"Dragon Age" franchise discussion/appreciation thread

[DigiFluid]

Well I'm not sure how popular this one will be, but we seem to veer off to it every so often in the Mass Effect thread so I thought I'd put it up. Plus it's my latest gaming (re)addiction, so I need a place to gush

Lots of stuff happening in this franchise! There's the two novels set decades prior to the game, The Stolen Throne and The Calling. There's the Leliana's Song DLC set a few years before the game; Origins (and in-story DLC) in all its massive glory, Awakening set 6 months after Origins; the Witch Hunt DLC set a year after Origins, and Dragon Age II on course for March if I'm not mistaken.

Now I haven't read the books....or even finished Origins, but good god what an amazing franchise already. Bioware frelling rocks. I know the console versions were a bit more hack and slash, but I really dig the kind of retro pause-combat of the PC one (which is the one I have). Fun to see that in a newer game.

I also want to share that you can get free gear for Dragon Age II now, on the Bioware website. Presumably if you've played any of the games you already have a Bioware social account so get logged into that. Then go here and click the "Get Your Penny Arcade Belt Here" image (on the right) and give it your login info (you have to check the box for the newsletter to get it). Whammo. Free item. You can also get another item here; there's a link in the first paragraph where you do the same thing you did for the previous free gear. Whammo, another free item, tied to your Bioware account for when the game comes out!

Personally I'm a bit annoyed with DA2 already....mostly because they're pre-selling this "Signature Edition" online (only until January 11!), but not through Steam. I don't buy any PC games off of Steam anymore, and I don't need more discs and crap cluttering up my place. Digital download ftw. But I desperately want that extra character so I'm considering giving in Maybe I'll do that and then return it if the SE shows up on Steam later

[mr_kennedy]

i tried one of them but i didn't like it

[Selene1212]

I played the hell out of DA:O when it first came out and bought Awakenings, but I couldn't get into that one. (Mostly because my desktop died and I have limited patience playing games on my laptop.) Finished DA:O with 3 different characters though, I did love it.

Anyway, I always buy the disc's because I'm afraid I'll lose the digital download proof and have to rebuy stuff. LOL

[gotthammer]

MORRIGAN!!!

I've finished Origins, most, if not all, of the DLCs for Origins (the ones for the main campaign), and Witch Hunt. I haven't touched Awakening and Golems, yet. I'm currently working on a couple of playthroughs that should get to that, tho'.

Graphics and art/atmosphere, and some aspects of combat, aside, IMHO, DA:O is a great game. Especially in terms of characters (the story is good, but nothing really new).
Oh, and I loved the soundtrack (esp. the main theme)

And mods: there's a fair number of mods which make the game so much better, particularly the Dragon Age redesigned mod. (which tweaks the appearances of most of the NPCs in the game, major and minor).

As for Dragon Age II, while I've pre-ordered (physical copies FTW! ...ooh, Steam sale *goes to grab Europa Universalis III complete* ), I'm still a bit annoyed that I won't be 'continuing as my Warden' (yes yes, different story and all that, I know the arguments, particularly since I visit the BW forums...still, I'm annoyed ).
It looks good so far, tho'. I hope that the visual atmosphere for the game is better than DA:O's.
And, yeah, Digi, kinda sucks for you guys that the Sig Ed isn't on Steam. How about the other digital distribution services? (gamersgate? D2D?)

[Sami_]

Tried to get into Dragonage but didn't like it at all.

[DigiFluid]

I've finished Origins, most, if not all, of the DLCs for Origins (the ones for the main campaign), and Witch Hunt. I haven't touched Awakening and Golems, yet. I'm currently working on a couple of playthroughs that should get to that, tho'.

Luuuurvly

Picking the game back up this time, I decided to start by playing the Leliana's Song DLC mission (since it's set sometime before the game starts anyway). At the moment, I've finished Ostagar, Lothering, the Brecilian Forest, Soldier's Peak, Shale's DLC, Return to Ostagar, the Circle Tower, and am currently working on Orzammar.

And holy crap, someone at Bioware frelling loves Dwarves. Orzammar has always been my big hangup when trying to play through the game before, because of how bloody long it is. I didn't even realize until tonight--having just a few minutes ago finished a SEVEN HOUR session JUST in Orzammar and the Deep Roads (and still not done!!)--just how bloody long it really is!

Especially in terms of characters (the story is good, but nothing really new).

Heh....I hadn't even thought of it till just now, but you're absolutely right. Among others, the Blight and the fate of the Deep Roads are pretty much lifted straight out of Tolkien.

