elves, and Noble or Commoner Dwarf. Then there’s Warriors, Rogues, and Mages. That creates a total of six origin stories (Human Mage and Elf Mage have the same origin). You can, in fact, find out more details about the origins in last month’s PC Gamer (ish 205), wot I wrote.
Not only that but you can see the full Skill and Talent trees available to each class, along with explanations of their importance. Once you’ve created your ideal character you can upload it to your EA account, for um, some reason? Either way, it’s a fun little taste of the game to come, due November 3rd. Here’s my creation:
Perhaps the key thing to note about the trailer is that it doesn’t have any silly metal stings at the end. In fact, it presents itself as an advert for a game aimed at gamers, which is quite a relief. Clearly it’s all CGI, but it sure is fun!
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Wow, women sure can jump in Dragon Age.
Anyone can do that. Just do a few tumbles and cartwheels first, you’ll spring right up.
No intrusive DRM definitely sounds good… I don’t know – I’m cautiously optimistic about Dragon Age. I’ve never been terribly disappointed with anything from Bioware. The fantasy setting just doesn’t seem very adventurous, as though it’s impossible to craft a fantasy world without the human-elf-dwarf archetypes :(
@ Tim
Certainly not impossible, heck Bioware’s done it before in Jade Empire. I get more of the feeling that the setting for Dragon Age is intentionally stereotypical though. Bioware has stated from day 1 that Dragon Age is supposed to be the spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate games. It would be difficult indeed for them to directly appeal to what everyone liked so much about those games and at the same time attempt some completely new take on a fantasy setting.
The best part of this for me is being able to see all of the skill trees. Of particular note is the Entropy class of skills for mages. Magic that taps into the slow inevitable death of the Universe? Do want.
I was less than impressed by the CGI clip shown before the editor loaded. In fact, it did more harm than good because it came across as a very generic fantasy game with cheesy looks and a lame story (even if, from what I heard, the actual game is much much better than the trailers so far have made it seem).
Personally, I’ve frequently skipped intro movies lately because they are so nauseatingly generic even with the best of games that it does more harm than good. Please, publishers, save us from “the world is in danger” trailers. We deserve better than that. Seeing big armies battle it out may seem cool to 8 year olds but my attention span for such tripe has really shortened over the years. ESPECIALLY if you can’t skip them.
Took the words right out of my mouth. :)
Unless it’s Valve. I love the stuff Valve produces.
oops I meant to second Red Avatar’s opinion
The full game had better have a randomise button I can mash a few times before finishing it off with some perfect hairstyle, like all right-thinking busy people.
When my character speaks, her lips stretch across her face first, then return to my settings.
So, I guess the trailer was a pretty accurate depiction after all.
Oh yes do love it whenever a game or demo launches with some ridiculously low resolution as default, thus upsetting everything on my desktop.
Did anyone else think 300 when they saw the start of that clip? You know pushing monsters / Persians off the edge of the cliff, throwing them away from you with your shield and stabbing the next monster/Persian in a way that looks like it was taken STRAIGHT from the movie… :P
300 invented pushing people off cliffs, and athletic swordmanship
Actually, there ARE some very moody and well-placed heavy metal guitar licks at 3.25″.
It’s rare that RPS says something which makes me want to do something other than nod sagely in agreement, but your moaning over the DA trailers over their soundtrack, of all things, has gotten slightly up my nose.
Who says that “games made for gamers” have to feature sweeping orchestral scores? The convention that fantasy and medieval-ish settings HAVE to be associated with pompous symphonic music didn’t start in any kind of game, it started with Wagner over 100 years ago, and was cemented by the countless Hollywood hacks who plagiarised his scores for movie soundtracks. Any film on a King Arthur or Robin Hood or (yes) Lord of the Rings theme HAS to have a specific kind of music, and, while there;s nothing wrong with that kind of music, I don’t see why people go off on one when something deviates from that!
