Gen-con Dragon Age vid

[Mirage]

http://yellow-menace.com/2008/08/dragon-age-origins-20-min-gameplay-video-from-gen-con-indy-2008/

Enjoy...

 

[Lucid]

Sweet Jesus.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Looks wicked. Can't really tell much of the graphics from that, but the animations look smooooooth.

 

[VictimOfScience]

Jeebus I can't wait for this game. Updating the rig just for it!!

 

[Lucid]

You don't really see much gameplay until the last 10 mins or so, but the cutscenes are phenomenal.

 

[Laivasse]

Finally a Dragon Age presentation that shows us some of the real meat of the game... It does look like it's going to be pretty enjoyable but things about it are still niggling at me.

First off, the facial animations look pretty stiff and although it might have been the fault of the video frame rate the lipsync seems to go in and out of phase a lot. I hate to keep harking back to this but why does HL2 still have better facial technology than most 'cutting edge' games even after 4 years??

Some of the voice acting seems to be quite middle-of-the-road in terms of quality, but then there's also evidence of some genuinely good performances too, so hopefully those will make the duff performances easy to forget.

The dialogue tree at the start was quite disappointing. You have the hackneyed spread of things to say - good guy/medium guy/murderous arsehole - and considering the game's tepid (lack of) reaction to the player's arbitrary execution of a prisoner, we're led to surmise that all of those dialogue choices pretty much lead to the same outcome. Sure, the guy giving the presentation says that it could have consequences further down the line, but I just hope that it's not along the lines of something like: 'I REMEMBER YOU! You're the one who killed Gibbet Jimmy in cold blood! So I will now only give you 3 healing potions and not 5.'

Then there was something that really has me worried about the battle system:

'NPCs who are greyed out are not dead, they are just wounded to the point of being unable to assist. They return when the battle ends, but will be less effective until you heal them.'

EH??? Talk about handholding....! Where's the disincentive to just tanking it out with a single character every time? With the guy saying that you can just ignore the control of all the other players, it's sounding worryingly like there is no such disincentive. With all this talk of being the 'spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate' they aren't half changing a hell of a lot of the game dynamics; I can't help feeling I'm going to be giving a lot less of a shit about my NPCs in battle than I ever used to. I don't often use the term 'dumbing down' but man... I dunno what the hell else to call this.

Aside from that, there's also the minor issue of an immense amount of fantasy cliche being present. Battle at Helm's Deep much, not too much, or much too much? But with sophisticated fantasy settings being so thin on the ground these days, it's not like I'm too surprised or disappointed by this.

Anyway... Having said all that, this is still my most anticipated game for the forseeable future. It does still look pretty great, whether or not it looks as good as I wanted it to look is another matter...

 

[Mirage]

http://pc.ign.com/articles/900/900832p1.html

New preview.