Dragon Age How to Enjoy Dragon Age: Origins

[Sweeper]

I never got around to playing DA: II, mainly due to the combat being fully real time. However I hear it can be fun...does anyone recommend it?

Don't even think about pirating it. It's one of the worst RPGs ever.

 

[Doktor Best]

It was alright to play as a teenager back in 2008 because there was nothing else to play and cinematics in rpgs was new and all flashy. I remember being disappointed by the lack of tactical depth from NWN and DAO at least brought back some sort of party combat, while adding "cinematic value" to the mix. Nowadays of course we know what road cinematics led the genre down to so we look critical upon it, but back then there was no such negative notion, at least not in my naive teenager mind.

Pretty much all kickstarter games are better RPGs than DAO, so the proper way to play DAO is not to play it and play Pathfinder Kingmaker or Wasteland 3 instead.

 

[Nephilim]

If you decide to play DA:2 and DA:I, you will perhaps appreciate Origins more. The downgrade is like jumping off a cliff.

 

[Joggerino]

DA:O is is like Risen 2, forgettable and not worth playing.

 

[Falksi]

DA:O is like Risen 2, very underrated and plenty of fun to be had if you can shake off the flaws.

 

[markec]

https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/4927

Tome of Death is an equippable, reusable tome that allows the player to kill all hostiles in the immediate area. Two versions are now available for different play styles.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/4927

Tome of Death is an equippable, reusable tome that allows the player to kill all hostiles in the immediate area. Two versions are now available for different play styles.

More importantly,
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/301

This mod allows players and followers to "bash" or "force" open most locked chests and doors. This is the real deal, the character will actually attack the object and it will be destroyed with rubble and all (this was clearly a feature cut from the final game).

The gameplay change can be balanced by a chance to "break" items or "lose them in the rubble". The mod behaves intelligently. Your characters will not bash doors/chests for which you possess a key or can otherwise open without issue. In addition, if a rogue with sufficient skill is standing-by when you attempt to open a locked chest instead of bashing it, you will automatically command them to open it without any manual input. In other words, you no longer have to continuously switch to Zevran or Leliana while exploring and looting.

Class and stats also factor into bashing. The specific attribute used in bashing differs by class, normally: Magic for Wizards, Strength for Warriors, and Dexterity for Rogues. With doors, your stats determine whether or not you can bash at all. With chests, your stats modify the chance of breaking items.

The mod is highly configurable so you can tailor it to your desired level of play. You can turn off item breakage and stat requirements, and go around bashing chests and doors without a second thought. The goal after all is to enjoy the game.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I'm playing this game for the first time and it's boring as fuck. It feels like a single player MMO with the most boilerplate dark fantasy setting and absolute garbage combat.

I thoroughly concur. To get through it, you'll want to fill your party with 3 mages. DAO was one of the genre's last gasps at allowing players to have interesting mages, and much of the content involves them. The plot won't improve, so just enjoy combining your spells while coasting through it. The game is worth a play through at least once, because it's not horrible. It's just the epitome of generic mediocrity. It does some things right, but mostly embodies the console and "cinematic" effect on the genre.

 

[luj1]

By not playing it

 

[Sarathiour]

Combat mechanic in this game are fundamentally broken, there is already a shitload of thread talking about it. One of my preferred exemple is that the mage is actually the best tank of the game, but still need a staff for efficient spell casting, because if you want to cast a spell, it's quicker to swap from sword to staff and then to cast a spell rather than casting directly the spell without swapping your sword .

Also, i never bought the setting as a dark one. It look like your typical copy paste fantasy setting, with some dark element slapped at the last minute, that shatter my suspension of belief. Darkspawn also are a fucking joke and probably one of the most retarded army of the world. They're supposed to be fearsome because they could work with only some bare-bone logistic, are they can feed off literally anything and are mindless drone under an archdemon command. Despite all that, they still manage to take their sweet ass time to finally siege the capital, but not before you traveling the country from west to east with some back and forth around the north and securing alliance with 4 different faction.

 

[Sweeper]

Also, i never bought the setting as a dark one.

What, you haven't seen the trailer?

It's totes dark and mature dude. Are you motherfucking ready for the new shit brahs?

