I let the mother kill her child. Not something my dwarf commoner could have done, though thinking back maybe I should have gone to the Circle of Magi. Was tempted to 'go back' to redo that part, but I'm going to let the story play out as naturally as I can for now.
Well, I fought them, so I don't know what would happen if you didn't. But yeah, basically you're sent to the kitchen to collect Dog, whose barking at a door. You open the door, and the rats attack. I suppose you could just not open the door though ...
Well, I fought them, so I don't know what would happen if you didn't. But yeah, basically you're sent to the kitchen to collect Dog, whose barking at a door. You open the door, and the rats attack. I suppose you could just not open the door though ...
By the way, they've just release the "Return to Ostagar" expansion for the game. It's short, only a couple of hours play time at most (particularly if you're inept, like me), but well worth the $5 price of admission.
So, is anyone playing this on a console? I heard the PC version was vastly superior, both graphically and tactically.
Was listening to an IGN podcast that touched on Dragon Age and how harsh it is. It was hilarious The guy mentioned that early in the game you get sent to clear out
some wizard's guild tower or somesuch, and he went in with the impression that it would be some kind of quick tutorial. Instead it was a huge floor-by-floor slog that took twelve hours. Then at some point you get sent to another dimension, which again he figured would just be some minor fetch-quest that introduces you to dimension-traveling. Again he was proved wrong when a detailed map popped up with all the places he needed to go. And then when he was done and returned to his dimension, the boss was still waiting for him. He had played about thirty hours total at that point.
All this, and no vendors, no chances to resupply. Sounds rough. Is it really like that?
There are places where there are no vendors, and the Mage Circle is one of them. Pretty much from the moment you get there, until you finish that part of the game.
That's about the only place I can think of. Even in the finale of the game, where you can't go back once you get to a certain point, there's a vendor standing in the middle of a bunch of enemy corpses, right before the end battle.
As to graphics, I played on PC, and my friend played on 360. He's got a high def TV, and I've got a monitor running at 1080p resolution, and the graphics on the PC version are infinitely better. I'm even on an old computer.....AMD Athlon II 2.2 Ghz single-core processor, 2 GB RAM, and an NVidia GeForce 7600GT video card. At times, particularly at the end, it *did* get sluggish, but I made it though 95% of the game without changing the settings.....so, a computer with 4 year old technology was still powerful enough to run the game.
The only thing I can say is that, though the game scales according to your level etc. so that encounters stay hard, but not impossible, the amount of money you can get is really somewhat limited. It's very hard to accumulate enough GP to buy the better equipment in the game. In the end, before going to the final chapter, I had to spend time using the Potent Lyrium Potion gold farming thing to get enough to improve my equipment as I needed it.
They say it shouldn't be necessary, and the trick is to save all your gold all game long and save it for the end, but when the difficulty is at a point where you have to keep either buying healing poultices, or ingredients to make them, it makes it very difficult to avoid spending a majority of your money on healing, lyrium potions etc. Maybe I just suck at the game, or I'm not optimizing my characters correctly....but I also don't read books on "ideal builds" etc. and then spec my characters to conform. I know my friend wasn't able to beat the final boss battle, and gave up, as did the guy at the local EB who we usually get to tell us the lowdown on new games.
Overall, an excellent RPG though. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It took me about 120 hours to get through it though, and I did about 80% of the quests in the game, so I don't think I'm going to be rushing to replay it anytime soon. There are others to try out
I've been enjoying DA:O very much playing on the Xbox 360. I'm about 51 hours into it so far and I figure I'm about halfway through. Did my Mage origin, the Broken Circle quest, and the Arl of Redcliff quest. Just today finished vanquishing the high dragon on the mountain after the Urn of Andraste quest. What an epic battle! Probably took nearly 30 minutes to grind away that things hps.
Yes, the long slog in the mages tower was grueling. I've also done some of the DLC stuff like the Warden's Keep and the Return to Ostagar. Might do the Stone Prisoner quest next before going for the dwarves and elves. I'm using an Elven Mage for my character with Alastair as Tank, Lelianna as Striker, and Wynne to keep everybody alive. The first time I tried the dragon fight, Wynne got killed and it all fell apart after that. Watched things more carfeully the next time and made it through with all of the party intact.
Like I said, I'm loving it so far but I'm one of those who likes to do every little quest possible. My kids call me a 'quest whore'. As opposed to one of my sons who plays all the games with the goal of getting all the achievements. We joke about him being an 'achievement whore'. Heck, I haven't yet completed the Oblivion game because I've been working on completing all the misc quests before finishing the main questline. And I mean every quest. I've got the strategy guide which has little checkmarks here and there to keep track of what I've done already and what's left.
Heck, I haven't yet completed the Oblivion game because I've been working on completing all the misc quests before finishing the main questline. And I mean every quest. I've got the strategy guide which has little checkmarks here and there to keep track of what I've done already and what's left.