Come to think of it, maybe that's exactly why I enjoy DA so much. I tend to be a bit of a fantasy snob, dismissing as crap anything that wasn't written by CS Lewis or JRRT. I guess maybe I made the unconscious connection?

They do have some unique story elements though. I really love the history of the Elves, Ferelden still being fairly new at independence, and especially the interrelationship of the Chantry, Circle, and Templars.

Oh, and I loved the soundtrack (esp. the main theme)

It is a lovely soundtrack....I'm glad it came with the Digital Deluxe release (damn you to hell EA!)

And mods: there's a fair number of mods which make the game so much better, particularly the Dragon Age redesigned mod. (which tweaks the appearances of most of the NPCs in the game, major and minor).

I've heard of that one....any other suggestions for making the game prettier without breaking my PC?

I'm still a bit annoyed that I won't be 'continuing as my Warden' (yes yes, different story and all that, I know the arguments, particularly since I visit the BW forums...still, I'm annoyed ). It looks good so far, tho'. I hope that the visual atmosphere for the game is better than DA:O's.

Mhm...I'm quite fond of my Warden too. I'm a bit sad he won't be around for DA2, but at least we can take comfort in knowing they're still 'out there', if we import save data from DAO/DAA

I guess there's a whole lot of the DA world and history to explore though, besides Ferelden. There's the Free Marches for DA2, perhaps across the Amaranthine Ocean, Orlais, etc etc. I guess I can't be too upset at them for expanding the world I already quite like

And, yeah, Digi, kinda sucks for you guys that the Sig Ed isn't on Steam. How about the other digital distribution services? (gamersgate? D2D?)

Eh I'm just really not all that keen on alternative gaming digital distribution services. I really haven't heard anything kind about any of the alternatives, just a whole lot of bad. A lot of people on the Bioware forums have made much stronger arguments than I have, so I'll just leave that one up to them

[gotthammer]

I've heard of that one....any other suggestions for making the game prettier without breaking my PC?

Hmm. What I have (I think this is all of it):
- Dragon Age Redesigned (and other mods that work well w/ it, like 'tucked hair', etc. the DARedesigned has a document in it that tells you what else it needs if you want a specific look)
- The Winter Forge (allows you to customize/craft items, and even transfer/copy items across saves)
- Grey Warden Runic Armour and Weapon sets
- Wings of Velvet, The Ivory Tower, Nightfall and Bloom, Verdant Sonata, Legacy of Sundown (these may be a bit 'overpowered', but they're quite pretty )
- Devout Armour set
- Golden Egg ('cause I want all the stuff I can buy. And since I can't 'grind' for gold, as enemies/encounters don't respawn, a goose that lays a golden egg will have to suffice. Yes, it's basically a gold cheat. )
- Alley of Murders (a fully voiced adventure in Denerim)
- Morrigan Restoration Patch (something which adds in cut dialogue and fixes stuff, I think ...it apparently works even w/ the latest patches)
- Silverite Mines Fix for Awakening (dunno if it works, as I haven't played Awakening yet )

http://dragonagenexus.com/
I get most of my stuff from the above link. A warning, tho', there are mods of an 'adult' nature (but I think you have to register to see those, anyway...still, a warning).
There's also the projects site on Bioware's social forum:
http://social.bioware.com/browse_bw_projects.php
There's also this index of community created stuff (I haven't really gone through it, for the most part, yet...maybe after the EVIL Steam Sale )
http://code.google.com/p/dragon-age-...N_IndexPlayers

Hope this helps.

[DigiFluid]

Hmmmm interesting. I think next time I play through the game I'll definitely have to look into a bunch of those. Have you heard of the JB Texture pack? I was thinking of giving that one a go too.

As for me, I just beat the game for the first time. Lovely ending, though I found the Archdemon surprisingly easy to beat. I had a HELL of hard time fighting mobs like Zevran's old Crows buddy, or the slaver woman, but the Archdemon was quite manageable.

Need a little break before diving into Awakening though. Steam says I've logged 73.6h in DAO in the last 2 weeks

[gotthammer]

Hehe. My first playthrough was just a little under 110 hours.

As for JB Textures: yeah, I've seen that before. I decided not to get it...might slow the game down for me a bit more than it already is.
See...I found the Archdemon fight a bit tough: not because of the enemies, per se, but because it was lagging/choppy ("where's that sound of anguish coming from?" answer: video card).
<--- too stubborn (or lazy) to turn down the settings

[Giantevilhead]

I don't know why people like Dragon Age so much. It's pretty generic fantasy and doesn't offer anything that's not in Dungeons and Dragons or Warhammer. Heck, they practically copied a bunch of stuff from Warhammer and I'm not just talking about concepts like the Fade/Warp but also in terms of the art and design.

