By Jim Rossignol on July 28th, 2010 at 8:50 pm.
I love golems, best of all the magically animated constructs. They’re my friends. It’s fortunate for me, then, that Bioware have announced the next bit of DLC for Dragon Age as being Golems of Amgarrak, in which you can head out of Orzammar to hunt for the dark secrets of the big stone dudes, and recover a lost dwarven expedition. It features new creatures and new characters, apparently, and will turn up on August 10th for the sum of $5. I was going to post a trailer, via MMORPG, below, but it doesn’t work for some reason. See it here.
28/07/2010 at 20:53 BigJonno says:
What are creates and why would I want new ones?
Now the snarky, childish bit is out of the way, all I have to say is “HOORAY, GOLEMS!” and be generally very excited.
Someone needs to make a golem fighting game. Just big clay and stone men knocking the crap out of each other. It’d be brilliant.
28/07/2010 at 21:49 Wulf says:
This is exactly what I was thinking when I saw the screenshot, and I was massively disappointed to find out that it wasn’t actually just that.
28/07/2010 at 22:45 PHeMoX says:
Same thoughts here, I dislike all things MMO.
28/07/2010 at 22:54 Hidden_7 says:
Good thing this is for Dragon Age then, which isn’t particularly massive (more quite large) isn’t multiplayer, and isn’t online, which always seems sort of redundant after the multiplayer bit.
28/07/2010 at 23:30 Vinraith says:
@Hidden_7
A massively multiplayer non-online game, wherein 700 people stand around a single screen with their own controllers or mouse/keyboard combos each controlling a tiny dot trying to kill the other tiny dots…
28/07/2010 at 23:53 Hidden_7 says:
@Vinraith
Touché. I can’t believe I forgot about single-screen multiplayer.
In any case, Dragon Age isn’t that.
29/07/2010 at 02:27 Wulf says:
Regardless of what Dragon Age is or isn’t, I’d still much rather like an interesting golem fighting game more than some DLC.
I’d actually be fascinated to see what someone would do with that, but I imagine it would hark back in ways to One Must Fall, 2097, with each golem having a controller, and both the stats of the golem and the controller matter. It would also be interesting if there was some basic scripting going on, so you could have your golems do some seriously crazy things. Such as, golems being built from customisable parts, and then each part having a set of scripted moves.
That’d be neat.
29/07/2010 at 03:40 Spacewalk says:
@Vin
That’s one hell of a Sidewinder pad daisy chain. Is that many controllers supported by default or would you need special drivers?
29/07/2010 at 18:19 BAReFOOt says:
The maximum for USB is 256 devices. So with 4 separate controller chips (extension cards), you could do it. ^^
28/07/2010 at 21:15 DSX says:
Yesterday I was watching a video about DA II, now I’m watching a video for more DLC on the first. I loved Dragon Age, but I think this DLC is a bit late. Priorities have shifted.
28/07/2010 at 21:39 Sam says:
It’s not too late until DA2 is released.
29/07/2010 at 10:02 battles_atlas says:
Who’s appetite for this game isn’t sated already? I really enjoyed DA, until about 80 hours in when I still hadn’t finished it and found myself profoundly bored. Can’t believe anyone would want to play additional DLC after that. Do these people know that there are other games out there?
29/07/2010 at 12:45 Nallen says:
You went from really enjoying it to profoundly bored in one step?
I really wanted to enjoy it, but ultimately never really did. Even though I could appreciate what it was doing and the craft of it all.
29/07/2010 at 13:03 battles_atlas says:
You mean you’ve never been ambushed by profound boredom? You know, one minute you’re loving something, 80 hours pass, you do a state-of-existence selfcheck, WHAM – I’m profoundly bored.
29/07/2010 at 14:35 StingingVelvet says:
@ Battles Atlas
Obviously some people, like myself, want more Dragon Age. Some people, like yourself, don’t. The awesome thing is I can buy the DLC without you doing so and we’re both happy.
28/07/2010 at 21:22 Vinraith says:
Golem?
http://img84.imageshack.us/f/golemi.jpg/
I guess that’s one for “You know you’ve been playing AI:War too much when…”
28/07/2010 at 21:30 DarthNader says:
Ok, I don’t know if it was a bellwether for Dragon Age 2, and considering the talk about it moving towards a more ‘Mass Effect’ style of game….but I could swear that the background music for the trailer was from Mass Effect 2.
28/07/2010 at 21:41 Pace says:
I hadn’t been getting the Dragon Age DLC, but I did buy the last one Leliana’s Song, and I thought that was pretty good, worth the money. It was its own self-contained story with quite a bit of new voice acting. It wasn’t super duper, but worth the $5 or whatever.
28/07/2010 at 22:04 Rohit says:
Yay, another dungeon.
28/07/2010 at 22:38 Vinraith says:
I remember this place being mentioned in the original game, actually, and sounding like a cool place to visit. I don’t hold out much hope that the DLC will be meaty enough to warrant its price tag though, considering what’s come before it.
