Dragon Age

[Chrome]

Personally I think it would have been as hard as hell to shoot anything wearing those big helmets. I mean you've got no peripheral vision and those things don't exactly look like they're very form fitting. I'd imagine they'd bounce around a lot while you were running or ducking behind cover. Just look at how easily Luke took his off when he introduced himself to Leia. Proper-fitting, full-formed head gear like football helmets or hockey masks require two hands to remove and even then always involve a series of straps and snaps to ensure a tight fit.

 

Stormtroopers are more like bobble-heads trying to aim through those two little eye holes.

 

Plus the tinted the damn lenses too! It was bad enough that the Empire seemed to be intent on cutting down on the power bill by not properly lighting the Death Star's hallways, but then they expect their soldiers to be able to see stuff wearing sunglasses???

 

I STILL say that magic should be dangerous, difficult, and spectacular in equal degrees.

And the magic in that preview was spectacular. We have no idea how difficult it was to learn, simply because the caster makes it look easy the way Tony Hawk makes a quadruple Kickie Ollie faceplant or whatever look easy. Or the way you make sculpting orcs look easy. Practice, skill, and confidence = it looks easy, no matter hard it really is to do.

Actually the faceplant bit is pretty easy. I did plenty of them in my early teens.

 

A little background on the game world, since what Bryan said is pretty spot on. In DA's world magic is extremely dangerous. There is basically another plane (kinda like the astral plane in Shadowrun) that can only be accessed through magic, and its in this plane that the games really big, really bad, baddies come from. The problem is that magic users always co-exist on both planes and they draw these demons to themselves like bugs to a lamp. Worse yet, the demons can actually overcome the magic user and either possess their body, or if strong enough, sometimes break thru to our plane totally. So, at the first sign of even the smallest bit of magical ability, a person is taken into "protective custody" by this group that kinda resembles Warlord's Crusaders. They spend day and night training the person how to mentally fend off the demons to keep themselves from being possessed. All the while surrounded by a cadre of body guards who sole purpose is to cut the mage down at the first sign of demon possession.

 

That's a pretty hard-core take on magic if you ask me. In DA's game world, for most people being a mage would be a curse, not a blessing.

 

So anyways, by the time a mage has become proficient enough to leave the "church" and travel on their own, they are most definitely highly trained and practiced. They've also undergone years of physical training so that they're capable of spell casting during close quarters melees and defending themselves at times when their magical abilities are limited or expended. (All characters start the game with a skilled called Tactics I or something like that. For fighters and rogues it allows them to fight better, for mages it allows them to avoid attacks and cast spells during melee.)

 

Back to Bryan's comment, Morrigan, the chick that turns into a giant spider, she's the daughter of the Witch of the Wilds, an outlaw who lives outside of the control of the templars. Her mother raised her deep in the wilderness and trained her in ways that the templars never would. She's pretty much the prodigy offspring of the greatest witch that ever lived.

[Chrome]

In the vid, she seems to cast spells without a second's preparation or even concetration for anything other than dramatic effect. When she transforms into the spider thing she does it whilst in some wierd ( and yet again gravity defying, but I suppose if one of them has a ring of super duper acrobatics they certainly all could ) handspring!

Sure, if we were dealing with a D&D world she'd have had to make all kinds of silly hand gestures, recite some arcane phrase, and sacrifice a goat in order to cast a fireball. But that's D&D, and in D&D anyone who wants to can learn magic, all it takes is a moderate IQ, the proper studying materials, and some hard work.

 

Honestly I'm not really even sure how you could call it "magic" if everyone can do it. I mean planes fly, we all know the basics of how they fly, but only a rare few people study hard enough and long enough to become aerospace engineers or pilots. But we don't call them magicians.

 

In DA's world, magic seems to be something that someone is either born with or doesn't have at all. Its DNA, not knowledge. And yes, while knowledge, practice and experience can always make someone better at something, some people are just gifted in ways that place them head and shoulders above everyone else.

[Reaperbryan]

Most movies these days have so many fast cuts that for all I know they reload after every shot, but the camera was on the bullet not the gun...

 

That is a trifle weak me thinks.

Bah. Saying "if it didn't happen on screen it didn't happen" also means that those same action heroes that never reload never sleep, eat, or poo.

 

I think the issue is where you said if you have think about it you won't believe/suspend disbelief, and the stuff in that show isn't obvious - it's exciting, fantastic, and cinematic. Some of it is game detail we don't possess (but Chrome does, lol!) and some of it entails taking the leap into the realm of "in order for me to accept that leap, I must accept a) years of training and/or b)magical aid that is not apparent".

