Dragon Age Screenshots Put the Dark in Dark Fantasy
An RPG in the vein of BioWare's Baldur's Gate series, Dragon Age: Origins hits the PC early next year, with console versions following later on.
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Personally I've ONLY got into the 3D Bioware games and love them all. I realise this makes me broken.
Main concern about this is it looks too generic fantasy and I really don't think it will do well without a stronger hook.. Mass Effect was not a big seller and that was more visually distinctive than this is so far. I'm sure it'll still have that Bioware magic, but only once you get into it, and that won't get them big sales to match the big budget.-
Mass Effect wasn't a big seller? On which planet?
But I do agree that DA's setting looks disappointingly generic. Which is a shame, because before they showed anything I'd been led to believe they were going to actually, you know, make it dark fantasy. They can call this dark fantasy all they like, but from what we've seen so far it's pretty much bog-standard high fantasy with slightly grittier visuals.-
My mistake, that's awesome then! Go Bioware. http://majornelson.com/archive/2008/01/03/some-xbox-360-numbers.aspx
One nice thing I heard about Dragon Age. You know there was that made up language in Jade Empire? The same guy is doing FOUR languages for DA. If nothing else it sounds crazy ambitious.
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You realize the KOTOR combat is the same as the BG combat, right?
It's all turn-based behind the scenes with dice rolls and all that tabletop stuff....there's no difference at all except that you can queue up a few actions in advance in KOTOR.-
KOTOR was primarily a game with simplified combat to cater to Star Wars fans and console players. You could basically autopilot your way though the game on hardest, never even worrying about things like AOE's, choke points or positioning. You're doing a huge disservice to the BG series, which are the epitome of CRPG's by saying they had the same combat. The battles on the harder difficulties of BG play out like Jagged Alliance fights, requiring careful microing of each party member. BG had far greater tactical depth and options for the player.
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I'm inclined to agree. I only ever played through BG and BG2 on the provided "Normal" difficulty (I tried sticking to "Core Rules", but found myself wanting to progress through the game at least once before challenging myself further), and, even then, I've never had to think through any of the battles in KotOR even half as much as I've had to for even some of the fairly early fights in BG and BG2.
There's so much strategy behind every bit of prep in the BG titles, be that selecting an appropriate weapon load-out for the group, selecting appropriate vantage points for each character in the party, or trying out combination after combination of offensive and defensive casting. Combine that with the fact that there's a wealth of classes and possible party combinations to choose from, and you have a game that requires a great deal more forethought when approaching new situations than KotOR did.
That's not to say KotOR was, by any stretch, a bad game. I really enjoyed the story, characters, and mechanics (not to mention the graphics, for the time). I just didn't find it as challenging or as demanding in terms of strategy as BG or BG2 when playing on an analogous difficulty. Thus, I'm hoping Dragon Age will be more like a BG or Icewind Dale game than a KotOR.-
I think a sign of a game with good combat is when you can remember DISTINCT combat scenes even 8 years later. I can't really remember any battles from my play through KOTOR (though I thought it was a fantastic game). BG and BG2 though... I could rattle off several dozen fights I remember, just because of how awesome they were.
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Get the hell off my planet! Baldur's Gate lets you control a party of up to six characters with dramatically different specialties. It's not just a matter of deciding whether your guys are going to shoot or swing. Until KOTOR allows you to knock out your enemies with a stink spell and have your posse of skeletons punch their unconscious bodies to death, I don't want to hear any lip.
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