12/23/2009

DAO Lasting Impressions

And there sure are alot of them! I've been off this week and been doing xmas shopping, alot of walking and truly not enough gaming; boo. My friend Jag and I had an email going back and forth of all the great, no-so-great, and curious things we came across in Dragon Age.. and needless to say, it was a lot.. it was a WALL OF TEXT. And I hate reading wall of texts, so here is parts 1.

**Huge spoiler warnings.. but why haven't you played this game yet? :P **

**note: both Jag and I played our copies on the pc, tho i've seen it been played on the 360.. I picked the pc for better control of the characters and camera views, and i'm quite sure Jag picked pc for his amazing rig**
Jag - White
Moi - Yellow

Enchanting/Runes/Items/Crafting:
1) Undead creatures, did i miss them? lol cold iron runes were nice and all, but i never actually used them
- quite a bit of undead in the Redcliff storyline

2) Paralyze + Slow runes -> difference between novice up to grand master -> mob level impact? percentage change? are these runes affected by any stats?
- I always used the most powerful on the appropriate character ;)

3) Item depth; there are so many weapons and armors and craftable items, and without a good 2-3 walkthroughs you can't experience using all of it

4) Crafting; much easier than prior rpg games, just need the skill, the plan and the item, no silly spells to create

5) Enchanting; wish you could do it yourself, so you could enchant on the fly and react to the situation at hand

Story line:
1) I really like the spin on dragons, their origins and place in the "world". in this case, which is not typical, they were not highly resilient to magic. making them the "old gods" was very cool, and stating that only a few have been woken up and in charge of blights leads right into a DAO 2.

2) Flemeth was a dragon... ummm.. old god? just a demon? demonic dragon? i would have loved to explore a deeper story here. Morrigan played such an important role... can you actually tell her to leave your group though? might try that with an alt.
- should have tried telling companions to leave too and see what happens..

3) Question: what is the function of The Pearl establishment in Denerim? besides the Duelist trainer.. and a fewwww side quests... there isn't any function except for the woohoo you can pay for.... 'woohoo'

4) Interesting how they incorporated Shale and fleshed out HER dwarven story.. it really fit.. but it makes you think.. huh.. they made me pay X amt of money to get something that feels like they ripped from the original game. Maybe thats just the case when they make a character fit so well into the story, that it makes you feel like they purposely withhold it from you to make a buck..

5) Deep characters; each with their own story; I always thought Sten was lying or that he was framed, and then when he said how he lost his sword and thats why he went into a fit of rage.. it made no sense, until he explained how the sword if part of their being, their soul, and without it, he cannot go back to his homeland with honor

6) Codex; like the tome of knowledge, TONS of background info that one could spend reading that IS critical in some instances as without reading it, you may not be able to get some fantastic items (ie. dragon slaying sword in mage tower)
7) Limited origins, everyone's mage origin will be the same, and humans can only be a noble rogue/warrior

Map/travel:
1) need a better travel system, or better travel points... it wouldve been nice to see Orzammar have the same city-type map that Denerim had.

2) more random encounters would have been good.

3) Stealth worked well; if you detect enemies, your companions will stop following and stay out of view, while you do what you need to do in stealth (steal, disarm traps or setup your own traps), and when you actually attack them, your companions will THEN rush in once you got the backstab bonus

4) The quest tracker; wasn't as helpful as it could be

Game Performance:
1) a few glitches here and there, nothing worrying. i recall once stepping into a tub in the royal palace in orzammar and then falling to the side and being trapped in the air... furious since i didnt save since EVER and had to restart! limited glitches;
- i've only ctd 3 times in over 70 hours of play

2) i noticed after several hours of playing the loading screen between travel spots and cut scenes gradually slowed and slowed until it was taking 10x as long since the first time you loaded DAO... a simple DAO restart and all was good again.
- i agree, it was scary :P

3) Different camera views; sometimes overhead mode is much better than over-the-shoulder mode

4) The inability to take manual screenshots; in my experience.. makes me a sad panda

Rawr! me sad panda!

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