Games you plan on shoplifting thread

Dragon Age - delayed... was March, now "second half of 2009".

I read the entire DA FAQ and there was a lot I liked. The most advanced facial generation software Bioware has used, which surprised me. Mass Effect's was incredible, far better than Fallout3. The developers of Fallout 3 were pleased my character's Dad would look like me, but I thought every son of a bitch looked like me. I swore every second bandit was my brother and I began to suspect a plot involving my geneticist father mass cloning - who would know. The writing was too attrocious to persist). Despite the new face gen software the DA facial screenshots look very ordinary, more like Fallout. Mass Effect used several nice graphical touches of blur and film grain which some (dipshits) complained about; but Dragon Age is probably unlikely to have. Some shots of the purple Tim Curry (an ogre apparently), look good... other times he looks pudgy and cute like a Troll doll. Forumer comments of those who watched some video interview complained a lot about a goofy oversized axe, a seemingly minor complaint coming from potentially annoying military buffs... but it came up a bit, with several accusing Bioware of silly WoW graphics, which had me worried given their "dark, gritty fantasy" has goofy oversized axes. Incidentally, on the topic of Aeon server direction a NWN GOLDEN AXE server is a red hot idea if I ever saw one. Barbarians, dwarves, and amazon chicks unleashing epic hellballs.

Bioware created their own combat mechanics ditching the crappy D&D... -good, dump that baggage. But it was still a collection of feats, etc. I just hope they can be easily modified and I can't see why they wouldn't given their experience with NWN and being free of 3rd party proprietary restrictions to keep the game pure D&D. Bioware seem pretty mod friendly. I'm really dying to re-do the combat mechanics in line with my mad vision of low level brutal combat and actual tactical ambushing. (I have a unique death system idea... so don't tell me dying's not fun. In my world it's living that's a drag.)

Not sure what the deal is with Classes, there is only 3. But then I think you get sub classes. They've boldly dumped priest which suggests Stanley Woo had been incensed after reading The God Delusion. Pretty weird to have no Healer class, and I've probably just overlooked something. But it worries me about the difficulty, as I read it they are still afraid of Death... your NPC colleagues just are 'injured' if they fall in a fight and get up after a battle. This happened in Mass Effect, and I don't loathe it... but I wouldn't let it in my car. It does make combat ridiculously easy. You just retreat and stand up. As long as you are not stupidly aggressive you can't fail to win. Unfortunately, stupidly aggressive is the only way to play games, a point I fear they may have overlooked (unless they come with sniper rifles and cannibalism in which case you play like Lee Harvey Oswald and Jeffrey Dahmer).

On Quests they've obviously matured with the sublime Mass Effect, so I really hope to see some quests with dilemmas. Those who have played Mass Effect will remember the game presenting you with some doozy decision making moments. Decisions with great repercussions, not just haggling over more bounty. I've long been against PCs been reduced to an NPCs stableboy and so fell in love when Mass Effect when your character was introduced as PLANETARY ASS KICKER from day one, and then escalated rapidly to GALACTIC SUPREME BEING. Zaphod Beeblebrox is my kind of hero, not Arthur Dent.

Well, 6-10 more months for Bioware to make a better game, which should really count since they were a month away from releasing it, they must have been nearly finished. Which means plenty of time to plan a mod... or screw around with NWN. Why the hell won't they release a Mass Effect toolset (Unreal 3 engine, perhaps?). I'm pretty sick of swords and shields and want my goddamn laser rifle.

Designed as only SP but there is comments suggesting that this may be the first of many games in this world/engine and so there might be some sort of MP follow-up.

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Ugh... I thought I was over giant spiders in fantasy games. But that's pretty revolting... nice work.


I found some DA movie from Gamespot, forget the link, had a lengthy demo of whacking darkspawn in a pretty forgetable display of the gameplay. I'm always on the lookout for clues about the writing, here's what I copied from the movie.

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Alistair: Maker's breath! What are these darkspawn doing ahead of the rest of the horde? There weren't supposed to be any resistance here!

1: Weren't you complaining that you wouldn't get to fight?
2: There's no point moaning about it. We have fighting to do!
3: You can try telling them they're in the wrong place.

Alistair: Good point. I need to stay focused. Kill first, ask questions later.
Alistair: At any rate, we need to hurry! We need to get up to the top of the tower and light the signal fire in time! Teyrn Loghain will be waiting for the signal!

So there you go. Some stealin' from JRR Tolkien and a guy actually says "I need to stay focused!" and "Kill first, ask questions later!" in the same line.

Also, from another source, the head of the werewolf clan is called Witherfang.

Bummer.

Not to be a negative nelly and tear down someone else's work, I'll offer up an alternative suggestion.

I'd name my head of my werewolf clan Clive.

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Nice architecture from elven NASA

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Hell yeah.

I thought you'd like the flaming oil Baron .

