Dragon Age: Origins

[Obryn]

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 at 3.16 GHz, 4 gig DDR2 800 on a P5QLPro mobo, Asus ENGTX260 / 896 Mb video under Vista 32.

A middle-of-the-road leaning to higher end gaming PC by tody's standards. Not slow, not bleeding edge. About 18 months old. Certainly more expensive than a console though

This is eerily identical to my own PC's specs, apart from running Vista x64. I'm running super-smoothly, no hiccups, with maxed detail settings ... but only 2xAA. If I turn on 4xAA, I get a few hiccups, but it remains very playable. Have not tried 8xAA. It's one of the prettiest games I've played yet; the faces and expressions, especially, are amazing.

So what origin story / class combos are people using for their first run through? Does gender choice make big or small differences (i.e. hardly noticeable, or does every interaction also skew towards your gender choice, etc)?

Erm... all of them? I made about 5-6 different characters right at the outset and finished the intro on 4 of them. (One dwarf, I had to put down because I noticed - too late - that he looked just like Santa Claus.)

So far my favorite characters - the ones I'm running the game with for now - are both Dwarves. One is a Commoner Rogue, and one is a Noble Warrior. For the warrior, if you want a tip...

Spoiler

sell everything you don't immediately need - like everything but the specific weapon you're using, shield, armor, and healing potions - before the end of the feast. Sell the Helm, if you get it, too, because although it rocks, it's worth more as cash right now.

At least, that's IMO.

And, as someone who is not allowing himself to play until next week (homework first), what are some small detail gems that might get overlooked but are well worth the notice? -- By that I mean "pay attention to how your NPCs interact" or "watch how the weather changes" or "don't gloss over any dialogue choices, read them all before picking because one is always humorous" etc. -- not asking for actual spoilers, just detailed attention that I might otherwise overlook when I start playing...

If you've played any Elder Scrolls games, there's a quick shout-out to Bethesda in your first Intro mission if you play a Human Noble.

Otherwise, your background decides what story you start with and which NPCs you already know. Your sex modifies both this story and how later NPCs react to you. (Although it doesn't always change which NPCs you can seduce.)

I listen to all the dialogues the first time I run into them. They are acted better than any other CRPG I can think of right now. The cut-scenes are likewise pretty brilliant. On your third or fourth time after the plotlines merge, you will probably be sick of them, at which point you can ESC through them.

And yes, the game of course has lots of good dialogue options and a few completely psychotic ones. I'd pay attention.

-O

 

[Banshee16]

Which is one of the reasons a console port of The Witcher has yet to be released, I might add.

I thought the team that was producing the console port was in another country (France??) and CDProject took the project away from them and laid off the team or something....the rumour mill covers all kinds of ground....layoffs due to the economy, no appetite for the game, concentrating resources on making sure that The Witcher 2 will be on consoles *and* PC...

In any case, I have to say, The Witcher was one of the best CRPG's I've ever played...right up there with Planescape: Torment.

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

Ok, that should have no trouble with the game.

On another forum, someone posted he can run the game completely fine with most things turned to high with a C2D 2.2 GHz and a GF 8800GTS320.

Bye
Thanee

Well, Dell had a 12-hour sale on Monday, and the game was $10 off with free shipping....they got it to me within 24 hours, so I tried it last night on my PC.

On medium or high details, it's working fine...now, I'm trying an Elven Mage, and I'm doing the Origins test of sorcery thing, and it's running fine at the moment. Not sure if it'll slow down significantly when I get into the regular world.

But it's running fine on an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (2.2 Ghz), with WinXP SP3, 2 GB RAM, and an ASUS GeForce 7600GT card with Sound Blaster Audigy.

Guess I'll see what happens when there are more opponents on the screen, but for now, it's working silky smooth.

An observation I'll make is that I find that system requirements seem somewhat less cut and dry than they did in the early days of PC gaming. I remember getting some of the Wing Commander games way back when, and if you were just a smidgen off the specs, it was brutally slow. At least with games I've seen recently, having minimum specs or below minimum can often still result in a playable experience.

Banshee

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Freakin' enjoying this game big time! Maybe the best CRPG, ever, IMHO, right up there with Planescape Torment.

Zevan is a riot, haha!!!

Oh any of you seen the loading screen that says:
"When in doubt: go for the eyes!"
Hm?
GO BOO, WE KNOW THEY MEAN YOU!!!

 

[Thanee]

Got my copy installed yesterday, too. Runs perfectly smooth so far on highest with 2x AA even (Athlon X2 2.8 GHz with GF 8800 GTS 640 and 2 GB RAM).