Bioware has good marketing and can make games that are polished and fun to play but they really lack creativity in terms of the writing. It's just a shame that the companies and people who made really innovative or well written games like Legacy of Kain, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Planescape: Torment, etc., lack the technical skills or the resources to really polish those games and make them more fun to play.

[DigiFluid]

To say Bioware lacks creative writing is a bit....well, blatantly false. Patently false, if you've been playing most Bioware titles over the years.

Dragon Age does lift a few concepts here and there I'll admit. But for the most part I think what they lift are fantasy tropes, hugely common to the genre. Besides that the game is a ton of fun.

And this really isn't the thread for other games.

[The Mighty 6 platoon]

I don't know why people like Dragon Age so much. It's pretty generic fantasy and doesn't offer anything that's not in Dungeons and Dragons or Warhammer. Heck, they practically copied a bunch of stuff from Warhammer and I'm not just talking about concepts like the Fade/Warp but also in terms of the art and design.

Bioware has good marketing and can make games that are polished and fun to play but they really lack creativity in terms of the writing. It's just a shame that the companies and people who made really innovative or well written games like Legacy of Kain, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Planescape: Torment, etc., lack the technical skills or the resources to really polish those games and make them more fun to play.

Well firstly way to come in and take a dump in the thread. If you're not a fan of Dragon Age stay out of the thread, people don't go into the SG1 subforum and say it's totally rubbish, I think that should apply to stuff in the general scifi board as well.

Secondly if you'd actually played through the game and it's expansions fully, read the novels and background material such as the codex with the game you'd actually find that the Dragon Age verse is pretty damn original. The resemblance to a standard fantasy world is only skin deep, yes you have your humans, elves, Dwarves, mages, monsters, yet as you go deeper into the game world you discover that Bioware have turned all the traditional fantasy tropes on their head. You have the elves being oppressed, either living in slums and being used as servants and slaves by humans or living as gypsies. Dwarves aren't the sexless beardless things in the dragon age world, they are in fact the most sensual of the races. And most of them don't care about mining but rather backstabbing political intrigue. The human kingdoms in Dragon Age actually make sense, unlike in most fantasy medieval lands where everyone just swears allegiance to King Shiny Hat the 16th and that's that, Dragon Age has realistic medieval style politics. The Landsmeet shows the monarch is constrained by the power of the nobles and the church. Religion is an important factor as well, Dragon Age actually goes to great lengths to show the power religion and religious organisations will have in a medieval world, unlike many fantasy worlds where the power of religion is just ignored. The Darkspawn aren't orc expies, they aren't evil, they aren't even sentient, they're essentially a disease.

If Dragon Age has taken inspiration from anything, it's two things. Firstly it would the Song of Fire and Ice series. The magic coming back into the world plots are similar as are the realistic depictions of medieval kingdoms. The other is medieval Europe. The Dragon Age world is essentially medieval Europe reversed, placed in a southern hemisphere and with magic made real. Fereldan in the game is essentially medieval England if the Saxons had beaten the Normans which on it's own is an intresting and failry orignal idea. . All in all the Dragon Age world is complex, interesting and original.

[gotthammer]

Well, I enjoyed the setting, but, IMHO, it's the way that DA's plot unfolds, as well as the characters and their interactions (like the banter and the romances), that sets it apart from other fantasy RPGs.

As for the setting: yeah, it tries to do a new take on things, but nothing really new if you've read or gone through a fair share of what's out there (oppressed minorities, like the elves, isn't anything new, esp. since I played The Witcher, which came out not too long before DA:O).
I found the dwarves funny, tho' (kinda reminded me of my discussions w/ my buddies regarding folks who yammer on about stuff like honour, then stab each other at the back...like a good number of Japanese feudal lords, or, well, many/most politicians ).

I also saw the similarities from other settings (Warhammer being one of them: lyrium kinda reminded me of warpstone. Heck, some of the darkspawn looked like Khornate warriors. I didn't get the ASoIaF vibe like M6P, tho' *shrugs* ), but that's a given...I mean, nothing's really 'new' anymore (heck, Warhammer, esp. 40k, 'borrows' from a lot of stuff). It's how the stuff is used that matters, methinks.

