Dragon Age: Origins gameplay and discussion thread.

[FactionHeir]

Forgot to mention:

Dislike the camera, prefer the NWN2 one over DA:O. Not being able to rotate without holding the RMB is annoying.
Also, zoom in is quite limited. Can't appreciate the detail without greater zoom.

Lastly, they really ought to allow you to click through dialogue rather than forcing you to wait through it all. Mainly for subsequent playthroughs.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Is there actually any point to the trailfinders? I long found the crates by the time the trailfinders took me there (in fact, before I even found any one trailfinder)

[Monk]

Lastly, they really ought to allow you to click through dialogue rather than forcing you to wait through it all. Mainly for subsequent playthroughs.

You can. Press Esc.

[FactionHeir]

That's the only key I didn't try, thanks!

Re blood splatter, in the PC version you can turn the persistent splatters off in the options menu. Alternative is to re-equip armor.

Another peeve I've been experiencing is how only rogues can lockpick but everyone can pickpocket. I mean why can't I invest in open lock like a rogue can Just seems a bit silly to have to leave every chest out there locked (the initial henchie helped a bit at the camp, but he can't open several of those...)

[Zenicetus]

That's the only key I didn't try, thanks!

Re blood splatter, in the PC version you can turn the persistent splatters off in the options menu. Alternative is to re-equip armor.

Another peeve I've been experiencing is how only rogues can lockpick but everyone can pickpocket. I mean why can't I invest in open lock like a rogue can Just seems a bit silly to have to leave every chest out there locked (the initial henchie helped a bit at the camp, but he can't open several of those...)

Yeah, I understand the rationale for it (get a Rogue in your party!), but it's still frustrating. Even when you *do* have a Rogue in the party, you have to manually take control and have the Rogue open the crate. I remember another game (NWN? NWN2?) where if you tried to open something as a non-Rogue party leader, the Rogue would just push you aside and say "here, let me do that." Maybe it has something to do with encountering trapped chests later in the game? That auto-open design did get my Rogue zapped a few times in that earlier game.

Oh, and here's a possible bug. Or it could just be the way it's designed. Two of my current party members are turning on sustained spells during combat (bard song and threaten) and then not turning them off after combat is over. They'll walk around with the glowing effect, and the stamina bars partially depleted to run them, until I manually take control and turn off the effect. I suppose that might be useful in a situation like a dungeon crawl where you're moving quickly from one battle to the next. Maybe there's a tactical advantage in having something like Threaten running during the initial enemy aggro? I dunno. But it's annoying when we're just walking around and talking to NPC's between battles.

[frogbeastegg]

10 hours in now; I ended up playing until 1am, then spending most of this morning playing too. It's gotten a lot better. I love the party banter and the characters I've acquired so far are brilliant, by far Bioware's best. The Alistare/Morrigan/dog combo is hilarious and by preference I'd have rolled with it to the end of the game if not for the need for a rogue. The plot's gotten more interesting, the world has opened up, and the game just feels like it has found its feet and its stride.

Reading the lore adds some flesh to the bones of the world. Leliana has some good historical stories once you get her to join.

However ... well, flies are in the soup and they're exasperating because they're so small and easily fixed, or because they're large and should never have been present. It's the large flaw which has prompted me to stop playing and hit the internet in the hopes of finding a way to mitigate it.

Character/party influence is proving to be a random feeling illogical headache. For each handful of points with a character I gain I seem to lose a larger amount with that same character plus a smattering with one or more others. That’s fine; I don’t mind it being hard to keep characters happy, and not being able to make everyone like me. The problem is that a around a third of those loses come from reasons which don’t quite make sense. I've seen (safely disguised from spoilers) "You agreed with me? I hate you!" "You disagreed with me? I hate you!" "You took my advice? I hate you!" "You asked me if I'm ok? I hate you!" "You tried to talk to me? I hate you!" "You did something I said I approve of? I hate you!" "You didn't do something I said I approve of? I hate you!" "You supported me in an argument? I hate you!" The dog's the only one who likes me, the rest are sulking around neutral and losing influence like a sieve loses water.

This is made worse by the conversations. Some of those lines of dialogue don't give the effect you'd expect from reading them and on multiple occasions things have gone a way I didn't want because I picked a line which meant something other than it appeared to.
"Would you like a drink?"
1. Yes please, I'm very thirsty. (Turns out to mean: Give me sixty bottles of your strongest because I'm going blotto and don't care if my entire party is disgusted by it :hiccough:!)
2. No, thank you. (Turns out to mean: I think everyone who touches alcohol is weak and feeble-minded and I don't care if I'm insulting the entire pub by saying it.)
The response I wanted would be closer to: “Give me a glass of whiskey and that’s all, thanks.”

:sigh: Both of these things are headaches because of the way they are presented. If the dialogue lines were vague like Mass Effects I wouldn't be so bothered by the unexpected results, and to be honest I never found ME's limited lead-ins to be misleading anyway. I have no problems at all with losing influence and being unable to keep every character happy, or with it being very hard to get people to like my character, just make it somewhat logical so I have a feel for what I'm doing.

