Dragon Age: Origins gameplay and discussion thread.

[frogbeastegg]

38 hours now. I've got Shale, done some extreme lizard removal, and completed the "gather an army" quests. I'm now headed to the big city to have a polite chat with Mr Usurper.

Has anyone figured out where the game's title comes from? Dragon Age being the time period, and Origins being ...? The fact you can choose between 6 different character backgrounds? That would be dumb; might as well call it Dragon Age: Stat Distribution.

Does anyone else think that this game's going to be quite limiting on replay. I mean, the mage tower main quest offers such good rewards it's plainly best to do that first every time. Shale is such a good tank he makes the others a bit obsolete. If you're not the right class yourself and you want a healer you're practically forced to take Wynne, and if you want locks opening and traps disarming then it's Lelianna. Those characters then lock you out of certain plot choices. If you don't pick up the characters you want to use ASAP then the game will auto-level them and distribute their points in ways which might not fit in with your plans. I can see my 2 replays being spent going through in much the same order and with minor variations on the base party depending on my own class. The game's difficulty level makes it harder to take a sub-par group in order to hear the conversations.

In reply to Monk's Shale spoiler:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Didn't you talk to Shale much? I've found lots of conversational lines which pretty much give her gender away. "Do these crysals make me look wide?" and similar. Then there's the voice. It was a choice between female and extremely metrosexual.

I did love the girl talk after the discover in Orzamar. "Let's do girly things like crush heads so they fountain blood! Isn't female bonding wonderful? Rah!" (Paraphrased because I don't remember the full line). It was the "Rah!" which sent me into helpless laughter.

[AggonyDuck]

Well I found having Morrigan learn the simple heal spell enough for most of the fights in game. You really only need Wynne for the Dragons in the game. Leliana on the other hand did feel like a must and an added burden to the party. I did do some sections of the game without her, missing out on a lot of locked chests. Interestingly enough, almost none of the really good equipment is behind locked chests, so you can make do without a rogue.

[frogbeastegg]

Making do without a rogue works until you enter one of those areas with enemy traps. I've had quite a few full party wipeouts when AI party members blundered onto traps in a battle. It's amazing how badly a few simple leghold traps can spoil your day.

Maybe it's a console/PC difference but I've found that the basic healing spell isn't worth much when you are in a tough fight. My mage has a very high magic stat and the spell does around 1/5 to 1/4 of a healthbar. That's the same as the lowest level healing item. Most orange rated enemies do that much damage in a single hit. Group heal does far more and it covers everyone; I took spirit healer as a specialisation just to get group heal. Healing items would be a good alternative if only it were easier to control the entire party's actions on the console; the pre-set tactics don't quite get it right. Either they leave it too late or they use them when the fight's as good as over, meaning the item's wasted.

[Monk]

Making do without a rogue works until you enter one of those areas with enemy traps. I've had quite a few full party wipeouts when AI party members blundered onto traps in a battle. It's amazing how badly a few simple leghold traps can spoil your day.

Maybe it's a console/PC difference but I've found that the basic healing spell isn't worth much when you are in a tough fight. My mage has a very high magic stat and the spell does around 1/5 to 1/4 of a healthbar. That's the same as the lowest level healing item. Most orange rated enemies do that much damage in a single hit. Group heal does far more and it covers everyone; I took spirit healer as a specialisation just to get group heal. Healing items would be a good alternative if only it were easier to control the entire party's actions on the console; the pre-set tactics don't quite get it right. Either they leave it too late or they use them when the fight's as good as over, meaning the item's wasted.

Out of curiosity what difficulty are you playing on?

One of the biggest differences I noticed when playing around with difficulty settings is how much life is refunded per heal. On Easy, a lesser health potion can refund near full life when you are around level 5. On Normal, that same level 5 might only get half that with the same type of potion

[FactionHeir]

Opening locks is not just for the loot really. Its mainly for the XP until you can get "free" xp from donations to your troops.

Re crafting, I agree its not exactly useful. Maybe a few swift salves and things here and there, but those are more for fun than necessity. Haven't tried Nightmare though, so maybe there. Nightmare supposedley reduces effect durations even more than Hard though, so it might also be a waste of money.
Also, crafting stuff seems to overall cost more than outright buying the item, which defeats the point behind it.

