Dragon Age: Origins

[Terbinator]

I seen the point and click game-play and the apparent regression in production values to Mass Effect and turned it off.

[kalniel]

I seen the point and click game-play

Do you mean that you interact with the game with just the keyboard and mouse, as opposed to something else?? DA:O has the same kind of gameplay/control interaction as classics like baldurs gate - there are very few RPGs that do different.

and the apparent regression in production values to Mass Effect and turned it off.

Again I'm not sure what you mean by regression? DA:O's production values are better than any other western RPG that I can think of. They might not be up to the likes of some jRPGs yet, but that's the trade off you get for scope. Maybe my memories going though - what western RPGs have got better production values?

[Gerrard]

A few tips that I picked up along the way that may already have been mentioned: -

Specialisation are stored for all characters in a separate file from your save games (it's actually your profile). This means that you can save, buy a specialisation book, learn it and reload the game to basically get it for free. Can also do a similiar thing for achievements if you really wanted to.

Do the Circle of Mages part first (out of the four parts). Not only do you get a healing mage, but you also can gain some nice permanent stats increases as well. I actually decided to blitz the forest part first to get the Arcane Warrior spec and then reloaded the game to carry on "properly" from the Mage's Tower with my character the way I wanted it.

Press TAB to higlight interactable objects. The first time I did the mage tower I missed a lot of stuff by not knowing this.

[Butcher]

I found having a balanced party - 1 tanking warrior, 1 damage dealer, a rogue and a mage makes things a lot easier. Shale seems to be the best tank if you have the DLC, otherwise Alistair is probably your best bet. Manually spamming taunt (or setting up a tactic to use it a lot) helps keep stuff hitting the tank not the squishies too. Make sure the mage has some heals and tactics to use them.

[Zadock]

A few tips that I picked up along the way that may already have been mentioned: -

Specialisation are stored for all characters in a separate file from your save games (it's actually your profile). This means that you can save, buy a specialisation book, learn it and reload the game to basically get it for free. Can also do a similiar thing for achievements if you really wanted to.

Do the Circle of Mages part first (out of the four parts). Not only do you get a healing mage, but you also can gain some nice permanent stats increases as well. I actually decided to blitz the forest part first to get the Arcane Warrior spec and then reloaded the game to carry on "properly" from the Mage's Tower with my character the way I wanted it.

Press TAB to higlight interactable objects. The first time I did the mage tower I missed a lot of stuff by not knowing this.

On my second run through now so I have a few tips to. My tips relate to the rogue and the mage since these are the two classes I have tackled thus far.

I second going to the circle of mages early esp to get the cunning points as this allows you to meet the requirements for certain more secondary skills early (e.g. tactics slots) so you can focus more on the important attributes for dealing damage (str,dex and magic).

Make sure that all of your mages have the crushing prison spell it is about the most powerful spell for taking down ranked nasties. Along the same discipline you also get force field which paralyzes an enemy or character and stops them from taking any damage, this is useful three fold: 1. If one of your party is getting mobbed and the rest of your part is preoccupied with other enemies or at a distance you can cast this to give them time to assist. 2. If you have a large number of lesser enemies and one powerful one you can cast forcefield around the powerful one and hold him in place for a good 45 seconds allowing you time to dispatch his/her minions so you can focus the whole party on taking him/her down when the spell subsides, and 3. It can buy you time for your spells to renew so you can hit a powerful enemy with all you have.

The spells: mind blast, paralyze and winters grasp (+others) are really useful if you are or if you have a melee rogue in your party this is especially effective with the Coup De Grace skill which allows rogues to backstab from pretty much any angle so long as a target is incapacitated... generally an absolutely essential skill for any melee rogue.

I'm sure I have more tips if people have questions... these are just a few things that spring to mind that I have found to be very effective.

[Terbinator]

Do you mean that you interact with the game with just the keyboard and mouse, as opposed to something else?? DA:O has the same kind of gameplay/control interaction as classics like baldurs gate - there are very few RPGs that do different.


Again I'm not sure what you mean by regression? DA:O's production values are better than any other western RPG that I can think of. They might not be up to the likes of some jRPGs yet, but that's the trade off you get for scope. Maybe my memories going though - what western RPGs have got better production values?

I'm not going to lie, i've never played Baldurs Gate, apparently it's a classic ? But once it opened up and it was click here to go there i just thoguht to myself can i really do this for the next ~100 hours. Production wise the lack of voice acting made it feel old and poor compared to BioWares own game Mass Effect.

[kalniel]

I had voice acting in my game - did you install it correctly?

Production-wise it's not as good as shorter games like FPSers, for example Bioshock or Mass Effect, but that's a necessary compromise when you have a game with content for 100+ hours and a more flexible world data system.

I'm most confused about the comments about clicking to move - you can use WASD to move as well, there's nothing forcing you to only use mouse, but the combination of WASD and mouse is very common to a lot of games - if you have to use a controller then I'd suggest trying the console versions of DA:O.

[aidanjt]

Baldur's Gate isn't just a classic, it's the classical RPG. You get over the clicking thing when you get the hang of it.