Games didn’t take off until the 70s and 80s really, what’s wrong with them using a musical style from the same period? Unless you wanna go all Dogme and rule that all music must be diegetic and in-action, in which case you can get the spider lady to weave a web and the PC can play it like harp strings. (That sounds like a very disturbed porn video but nm.)
Don’t get me wrong, I actually like scores like Jeremy Soule’s, they’re sort of like mental bubblegum for classical music fans: simple and derivative, but well-crafted and enjoyable. Trouble is that sort of music has specific good vs. evil connotations, and DA has been promised to be a game that gets away from that archetype. Yes, electric guitar licks might be a rather simplistic way of saying “Yeah! We’re badass!” but at least they’re trying to differentiate themselves! Considering the most frequent criticism of RPGs (including by the writers of this site) is that they’re generic and derivative, you really should be applauding any effort to be different.
I’d like to massively agree with this. If I had one complaint about RPS it would be the immediate curling into a ball they seem to do whenever there’s a hint of metal anywhere. Metal isn’t just for teenagers, and it’s quite insulting to suggest otherwise!
I do miss the days when games could have soundtracks other than “sweeping orchestral”. Don’t get me wrong, as above, I love an orchestral soundtrack done well (with a particular master being the above mentioned Soule) but it isn’t ALWAYS appropriate. Quake 4 is a great example – it had the most generic orchestral mehness you’ve ever heard. Compare it to Quake 2’s amazing soundtrack by Sonic Mayhem, which was far more fitting and evocative. But yes, it was metal.
And of course, it doesn’t have to be orchestral OR metal. My favourite OSTs of the last year or two are Mass Effect and Mirror’s Edge. The latter in particular is amazing, done by Solar Fields. Thanks to that game, i’ve now got massively into ambient music in general, and have gone out and got all his other albums!
Hmm, not that i’m suggesting RPS only love orchestral tracks :) I just got sidetracked. And i’m sure RPS don’t actually get faint at the distant sound of metal music. Just seems that way sometimes.
Well I can safely say that that clip has undone all of the damage some of the previous vids did for me.
Awesomeness!
Another +1 to seeing Maximum Face. Some of those sliders are clearly at minimum.
Or is it like Oblivion, with annoying interdependencies that prevent such a creation?
No, but a lot of sliders are so subtle that it’s difficult to tell what they do without looking at the face from every possible angle.
Wow, so they made a shit action film for a trailer.
Boo must have his exercise, lest he bite us all in hard to reach places.
Does no one else find all that blood off-putting? I winced when the sword man tore the dragon’s side.
Man, I miss comic violence.
I do too. As soon as he started impaling people and slashing their faces or whatever, I was put off.
You guys obviously don’t remember when an enemy could explode into gibs in the BG games…
Silly man, games were never violent in the GLORIOUS GOLDEN AGE OF THE PAST.
Fallout certainly never had a ‘bloody mess’ trait, that would just have been crass.
Well, I just got my copy of PC Gamer, and a certain Mr John Walker was overwhelmingly positive about Dragon Age.
Me wantee.
Good to hear. I've already pre-ordered it, but had John given it a slating then I'd be considering dropping that. I'm not sure if I'm going to read said review or not, at least until after I've played the game. (Although in practice I'm sure I'll cave in and read it.)
As a fan of both metal and RPGs (as well as BioWare and gaming in general), I’ve this to say:
How dare anyone ever refer to Marilyn Manson as metal. At best he’s glam rock.
– Griffinhart
PS. Preordered DAO CE waaaaay back a long time ago, then canceled that once word came about that Steam was also doing preorders, and went with the Steam Digital Deluxe Edition. BW hasn’t done me wrong yet, and if NWN’s (still-kicking) mod community is indicative of anything, even if DAO blows chunks (which I doubt), the mods surely won’t.
I also really enjoy atmospheric music in games the music for the original fallout never dulled because it was simple and sat in the background, I’ve been playing majesty 2 recently and as good as the game is the music REALLY grates on my nerves.
@M.P. says: I second this motion