BioWare Rocks

[Saxman]

Yeah, I'm thinking of giving Morrigan a heal spell on her next level up. It'd be much easier to give her that capability than it would to build up Wynne to the same level of ass-kickery Morrigan has from the start. Although Morrigan's Herbalism skill helps make up for things by churning out a ton of healing potions (I'm glad I picked up the dwarf merchant in Lothering, love the unlimited potion crafting supplies).

Landscape POIs, you mean the "Landmark" items which apparently serve no useful purpose? Damn, would suck having to track all those things down again just so the dog can take a wee....

Interesting about Zevran, I may have to do that just to see what happens.... Alistair was pissed I let him sign on in the first place. I was thinking of taking him along next time I go to Denerim to see what happens on the Antivan Crows meeting I got invited to.

My biggest problem with Sten is that he's single-minded about fighting the Blight to the point of absolute absurdity, as any side-quest you accept drops his disapproval. It took a HUGE hit when I agreed to help Redcliffe fight off the undead armies attacking them, even though I reasoned with him that we needed Redcliffe if we were going to beat back the Blight. One would think that a warrior and experienced soldier would know you can't fight an army on your own. The fact that he NEVER has something to say in camp makes it even harder to get his approval back up. Even Morrigan is easy to keep a high approval with if you're playing your character as a total Boy Scout by giving her something shiny every now and then (actually, she may be my favorite party member. She's certainly the most interesting--and I don't just mean her wardrobe ).

I haven't recruited Oghren yet, but I already know it'll be tough keeping him out of the party. Every RPG needs a drunken, surly dwarf (Khelgar Ironfist was my favorite NWN2 party member. I was really bummed he wasn't in Mask of the Betrayer).

[Fishu]

Sten is a communist bastard. If he would only keep his mouth shut and keep opinions to himself like a good commie. A true commie soldier should not question the orders of his superiors.

[Ack-Ack]

Sten is a communist bastard. If he would only keep his mouth shut and keep opinions to himself like a good commie. A true commie soldier should not question the orders of his superiors.

My next play through I'm going to leave him in the cage for the Darkspawn to feast on.  I just need to figure out which race and class I want to do next, was thinking trying the city elfs since my first play through was the Dalish origin story line.

ack-ack

[Delirium]

By far, my favorite is a blood mage with low willpower and high constitution. So instead of being an 'eggshell with a hammer', he can take tons of damage and still be able to dish out the spells. In addition, he has the 2 items in the game that lower the cost of blood magic so I do much better than a normal caster would (last I saw it was 20% the cost for casting spells with him compared to another mage). Not to mention, he has the spell that converts dead enemies into life so he is basically the energizer bunny.

Frankly, the rogue and the warrior bored me to tears, I actually dropped my rogue halfway through playing the first time around because I was having more fun playing the NPC mages like Morrigan.

[Ack-Ack]

First chance I got, I made Morrigan an Arcane Warrior, which is probably the most powerful class in the game.  With the tactics feature, she really kicks bellybutton in either range or melee combat.  It's cool to see her charge into a hord of darkspawn and shape shift into a Swarm or Bear and just go to town on them and then shape shift back and finish them off with her Spellsword.


ack-ack

[Saxman]

The character I play tends to vary along certain lines:

When I play a male character as a warrior he usually ends up pretty high STR, with a secondary focus roughly split on DEX and CON. My male characters are usually the tanks: swords and shields, and heavy armor. Whenever I roll a female character as a warrior I always end up giving her only just enough STR for the gear I want her to use--typically a longsword and light-to-medium armor--and sink the rest of her attributes into DEX (the core game here irritates me, tho, because they go from mislabeled arming swords right to big massive zweihanders--which btw STILL wouldn't be as slow and unwieldy as the game makes them--with nothing in between). For whatever reason, I LOVE the concept of the ridiculously agile female warrior in RPGs. My female Planetouched (Asimiir) Weaponmaster in NWN2 ended the game with such INCREDIBLY high DEX that she almost never missed an attack, and her Parry skill was so high I could just turn it on and cruise through the really hard boss fights without taking a hit.

Not much variation between male and female when I play a Rogue. I generally split even focus on ranged (typically bow and arrow) and melee (once again, I prefer a proper 2H longsword) regardless of whether I play as male or female. It usually ends up on the front line firing with the bow and arrow until the enemy closes. I've had some characters (Baldur's Gate, especially) that had such high proficiency that he could 1-hit kill enemy after enemy, and take down 3-4 before they could even close to melee range (worked REALLY well teamed up with Imoen in Baldur's Gate, especially late in the game once a lot of high-level gear became available).