[Terbinator]

I had voice acting in my game - did you install it correctly?

Production-wise it's not as good as shorter games like FPSers, for example Bioshock or Mass Effect, but that's a necessary compromise when you have a game with content for 100+ hours and a more flexible world data system.

I'm most confused about the comments about clicking to move - you can use WASD to move as well, there's nothing forcing you to only use mouse, but the combination of WASD and mouse is very common to a lot of games - if you have to use a controller then I'd suggest trying the console versions of DA:O.

Your guy(girl?) didn't speak though did he (?) and everyone sounded wooden. I know you can use WASD but i assumed that the point and click was the way it was mean't to be played.

[kalniel]

Your guy(girl?) didn't speak though did he (?) and everyone sounded wooden. I know you can use WASD but i assumed that the point and click was the way it was mean't to be played.

It's common in RPGs for your own character not to speak - witness everything from Baldurs Gate to Oblivion and Fallout 3. The idea of a RPG is that you take the role of the main character, and several people find it breaks immersion to have actor joe voicing their character. On the otherhand, there's a HUGE amount of voice acting for all the NPCs in the game, and absolutely loads of conversations between them. I don't agree about the wooden comment though - DA:O has some of the better voice acting in recent games. Some of it sounds a bit modern compared to traditional RPGs, but you get used to that and then start appreciating it I found.

Not sure why you assumed point and click was the way it should be played - I didn't notice that in the manual, but I could have missed it. Personally all my friends are using a combination of WASD and mouse - we control direction more with the mouse and then run forward with W with the occasional AS side step.

[Terbinator]

Snip>>>.

You think i should give it another go then? The voice issue still irks me though :\ I suppose it makes sense in this game (and others mentioned) that there is no voice for you character as opposed to ME where you're given shepard to play as (i know you can change him...) - In Oblivion and F3 the voice acting is poor, even Bean, Neeson & Stewart couldn't save those games.

[kalniel]

You think i should give it another go then?

I'm not sure - certainly it really is a very good game, but it is a western style RPG and if you don't like that sort of game then you won't like DA:O, no matter how good an example of a wRPG it is. If you're willing to give it a try then do put a little effort into getting used to the controls, it doesn't take much, and once you're familiar with them then the rest of the game opens up - allow yourself to be taken for the ride and you'll enjoy it. Don't be afraid to switch to easy for combat either - you can change at any time with no consequences, but it allows for a lot more clumsiness in controls as there's no friendly fire etc.

The voice issue still irks me though :\

Fair enough - everyone has their own preferences. Coming from games in the past that didn't have it means it's not a deal breaker for me, but if you did want to try some RPGs with protagonist voice acting then I recommend The Witcher first and foremost (it has a very shooter friendly WASD mode as well), as well as the likes of Risen/Gothic1-3, and Two Worlds - all of these games give you a protagonist to play rather than letting you choose your own, and consequently are better suited for protagonist voice acting, even if they are vastly inferior to DA:O as games (apart from The Witcher).

[Gerrard]

I found some of the conversations quite amusing. I think you can use either FPS like controls and view or take the NWN approach and zoom out and point and click. I prefered the formal myself, but sometimes it's handy to zoom out and control larger battles.

Good point about Crushing Prison. It'll hold and damage yellow mobs and normally kills normal mobs, especially handy against enemy mages. However, it doesn't hold orange bosses unfortunately. I found Paralyse/Petrify can work on them. However a party of three mages worked really well for me. I had Flaming, Frost and Telekenetic weapons all running, along with Leliana's bard song for mana regen. Having her dual wielding and backstabbing saw lots of numbers.

My character was rock hard by the end. With Dragon Armour, I think I had something like 65 armour, 110 defense and 75% resists across the board thanks to various buffs. The only problem I had was that although my sword did a lot of damage, I wasn't sure whether the Arcane Warrior spec also increased your attack rating as I only seemed to hit half the time. That and I didn't have any real way to focus the threat on me that warriors do; although fireballs normally get their attention!

[Butcher]

I found actually hitting stuff with an arcane warrior was rather lacklustre. Not only do you lack any useful combat abilities (like warrior taunts, or rogue backstabs), but you don't do amazing damage compared to the proper melee classes. Using arcane warrior purely as a means to wear massive armour while casting spells seemed a lot more effective.

In terms of hitting - I think it uses your spellpower stat for attack, so as long as spell power is 100 or so you should hit quite a lot. I've noticed on other chars that around 100 attack seems to be the point at which you stop missing so often.

[Haiku32]

Decided to roll a new character (on easy, lol) and I'm actually enjoying it better than my last 2 starts. Human Warrior was my choice, finding it pretty fun now that I know how to control my party better and stuff. Getting quite a few crashes 4 hours in however. Right now I am unable to release Sten from his cage as the game freezes everytime I do so. Very weird.

[Zadock]

The only thing I have found is that the game gets progressively longer to load the longer you play it but its never crashed on me.

I haven't played through as a warrior yet, anyone tried it as a pure archer?