Dragon Age Screenshots: Dwarven Dwellings

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As the release of Dragon Age draws closer, BioWare is ramping up the media saturation, carpet bombing us on a weekly basis with new screenshots and stories about the fantasy RPG. This week's shots and text deal with the Dwarven starting city of Orzammar, "a maze of stone where discovery, reward and treachery are around each corner."

For the whole spiel, click through:

The Land of Orzammar

History tells us that the dwarven kingdoms once spread across all of Thedas, and that the underground city-fortresses called thaigs were almost beyond counting. Kal-Sharok was the capital then, home to all the noble houses, and Orzammar was simply the home of the miner and smith castes. Upon encountering this ancient city, many are struck in awe by the sight of the great city of stone. Orzammar stands within a vast cavern, poised over a sea of molten lava. There, the sounds of the forges ring loudest as the finest smiths craft works that are the envy of all races. Countless thaigs were lost in the first Blight, when the darkspawn poured out of the Deep Roads of Orzammar like smoke. With each generation, due to the threat of the darkspawn, more of the Deep Roads has had to be sealed and more thaigs are lost forever. Now only Orzammar stands--the last bastion of the dwarven race and its finest creation.

From The Chatty
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    August 6, 2009 1:21 PM

    Meh, hard to look forward to a game that locks you down on the z axis after playing games like Oblivion, etc. This game just hasn't sold itself to me like most older bioware titles did, there's something about it I can't put my finger on, it's just lacking.

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      August 6, 2009 1:27 PM

      [deleted]

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      August 6, 2009 1:32 PM

      [deleted]

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        August 6, 2009 1:35 PM

        It was originally intended to be a NWN using their own IP, but they gutted the multiplayer aspect.

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          August 6, 2009 1:58 PM

          Isn't it Baldur's Gate? I never played NWN or BG so forgive my ignorance. But BioWare keeps talking about it as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate.

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            August 6, 2009 2:27 PM

            It is now, but it originally was supposed to be something else. Time will tell.

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              August 6, 2009 4:32 PM

              It really does look like NWN a lot more than BG. From the look to the fact that you only control 3 characters instead of 6. Also, I'm just assuming, but I don't see how they could make the combat as strategic and hard as BG when it's playable on consoles with a gamepad.

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                August 6, 2009 6:32 PM

                We'll have to see, as far as the combat goes. The very small party size seems to be part of the new Bioware formula... ever since BG2, I don't think they've featured a party larger than 3 people in size. Also part of that formula, some sort of travellnig hq, (spaceship, campground, tavern, whatever), where all of the joinable NPCs -not- in your party congregate, characters coming back to life once combat ends, (if anyone else survived), etc.

                So I'm pretty curious as to how DA will turn out... it seems to me like it's impossible for it to be the oft touted spiritual successor to BG when so many of the design decisions seem wildly different. I guess we'll see. :)

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                August 6, 2009 7:10 PM

                Because they are almost completely different games? The console version has a redesigned interface and plays like Mass Effect. The PC version, does not. You can zoom back with the mouse wheel and do everything that you could in Baldur's Gate. Or so, I'm told. By Chris Remo.

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      August 6, 2009 2:14 PM

      Locking you down on the z axis is the only effective way to control an entire party of charactors though and I like parties of charactors.

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        August 6, 2009 2:40 PM

        Agreed completely. I've played a lot of good RPGs in recent years where you control a single character, but another awesome party-based game like BG would be so damn welcome.

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