Btw, noticed something really useful today. If your quickslot bar is unlocked, you can drag it horizontally for additional slots. Lifesaver for a mage.

I've completed the game several times (well for the endings mainly) with my warrior and will be starting anew. I'm thinking human or dwarven rogue, since I already made an elf last month but put her down as mage. Might go dwarven since I already played the human origin....still, I'm not a big fan of RPing dwarves...

Will be interesting to see how your choices reflect differently in the epilogue.

[Mailman653]

The characters seen more chatty than the ones in ME which is awesome, the downside is I wish I could hear everyone interact sometimes.

[frogbeastegg]

Out of curiosity what difficulty are you playing on?

The default one ... normal? Standard? There's casual below it, and two others above. I've had to drop to casual for some fights. I beat Mass Effect on Insanity and I'm no RPG softie, but I can't for the life of me imagine playing on the two harder levels.

The difference in party viability must be down to the lack of effective full party control. The further I get the more I notice the shortcomings, omissions to the interface, and questionable decisions. You can take fragile characters like Zavran and babysit them into being useful. Me? Unless I control him all of the time he's a liability I can't afford.

You PC folk notice that your tank is down to 1/4 health and want him to use potion? You can pause the game, toggle control to him, select the potion and tell him to use it at leisure. You can then double check other party members status and the lay of the field, maybe give a few extra orders to help things along, and resume when you like.

Me? I have to toggle control while the game's still moving, hopping from one member to another until I reach the right one. With each hop I disrupt the tactics of the member I briefly control. If the character I want to reach is still alive by the time I get to him I can pause the game to pull up a menu and set a single command. I can't see anything much while doing this because the overlay fills most of the screen. The action only happens once I close the menu and it’s easy to cancel an action by accident if you attempt to do anything other than immediately exit. Theoretically I can pull up the command menu with any character and then toggle across to the one I want with the game paused .. in reality it's fiddly and tends to cause more AI troubles. Or I can set AI tactics and watch as it guzzles expensive health packs like there’s no limit on them, and also somehow manages to neglect to use them when it desperately needs to.

There's secondary issues as well which serve to inflate the difficulty. It's harder to me to effectively use AOE spells. The resurrection spell is so awkward to use it was a waste of my points - I can't target characters, I have to scan around to locate their unlabelled corpse from a camera angle that is not at all helpful. Consequentially once a character's down they're down for the duration. I can't do anything with formations, and my mage character has to lead from the front unless I care to play as someone else all the time. I have no way of sending my tanks into a room first unless I take control and lose the chance to send in a pre-emptive fireball with my mage. My AI party members will only start to engage once I use a normal attack (and why would a mage use normal attacks?) or the enemy start slashing me in the face. The more pro-active setting makes them sprint off across the field into all sorts of death traps. Despite setting decent tactics sets I notice my main tank standing around doing nothing in many battles, typically while I'm being used as a punch dummy. Because 3/4 of my party is AI controlled all of the time I need lots of tactics slots, and they only way I can get them is by buying the combat tactics skill. That means it takes me ages to get a full feature set, and I miss out on more useful skills as a consequence. I only have 6 quick slots for abilities and commands; anything not on that small list forces me to head off into the menus. Most of the time that's not a problem but it gets fiddly in heavy fights where I'm using a lot of spells and can't monitor the cooldown on most of them. It’s hard to tell when you can use a spell if the cooldown ‘clock’ is not in good contrast with the icon. That’s particularly an issue with dark icons. Traps in an area? The AI's drawn to them like moths to a flame and I can't quickly take control to steer them around.

Now I'm approaching the end game I need some pretty smart tactics to pull through battles in good order. Things like my archer plinking the enemy mage with arrows to stop them casting while my main tank draws in the melee hordes, my mage unleashes AOE pain on said horde, and my secondary melee dude wades in to break skulls where needed most. Unfortunately all I can manage is lobbing a fireball in at the start for splash damage and then hoping for the best.