 

Verisimilitude (often confused with "realism", but not technically the same thing) requires only that the world be internally consistent with its rules. If Archer can leap like an olympic gymnast and fight like a mother-in-law, then other people should be able to do those things,to the degree that they share that skillset and magical aid. If Spider-girl can explode an orc without working hard, then I expect an Orc sorceror of the same skill level (again, through years of training etc.) should be able to make spider-girl go a-splodey too.

 

If these internally consistent rules differ from our own world, hey, it's fantasy. Now if the rules are inconsistent - if some people can push armies off mountians and other people of the same strength cannot, or what have you, the I also take issue.

 

As for stormtroopers, again, it would have been a 3 minute movie if they'd been good shots. That's the #1 drawback of guns in cinema - a hit is lethal, and you therefore must miss characters you *need* for story reasons, which makes you wonder why people fear storm troopers - they never hit anybody....

[SIGIL]

The explanation of magic DOES go a long way to ease my suspension of disbelief. Most of the time when I see something that is basically just a fresh lick of paint on traditional fantasy I instantly judeg it by teh standards of the genre. which i sprobably unfair, but it is what I do.

 

Bah. Saying "if it didn't happen on screen it didn't happen" also means that those same action heroes that never reload never sleep, eat, or poo.

 

While not quite what I was saying I do take your point.

 

Now if the rules are inconsistent

 

Kind of where I was going but not quite. I just have a difficult time accepting supremely powerful magic without some much larger controlling force or an equally potent counter reaction. Dark Sun is a prime example of a great explanation for both the power of magic and a justification of it's existence, persistence and effect on the world. For me magic without consequence eual to power is like a gun that never runs out of bullets, and never misses.

 

 

I am most entertained by figures with whom I have some ability to indentify. Yes I will never hurl a fireball but I can identify better with a wizard who can do so because of some dark pact of eventual self destruction, or incredible mental accuity to some inherent, deeply latent natural ability.

[Reaperbryan]

I think we're at least at an understanding, then, Tre.

 

I just like my fantasy to be... fantastic. I'm not so into dark fantasy.

 

Then again, you've listened to my podcast, so my DM philosophy is out there, and you've heard at least some of my style.

[haldir]

I hope we can at least agree to this:

 

Maxim Girls of Dragon Age

 

So I was gonna preorder the game at GS the other day. I was in a bit of a shock to see how small the PC section has shrunk up there. I mean I hate buying PC games at Walmart now, thanks to behind the glass sale approach they use (I can't look without the resident techno-geek's help, then no sale for you!!). As really in-town WM & GS are about the only places local that sell PC games.

 

So I didn't bother. That & I also realized I had the Pathfinder Bestiary coming from Amazon at the first of the month (or whenever Amz releases it) so I figured I better not stretch my cash to far so early in the month.

[haldir]

Something to tide DA waiters/players till the Nov 3 release

 

Dragon Age Journeys browser flash game

[Chrome]

Now if the rules are inconsistent - if some people can push armies off mountians and other people of the same strength cannot, or what have you, the I also take issue.

I'm pretty sure that the whole push the guys off the cliff deal was just for the movie and not a game mechanic. However, Ogres can pick up player characters (in-game) in one hand and squeeze the life out of them. The character will either need to make a type of saving roll to escape or the rest of your party will have to hurt it badly enough to make it drop the character. I thought that was a pretty ingenious use of something that should be a fairly normal mechanic in fantasy gaming.

 

Over the last couple of years or so worth of press releases, as EA was building hype for the game, they showed/talked about the ogre a lot, kinda displaying him as the game's biggest baddie. If you want to see what one looks like, there's one at the 2:42 mark of the video. Its the big, horned moster that you see running in the middle of the screen. Then it promptly gets stomped flat by the dragon at 2:45.

 

I seriously laughed out loud the first time I saw that! EA is publishing the game, so it's their marketing department who's giving out all the pictures of ogres, and I kinda took it as a little back-handed reminder from the developers at Bioware to EA that ogres aren't the most dangerous monsters in their game.

[Chrome]

Something to tide DA waiters/players till the Nov 3 release

 

Dragon Age Journeys browser flash game

Sweet, it finally went live! It wasn't up yet when I last checked on Wed.

 

If any of you have played Monster's Den before, this game was designed by the same guy. It sounds like EA hired him specifically to design this game.

[Chrome]

I took a little time to try DA Journeys over lunch. For a flash game its pretty decent. Its hex-based combat, so any of you who enjoy Warlord should dig this. It kinda gives a look into how attributes and skills might work in regular DA too, although in one of the blogs about Journeys they mentioned that they changed combat a little to fit the turn-based format.