Headache the third, aka the large flaw, is the combat AI. My party AI coped very well in the early fights. Now I have gone to ... let's say a village and a castle, and the system has shattered. I'm a mage. Low HP, low damage resistance, spells which get interrupted if I'm hit, no melee capability. So I need tanks to hold up the hordes and protect me. I've got 2 melee characters and one who can swap between ranged and melee. Used to work great; they kept the goons away from me while I cast. Doesn't work any more, for some reason it's completely stopped working. Enemies run right past my party and start beating me to death every single battle, and it's not one or two strays that get through, it's the majority of the enemy party. My companions ignore the situation and go after the couple of goons who aren't killing me.

Headache the third part 2 is the fact that once an enemy enters into an attack animation you're going to get hit no matter what, even if you've run away and are now on the other side of the screen. That means I can't even try to escape. The nemies move as quickly as my character does so hit and run is a no hope proposition.

Headache the third part 3 is that for some inexplicable reason there's no way to set the AI tactics to do anything useful if you're under attack. You can set it up as far as: "if [character] is under [attack type] then [?]" at which point it breaks down. There's no option for [attack that enemy], [heal [character]], [use distracting skill], or anything else which would draw the heat off or top up my health. Instead I've got options which make my party use special abilities on anyone and everyone who is not me. Or if then is a way to get them do help then the wording of the options is very misleading. "If [character] is under [attack type] then [use a health kit on yourself and wail in surprise as [character] dies in a spray of blood once again]"

So I'm currently casting one or two spells before running about being hit by melee attacks animating on the far side of the screen, frantically topping my health up and waiting for my party of idiots to snooze their way around to killing everything. It's boring. It's tedious. It's profoundly stupid. And I'm dying repeatedly for no good reason. It's so bad I'm gradually respeccing my mage into a close combat mage; I've got light armour now and aim to get a sword so I can at least hit back without being two-shotted.

I stopped playing in the hopes of finding AI settings on the internet which will get my party doing its job again. I can’t keep going like this; without the artillery and healing power of my spells each battle is tougher and tougher to scrape through and soon will come a point where it won't be possible. I barely managed to beat the first proper boss on my third attempt; I know I won't get past the second without my party pulling their weight.

And … um … well … the skills are boring. Each time I level up I struggle to find something that looks worth buying. The kind of effects I want I can’t buy (e.g. faster recharge time on my staple spells, or a healing spell which heals more than a tiny amount) or are limited to a single class (open locks!!!) or don’t seem to exist as discrete skills (locate and disarm traps)

Even when you *do* have a Rogue in the party, you have to manually take control and have the Rogue open the crate. I remember another game (NWN? NWN2?) where if you tried to open something as a non-Rogue party leader, the Rogue would just push you aside and say "here, let me do that."

This is annoying me as well. Especially as it's often paired with two lines of dialogue, the first being "I can do that!" when I select the locked item, followed by "I can't do that!" when Leliana gives it a go. Salt and wound.

I don't understand traps either. There doesn't appear to be any way to get her to detect them, and then there was no way to disarm or even locate visually the single trap she did pick up on her own. "There's a trap ahead!" - great, where is it and what am I supposed to do about it? The only answer I found was to blunder about until I stepped on it, same as all the ones no one detected.



Has anyone else noticed that the prompt to leave for the world map is a nod to Baldur's Gate's famous "You must gather your party before venturing forth."?

[Vladimir]

Has anyone else noticed that the prompt to leave for the world map is a nod to Baldur's Gate's famous "You must gather your party before venturing forth."?

Oh God, please no. Painful memories.

[FactionHeir]

Re traps, they might be like those Chasind trail signs where they are pretty much invisible outside of being marked on your map and unless you have your mouse in the right spot (and a very tiny spot too) it won't change your cursor. I noticed that starting with the books in the origin story and how they were difficult to pick up because of that. They really need to bring back the item outline thats all clickable and lit up.

[frogbeastegg]

Re traps, they might be like those Chasind trail signs where they are pretty much invisible outside of being marked on your map and unless you have your mouse in the right spot (and a very tiny spot too) it won't change your cursor. I noticed that starting with the books in the origin story and how they were difficult to pick up because of that. They really need to bring back the item outline thats all clickable and lit up.

Good idea. Unfortunately I can confirm it doesn't work like that. On the console version items you can interact with have small gold sparkles coming out of them and they get highlighted with white text labels if you're standing near them and looking in their direction.

I miss the days of manuals which went into exhaustive detail about everything. The Infinity Engine games came with such massive books ...

[Zenicetus]

Character/party influence is proving to be a random feeling illogical headache. For each handful of points with a character I gain I seem to lose a larger amount with that same character plus a smattering with one or more others. That’s fine; I don’t mind it being hard to keep characters happy, and not being able to make everyone like me. The problem is that a around a third of those loses come from reasons which don’t quite make sense. I've seen (safely disguised from spoilers) "You agreed with me? I hate you!" "You disagreed with me? I hate you!" "You took my advice? I hate you!" "You asked me if I'm ok? I hate you!" "You tried to talk to me? I hate you!" "You did something I said I approve of? I hate you!" "You didn't do something I said I approve of? I hate you!" "You supported me in an argument? I hate you!" The dog's the only one who likes me, the rest are sulking around neutral and losing influence like a sieve loses water.

