Dragon Age

[CapnZapp]

I've understood that the PnP game's mechanics follow the computer game's mechanics pretty closely. If this is true, mages will overshadow warriors and rogues.

It is not true.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

DA:O just doesn't stand out, setting wise. It's not a bad game, and I thought it would be. But it IS a bad setting.

Sure. But it's not bad because those ideas have been used before (together or otherwise). It's bad because the execution isn't on a level that allows you to ignore it.

Planescape was brilliant, but it was not brilliant because it used "new" ideas like Dickensian slang or a city full of philosophers essentially vying for the ear of the "throne." It was brilliant because it stitched them together so well you never went looking for the serial numbers.

The Matrix didn't use anything that had not been used before. Dark City was practically the same movie, released one year earlier. And read any old sci-fi short story collection from the 70s or 80s and you can find every one of those plot elements. Bullet time wasn't new, either. But the production values on all of it were such that practically no one noticed, and it became a phenomenon.

Video games and movies actually have it harder then PnP settings in this regard, though, because our visual storytelling is so impoverished. You see one shot in a cinematic that looks like something from a movie you saw and all of a sudden your brain kicks into high pattern-recognition mode. Since Hitchcock pretty much wrote the only grammar most people use for modern visual storytelling, it doesn't take long for that to happen.

 

[avin]

Planescape was brilliant, but it was not brilliant because it used "new" ideas like Dickensian slang or a city full of philosophers essentially vying for the ear of the "throne." It was brilliant because it stitched them together so well you never went looking for the serial numbers.

Planescape is from Black Isle, not Bioware (in case you're not just comparing games outside of Bio dome, of course)... Bioware settings and atmosphere are <insert grandman filter letters here>. Baldur's Gate and Kotor I pleases me, but they are far from games like Fallout 1 or 2 or Torment...

 

[Gentlegamer]

Dungeons, Dragons, and now Gay Sex, NY Times article about Dragon Age Origins

 

[Leatherhead]

Will there be stances, mana points/stamina, etc?

Because that was cool idea.

Ew, mana points. I hate mana point systems on tabletop.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Planescape is from Black Isle, not Bioware (in case you're not just comparing games outside of Bio dome, of course)... Bioware settings and atmosphere are <insert grandman filter letters here>. Baldur's Gate and Kotor I pleases me, but they are far from games like Fallout 1 or 2 or Torment...

Not really relevant who made the video game, but I knew that, in any case. I was speaking in general terms about the setting, new ideas, etc.

 

[Dire Bare]

DA:O has a lot of good points - much more then I thought there'd be - but the world design is not one of them. It's just stock fantasy setting #204 with a few names changed

Well, I guess we'll just have to disagree!

Dragon Age definitely uses a "standard" D&D style fantasy world with all the requisite trappings . . . but things are well put together, have a nicely done dark twist (while still being heroic and epic), and the setting feels both fresh and also old school to me all at once.

Sure, some of the tropes are less than original, not just the standard fantasy tropes but some of the "twists" aren't new either . . . . who cares?!?!?! A setting doesn't have to be original to be awesome, it has to be well done.

Again, I haven't played the game yet, and I may change my mind, but so far I am incredibly impressed and I'm even more excited to play the game than I was before.

 

[Rechan]

Y'know, I can't think of any fantasy video game that had a setting that impressed me.

They've all pretty much played in Tolkein's back yard, with typical things.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Ico.

You don't need to flesh out the setting to make it evocative. In fact, I would argue that most of the time, less is more.

I also hear Team Ico's other games were similar, but I've not played them.

 

[Lancelot]

You are, of course, aware that none of those things originated where you're listing, either. Given 20 minutes of time with my bookshelf, I bet I can find a dozen or so independent urbanized elf concepts from different authors. Most of the visuals in your second section track back to any well-told myth, though modern representations of them pretty much all hearken back to Hitchcock. And don't get me started on the Templar thing.

Berating people for recycling ideas is an empty exercise....

True, true... but we're not talking someone taking a plot hook from a Hitchcock concept designed 40 years ago. I have no problem with a game being reminiscent (for example) of a particular Conan novel I've read, or having themes similar to a CRPG released 20 years ago.

We're talking an almost point-to-point copy of a major recent PC fantasy CRPG release. The Witcher has sold many hundreds of thousands of units. For many PC gamers, it is the most recent fantasy CRPG they've played before Dragon Age was released. And the comparison is startling. We're talking the visual appearance of the elven race, the physical appearance of both their forest camps and the slums they inhabit, their relationship with the humans, the location of their slum in the human world (in their largest city), the disease ravaging their people, and even the point at which you can access the slum (late Act in the game)...

Similar comment on the Ostagar and Dead Trenches cutscenes, among many others. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the Big Boy of fantasy movie franchises. I'm not talking broad themes being copied; I'm talking jarring moments where you see reaction shots of uruk-hai posing and screaming at the nervous defenders of Helm's Deep, before an imposing uruk-hai general waves them forward to attack with his sword.

All fantasy owes a debt to what comes before, but I believe it's fair criticism to point out some really noticeable creative shortcomings. If you've just read Lord of the Rings, and a new fantasy book is released (we'll call it, say, The Sword of Shanarra) that has a mysterious wizard showing up in a rural setting and sending two unlikely heroes on a quest, pursued by ersatz nazgul, aided by a company of diverse heroes (incl. an elf, a dwarf, etc), to bring down an evil sorcerer who is unleashing his armies on the free races, culminating in a major siege and battle...

Well, you get the idea. And that in no way means you can't enjoy the more recent novel. You may find Terry Brooks' writing more engaging than Tolkein's, for example. But dismissing that level of "recycling" as being fair game, given the Mesopatamians were the first people who came up with the heroic quest, is probably a bit much.

I still reckon any serious PC gamer should give Dragon Age a go. It is a very fun game, and the NPCs are simply terrific (Zevran and Oghran for the Win!). But I hope any sequels, and any setting information for the new pen-n-paper RPG, goes a lot further in avoiding "homages" to recent, major fantasy fiction.