Had a look at the movies a few months back when they first came out and looked nice. Will still have to wait and see when it gets closer.

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2.06: Will there be any weapon proficiency limitations across classes? (Back to Top)

Characters can use most weapons in Dragon Age Origins, however, there are some restrictions. Only mages can use staves, and most weapons require a minimum strength or dexterity to use. How you build your characters stats will directly affect what kind of equipment they will be able to equip. Do keep in mind that there is a difference between being able to use a weapon, and being able to use the weapon well. Some character classes will be able to receive training to use certain weapons better than people who are untrained.

Gah, I hope it's not like diablo/dungeon siege where every single sword has a min str requirement. "oh look, my str is 41 now, I can use that identical appearing sword thet does 1 extra dam per hit"

Never understood NWNs proficiency system.

Anyone can pick up and swing a scythe, not everyone will still have thier toes afterwards.

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You will not be able to randomly kill anyone you want in Dragon Age Origins, as this does not make sense to the world around you. Rest assured, however, that there will be a lot of both enemies and victims out there. How you deal with them is up to you.

WOE!

I wouldn't worry too much about the weapons/proficiencies it seems like Bioware understood a lot of the things that made D&D a stupid bloated system. As you say, there is no logical reason that a lv1 priest can't launch himself at an ogre with a scythe. There are specialisation mastery feats and/or levels to gain if he wants to claim some kind of proficiency with it.

I much prefer a world where any sharpened metal head attached to a hickory haft will be able to do a person a great deal of harm. I mean, someone invented ALL of these medieval weapons to kill someone, so why don't they? Has the light hammer ever killed anyone across 1,237 persistant servers? I would be surprised. If you have weapon degradation, or the harsh save-to-break on a '1', then it's a fun made scrappish combat retreating from the melee, grabbing clubs off the dead, and killing your enemy with any tool you can. I like combat messy and about killing in interesting ways. I never liked D&Ds focus on obtaining a single powerful weapon, mastering only that, and the focus being on statistical maximisation of your damage roll. Let a nearly retired Lord sit at home maintaining his beloved magical blade. But let real dwarf combat be scrappy, chaotic, and unfair. Make weapons plenty and disposable, don't make them to be hoarded and worshipped. If they can all kill a man why will people pour over the stats looking to algebraically determine their maximum combat effectiveness. That's year 9 maths not D&D.

I just remembered my inspiration... Unreal Tournament. God damn, that was one of my all time greats. Every weapon was lethal in the close encounter fights of UT, although they certainly involved different strategies. You'd kill, run out of ammo, kill with a pistol (you actually could), and grab your victim's weapon. Flawless fighting fun.

Regarding weapon weights, I don't see Bioware using the Diablo system. Fingers crossed it's just 'You need 16 STR to weild a great axe' or '14 STR for a mithral great axe'.

I don't have a problem not killing everyone in a game. I have a friend who won't look at Mass Effect because it lacks that complete Fallout/GTA freedom. The chars in Mass Effect raise their weapons if an NPC wanders into their line of sight, which looks pretty good and I never found myself short of people to fill with holes or bash against the walls in psychic fury. I have too many other features I beg to be in the game for it to be a gamestopper... things like an original story, a plot twist, no Minsc or Deekin NPCs.

Well this appeared to be a thread for multiple games by it's title not just DA, as such I'm going to post here.

For those who haven't seen the trailer for Mechwarrior Reboot yet, I'd recommend taking a look. It appears that the game will be set before the first Mechwarrior game and is a complete restart of the series so we should be expecting even more to come from it if it turns out good. It appears to be comming out in 2010 (edited correction there is currently no set release date) which is also nice news to see that it's fairly close at hand yet still got enough time to polish it off even more (The trailor looked friggen awesome).



Then there is also Mechwarrior living legends a Crysis mod being created as well. The mod is suppose to be released sometime this year to the public which means we end up with two nice shiny Mechwarrior games in a period of two years, personally I can't wait I loved the look of the trailers for both of them. Anyhow I'll let you guys decide on if you like the look of them or not.

Never played any of mechwarrior c=games, even though they interest me, jsut never got round to gettign any. These look awesome and certainly motivate saving up for a new PC lol ...

Where did you hear that Mechwarrior is coming out in 2010? That sounds a little suspicious, because its only been in development since October last year, and they havent yet signed with a publisher for it afaik...

Im very much looking forward to it, though. I loved me some Mechwarrior 2, and Ive been looking for my copy for the last week since I saw the teaser because it reminds me so much of the MW2 intro movie.


Btw, IGN has an interview with two of the key guys involved that was an interesting read.

Opps my bad I seen some reviews comment on when he was hopping the release to be. Added a note in the original post about it and thanks for pointing it out to me Caff even though it has spoiled my day I'm happy knowing I was be pissed if 2011 comes and it still ain't out.

Still I'm going to be looking for to both of them until the day they're relased, I'll likely preorder Mechwarrior reboot.