I'm having a little trouble with that too. Just talking to a party member and making choices based on what you think they want to hear, based on what you know of their personality, does seem to consistently result in approval. And yes (just saw your second post below), the downgrades are mainly through plot choices. Although I've blown a few conversations with the wrong choices.

What I don't like, is that I'll get downgraded (sometimes by as much as 10 points) for choosing an optional side quest that's a fairly major one, just because it's on the wrong side of a party member's preference. It seems to be roughly on an axis of "nice person helping out" vs. "ruthless, get on with it" axis. Not exactly good or evil. Reminds me a little of Mass Effect's "moral" choices, actually. But dammit, I want that quest because we need the XP (and the loot). I don't mind declining a very minor side quest to keep a party member happy, but it doesn't feel right to do it on a major one. At least offer me another quest with the same XP and loot potential, on the other side of acceptability for the majority of the party members. Maybe that does happen later, but I don't want to lose a party member in the meantime.

Headache the third, aka the large flaw, is the combat AI. My party AI coped very well in the early fights. Now I have gone to ... let's say a village and a castle, and the system has shattered. I'm a mage. Low HP, low damage resistance, spells which get interrupted if I'm hit, no melee capability. So I need tanks to hold up the hordes and protect me. I've got 2 melee characters and one who can swap between ranged and melee. Used to work great; they kept the goons away from me while I cast. Doesn't work any more, for some reason it's completely stopped working. Enemies run right past my party and start beating me to death every single battle, and it's not one or two strays that get through, it's the majority of the enemy party. My companions ignore the situation and go after the couple of goons who aren't killing me.

Headache the third part 3 is that for some inexplicable reason there's no way to set the AI tactics to do anything useful if you're under attack.

It's so bad I'm gradually respeccing my mage into a close combat mage; I've got light armour now and aim to get a sword so I can at least hit back without being two-shotted.

Don't give up the pure mage approach yet. I see in the later post you found some help. Here are a few more ideas that might be useful. I'm playing as a Mage with one other Mage in the party, a Warrior tank, and a Rogue. So, basically only two melee fighters to hold everyone off. I'm not afraid to admit that I've temporarily set the difficulty to Easy to get past one or two rough spots, and because I'm more interested in the plot and the RPG dynamics than the combat. But mostly I'm playing on Normal. Anyway, some tips:

• Having one extra mage in the party is a big help, if you're going the pure mage route. That means twice the magic-based damage, with only half the attracted aggro. I can briefly take over the other mage and direct ranged attacks on enemy archers or spellcasters, while I focus more on the closer enemies, and the two melee types take on the rest. If this game is like D&D where mages start out very weak and become uber-powerful later, I can always ditch the other mage (although it's an interesting character and potential love interest).
• You can burn one sustained spell while firing off others. I use Rock Armor or that other generic defense one (can't remember the name) if enemy fighters are near, and Spell Shield for enemy mages. It helps a little, and seems to be a better use of the mana burn than using a sustained spell that helps the rest of the party.
• There isn't the scripting I'd hope for, to protect squishy characters with stronger ones. Since there isn't, when my mage gets into melee trouble I'll often just take over my main tank and direct him to help out, then do the same with the Rogue. It at least pulls them back to where my mage is standing in the room.
• I use Winter's Grasp a lot, for delaying enemies near me.
• When it's mostly melee enemies and I'm not dealing with archers or casters, I'll sometimes use the Hold Position command to lock the other party members in one place. That lets me use them as a shield of sorts. The bad guys have to go through the party to reach me. Only drawback is I have to be careful with friendly fire effects with my spells.

And … um … well … the skills are boring. Each time I level up I struggle to find something that looks worth buying. The kind of effects I want I can’t buy (e.g. faster recharge time on my staple spells, or a healing spell which heals more than a tiny amount) or are limited to a single class (open locks!!!) or don’t seem to exist as discrete skills (locate and disarm traps)

I agree to an extent, although it's hard to ditch D&D preconceptions about what "should" be there. I had the same issues with The Witcher game, before I got used to the system and just decided to roll with it.

[Monk]

You can find out which character likes what sort of gifts by reading their Codex entries.

Sten, for instance.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Loves paintings and all kinds of art.

Blew through the Stone Prisoner and Warden's Keep DLC, must say that WK was much shorter than I expected but was very interesting nonetheless. Worth the price tag? Hard to say.

Shale, on the other hand, is an absolute treat. The rumors of his likeness to HK-47 were spot on, and while he won't call anyone a "meatbag" he is certainly a welcome addition to my party. He's a very versatile party member and one of the more durable damage dealers.

My suggestion is to get him early in the game, if you wait too long you miss out on something good and it's only hinted at later.