[Official] Dragon Age: Origins


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  • 1 month later...

I searched the forums for an official Dragon Age thread & I didn't see one. That being said I'd like to know your opinions on the game and any of the DLC that has come out or is coming out in the near future. I played the game and awakening the day they came out and played some of the DLC content but I see they have added some more DLC in the last few months like playing as a darkspawn? Or leliana's song? And now I see there is a witches hunt with the story continuing with the chase of Morrigan. Anyways I just made this thread so we can generate some discussion about your experiences and talk about the upcoming DA:II.

i was interested in DAO because some of my online friends said they were having fun, but i didn't like it.

the character customization/building wasn't all that great. you basically chose one spec and pumped all your points into it.

there were certain obvious party member choices, and not using them made the game alot harder.

i didn't like how you basically based your dialogue choices on which party members you wanted to like you. my character was good at first, then evil then good again depending on who i had in my party.

the combat itself was really boring and the mobs were ugly but uninteresting. i didn't like how it tried to be mmoish with cooldowns and active states and such.

the voice acting was great but the story itself was not so great.

the camera was really annoying and bouncing all over the place all the time.

i hated setting up my party's ai scripts. i also disliked how the amount of items in your script were limited by character progression.

i hated how much you had to pause and switch characters.

i hated how spell casting spell targetting were set up. playing a mge was a real PITA.

i tried to like DAO, but in the end i was just bored and frustrated by it.

I happened to like the game, ya I agree with alot of your points but there are alot of crap games out it seems and this one at least brings me back to some older d&d games. I will be buying all the DLC because its so cheap compared to all these other greedy companies.

I happened to like the game, ya I agree with alot of your points but there are alot of crap games out it seems and this one at least brings me back to some older d&d games. I will be buying all the DLC because its so cheap compared to all these other greedy companies.

i think i would've enjoyed the game more if it was more d&d like in the way you RPed your character through dialogue choices and your charachter build options, instead of how these things were handled in DAO.

for example i enjoyed nwn2 a lot more and had a lot of fun just building characters in different way like high chraisma dialogue heavy builds or high powered soloable toons and how i could pick my party based on their personalities more than their ability to clear mobs faster than any other particular party build. it used pretty much the same engine and all the things i disliked about it, such as frequent fairly long loading screens were in DAO.

another thing that really stood out when i reinstalled and started a new toon in teh dalish elf origin in DAO a few weeks ago was the camera bobbing and weaving like crazy. i usually don't get motion sickness from games but i found it super annoying, and made picking targets in combat a bit more annoying.

I played Neverwinter Nights, bought all expansions and was thrilled at the prospect of playing NWN2 and was horribly disappointed. The combat engine in this game is how I felt NWN2 should have been. I've played through DAO and DAO Awakening several times: 2 as a (tank) warrior and 3 as a (dps) mage. With games like this, I'm mainly interested in the story, so I was happy with the heavy focus on that and played it on Easy. Now that I'm very familiar with all of the dungeons/encounters and such I'll have to go back and play on the harder modes.

As for the DLC, you should consider that that DLC allows you more opportunities for party member experience gathering and chances to interact with them. Higher experience and approval with them makes them better in combat. With the main DLC that your party can play through (Return to Ostagar, Warden's Keep and especially The Stone Prisoner) you can have party members be level 20-22 when you head into the final act in the original campaign. The highest I've gotten myself was 23 I think... When playing on the harder modes, this can be a real boon.

One of the main issues that I have however is the single action bar available and I wish there were more space. I tend to prefer to manually use most abilities (especially in a boss fight, or the start of a difficult pull), even though you can program the AI for all of the party members and yourself (these can use abilities not on the action bar). Near the end of Awakening a high level mage has an insane amount of skills to choose from.

I enjoy the voice acting and the conversations and they're a lot easier to get through since everything is acted out. By comparison, most of the NWN dialogue/concersations (by NPCs other than mainly Aribeth and Arin Gend) is written out in (sometimes) lengthy paragraphs, so if you care about your character's alignment, you really need to pay attention and read a lot of material. On the other hand, after playing through DAO several times, the dialogue can start to get tedious and I sometimes find myself hitting Enter to make them jump to the PC dialogue choice so I can move on.

