[Official] Dragon Age: Origins


Recommended Posts

Picked this up on Steam, Deluxe Edition. Took all of yesterday to download it, with some pausing as I did WoW dailies / heroics. Left it to Unlock overnight, as I was too tired to wait for it.

Now, I'm sitting at work until 6PM, have a class which will end at 8PM... and THEN... THEN I get to actually play it and enjoy myself!! :p

Can't wait. :happy:

I didn't get to play last night for the same reason.

You're in the SAME boat I'm in. Well, no... you're actually worse off because you're STILL not done downloading.

Since you have the Deluxe edition (like I do) you still have items and content to download. That will take a bit. :)

I didn't get to play last night for the same reason.

You're in the SAME boat I'm in. Well, no... you're actually worse off because you're STILL not done downloading.

Since you have the Deluxe edition (like I do) you still have items and content to download. That will take a bit. :)

Oh? Damnit! D:

Game starts off very slow, but it's building up now.

What are you talking about?

In the first hour-two there's an epic battle, the king dies and after you become a warden, you and that other dude (that I can't remember the name of) are the only ones that left as gry wardens and pretty much everyone wants to kill you two because of the reward on your head.

Not really "very slow".

Game starts off very slow, but it's building up now.

It really kicks off past the first huge battle in the tower, then slows down again till you've completed getting everyone on board. It's picking up again.

Unfortunate that it took me over 24 hours in game to get to this point though!

It really kicks off past the first huge battle in the tower, then slows down again till you've completed getting everyone on board. It's picking up again.

Unfortunate that it took me over 24 hours in game to get to this point though!

Holy crap you have played over 24 hours of this game already when it was just released on the third? Sleep man, sleep!

Cheater!! lol

Hey, anyone else have the STEAM deluxe edition? I was given three codes and the one without dashes

isn't recognized at the EA/Dragon Age site. I'm curious what it's for.

That third one is the registration for the game itself I think... at least, that's what I used mine for. The other two were to unlock the items.

There are two ways.

1. There are two buttons right below your party portraits, the second one is what you're looking for, it says something like "Enable free walking" or "Hold your position" or something like that.

2. CTRL+A (like select all in Windows :)) selects ALL of your controllable characters and you move them together.

lol damn I missed something that simple (first option)?! thanks. heh

I dont know wether to get this. I dont like point and click RPGs, can you let the AI go and do its own thing like Mass Effect, i dont like handholding AI i just want it to follow me and help me fight?

It has a final fantasy xii style gambit system where you can set your party members to do a variety of things during combat.

You could also play on the easiest difficulty and worry less about the party members... But I'm a fan of the old micromanagement.

Anyhow, as far as selecting all your party members go, you can also left click and drag to select multiple (or all) members on the screen too.

As for the game itself... I've been a BioWare fan for a long time and I've had pretty high expectations for this one - more so considering that they were billing it as a spiritual sequel to Baldur's Gate. I feel my high expectations were justified, so far. :-)

I dont know wether to get this. I dont like point and click RPGs, can you let the AI go and do its own thing like Mass Effect, i dont like handholding AI i just want it to follow me and help me fight?

It's not entirely point and click, you can run with WASD keys, you can also ditch the isometric view and have it more of a third-person view, like in Oblivion.

I'm surprised no one mentioned the Tactics, you can set several (like up to 8-10 ?) different instructions to every character, including your main - because you can easily take control of a different character and your main one will be operated by the AI.

If you don't set any tactics your friends will be standing there and staring at you die, you either select them all and bash the mob to death, or just control your own main character and set several "rules" to the other characters, like to use ability X on any enemy in sight, or to heal an ally when their HP is below a certain percentage.

I do find it a bit odd, because from time to time they just refuse to listen to my "orders" and just stand there like dolls, might be my "copy" is bugged.. hopefully Steam's copy will be good.

I started out playing on Normal as I didn't want to plow through 10 mobs with one swing, but then it got really hard as if it's intended for you to control ALL characters ALL the time..

But hell.. even on Easy there are fights where it becomes difficult, might be due to my party composition, but I get into a lot of **** when there are a lot of mobs, especially the mages with their bloody AOE.. friendly fire sucks.

I suggest you also level up the character(s) yourself and not let the computer do it automatically, it misses on some good stuff, like not picking up Heal, or concentrating on Ranged when you're using the Rogue in melee..