If I have any complaints about the game, it's the atmosphere: it doesn't do too well to convey much 'oomph' in some parts (esp. when you compare it to Bioware's other recent releases: Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2). IMHO, there's a good amount of wasted opportunities to draw in someone better into the environment and the events: my favourite example being one of the 'darker' parts of the Deep Roads. (which, sadly, isn't visually 'dark': there's always some light source to make the subterranean passages rather well lit. I mean, didn't the flight of the Fellowship, in the first LotR movie, in the Halls of Khazad Dum, after the fight at the tomb of Balin, rather cool; with the only real light source being Gandalf's staff? )
The characters could've looked prettier, too (I don't mean in the Japanese RPG sense, but more of better looking from a graphics standpoint ), esp. after showing that great Sacred Ashes trailer, and what we've seen from ME1.

[magictrick]

Time to hijack your thread by talking about Mass Effect 3!!

Ok so I did give Origins a go but because of my schedule I didn't have a lot of free time to put into it and sort of lost interest. I would really like to get into it at some point again though, especially with the second one coming out. I really liked Morrigan, and really, who didn't.

[Giantevilhead]

To say Bioware lacks creative writing is a bit....well, blatantly false. Patently false, if you've been playing most Bioware titles over the years.

Dragon Age does lift a few concepts here and there I'll admit. But for the most part I think what they lift are fantasy tropes, hugely common to the genre. Besides that the game is a ton of fun.

And this really isn't the thread for other games.

I've played almost every Bioware game, including Shattered Steel, MDK2, and Sonic Chronicles.

Most of their games are fun and addictive but not creative or innovative.

Well firstly way to come in and take a dump in the thread. If you're not a fan of Dragon Age stay out of the thread, people don't go into the SG1 subforum and say it's totally rubbish, I think that should apply to stuff in the general scifi board as well.

Secondly if you'd actually played through the game and it's expansions fully, read the novels and background material such as the codex with the game you'd actually find that the Dragon Age verse is pretty damn original. The resemblance to a standard fantasy world is only skin deep, yes you have your humans, elves, Dwarves, mages, monsters, yet as you go deeper into the game world you discover that Bioware have turned all the traditional fantasy tropes on their head. You have the elves being oppressed, either living in slums and being used as servants and slaves by humans or living as gypsies. Dwarves aren't the sexless beardless things in the dragon age world, they are in fact the most sensual of the races. And most of them don't care about mining but rather backstabbing political intrigue. The human kingdoms in Dragon Age actually make sense, unlike in most fantasy medieval lands where everyone just swears allegiance to King Shiny Hat the 16th and that's that, Dragon Age has realistic medieval style politics. The Landsmeet shows the monarch is constrained by the power of the nobles and the church. Religion is an important factor as well, Dragon Age actually goes to great lengths to show the power religion and religious organisations will have in a medieval world, unlike many fantasy worlds where the power of religion is just ignored. The Darkspawn aren't orc expies, they aren't evil, they aren't even sentient, they're essentially a disease.

If Dragon Age has taken inspiration from anything, it's two things. Firstly it would the Song of Fire and Ice series. The magic coming back into the world plots are similar as are the realistic depictions of medieval kingdoms. The other is medieval Europe. The Dragon Age world is essentially medieval Europe reversed, placed in a southern hemisphere and with magic made real. Fereldan in the game is essentially medieval England if the Saxons had beaten the Normans which on it's own is an intresting and failry orignal idea. . All in all the Dragon Age world is complex, interesting and original.

First of all, I didn't "take a dump" on the thread. I never said that Dragon Age was a bad game. It's a fun and addictive but it's not creative or innovative. Similarly, I like Stargate SG-1 but it's not exactly on the level of Blade Runner or 2001: A Space Odyssey, and pointing that out is not the same thing as "dumping" on the show.

I've played through the campaigns and read the codices. The settings and stories do not offer anything new.

Sure they defy a couple of fantasy tropes but nothing that hasn't already been done before. The power of religion and the church is just as important in Warhammer. The elves and dwarves are stagnating and being oppressed in The Witcher. Political intrigue is actually pretty common in most fantasies. The story of Baldur's Gate, a Bioware game, was full of political intrigue. The Darkspawn are basically like a combination of the Orks from Warhammer Fantasy and the Tyranid from Warhammer 40,000. Then there are the obvious Warhammer rip offs like the Fade/Warp, Demons/Daemons, Mages/Psykers, Chantry/Imperial Cult, etc.

Bioware may have a few ideas that are innovative but nothing on the level of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura or Legacy of Kain, with the exception of Jade Empire, which was probably Bioware's most daring game. An entire game based on Eastern Mythology is an extreme rarity in the west. Not only that but Bioware didn't try to westernize it and kept true to its wuxia roots. The setting in that game was actually new and innovative, at least to the west. I think the fact that this game wasn't as successful as their other games is the reason why they're not willing to take real risks.