 

[Harthwain]

Also, i never bought the setting as a dark one. It look like your typical copy paste fantasy setting, with some dark element slapped at the last minute, that shatter my suspension of belief.

I would understand saying "Dragon Age is discounted Warhammer Dark Fantasy", but to say it's not dark is a bit much:

• You have scheming, backstabbing Dwarves who are eager to kill each other and live in a caste-like, dystopian society. All this despite the fact that their supposed "empire" is in severe decline.
• Humans in Dragon Age will do anything for power, gold or whatever else they want. Human noble player will be betrayed by a friend, losing his mother, father and land in the process.
  
• City Elves will essentially be raped by human nobles (primae noctis) and are treated like second-class citizens/trash.
  
• Magic is super dangerous for casters, because it's linked to a demon dimension and there is also blood magic involved. It's so dangerous, in fact, that there is a special knightly order dedicated solely to keeping mages in check.
• The Darkspawn Horde is very similar to legions of Chaos attacking Empire/Kislev. You even get a scene at the end, where the father says goodbye to his wife and son to go fight the Darkspawns, only have his throat cut at the end of the cinematic, to underline to the player how hopeless and brutal this world is.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Is there a specific class that lets me blast through the hordes of trash mobs as fast as possible?

Uninstall.exe

 

[Sarathiour]

I would understand saying "Dragon Age is discounted Warhammer Dark Fantasy", but to say it's not dark is a bit much:

• You have scheming, backstabbing Dwarves who are eager to kill each other and live in a caste-like, dystopian society. All this despite the fact that their supposed "empire" is in severe decline.
• Humans in Dragon Age will do anything for power, gold or whatever else they want. Human noble player will be betrayed by a friend, losing his mother, father and land in the process.
  
• City Elves will essentially be raped by human nobles (primae noctis) and are treated like second-class citizens/trash.
  
• Magic is super dangerous for casters, because it's linked to a demon dimension and there is also blood magic involved. It's so dangerous, in fact, that there is a special knightly order dedicated solely to keeping mages in check.
• The Darkspawn Horde is very similar to legions of Chaos attacking Empire/Kislev. You even get a scene at the end, where the father says goodbye to his wife and son to go fight the Darkspawns, only have his throat cut at the end of the cinematic, to underline to the player how hopeless and brutal this world is.

I don't deny the dark element, but to me they feel "added". For example, i would like an explanation for why the fuck darkspawn blight is so fucking slow, other than narrative convenience. There are obvious element taken from the lotr movies aesthetic, but they feel "weird" compared to what they want the setting to be. Mage are described as a incredible danger, but most of the time townspeople and local nobility don't really mind you or you follower. It's like the game describe something, add something really gritty, and don't develop the idea until it's logical conclusion.
I would have to replay it to be more accurate with what was rubbing me the wrong way, and i'm not sure i really want to do that.

 

[Harthwain]

For example, i would like an explanation for why the fuck darkspawn blight is so fucking slow, other than narrative convenience.

Of course it's for narrative convenience. Some games won't dare to put limits or deadlines on players. Personally I think people would be more eager for them, if they were a more fleshed out mechanic than "time ran out, game over". Like, you are dying, but you can prolong your life by taking a medicine that's hard to come by. You are still on a timer, but you feel like you have some degree of control over it and that's what people prefer over arbitrary limits.

Mage are described as a incredible danger, but most of the time townspeople and local nobility don't really mind you or you follower. It's like the game describe something, add something really gritty, and don't develop the idea until it's logical conclusion.

Well...:

Take Dragon Age, for instance. Very early in DA:O you're told that mages need their mana potions and some get addicted to the stuff, become druggies and shit. You also uncover that even some Templars get hooked and become dirty cops, helping mages smuggle magical cocaine. Sure, great premise, I like it! Except...you can have as many mages in your party and mana management will never lead to addiction, legal troubles or anything of the sort. The narrative and the gameplay exist in different realities. That's the hallmark of a mediocre game. Same goes for blood magic: you can cast all BM buffs in front of templars, nothing is gonna happen, lol.