I dont know wether to get this. I dont like point and click RPGs, can you let the AI go and do its own thing like Mass Effect, i dont like handholding AI i just want it to follow me and help me fight?

They did a lot of work on the AI. You now have complete control over it. You can use the GUI to edit the behavior of each character. So you can now control how often they use magic items, or stop them from wasting high level spells on easy enemies, have thieves flank and backstab enemies, etc. They've taken everything they learned from the mistakes of NWN2's AI and fixed it.

But the game isn't that great. New players will love it. Experienced BG, NWN, and WoW players will be bored. There are some nice moments, plot twists, etc., but it doesn't do anything innovative as far as fantasy stories/settings go. It's exactly what you'd expect from a generic fantasy game. I'd give it an 8/10, mostly because it's a got so much content to explore, and the improved AI.

Oh, and I started on Nightmare. WOW.

I started on easy and now partway into the game (after getting a second rogue to join my party) I have died multiple times and re-fought a few battles. Now, I rarely plan my battles (pausing and queuing up actions and what not) and I am playing as a mage so that is probably why, but being a mage looking to do damage and having Morrigan set up to do damage certainly isn't helping any......thinking of going back to my rogue and setting up Morrigan to be a healer, it would definitely help.

I must play more of this game. I started off as an Elf Mage. So far, it's pretty good. I do lots of damage to the creatures I encounter and my health stays high. Gotta love potions though. :p

Anyway, check out this music video:

The song is "This is War" by 30 Seconds to Mars.

I am thinking about buying it right now, anyone else personal reviews? The last RPG I fell in love with was Final fantasy 10, which was on the ps2.

Last night I touched some gravestone in that elves forest place, during the quest to kill the werewolves. Got absolutely pwned by some skeleton lord, he was red and his minions were orange/yellow I believe. Hadn't saved in a bit, so I rage quit.