28/07/2010 at 22:45 Alexander Norris says:
So it’s going to be yet another 20mn dungeon with entirely recycled content and an overpowered item?
28/07/2010 at 22:59 Hippo says:
Sorry BioWare. I loved Dragon Age, but I’m done with it now. I’ve uninstalled it, and I’m not reinstalling it for two hours of DLC. Leliana’s Song just reinforced my negative view on these DLC-packs anyway. It was very limited, completely linear… and just when I was getting back into the good old Dragon Age-mood, it was over.
28/07/2010 at 23:24 Zenicetus says:
Great, another corridor crawl through the Deep Roads; the most boring and repetitive part of the OC.
And what a shame you can’t play as a Golem main character! They have the basics for that already, from that one Fade sequence in the OC. Maybe it was too much trouble making a Golem skill tree for a $5 DLC? Still, what a wasted opportunity. I want to bash the floor to cause earthquakes, and throw rocks…. crush the Dwarves that made me what I am. I’m tired of playing a Warden. Why do the supposedly “great writers” at Bioware keep falling back on tired old D&D dungeon crawl themes?
28/07/2010 at 23:40 FunkyBadger says:
Suggest a better structure than “kill the goblin, find the treasure” – these things are cliche for a reason.
29/07/2010 at 01:08 jconnop says:
They already do have the skill trees etc. There’s Shale, the Golem party member you can aquire assuming you bought a new copy of the game.
So yeah, it’d be trivial for them to do.
28/07/2010 at 23:57 Mr Lizard says:
Another good reason to wait for the Game of the Year Edition. To be reduced to £5.
29/07/2010 at 01:19 Deevian says:
Curiously, I feel more anxious to shoot whoever chose the font for the DLC logo than to actually play the goddamn thing.
I mean, DAMN.
29/07/2010 at 04:28 Karthik says:
Mass Effect 2 music in a Dragon Age trailer…
Bioware!
29/07/2010 at 12:43 bleeters says:
@ Karthik
That part boggles me, too. Dragon Age had some perfectly fine music. It’s as Bioware have universally decided Mass Effect is superior in every way.
Not to mention I heard that particular track enough times during the ending for a lifetime.
29/07/2010 at 05:15 1stGear says:
I think it telling how quickly they’ve been pumping out DAO DLC and the reaction to it compared to how slowly they’ve been moving on genuine content DLC for ME2 and the reaction to it.
29/07/2010 at 08:16 Jog says:
Looks like Transformers…
29/07/2010 at 09:39 Hmm-Hmm. says:
That was my first impression, too. I might actually get this one, too. Robo-golems, roll out! *ahem*
29/07/2010 at 10:27 Jezcentral says:
I would have preferred this to star Shale, and be about [its] quest with Wynne to find out about [its] past. If we are going to have DLC, I wish it was about the characters we already know.
29/07/2010 at 11:06 Chris says:
I love Golems, they’re my friends!
29/07/2010 at 12:09 Malibu Stacey says:
Dorfl.
That is all.
29/07/2010 at 23:49 Fumarole says:
You sir, are clay of my clay.
29/07/2010 at 13:07 suibhne says:
It amazes me that Bio sells things like this for $5 while Gearbox retails The Secret Armory of General Knoxx for $10 (and it’s often on sale for $7.50 or even $5).
One of those is DLC done right.
29/07/2010 at 14:37 StingingVelvet says:
Bioware DLCs are only overpriced because their games are so massive though. A 3 hour DLC like Leiliana’s Song or Mass Effect 2′s Overlord would be an awesome value for $7 if the core game was a 10 hour shooter. It’s only because the core games are 60 hours that $7 for 3 more seems a bit high.
I have to say though, most of the quest DLC has been worth it for me. They’re made for fans, and only fans buy them, so it works out. I didn’t buy Knoxx because I didn’t like Borderlands that much, stupendous value or no.
29/07/2010 at 15:50 SanguineAngel says:
@ StingingVelvet
Actually that’s incorrect… or at least I hugely disagree. a 3 hour DLC for $7 would be overpriced, even if the core game was a fully priced 10 hour corridor shooter. The only difference would be that the original 10 hour long corridor shooter would have been way overpriced to begin with. Unless it had been magnificently crafted in every conceivable way in which case it MIGHT be eligable for an exception. maybe.
29/07/2010 at 16:41 StingingVelvet says:
@ SanguineAnger
Well I know a lot of people disagree with me, but length is not my main concern. Mirror’s Edge might have been 5 hours long but it was one of my favorite entertainment experiences ever, so that is certainly worth $50. My favorite genre is FPS and I don’t really like it when they drag on past 10-12 hours, and I certainly get my money’s worth when they’re good.
So, depending on the quality of the game of course, I don’t consider $50 for 10 hours overpriced. $5 an hour for entertainment is not exactly unheard of and games have more replay value than movies and such in my experience.
29/07/2010 at 23:37 DaveyJones says:
For a second, I thought someone had finally made a game about giant, customizable golems smashing each other to pieces. Now I’m sad.
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