I rarely play a mage. Often the early phases of these game are STUPIDLY hard if you're a mage, because you've got maybe got one or two companions and get swarmed by five guys in heavy armor. I was also turned off by the D&D magic rules (thank GOD DAO jettisoned those!) and the way mages are largely hamstrung when it comes to their equipment. I really would want to play a TRUE multi-class like was possible in the Quest for Glory series (I miss QFG!).

[Delirium]

I rarely play a mage. Often the early phases of these game are STUPIDLY hard if you're a mage, because you've got maybe got one or two companions and get swarmed by five guys in heavy armor.

It is even harder than normal when you have no energy to cast your spells until level 9 as a blood mage. It takes strict crowd control spells like sleep, cone of cold, and walking explosion. The complete repetition of playing a sword wielding character is nauseating.

[Saurdaukar]

WTFH are you smoking?

Is the DAO engine not based off of the Unreal engine?

It was originally designed in 1998 for the title of the same name in 1998.

Have you played anyother Bio-Ware RPG games?  If you had, then you would have known that the games are very linear and aren't wide open world explorations.  The only areas that are really open to exploration are the 'dungeons' but the world map has always been very linear in all Bio-Ware games.  As for the engine, this game has been in development for around 5 years now and the engine isn't all that new and the final version of the engine is around 2 years old but it still looks good and gets the job done.  There is also nothing about the game that is limited by the capabilities of the consoles, what parts do you think are limited?


ack-ack

Admittedly, I have not played another Bioware game.  Perhaps thats my problem.

Being unfamiliar with their previous products, my first impressions, regarding the port feel, were that the map had to be limited to accomodate the limited capabilities of the consoles and that an aged graphic engine (no matter how "updated") had to be used for the same reason.  While the map issue may be more their design style, I see no reason why a PC-only game would have opted for such a lackluster graphics engine.

You are high as a kite, free roaming as nothing to do with consoles. On the Xbox department, Fall Out 3, Test Drive Unlimited & Mercenary 2 are excellent examples of free roaming.

Ive not played two out of those three, but I did play Oblivian and, honestly, I hated the game.  Could never understand why people were so smitten with it.  Felt the same about Fallout 3.

Regardless, would not the memory and processing limitations of the Xbox 360 and the PS3, in comparison to an even mediocre PC rig, neccessitate the "watering down" of titles to make them compatible with both platforms?  

Seems only a question of mathematics to me.

[Saxman]

Great draw to this game is going to be its mod-ability once the community really gets rolling and figures things out ( there's no mesh exporters yet since the community needs to make their own due to some licensing issues). Still, there's some impressive stuff possible with the existing tools. Someone has already modded Morrigan's face so it's less blocky and more in-line with the generally more-preferred concept art:



And yes, he DOES have a version that retains her creepy golden eyes.

Another modder managed to extract Duncan's armor and make it equippable by the players as well.

[Ack-Ack]

Is the DAO engine not based off of the Unreal engine?

It was originally designed in 1998 for the title of the same name in 1998.

No, it uses an in-house engine called "Eclipse".

ack-ack

[Saurdaukar]

No, it uses an in-house engine called "Eclipse".

ack-ack

It is my understanding that the Eclipse engine is, in fact, a modified Unreal engine.

Let me search for an article...

[Ack-Ack]

It is my understanding that the Eclipse engine is, in fact, a modified Unreal engine.

Let me search for an article...

The Eclipse engine is based on the Odyssey Engine (used in Knight of the Old Republic I and II) which was based on the Aurora Engine used in Neverwinter Nights.  Each engine was developed in house by Bio-Ware and licensed out to other studios. 


ack-ack

[trigger2]

Not trying to diss the game, so don't think that's my intention, as I've put well over 20 hours into it already. xD

But, it seems a helluva lot like Oblivion to me, and the control set-up I found rather... weird (whole left click/right click thing, auto-"combat mode"), but it's a fantastic game, especially after getting used to the controls. All in all, great game, another one BioWare has hit the mark on.

In all honesty, IMO, BioWare and Bethesda are the 2 best single player game makers... ever.

[RightF00T]

Couldn't you just play Lord of The Rings and be over with it? 

[Saxman]

I still wish there was another 1-2 party slots. It's absurdly frustrating to be constantly outnumbered 3 or even 4 to 1. If I wanted those odds I'd go play in Furball Lake....

On the other hand, they DID at least get rid of the more infuriating D&D rules from the Forgotten Realms game series (Baldur's Gate, NWN, etc.)