Enjoying it, but I slapped it on easy, I cba micro-managing everyone and I was dieing quite a bit because of that. I'm a mage. By the way when the **** do you get new armour for the mage? I guess going to the elves forest as my first choice might not of been the best idea.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • AMD RX 9070 GRE AI, Blender benchmarks vs 9070 XT, 7800XT, Nvidia RTX 5070, 4070 by Sayan Sen Earlier this week, we shared the first part of our review of AMD's new RX 9070 GRE. It was about the gaming performance of the GPU, and we gave it an 8 out of 10. As a follow-up, similar to how we did with the 9070 XT and non-XT, we are doing a dedicated productivity review for the RX 9070 GRE as well, where we compare it against the 9070 XT, 9070, 7800 XT, as well as Nvidia's 5070 and 4070. This will include AI, rendering, compute, and more benchmarks. AI performance, especially, is a very important metric in today's world, and AMD also promised big improvements thanks to its underlying architectural improvements. We will be pitching it against the data we already have for the RX 9070, and RX 9070 XT, but also the Nvidia 5070 FE, MSI GeForce RTX 4070 VENTUS 2X 12G, and Gigabyte Radeon RX 7800 XT GAMING OC 16G as they are in a similar price class, but also because we do not have a comparable 5060 Ti card lying around here that we can compare it against. Before we get underway, this is a collaboration between Sayan Sen and Steven Parker, who lent me his test bed. Also, there was no editorial input from AMD. First up, the specs of the RX 9070, 9070 XT, and 9070 GRE, which were given to us by AMD: Radeon RX 9070 GRE Radeon RX 9070 Radeon RX 9070 XT Boost Clock: Game Clock: up to 2.79GHz up to 2.20GHz up to 2.52GHz up to 2.07GHz up to 2.97GHz up to 2.40GHz Stream Processors 3,072 (48 CU) 3,584 (56 CU) 4,096 (64 CU) Ray Accelerator 48 56 64 AI Accelerator 96 112 128 ROPs 96 128 Texture Mapping Units 192 224 256 Memory 12 GB GDDR6, 18Gbps Clock, 192-bit Bus 432 GB/s 16 GB GDDR6, 20Gbps Clock, 256-bit Bus Effective Memory Bandwidth: 640 GB/s Infinity Cache 48 MB (3rd Gen) 64 MB (3rd Gen) Card Bus PCI-E 5.0 X16 Output 2x HDMI 2.1b 2x DisplayPort 2.1a Power consumption 220W 304W Recommended PSU 650W 750W Slot width 2x 3x Price (SEP) $549 $599 As you can see from the specs above, it is less than the standard RX 9070 in every way that counts, except for slightly higher Boost and Game clock speed. Design Moving on, the RX 9070 GRE we were given is an XFX Swift triple-fan, dual-slot design with two 8-pin connectors. At 30cm (self-measured), it will fit in most systems easily. There is no RGB either. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE by XFX from all angles. Test system Our test system consists of the following: Lian Li O11 Dynamic Mini V2 Flow (Amazon|Newegg) ASUS Z890 ProArt Creator WiFi (Amazon|Newegg) Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus (Amazon|Newegg) Thermal Grizzly KryoSheet - 44x37 (Amazon|Newegg) 2x 16GB G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB (7200 MT/s in XMP) (Amazon|Newegg) Sabrent Rocket4 Plus 2TB SSD (Amazon) Windows 11 25H2 (Build 26200.8246) AMD shared a press driver based on the recently released Adrenaline 26.5.2 that we were required to use. We now move on to our benchmarks. First up, we have Geekbench AI running on ONNX. For some reason, the 9070 GRE does exceptionally well here in both half-precision (FP16) and single-precision (FP32). It manages to beat the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 non-XT, and is only behind the 9070 XT. Since Geekbench runs in short bursts instead of continuously hammering the graphics card, it seems the GRE's faster boost clocks are helping here. Next up, we move to the UL Procyon AI test suite, starting with the image generation benchmark. We chose the Stable Diffusion XL FP16 test since it is the most intense workload available on Procyon. The Nvidia cards do very well here, as even the 4070 out-muscles AMD's best fairy easily. The positive thing about the GRE is that it gets quite close to the 9070 non-XT in this test; this indicates that the VRAM does not play a very big role here, as SD XL relies on float16 (FP16). So this is something to keep in mind again. If you wish to work with float32 AI workloads, graphics cards with larger than 12 GB buffers would likely emerge as victors. Regardless, the gains are still massive on AMD's 9000 series compared to the 7000 series. Following image generation, we move to the text generation benchmark. This is one test where the 9070 GRE struggled, quite a lot. It seems that the 12 GB VRAM and lower memory bandwidth of the new Radeon 9070 GRE are hurting it quite a bit; the split is massive, especially in a test like Llama2, which packs 13 billion parameters. As such, in all the tests, the 9070 GRE is the slowest of the lot. Next, we tried Blender, and here the AMD GPUs were beaten by Nvidia. Rendering is something the Green team has always had a lead over the Red side, and it has not changed so far. On the positive side, though, the 9070 GRE shows significantly better results than the 7800 XT, which means AMD is on the right path. Catching up to Nvidia, though, will require a lot more effort. And we hope HIP and ROCm can keep improving. Wrapping up AI testing, we measured OpenCL throughput in the Geekbench compute benchmark. The RX 9070 GRE alongside the 9070 did not fare well here at all, even falling behind the 7800 XT. Interestingly, even the RTX 5070 could not beat the 4070 on OpenCL, so perhaps this suggests that OpenCL optimization may not have been a priority for either AMD or Nvidia in the modern era. Conclusion We reached the end of our productivity performance review of the 9070 GRE, and we have to say it's a mixed bag. Unlike the 9070 and 9070 XT, the GRE excels in some areas while losing ground fairly easily in others. Similar to how it happened in gaming, any time the card's memory subsystem gets hammered, it tends to fall behind the others. This was the case with text generation, wherein we saw the VRAM sometimes hit its maximum available 12 GB of usage with larger model sizes. So what do we make of the RX 9070 as a productivity hardware? It can certainly be used, but you have to know it has its limitations. For those looking for a GPU that can deal with more, AMD recently unveiled the Radeon AI PRO R9700, which is essentially a 32 GB refresh of the 9070 XT with some additional workstation-based optimizations. On a similar note, the new Ryzen AI Halo platform is something you can consider if you want to set up a local AI processing station. Considering everything, we rate AMD's Radeon RX 9070 GRE a 7.5 out of 10 for its productivity performance. Price is less of a factor for those looking at productivity cases compared to those considering the GPU for gaming, and as such, we felt it did quite decently on many occasions and can be handy if you need a 12 GB GPU and, for some reason, don't want to get Nvidia. Purchase links: RX 9070 / XT / GRE (Amazon US) As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