They should have used a KOTOR style set up in addition to the tactics system. The ability to pause, hop to a character, queue up 3 commands, then hop to all of the others and do the same before unpausing would make a massive, massive difference. They should also hand out the tactics slots for free, perhaps 1 slot every 2 levels starting at level 2. When using a ranged AOE spell like fireball the camera should move to an aerial view. The resurrection spell should work by targeting the character portraits down the side of the screen.

until you can get "free" xp from donations to your troops

I've been meaning to ask, do you see any report of XP gained on your screen when you donate items? Or does it appear silently? I donate items and don't see any XP related text so I think I am gaining nothing.

[AggonyDuck]

Just as an interesting unrelated comment, I've been kitting out my main character, a Dwarven Warrior, with most of the attribute increasing equipment. He's got the Helm of Honnleath (+3 to all attributes), Starfang (+3 dexterity), Anduil's Blessing (+2 all attributes), Blood-Gorged Amulet (+12 Constitution, -3 strength and willpower), Key To The City (+2 all attributes) and Lifegiver (+10 Constitution). Having +29 on Constitution is pretty downright awesome as it has more or less doubled his hitpoints.

Needless to say, stacking all of the best attribute increasing on one of the characters really is a great option. My dual-wielding warrior is actually a stronger tank than Shale at the moment and is able to deal far greater damage as well. Its fun seeing a little mean dwarf take down hordes of enemies down by himself, even after the rest of the party has been out for the count for ages.

[FactionHeir]

frog:
No, there's no mention of amount of XP gained throughout the game, but hvoering your mouse above your XP bar gives you an indication of how many poitns you currently have. The rest is down to math. Gave a few numbers on the last page regarding which items give most XP for cost.

[Beskar]

I've been meaning to ask, do you see any report of XP gained on your screen when you donate items? Or does it appear silently? I donate items and don't see any XP related text so I think I am gaining nothing.

Look at your amount before and after donation.

I only found out because I donated a lot of herbs because I found stacks of 99 from Rucks to be dirt-cheap. I thought they were something inregards to the final battle, but when I leveled up after donating was when I realised you get xp for it. I posted about it earlier in the thread.

[Mailman653]

So thats what donating does.

[Monk]

In reply to Monk's Shale spoiler:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Didn't you talk to Shale much? I've found lots of conversational lines which pretty much give her gender away. "Do these crysals make me look wide?" and similar. Then there's the voice. It was a choice between female and extremely metrosexual.

I did love the girl talk after the discover in Orzamar. "Let's do girly things like crush heads so they fountain blood! Isn't female bonding wonderful? Rah!" (Paraphrased because I don't remember the full line). It was the "Rah!" which sent me into helpless laughter.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It took me two weeks to figure out the gender of my cat, how in the world am I expected to figure out an sans-gender golem?

Also your paraphrase is pretty spot on.

As to party load-outs, i have to agree with AggonyDuck. I made it through the entire first play-through without Wynne, having given Morrigan the heal and heal over time spells and then focusing her on damage talents. It made the ffights with dragons tough, but they were certainly do-able. It also made the fight in the swamp (you know the one i mean!) very hard, but possible with clever tactics.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

No healer? No problem! 1 tank, 3 ranged. Tank swims in health potions. Go go!

I have to admit I've been passing up locked chests quite often myself. In my first run I noticed they contain one of three things: Gifts, crafting reagents and potions. Gifts can be found in droves if you know the right Merchants to look for, crafting... does anyone actually craft in this game? Seriously. And potions - well, those are the only things i really miss out on, but I can't be bothered to always keep Leliana/Zevron in my party.

EDIT:

If you don't pick up the characters you want to use ASAP then the game will auto-level them and distribute their points in ways which might not fit in with your plans.

Auto-leveling is completely optional for PC and is done on an individual basis. I have everyone use auto-leveling except PC, Morrigan (for healing purposes) and sometimes Shale who I all give points manually. The rest I let do as they please.

[Beskar]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It took me two weeks to figure out the gender of my cat, how in the world am I expected to figure out an sans-gender golem?

Also your paraphrase is pretty spot on.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Did your mother and father ever teach you the different between mummy cats and daddy cats?