A lot of these mechanics were designed and then scrapped from final implementation. I think DAO's game logic has dead variables for lyrium addiction and the Mage Circle questline has a fully prepared cutscene where Wynne turns you in if you're a Blood Mage.


They decided that it was better to avoid punishing the player for gameplay decisions, a retarded and terrible idea. I think they also removed it because of lore changing and the Wardens having more Mages than this dialogue indicates, but that would've been just re-voicing 1 line. There's a mod that returns the cutscene in question: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/336

They were also originally going to implement darkspawn sickness (and I think disease in general) into the game, where your party members could sicken and even die and you would have to join them to the Grey Wardens. None of that shit got implemented. Just like the Dwarf Noble Orzammar questline and so much other shit. In the year after EA took over Bioware, a lot of finer details got casualized and dumbed down. Originally Intimidate and Persuasion were separate skills too, for instance. Not that this is strictly EA's fault. It's clear that Bioware did a lot of dumbing down and reductivist design of its own. They followed the "dream big -> trim it down to size" model, with many bad cuts in the process, that led to a considerably less coherent plot and narrative. Loghain's betrayal for instance became pointless villainy since they cut the subplot where it was revealed that Cailan was going to divorce Anora to marry Celene and basically end up merging Fereldan territory back into Orlais, and Loghain learned of this which is why Cailan had to die even if he had to throw the battle. The Dwarf Noble subplot was extremely obviously meant to be followed up on with a unique questline in Orzammar. The Dalish subplot also became ridiculous when Bioware decided to hand you the ideal solution on a silver platter instead of doing the "Dalish want you to kill Werewolves, Werewolves counter-offer with grievances and reasons to kill Dalish, and you find out a best solution if you try hard enough." The blood magic option to free Connor lost weight when getting the Circle involved became an obviously better option (originally if you tried to do that the demon would go to town while you were gone and everything would be ruined). There was a lot of chickening out in the direction of making things more convenient than was sensible.

So naturally we end up with this shit, like blood mage characters that never get called out for being blood mages, a party that never accumulates darkspawn corruption, lyrium potions that don't cause addiction, and so on. It wasn't that they never thought to do these things. They were planned, and then they were cut, in large part because they didn't want to make things inconvenient on the player. And the result is precisely this load of ridiculousness about the narrative not holding up through the gameplay and everything being dumber for it. If Baldur's Gate II had been designed like this, the Cowled Wizards' prohibition would not have been applied to the player character at all and people would be mysteriously blind to the fact that you are a spellcaster, much like how in DA2 the Templars never seem to take note that Hawke is an apostate mage (especially if he's a Blood Mage at that), despite how ridiculously stupid that makes everything.

 

[Q]

Maybe DA:O is better than sequels. But it was still banal-shit-boring when I played it.
I finished it once. Tried some other races only to realise it changes nothing.
Couldn't even finish Awakening DLC, so bioware-boring it was.

 

[howlingFantods]

I like how your signature seems to answer this thread's question

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

DA:O is #43 on the RPG Codex's top 101 RPGs of all time.

Just behind such classics as World of Xeen or Temple of Elemental Evil.

How interesting.

 

[Zarniwoop]

, as did the bioware formula.

Get the fuck out of here

The Bioware formula was already extremely obvious in KOTOR and the first Mass Effect. (I never played Jade Empire because I'm not a weeaboo fag)

Discover Evil Plan, go 4 places and get 4 things to reveal new location, sex some crew members along the way. Then some crew abandon you, others help you kill Big Evil Boss. Unless you decide to join or become Big Evil Boss.

And the romance faggotry started in BG2 already.

 

[Cael]

edit: itemization was.. ok I think?

Best staff in the game can be bought for 6 gold at the start of the game. Good times.

Wait... what???

 

[Cael]

Enemies spawn out of thin air and in waves,

That was DA2, not DAO.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Enemies spawn out of thin air and in waves,

That was DA2, not DAO.

I faintly recall that it happens in DAO too in places like the Deep Roads. Not sure either way though.

 

[Cael]

For example, i would like an explanation for why the fuck darkspawn blight is so fucking slow, other than narrative convenience.

