Dragon Age: Origins

[nageov3t]

what's the gameplay of DAO like compared to say, something turn-based-ish like KOTOR / NWN or the more action/adventure-y Oblivion?

 

[a123456]

what's the gameplay of DAO like compared to say, something turn-based-ish like KOTOR / NWN or the more action/adventure-y Oblivion?

It's definitely more turn-based like NWN, BG2, etc. All your hitting percentages and everything are determined by your stats and you pause the game all the time to give orders. It's more like BG2 in the sense that you can fully control every member of your party and for the harder fights, it's probably necessary to give orders to each of them.

If you're more of an Oblivion-type person who likes real-time RPG action, it's not that type of game.

Leliana can loot almost every chest but you pretty much have to pump almost everything into cunning (40-45+).

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

supposely, if you have a

Spoiler

pet dog, he will lick off all the blood and gain health

Is that what that dialog option was for? I was afraid to select it, figured he'd eat all the corpses, and possibly my loot.

 

[DangerAardvark]

It just sucks that I have my main character (dual-wield warrior) and lockpicker locked in all the time, then my healer and then only enough space for a tank or an offensive Mage, so most of my companions barely get any play time.

 

[Alienwho]

It just sucks that I have my main character (dual-wield warrior) and lockpicker locked in all the time, then my healer and then only enough space for a tank or an offensive Mage, so most of my companions barely get any play time.

I haven't used anybody except for morrigan, alistar and wynn the entire game.

 

[Drako]

I haven't used anybody except for morrigan, alistar and wynn the entire game.

I've used Morrigan, Leliana, and Shale 90% of the time, with me as a Elf Mage (Arcan Warrior/Spirit Healer. Next play-through I'll party up differently.

 

[Slew Foot]

Good God the Magi quest is freaking long.

My party looks like it will be Me (mage) for damge/AOE, Morrigan for hexes and damage, Alistair for tank, and Wynne for healing/buff.

 

[NoSoup4You]

Funny how that works, I've used my dual-wielding Rogue, Alistair, Morrigan and Sten the whole game so far, but just unlocked Wynne and have dumped Alistair in favor of her.

I have every intention of switching this up on my next playthrough, though somehow I wonder if I'll end up with these same few again anyway!

 

[drebo]

Once I got Wynne, I've found that my best party is Me (Dual wielding warrior for super damage), Alistair (taunt tank), Liliana (ranged damage and lock picking), and Wynne (healing). I have not seemed to have any troubles, although I am starting to notice a small lack of AoE damage. Dual Wielding has two very good AE attacks though, and those have been getting me through.

 

[Kalmah]

I finally managed to stick with a character build that I like. I must have played all of they origin stories over like 20 times.

I just finished off one of the treaties. I dont want to spoil anything but holy awesome story batman. This game made me have to stop and think for a very long time before I decided what I was going to do.

Games like this make me wonder why so many people liked Oblivion.. you know.. the 3 recorded phrases that the entire continent spoke, the large EMPTY world to run around in with the cut&paste level-scaled dungeons. 4 different sword and armor types. EVERYTHING in the game wearing glass armor once you get glass armor.. heh.

 

[PUN]

Played about 10hrs at lvl 11.
IMO, this game has one of the WORST control, viewing angle in the history of rpg games.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

You are scrolling out to full view and making it control like every other rpg ever, right?


At any rate, anybody know how to get massive sums of money? The templar quartermaster in the tower is selling a very, very nice staff for 91 gold, and a very, very, very nice belt for 131 gold. I don't think I ever totaled 200 gold in my last playthrough.

 

[drebo]

I'm not having any trouble with money...I did at the beginning, but once I was half way through my second treaty (I did Redcliffe first, then Orzammar), I had over 180g, and that was after spending over 150g.

I just went though Arl Howe's place in Denerim.

Spoiler

How the hell are you supposed to beat that female knight after rescuing Anora? She was hitting my tank which has the full Massive armor set from the woods for over 160 damage per hit. I ended up having to surrender and escape from prison. I suppose if I had like three offensive mages with fireball and some kind of stun I may have been OK, but with my normal party, there was no possible way of winning that fight. First fight that I absolutely could not win.

 

[PUN]

You are scrolling out to full view and making it control like every other rpg ever, right?

Yeah, and around the corners and during mov't, it zooms in and out on it's own. Angle vew on 1st person gets tossed around as well. Sucky.

 

[you2]

Can someone explain to this dense fellow how dragon age dlc works? I redeemed code for blood armor and stone prisoner; but they don't show up as installed; how do i install them ?
--
bleh well that was lame; had to quit the game and restart. Ok. Well the game open sounds good (now I can see what everyone else is chatting about these days )

 

[datalink7]

I'm not having any trouble with money...I did at the beginning, but once I was half way through my second treaty (I did Redcliffe first, then Orzammar), I had over 180g, and that was after spending over 150g.

I just went though Arl Howe's place in Denerim.

Spoiler

How the hell are you supposed to beat that female knight after rescuing Anora? She was hitting my tank which has the full Massive armor set from the woods for over 160 damage per hit. I ended up having to surrender and escape from prison. I suppose if I had like three offensive mages with fireball and some kind of stun I may have been OK, but with my normal party, there was no possible way of winning that fight. First fight that I absolutely could not win.

Yeah I tried that a few times and couldn't ever beat it.

Spoiler

Note that you don't have to surrender. You can just die and you wake up in prison. Not that there is any difference. So I don't think you are supposed to be able to beat that part.

 

[NoSoup4You]

Took a little getting used to but I prefer the zoomed in camera (actually fully zoomed out but one tick zoomed in). Liberal use of the right mouse button keeps the camera where it needs to be. I like.