 

The cool thing tho is that you can do things in DAJ that will give you a code to unlock equipment in Dragon Age. One is pretty simple; all you have to do is complete a 3 part survey from EA and you get a ring (iirc) that gives +5% damage reduction against five different types of attacks.

 

The second item is another ring with the exact same attributes (again iirc) but seems to be for mages only. Maybe the first ring has a class restriction too? You get this one simply by completing part of the quest in the DAJ's 2nd chapter.

 

The final freebie is a helmet that provides 3 bonuses to its wearer. To do that one you have to unlock all 5 Achievements that DAJ has. The first unlock is simply finishing DAJ's first chapter, which was really easy and only took 20 minutes, and that includes the time I spent making my character. The other unlocks sound a little harder: killing 2 monsters with 1 attack, killing an Ogre w/out anyone in your group taking damage (you start solo, but end up w/3 party members), and something else I can't remember. The final unlock is to complete the campaign playing as each of the 3 races, so that's more a matter of time engaging than challenging.

 

PS - I just went to do the survey, and its actually about the Journeys game itself. The 3 parts unlock after you finish chapters 2, 3, and 4, so you actually have to play the game to get the free item (only fitting I guess).

[Sinden]

I was really excited in till i saw it was only a single player game. :/

Dont really want a MMO but be able to play with friends is a big plus for me.

 

-Sin

[Vil-hatarn]

I took a little time to try DA Journeys over lunch. For a flash game its pretty decent. Its hex-based combat, so any of you who enjoy Warlord should dig this. It kinda gives a look into how attributes and skills might work in regular DA too, although in one of the blogs about Journeys they mentioned that they changed combat a little to fit the turn-based format.

 

The cool thing tho is that you can do things in DAJ that will give you a code to unlock equipment in Dragon Age. One is pretty simple; all you have to do is complete a 3 part survey from EA and you get a ring (iirc) that gives +5% damage reduction against five different types of attacks.

 

The second item is another ring with the exact same attributes (again iirc) but seems to be for mages only. Maybe the first ring has a class restriction too? You get this one simply by completing part of the quest in the DAJ's 2nd chapter.

 

The final freebie is a helmet that provides 3 bonuses to its wearer. To do that one you have to unlock all 5 Achievements that DAJ has. The first unlock is simply finishing DAJ's first chapter, which was really easy and only took 20 minutes, and that includes the time I spent making my character. The other unlocks sound a little harder: killing 2 monsters with 1 attack, killing an Ogre w/out anyone in your group taking damage (you start solo, but end up w/3 party members), and something else I can't remember. The final unlock is to complete the campaign playing as each of the 3 races, so that's more a matter of time engaging than challenging.

 

PS - I just went to do the survey, and its actually about the Journeys game itself. The 3 parts unlock after you finish chapters 2, 3, and 4, so you actually have to play the game to get the free item (only fitting I guess).

 

The difference in the two items is that one gives 5% resistances, and the other gives 5% bonuses (assumably to elemental damage spells). Looks pretty similar though

 

I've been sick this weekend, so I unlocked all three items...interestingly enough, a double-mage party seemed to be the most effective (give them both heal and mind blast--hardly anything can touch you).

[SIGIL]

I MUST say this..... WORST DWARF DESIGN IN FANTASY!!! WORST I have EVER seen! Dear God what the hell were they thinking?

 

" Hmmm, arteests, we need a Dwarven Bad butt. "

 

" Dwarven bad butt? "

 

" That is what I said. Yes. Dwarven bad butt. '

 

" Dwarf "

 

" If you ask me again I swear to God I will tear off your arms and beat you to death with them. "

 

 

".............. "

 

" But let's make them different! "

 

" Dwarven bad butt?

 

" What did I just say!! YES!! A Stunty little bastard with red hair and bad attitude!........................ But not! "

 

" Ok............."

 

Art director gets out of ear shot

 

" jerk. "

 

End result this guy........................

 

 

 

I mean really.... I find myself wondering if this guy lost a bet.

[haldir]

just seen on Facebook the tv clips for the game. 30 & 15 sec clips, more or less the intro movie just cut up.

[yani]

Heh, I like how they threw some of the "Tolkien" archetypes typical in fantasies nowadays into a blender with history.

Dwarves that are political? Interesting.

Elves that were slaves? I kinda like it.

Humans cause a lot of the hurt and suffering? Eh.. that's the stereotype rearing its' head.