Some of those diaglogue options are really crazy, heh.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Steel_Wind]

In terms of dialog, the one thing I would have much preferred to have seen in DA:O would have been the Mass Effect dialog system. The Mass Effect radial system has you pointing your PC's response in one direction using a few words, and the game cinematically shows you the results of that dialog choice by depicting your PC speaking very different words in more complete sentences -- and then shows the interaction of the PC with the NPCs response to your own words. It's a genuinely very cool and innovative convo system in a CRPG and one of BioWare's most important contribution and innovations to the entire RPG genre.

I can only guess that the larger number of possibilities for main PC characters, longer game length, and the increased burden all of that would have had on voice acting requirements persuaded BioWare to not implement that convo system in DA:O. It may also well be that the game dialog would have had to be completely rewritten - and they didn't want to have to do that. Not sure.

Whatever the case, I though that aspect of Mass Effect was very well done (I was not otherwise much of a fan of ME, either on 360 or PC) and would have preferred to see the same approach to have been used in Dragon Age.

Don't get me wrong - its absence was not a surprise to me. The devs at BioWare had been clear that DA:O was not using the Mass Effect conversation system. That doesn't mean that the game would not have benefitted from it though. I think it certainly would have.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Still hammering away at this game, and enjoying it a great deal. Right now, I'm romancing both Morrigan and Zavran, and trying to work Leliana into the mix. I'll be interested in seeing where it all goes.

 

[wolff96]

Still hammering away at this game, and enjoying it a great deal. Right now, I'm romancing both Morrigan and Zavran, and trying to work Leliana into the mix. I'll be interested in seeing where it all goes.

Make sure you sleep with Leliana FIRST. She's a bit of a prude, so it's MUCH harder to do it the other way around. Not to mention that she doesn't get along all that well with Morrigan...

As a side note, I love one of the conversations between Morrigan and Alistar. She accuses him of staring at her breasts and he covers by saying he was admiring her profile -- that her nose was exactly like that of Flemith. There's a brief pause, then she replies "I hate you SO MUCH" in a very level and spaced tone that somehow conveys the exact depth of how much he just pissed her off... GREAT voice acting!

 

[fba827]

Ijust started my first play through.

I picked human noble fighter because i find for initial play throughts on rpgs, a fighter tends to have the 'simplest' combat mechanics and then once i get used to the game i go for more complicated classes like mages.

I'm having a lot of fun so far. I like the characters -- all well thoughout.

I am getting frustrated (not in a bad way) because i obsess over the equipment -- i am constantly "at full" but i can never decide what equipment will be useful and what won't so i keep trying to keep everything that has some marginal circumstance benefit over the others. and these gifts i'm collecting, i'm scared to give it to the wrong people (don't tell me, i'll figure it out on my own once i get over my neurotic behavior)

The controls on the console are taking a lot of getting used to -- i can see how this would be vastly better in terms of control scheme on a pc.
voice acting wise, i'm enjoying almost all of them, though there was one npc tossed in that i met so far who seemed to have the flatest delivery that went
graphics - it looks nice but there are a couple character models that just seem odd (someone who has disproportionate hands, for instance). all very minor things though.

anyway, as said, just started (am as far as the road where you first make camp and decide which city to go to first. And i'm immesnly enjoying it so far.

 

[fba827]

I never played Mass Effect but that sounds like an awesome system.

true, DO:A isn't bad for not having it, but it sounds like it would have been a fun addition (though, logically, yeah, adding all the voice dialogue, etc -- would have added a lot of both time and money to the development of the game)

In terms of dialog, the one thing I would have much preferred to have seen in DA:O would have been the Mass Effect dialog system. The Mass Effect radial system has you pointing your PC's response in one direction using a few words, and the game cinematically shows you the results of that dialog choice by depicting your PC speaking very different words in more complete sentences -- and then shows the interaction of the PC with the NPCs response to your own words. It's a genuinely very cool and innovative convo system in a CRPG and one of BioWare's most important contribution and innovations to the entire RPG genre.

I can only guess that the larger number of possibilities for main PC characters, longer game length, and the increased burden all of that would have had on voice acting requirements persuaded BioWare to not implement that convo system in DA:O. It may also well be that the game dialog would have had to be completely rewritten - and they didn't want to have to do that. Not sure.

Whatever the case, I though that aspect of Mass Effect was very well done (I was not otherwise much of a fan of ME, either on 360 or PC) and would have preferred to see the same approach to have been used in Dragon Age.

Don't get me wrong - its absence was not a surprise to me. The devs at BioWare had been clear that DA:O was not using the Mass Effect conversation system. That doesn't mean that the game would not have benefitted from it though. I think it certainly would have.