Of course it's for narrative convenience. Some games won't dare to put limits or deadlines on players. Personally I think people would be more eager for them, if they were a more fleshed out mechanic than "time ran out, game over". Like, you are dying, but you can prolong your life by taking a medicine that's hard to come by. You are still on a timer, but you feel like you have some degree of control over it and that's what people prefer over arbitrary limits.

Mage are described as a incredible danger, but most of the time townspeople and local nobility don't really mind you or you follower. It's like the game describe something, add something really gritty, and don't develop the idea until it's logical conclusion.

Well...:

Take Dragon Age, for instance. Very early in DA:O you're told that mages need their mana potions and some get addicted to the stuff, become druggies and shit. You also uncover that even some Templars get hooked and become dirty cops, helping mages smuggle magical cocaine. Sure, great premise, I like it! Except...you can have as many mages in your party and mana management will never lead to addiction, legal troubles or anything of the sort. The narrative and the gameplay exist in different realities. That's the hallmark of a mediocre game. Same goes for blood magic: you can cast all BM buffs in front of templars, nothing is gonna happen, lol.

A lot of these mechanics were designed and then scrapped from final implementation. I think DAO's game logic has dead variables for lyrium addiction and the Mage Circle questline has a fully prepared cutscene where Wynne turns you in if you're a Blood Mage.


They decided that it was better to avoid punishing the player for gameplay decisions, a retarded and terrible idea. I think they also removed it because of lore changing and the Wardens having more Mages than this dialogue indicates, but that would've been just re-voicing 1 line. There's a mod that returns the cutscene in question: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/336

They were also originally going to implement darkspawn sickness (and I think disease in general) into the game, where your party members could sicken and even die and you would have to join them to the Grey Wardens. None of that shit got implemented. Just like the Dwarf Noble Orzammar questline and so much other shit. In the year after EA took over Bioware, a lot of finer details got casualized and dumbed down. Originally Intimidate and Persuasion were separate skills too, for instance. Not that this is strictly EA's fault. It's clear that Bioware did a lot of dumbing down and reductivist design of its own. They followed the "dream big -> trim it down to size" model, with many bad cuts in the process, that led to a considerably less coherent plot and narrative. Loghain's betrayal for instance became pointless villainy since they cut the subplot where it was revealed that Cailan was going to divorce Anora to marry Celene and basically end up merging Fereldan territory back into Orlais, and Loghain learned of this which is why Cailan had to die even if he had to throw the battle. The Dwarf Noble subplot was extremely obviously meant to be followed up on with a unique questline in Orzammar. The Dalish subplot also became ridiculous when Bioware decided to hand you the ideal solution on a silver platter instead of doing the "Dalish want you to kill Werewolves, Werewolves counter-offer with grievances and reasons to kill Dalish, and you find out a best solution if you try hard enough." The blood magic option to free Connor lost weight when getting the Circle involved became an obviously better option (originally if you tried to do that the demon would go to town while you were gone and everything would be ruined). There was a lot of chickening out in the direction of making things more convenient than was sensible.

So naturally we end up with this shit, like blood mage characters that never get called out for being blood mages, a party that never accumulates darkspawn corruption, lyrium potions that don't cause addiction, and so on. It wasn't that they never thought to do these things. They were planned, and then they were cut, in large part because they didn't want to make things inconvenient on the player. And the result is precisely this load of ridiculousness about the narrative not holding up through the gameplay and everything being dumber for it. If Baldur's Gate II had been designed like this, the Cowled Wizards' prohibition would not have been applied to the player character at all and people would be mysteriously blind to the fact that you are a spellcaster, much like how in DA2 the Templars never seem to take note that Hawke is an apostate mage (especially if he's a Blood Mage at that), despite how ridiculously stupid that makes everything.

Dare I even ask how they got the NWN2 succubus outfit into DAO???

 

[Nano]

Wait... what???

Final Reason. Even more hilarious is that you can buy the staff twice due to an oversight.

 

[Cael]

Wait... what???

Final Reason. Even more hilarious is that you can buy the staff twice due to an oversight.

Oh, that one. I forgot about that one. I always use another staff, the one from the Soldier's Peak DLC.

Spoiler

Then I switch to swords because Arcane Warrior...