[Meneldil]

38 hours now. I've got Shale, done some extreme lizard removal, and completed the "gather an army" quests. I'm now headed to the big city to have a polite chat with Mr Usurper.

Has anyone figured out where the game's title comes from? Dragon Age being the time period, and Origins being ...? The fact you can choose between 6 different character backgrounds? That would be dumb; might as well call it Dragon Age: Stat Distribution.

You got it right. It's even explicitely stated in the small manual. You chose your origin, so it's Dragon Age: Origins. Woohoo.

[Beskar]

The 6 origins are completely different and also, if you only play an RPG for best stats, you are playing a roleplaying game wrong. The whole thing about roleplaying games is that you 'role play'.

In this way, you can be a Dwarf Casteless as you like and play the game in those shoes. You don't do things for the best stats, you do things for what you want.

For my Dwarf companion, I stuck me in that Legion of the Dead dwarf armour, not because it was the best, because I wanted him in the Dwarf Armour and sort of played it as if he joined them.

[Krusader]

48 hours and done almost every quest I came across...missed one love letter.
And holding down TAB key often gives so much extra stuff as it highlights stuff you wouldn't think were there.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Allowed Morrigan to be pregnant, so did that ending. RP-wise my char wanted to stay with Leliana (although hint that it might not have lasted for long in epilogue)

I loved how the characters say goodbye to you when you are off to fight the battles before the Archdemon.
At the victory banquet, wondered why I did not see Alistair and Arl Eamon.
And also liked the epilogue of sorts. Seems like, me making Harrowmont King actually made it worse for Orzammar.

@frogbeastegg:
Dragon Age is indeed the current Age. I think the Origins, is because its the first Dragon Age game in a planned series (but also because you have six origins to pick from too). Mass Effect 2 will look up your old savegames from ME1 will it not? Maybe Dragon Age 2 will do the same, so you pick up where you left off in DA:O

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Ending seems to strongly suggest so

After all there are player profiles and whatnot on their social site.

[frogbeastegg]

Finished. At first the ending was rather good, then it blew itself to pieces in a most disappointing way.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There was lots of build up about the fact Alistair or the player character would have to die, which left my character in a very difficult position because of the romance. I decided my character should die, and went into the end part of the game with that knowledge looming over me. Made for a nice bit of atmosphere; in 99.9% of games you head into battle with the certainty your character will survive the credits sequence.

When the time came Alistair didn't give me a choice over who died slaying the arch demon. He made a damned good little speech, ran off while I was trying to tell him that I was the one who would finish it, snatched up a sword and killed it in a flashy cutscene. Very good indeed! Very flavoursome and somewhat unexpected. Then everyone immediately forgot he'd done anything, or that my character cared for him. He merited a "Poor boy!" from Wynne and a single sentence from what's her name the queen and that's it. Everyone was behaving as though it was the best day of my character's life, and going on about how I'd defeated the entire blight myself and gained everything I could have wanted. Zavran even made a weak pass at my character. Lelianna is forever going to be a heartless bitch in my mind because of her inane talk about the whole thing being like a nice stage play. This being the same character who started a lengthy conversation about how special Alistair and my character were, and how happy, and how pleased she was to see love blossom in terrible circumstances. Loghain the traitor got a statue, Alistair might as well not existed. Um, actually the hero's the dead guy, and I'm sort of a heart-broken widow so please reflect that with a bit of dialogue and maybe a 3 second shot of a funeral pyre!

With a bit more thought (actually, with any thought) they could have made that into a real bittersweet ending for the female Alistair romance line. That would have been good. Very good. Touching, even.

Oddly even though Alistair didn't get elected and didn't try to get elected, the game suddenly started treating him as the king during the final battle sequence. He gave a speech before the battle in which he claimed to be king, and his speech to me included some lines about how he was king and that dying for his kingdom was his duty.

Huh. They also kept telling me how I'd got my entire life ahead of me, happy happy joy joy, it's all fun and games from here on out, happily ever after with extra rainbows. Nope, as a grey warden I've got a decade or two of nightmares and blight related problems before I go mad and head off on a suicide mission. Another chance for a nice bit of bitter sweet in the ending thrown away.