    • Does anyone here know if these updates are integrated into the UUP dump isos?
    • Motrix Next 3.9.4 by Razvan Serea Motrix Next is a modern, open-source cross-platform download manager built as the official next-generation successor to the original Motrix project. It has been completely rewritten using Tauri 2, Vue 3, TypeScript, and Rust, while still relying on the powerful Aria2 download engine for high-speed multi-protocol transfers. The app supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, BitTorrent, ED2K and magnet links, offering advanced features like multi-connection acceleration, task scheduling, bandwidth control, and batch download management. With a significantly reduced install size (around 20MB), it focuses on being lightweight, fast, and resource-efficient compared to traditional Electron-based download tools. Designed for Windows, macOS, and Linux, Motrix Next delivers a clean, modern UI inspired by Material Design 3 principles, with smooth animations and a minimal workflow. It improves usability through better download organization, system tray integration, and enhanced torrent handling including selective file downloads and tracker management. Motrix Next features: Multi-protocol downloads — HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, Magnet, .torrent, ED2K, and Metalink tasks BitTorrent — Selective file download, DHT, peer exchange, encryption controls, metadata caching, GeoIP peer flags, and tracker probing Browser extension integration — Embedded Extension API with independent authentication, download confirmation, smart auto-submit, filename hints, referer/cookie forwarding, and real-time controls (Chrome Web Store · Edge Add-ons) Safe filename handling — Content-Disposition, RFC 2047, non-UTF-8, percent-encoded, and extensionless URL resolution with path traversal sanitization Download organization — Favorite and recent folders, optional file-type categorization, stale-record cleanup, and completed history backed by SQLite Concurrent downloads — Independent controls for active tasks, HTTP connections per server, segments per file, and BT peer limits Speed control — Global and per-task upload/download limits with day-of-week and time-of-day scheduling System integration — Tray operation, optional tray speed display, macOS Dock badge/progress, protocol handlers for magnet://, thunder://, and motrixnext:// Lightweight mode — Destroys the WebView on minimize-to-tray while Rust keeps the engine, task monitor, notifications, history, and extension routing alive Notifications and power options — Native task start/complete/failure notifications, keep-awake during downloads, and optional shutdown after completion Network controls — Scoped proxy support for downloads, app updates, and tracker updates, plus system proxy detection Auto-update channels — Stable, Beta, and Latest Across Channels policies with separate download and install phases Diagnostics — Structured logs, exportable diagnostic ZIPs, database integrity checks, automatic DB rebuild, and Linux GPU rendering fallback Personalization — Light/dark/system theme, 10 color schemes, 26 languages, and first-launch system language detection Motrix Next 3.9.4 changelog: Motrix Next 3.9.4 promotes the 3.9.4 beta cycle to stable. This release refreshes bundled engine binaries, improves task detail readability and copy actions, expands link handling for magnet and ED2K workflows, polishes responsive navigation and text wrapping, updates browser extension documentation, and refines network preference controls. New Features Task Detail copy actions — Added copyable values for task metadata and reusable render functions for long text fields. Magnet and ED2K lifecycle support — Added task lifecycle handling for magnet and ED2K links. History cleanup for deleted tasks — Deleted tasks can now remove matching history records. User-Agent management — Added user-agent management and improved related network preference controls. Browser extension documentation — Added the Firefox Add-ons link for the Motrix Next extension. Improvements Engine binaries — Updated bundled binaries for supported architectures. Task Detail readability — Long task names, URLs, tracker values, and copyable metadata now render more clearly. Deletion messaging — Refined localized task deletion text for clarity and consistency. Text wrapping — Improved URI input wrapping and task name multiline display. Navigation layout — Improved sub-navigation responsiveness. Disk allocation default — Changed the default file allocation method to trunc. Proxy controls — Improved proxy button styling in network preferences. Download: Motrix Next 64-bit | ARM64 | macOS ~20.0 MB (Open Source) Links: Website | macOS / Linux | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • NVIDIA officially supports Ubuntu, as linked above with the GeForce NOW Hands on I did in collaboration with Paul Hill.
    • TO be clear I am not running linux today, however I keep thinking about it. And I want to make sure there are minimal obstacles if I decide to make that switch in the coming months.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Proficient
      Eric Biran went up a rank
      Proficient
    • Dedicated
      Conjor earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • Week One Done
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Dedicated
      Mark Spruce earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • Collaborator
      conkir earned a badge
      Collaborator
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      479
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      244
    3. 3
      Steven P.
      72
    4. 4
      FloatingFatMan
      66
    5. 5
      +Edouard
      66
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!