Enjoying NWN so much as I did, you can see how Bioware took those same concepts, combined them with a better combat engine and better graphics and put out Dragon Age.

some might argue that dlc should be in the normal game. on my first instsall of DAO the DLC didn't work properly so i had to manually download it all from a 3rd party. considering i bout the CE i was not impressed. as it was the only thing from the CE i did use was the UBER armour set you get in it, and considering it's the most improtant piece of gear it makes looting for the rest of the game merely a money making timesink in a game you don't need that much money in (or so it seemed to me)

i really liked the combat in nwn2. it was what you would expect from a d&d/d20 based game you could build your toon depending on class to use a lot of active skills or alot of passive and only auto attack. you don't get that freedom in DAO. also non mages felt gimpy in DAO, where as in nwn2 you could make a viable to solo melee or archer based toon if you planned it out right. i also didn't like DAO's insistance on the mmo trinity concept. personally i find it boring in mmo's, i don't want to see it in sp rpg's.

^ awakening does not allow DLC items carry over, and its a relatively short "campaign", not much character development, the plot feels rushed, the new classes are nothing spectacular... not worth the money in my opinion

Sounds good, thanks. I'll wait for DA2 then :)

^ awakening does not allow DLC items carry over, and its a relatively short "campaign", not much character development, the plot feels rushed, the new classes are nothing spectacular... not worth the money in my opinion

There are mods you can get to allow your dlc items to carry over.

http://www.dragonage...file.php?id=883

You might need to register to download.

Also... there is this link that will give you ALL the items that were exclusive to pre orders and special promotions and things like that. 100% legit as far as I know as you still have to authorize them in game.

http://dragonage.wik...oadable_Content

That is if you're using the pc version. :laugh:

Spoilers ahead

To anvil or not to Anvil

Well the anvil gives you glems on the final battle, and without the anvil you get dwarven fighters, also you can convince the guy that was near the bridge where u meet the arch demon in the mines to join you if your persuade is high enough after u pick a leader, also if you have Shayle in your party, she will leave you if you give the dwarf the anvil

Insta lvls

If you have 30 sovereigns to spare, you can to the Dalish camp, and buy 30 sovereigns worth of Elf Root; Proceed to give all of those to your elven supplies box and swoosh 40k in experience

NWN and NWN 2 really let me down, with the mages, as none of my favorite spells from d&d didn't port over, such as contingencies, and symbol death and spell of disaster. Also the classes and specs were booring.

Melee classes were over powered ......LvL 20 monk anyone?

monks were crazy in the nwn games for sure. i rolled one in each and it was fun just watched them roll through mobs with so many attacks per round.

but that's kind of what i liked about the nwn games.

sorcs in nwn2 were hardcore. my bro rolled one that was meant to be a melee hybrid or something and claimed he never got to use the mlee part due to the spells. i've never really like mages in d20 games myself though.

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

So i finally started playing this game. 6 hours in and i am only in redcliffe castle. Is it hard or its just me? I find non-real time battles to be a bit dull, and micromanagement is not my thing either :( But i still need to finish the game even if i will reload 10 times to complete each damn skirmish.

  • 3 weeks later...

Several weks later i've finally completed rorigins(55 hrs), awakening (14hrs), and all 4 dlcs which tooks about an hour. What an experiance! I feel likeive ben trapped in Ferelden :D And now i can finally get back to my old life :D But i wish the game was longer. I still had some unfinished quests.

Anyway the game is fantastic!

One thing about DA2...

the guy with horns from trailer....is he Morigans son? Half human half old god?

I just got DA:O from Games on Demand and started it yesterday. So far, I'm really liking the game. It might just be me but I can't believe how quick I came to care about my character - something that never really happened for me in Mass Effect.

Kind of disappointed reading some of the comments about the DLC, though.

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