The 6 origins are completely different and also, if you only play an RPG for best stats, you are playing a roleplaying game wrong. The whole thing about roleplaying games is that you 'role play'.

My point is that they apparently named the game after a character building mechanic. They should have named it after something related to the main plot since that's what the game's about. It took over 45 hours to finish ... and they apparently named it after the 1 hour long selectable intro.


...


Speaking of origins, I'm going to give the mage origin a thumbs down. In addition to a tedious opening quest that recycled material from the main plot line I got a handful of extra dialogue lines in various conversations and a few more different lines in the main mage tower quest, and that was it. I was expecting some reaction to the fact I was a member of a group treated with fear and suspicion, the kind of person whom the influential church viewed as half damned by mere fact of being alive and whom the populace at large considered to be a walking timebomb. Over and over I was told how distrusted mages are, that parents would abandon or murder their children if they found they had magic, that I'd be killed if I so much as looked at anyone wrongly, and there was an entire segment of the main plot which demonstrated why this attitude existed and the lengths people would go to. none of that mattered; when I introduced myself as a mage people reacted in the same uncaring way I'd expect them to if I announced I was a turnip seller.

I suspect the mage origin might be the worst of the 6. I've heard snippets of what happens in the other 5 and yup, they sound miles more original. I'll play through the remaining origin stories tomorrow, and then decide if I want a city elf or a dwarf commoner for my rogue character.

For those who haven't played it, the mage origin in a nutshell is:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Go through fade sequence involving several conversations and two battles, spot the obvious trick. Return to tower and talk to people. Run about the tower and talk to people. Get forced (either you choose to help him or you betray him and get told to pretend to help him so there's no practical difference) into helping an idiot who is meant to be your lifelong friend into escaping, an action which will mark you for a death sentence according to the lore you've seen thus far. Trot through a linear, short dungeon killing the odd enemy. The rubbish plan fails precisely as you knew it would from the moment you heard it, your friend shows that he's as corrupted as you suspected, and leaves you in the lurch. Enter grey warden to recruit the fallen prodigy.

[seireikhaan]

I'll play through the remaining origin stories tomorrow, and then decide if I want a city elf or a dwarf commoner for my rogue character.

I rather liked the city elf origin(done with a female), mostly for one particular line that just made my day:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Where's the that bottle'd me?!

[Beskar]

I rather liked the city elf origin(done with a female), mostly for one particular line that just made my day:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Where's the that bottle'd me?!

I like the convo with the king, but I think it might be the same as the female one. However, I did it as a male.

[FactionHeir]

I've played through the human and dwarf origins so far and one thing I disliked about the dwarf noble one is the inevitability of your character's fate. Even if you were gracious at the provings -> helmet. Other than that they were fairly alright, but human remains my favorite.

[Zenicetus]

My point is that they apparently named the game after a character building mechanic. They should have named it after something related to the main plot since that's what the game's about. It took over 45 hours to finish ... and they apparently named it after the 1 hour long selectable intro.

I'm not sure that's the only interpretation. As Bioware's first original (non-D&D) fantasy game, it introduces the world's lore, races, and magic system. I'm sure some modders will attempt total conversion mods, but I would assume that most upcoming expansions and mods will use this new fantasy world as a framework, like people used D&D for previous games. In that sense, I think "Origins" is a pretty good title for introducing a new (if somewhat un-original) fantasy world for gaming.

Speaking of origins, I'm going to give the mage origin a thumbs down. In addition to a tedious opening quest that recycled material from the main plot line I got a handful of extra dialogue lines in various conversations and a few more different lines in the main mage tower quest, and that was it. I was expecting some reaction to the fact I was a member of a group treated with fear and suspicion, the kind of person whom the influential church viewed as half damned by mere fact of being alive and whom the populace at large considered to be a walking timebomb. Over and over I was told how distrusted mages are, that parents would abandon or murder their children if they found they had magic, that I'd be killed if I so much as looked at anyone wrongly, and there was an entire segment of the main plot which demonstrated why this attitude existed and the lengths people would go to. none of that mattered; when I introduced myself as a mage people reacted in the same uncaring way I'd expect them to if I announced I was a turnip seller.