And I must be doing something wrrong, I'm on the last remaining treaty quest (Orzammar) and I've never had more than 35g saved up at any one time...

 

[TheVrolok]

Took a little getting used to but I prefer the zoomed in camera (actually fully zoomed out but one tick zoomed in). Liberal use of the right mouse button keeps the camera where it needs to be. I like.

And I must be doing something wrrong, I'm on the last remaining treaty quest (Orzammar) and I've never had more than 35g saved up at any one time...

My gold situation was identical. I never really had more than 35-50g at a time until I finished all the treaties and was just finishing stuff up prior to the latter portion of the game. Ended up over 250g when I finished, I think.


So I finished my first playthrough, and absolutely loved the game. One of my favorites to date. It's probably somewhere in the top 10, maybe top 3 RPGs. 38 hours, 92% explored, 50% completed.

 

[TheVrolok]

I'm not having any trouble with money...I did at the beginning, but once I was half way through my second treaty (I did Redcliffe first, then Orzammar), I had over 180g, and that was after spending over 150g.

I just went though Arl Howe's place in Denerim.

Spoiler

How the hell are you supposed to beat that female knight after rescuing Anora? She was hitting my tank which has the full Massive armor set from the woods for over 160 damage per hit. I ended up having to surrender and escape from prison. I suppose if I had like three offensive mages with fireball and some kind of stun I may have been OK, but with my normal party, there was no possible way of winning that fight. First fight that I absolutely could not win.

Spoiler

I ended up dragging her an one add (just one of her melee guards) back out of the main room into a side room just so I could fight her 1v1. With my party she was fairly easy to drop (though it did take some time). My party was Me (dps mage with some healing), Alistar (tank), Shale (dps), Leliana (lock picking and "dps"). It wouldn't (in my eyes) be possible to kill her in her room with all of the archers as well.

 

[TheVrolok]

I finally managed to stick with a character build that I like. I must have played all of they origin stories over like 20 times.

I just finished off one of the treaties. I dont want to spoil anything but holy awesome story batman. This game made me have to stop and think for a very long time before I decided what I was going to do.

Games like this make me wonder why so many people liked Oblivion.. you know.. the 3 recorded phrases that the entire continent spoke, the large EMPTY world to run around in with the cut&paste level-scaled dungeons. 4 different sword and armor types. EVERYTHING in the game wearing glass armor once you get glass armor.. heh.

I completely agree. I think the writing is pretty damned good for a game (well, it IS BioWare) which makes the choices fairly agonizing sometimes. Particularly when you're presented with 3-4 options.. a solid good/evil choice and then some pretty gray ones. Ditto on Oblivion, that's why I couldn't get into it.

 

[Zenoth]

What I like a lot about DAO as well is that there's often no clear and obvious choices in the dialog for being "good" or "evil", sometimes it is, but not always, contrarily to Mass Effect for instance in which any options at the top would lead you to being a Paragon and any choices at the bottom would lead you to being a Renegade (and the middle choices being usually neutral or leading to more dialog choices).

The way they're written the dialog choices in DAO is brilliant and subtle enough to make you stop for a moment and carefully real all choices instead of just clicking the "first one" for "being good". I would like it that the same "evil Vs. good Vs. neutral" dialog choices system be implemented in Mass Effect 2 (maybe it is, who knows).

 

[Kalmah]

Can someone explain to this dense fellow how dragon age dlc works? I redeemed code for blood armor and stone prisoner; but they don't show up as installed; how do i install them ?
--
bleh well that was lame; had to quit the game and restart. Ok. Well the game open sounds good (now I can see what everyone else is chatting about these days )

I got 2 different codes. I went into the game.. made sure I was loggged in.. went to the online area inside the game that let you use redeem codes. I copied and pasted the first one.. then the next.. then I went to the downloadable content page and hit "refresh" and they showed up for download.

 

[you2]

Is there any sort of 'search' command (like bg/nwn) or is it all automagic ?

(for Kalmah refresh didn't work for me; i had to exit and re-enter - I also got hit by the 1.01 bug where the game wouldn't even run when I hit play (which as very alarming since I installed the 1.01 patch before my first run; but I figured out that I needed to update some dll from ms).
--
btw I ended up starting as a elven rogue; am I gonna regret this choice? In almost every other dnd like game I play either warrior (for the easy experience) or mage for the 'fun' experience but for once I thought I would try a rogue

 

[smackababy]

Yeah I tried that a few times and couldn't ever beat it.

Spoiler

Note that you don't have to surrender. You can just die and you wake up in prison. Not that there is any difference. So I don't think you are supposed to be able to beat that part.

I beat it in that room with the archers. But I had me in full massive

Spoiler

Wade's Superior Dragonbone

armor, Shale, and two healers. I just let Shale tank her while I ran and destroyed the archers quickly. After you get those down, the fight is rather easy.

 

[Kalmah]

Is there any sort of 'search' command (like bg/nwn) or is it all automagic ?

(for Kalmah refresh didn't work for me; i had to exit and re-enter - I also got hit by the 1.01 bug where the game wouldn't even run when I hit play (which as very alarming since I installed the 1.01 patch before my first run; but I figured out that I needed to update some dll from ms).
--
btw I ended up starting as a elven rogue; am I gonna regret this choice? In almost every other dnd like game I play either warrior (for the easy experience) or mage for the 'fun' experience but for once I thought I would try a rogue

So far Elven rogue has been the most fun for me. I just re-created though since I felt like I wasted points in traps. Just remember to keep con moderately high.