Gaming Dragon Age: Origins Hands-on Preview

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2009/05/13/dragon-age-origins-hands-on-preview/1

We take another look at Dragon Age: Origins, this time focusing our attention on the intricacies of the combat system and whether or not spell combos have any place in an epic fantasy RPG. Check out our thoughts on the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate within!

 

Oh man I can't wait for this, I love bioware games so much

 

< jumps up and down excitedly like a little Girl

 

This looks green, people are running to F3 mods out there

 

WANT!
If it plays half as good as it looks, I'm in ... haven't played a BioWare game since KoTOR

 

Not tried Mass Effect? :O

 

Slap the name BioWare on it and I'll pick it up. Never have played a bad game by them. (Granted there may be a couple out there, but I've never seen them)

 

yup this is going to be fully excellent, cant wait to get my teeth into a proper swords n sorcery RPG again. also you can be guaranteed a decent storyline with a bioware game.

 

Not yet - It's on an ever-growing list of games which I really want to try but I never seem to get round to the actual 'buying' part. Odd, really, since on paper it ticks *all* the boxes for me (sci-fi, RPG, available for the 360 etc.etc.)

Having said that, I'm with crompers - I quite fancy getting into a hardcore fantasy RPG as opposed to something more whimsical like Fable 2 (which I still play. A lot) and this looks like it would fit the bill nicely.

 

Jade Empire, which I've been playing recently, is the worst game I've ever played of theirs. And to be fair it isn't actually all that bad, it's just a bit boring.

 

Awesome. Cannot wait to see more.

You didn't disappoint, Joe.

If this lives up to expectations it might just be the game to stow my cynicism for a while.

 

Have you guys seen the videos for it? It's extremely gory

Lookin forward to it!

 

Screw it ... I'm sold already
Also, turns out that the last BioWare game I played was NWN (plus various expansion packs) and I really enjoyed that at the time.

Getting old sucks - the memory ain't what it used to be

 

already fallen behind on gaming here.. haven't even played mirrors edge yet- been sitting there waiting to be installed for awhile now.. few other games too- this looks pretty sick though.. they make some good stuff- mass effect had my eyeballs flip backwards

 

Great image captions

 

Does anyone know if EA are repeating their customer shafting of Spore by including limited activations and SecuROM on the DVD version? Will it be SecuROM free on Steam?

 

All versions will be free of securom, there will be a disc check on retail versions.

 

Greetings!

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=167871

 

I don't really understand the bit about spell combo's on the last page
"The issue of whether or not spell combos really belong in an RPG like Dragon Age: Origins is still a thorny one though, as while the effect is undoubtedly cool and unique among the genre, it also causes a bit of a disconnect between the player and the world. The world of Dragon Age is 3D, but it’s not fully interactive or physically realised, so when the cyclone blew we were admittedly left wandering why no books were flying off shelves or furniture toppling."

Does the normal wind spell do this? if not why do normal spells not "a bit of a disconnect between the player and the world". "we were admittedly left wandering why no books were flying off shelves or furniture toppling" so does casting wind on a book shelf cause books to fly off, or furniture to go toppling? I really see this as nit picking on a non issue, right now, maybe in a few years with fully realised physics in most games you might have a point.

Spell combo's sound brilliant and if they could be done non scripted, i.e. each spell has a property and thoe properties can inteact, that ould be great. So imagine an ally is burning, cast a low level ice spell on them to put the flames out, or if an enemy cast a low level wind to make the flame burn hotter.

A bit like black and white style ai.

 

The point was that the game builds up these huge effects of cyclones that fill the screens and has elements of the world that you can interact with in specific ways, but physics still aren't in the world at all. There's oil on the floor which you can set fire to, but why can't you freeze it or evaporate it?