That surprised me a little too, especially since I'm playing a blood mage ("Fear me!" "What, you're not fearing me?" "I have to pay full price for this flask?"). I guess it's just a typical resource allocation problem, where the devs couldn't afford (maybe for reasons of download time or disk space) to script and voice-act a separate dialog tree just for mages. Or any of the other classes, for that matter, since they would have to treat all classes equally.

when I introduced myself as a mage people reacted in the same uncaring way I'd expect them to if I announced I was a turnip seller.

Also true, but I think it's part of a larger problem with most RPG's. The game world and NPC interactions don't track your character's progress from a kid fresh off the farm, to a demigod by the end of the game.

Playing Fallout 3, I get the exact same reaction strolling into some dinky refugee town, whether I'm straight out of the vault wearing pajamas, or a walking death machine wearing power armor and carrying alien weaponry. Same dialog, same blase' reactions from the NPC's. It was like that in The Witcher too, or Mass Effect towards the ends of those games. People should be backing away quietly, if not running for their lives at the mere sight of you. Everyone except the most powerful opponents, that is. Just once, I'd like to play an RPG that worked this way, because it starts to look ridiculous when you get near the end of the game.

[FactionHeir]

Thanks for the info frog, any information on whether they'll be fixing the effects staying on dead bodies? (i.e. ice, paralysis etc)
Reason being if you have a high magic mage (say 60+ like Morrigan in my game) and kill an enemy with ice/paralysis on, their corpse won't give loot until the spell wears off and if its a plot related body, the quest won't update/continue until that happens. Especially annoying in some sections where the next wave of enemies only appears after the current wave is dead.

[frogbeastegg]

Also true, but I think it's part of a larger problem with most RPG's. The game world and NPC interactions don't track your character's progress from a kid fresh off the farm, to a demigod by the end of the game.

Other RPGs didn't promise better, that's why it's irksome in DA:O. They said that your choice of origin will influence the way you experience the world and have repercussions throughout the game. That's supposed to be the whole attraction of the origin system.

I am definitely finding that my city elf is getting a much more tailored experience. Humans calling him knife ears or other degrading names, sneering at him for being a racial inferior, or patronising him as an elf who is working hard to better himself and be almost as good as a human.

Thanks for the info frog, any information on whether they'll be fixing the effects staying on dead bodies? (i.e. ice, paralysis etc)

Not sure. Xbox and PC have different patches and schedules. There's been 1 PC patch already and nothing for the xbox; I haven't seen any confirmation that they're looking into any of the minor yet annoying issues with the console version.

[frogbeastegg]

I'm still in the grey warden quest area after the origin section. Part of the attitude came from Cailen with his patronising, ignorant comments about the alienages and his "Jolly good show, an elf trying to be a real warrior!" attitude. I didn't get that as a Dalish elf; in that origin he garbled on about their ancient traditions and honour in a respectful manner.

You know the bits of conversation you can overhear from NPCs? There's been the odd line like that too; random soldiers walking about and muttering things behind my back. From the comments here it looks like I shouldn't expect this to continue into the other areas :sigh:

I think Dalish elves get a bit more respect. They've got the mystical semi-legendary woodland folk thing going for them. City elves are one step above slaves, even the Dalish hold them in mild contempt as folk who surrendered their birthright to save thier skins.

Are you playing your city elf with evil/selfish dialog choices?

I'm no good at playing evil characters, I end up feeling guilty. My character's pragmatic and rather blunt in dialogue. I'll help but I don't want the 6 hour story and there'd better be a reward ... unless you're being oppressed by humans in which case I'm there for free. If the humans think this elf is going to bleed for their benefit then they're sadly mistaken.

Landsmeet and the ending will be fun.

Or maybe it's tied to the non-Mage origin story for elves?

The mage will take precedence over the elf. Origin -> race.

[rajpoot]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Just finished Nature of the Beast and Leliana sang a song at camp after that. I was wondering if anyone knew what exactly was she singing? I have the subtitle option on, but I couldn't see any lyrics, elvish or otherwise....

[FactionHeir]

Its called "Leliana's Song" in the soundtrack that came with the collector's. I think its sung in Welsh (?) just like other songs by that artist.