Dragon Age: Origins in depth hands on preview - Page 4

Question about looting:

This game has a lot of different, seemingly random items. My natural tendency is to pack-rat and hold onto things, just in case I need to craft something at some point. However, all these items takes up so many inventory slots! I've been running out of room multiple times on quests.

Is there a storage chest or something in the game? Or should I sell back all non-quest items in camp that aren't immediately useful, except essentials (health potions, injury kits, etc..)? Will I be able to buy back anything sold if it's needed later in the game?

There is a chest included in the Soldier's Peak premium content, which is what annoyed me about it a little bit. Just seems like a necessary element to have allocated to DLC.

The next best thing is the Dwarven vendor in your camp. Everything you sell to him stays in his inventory. So if you're not sure about something, sell it to him as an insurance you can get it back if you really need to.

Anything marked as a Gift has a chance of being useful if you care about a particular companions approval. Reading their codex entries will reveal clues to what they like. And then some things are just obviously meant for them. Like: I think lots of Gifts are just junk but to be safe I sell them in camp.

The crafting items can really kill you. You just have to decide if you're into herbalism, traps, poison making, a combination of the three or none. Do all your crafting at once and them sell everything else.

Silly things like Black Vellum and Wolf Pelts drive me crazy. It seems like they have to have a purpose but I haven't found it. So they all get sold too.

Backpacks are an investment but they really do pay for themselves in the long run. When you see them, if you have the coin, buy them.

Thanks for the tips Sorax!

Ok, after playing many many hours I wanted to share some more thoughts.
First and foremost, this is one of the most beautifully well-thought out games I have ever played. The design and implimentation are perfect.
Secondly, I think this is the first game that really gives you sincere choices. Other games I've played have done this here and there or it was more of a facade, but this game, your choices really truly matter. Choices also reflect how your team views you. Choose one thing over another and you'll likely make 1 person happy, but someone else upset. I love it!

With those first two things said, let me throw out a couple of very minor things. The easy setting is too easy and will let you "cruise" through the game. The normal difficulty setting isn't necessarily too hard, but it does slow you down getting through the game. On a game that has me already in for about 50 hours (without being at the end and playing on easy) this is a huge commitment! I love Bioware's commitment to quality!!! The normal setting won't let you be lazy and just rush through, it will force you to make the most of your team and to actually utilize chain of attacks in combo with one another. I haven't tried the hard setting, but I'd imagine it's extremely difficult. I think a perfect setting would be between easy and normal.

Is anyone else getting a sound glitch where everytime you click to open a door or chest Alistar says "alright! alright!" or he'll say "shall I get you a ladder so you can get off my back?" I've had him say that on almost every door and chest. If the game wasn't so engrossing, I probably would have shot myself in the head, but I've been able to tune it out.

If I had to start this game over (which I will play again maybe 6 months from now) I would focus more on building up my persuasive language because the dialog is soooo important in making the game flow the way you want it too. If you don't have this skill built up you can't steer the game to your desires as much. I still think mage is the best class to role, but I won't play it in the future because the stories/backgrounds are so different. Most likely going rogue next time.

Like everybody else has said. Save often.

P.S. Morrigan is banging hot. Whoever that voice actor is was well chosen too, very sultry!

I'm pretty sure that's your character, not Alistair. I noticed he says those things a lot if you are spamming a hotkey as the spell is about to come off cooldown.


I usually level up my "chat" skills in bioware games, although I just recently re-played Mass Effect and decided not to level up my charm/intimidate at all, and honestly, I enjoyed the dialog tree's a lot more. When you level up your chat skills there is always an easy way to get people to do your bidding, and it takes some of the challenge and consequence out of it.

Yeah, you know you are right. My characters voice sounds exactly like Alistairs, but I was just playing and happened to catch my char's mouth moving. Oh well.

At close to 90 hours of game time, I finally finished my first play through last weekend. I'll 2nd everything tomfoolery wrote with regards to the games quality. Bioware created an interesting, thoughtful universe and sent us on an epic quest to experience it. When the end finally came, I was sad to say goodbye to my party members. I can think of no higher compliment for Dragon Age's writing.

It boggles my mind to think about the sheer variety of outcomes possible for the main quest. If Bioware is able to write a sequel that truly continues all my choices from the 1st I'll be blown away.

Just writing about it makes me want to start over right now.

Also, I'm not having the sound issue described. My party members respond occasionally but nothing crazy.

Can anyone give me a guide to which companions to bring on which quests/take to which areas? Also, which ones to not bring so they don't leave my party.

As spoiler free as possible.

Like "bring x to redcliffe and don't bring y."

I'd rather not have to read an entire walkthrough and spoil an area, but I like getting the most out of the characters.

Thanks.

Um, I don't think it matters. I finished the game and can tell you for story critical pieces the game will lock in characters that need to be present, but short of that, you're in the clear to take whoever you want.

I'm picking this up this week-end since I need to change my DVD reader first (can't read the game's DVD for like 2 years )

Reading this thread just make me want to pick this up tonight. My dad only told me good things about this game. He finished the game like 4 times already

I wasn't sure if I could run the game smoothly but I went at my dad's place last week and saw his specs and compared them to mine. If he runs it, I can (we pretty much have the same thing except he got a Geforce 8600GTS and I got a 8800GT)

This game is incredible. I'm at around 12 hours played and I'm hooked. Even bought the Warden's Keep DLC (mostly for the chest) and will probably buy RtO. My DW Warrior is a beast with the Blood Dragon Armor

I know what you are talking about. I just started my 4th time through. I would say this is the best RPG to come out in a long time.

I'll probably play multiple time. It doesn't happen with alot of game but for this one, I think we have a winner. Might have to wait some time tho since I'm playing a DW warrior and want to try a Rogue next, it will be more of the same otherwise.

Awakening is releasing in March if I remember correctly. I'll be picking it up but maybe not right off the bat. I'll wait for a "deal" since I'll be busy playing FFXIII on PS3 also in March

Will the current DLC's be in the Awakening?

Agreed. At around 50 hours to complete, that's a huge (but enjoyable) time sink. There just simply isn't enough time. Right now I'm sinking many many hours into Demons Souls. I will definitely play through again, but probably 1-2 years from now. I also plan on getting the expansion.

This game is great can't wait for Awakening.

picked up the original game on the steam 33% off sale. first non-casual purchase from steam, can't believe how huge the download is...

That's one of the reason why I didn't want to buy a digital copy. The game is 15GB so that's half of my download/upload limit for the month


Didn't pick up Awakening yet since I haven't finished Origins yet (33 hours in) and I'll probably replay another time with a rogue this time before going into Awakening. Might wait for a patch or something concerning DLC items too since I don't want to loose all my items even tho items in Awakening are far better. I love Starfang too much

Sequel? February 2011?

http://kotaku.com/5496467/is-this-th...r-dragon-age-2

If it's for DA2 I just hope I'll be able to finish the first one before that

I'm super late here, but am loving this game so far. I've had DA:O for awhile (Steam sale, natch) and only now started to get into it since the new AMD patch came in that gave us a sweet new MLAA buff on DX9 games for 5xxx cards and above (you need a custom driver for now though until the official update touches down). It really makes the game look so much better for me since I was running it with jaggy 2x AA in 1080P on my 5770 before the patch. If there is any performance hit, I'm not noticing it.

My stealthy, dual-weapon wielding Rogue is still pretty early on. I've only just got the witch daughter to join my party as we go out to gather the race tribes together for battle. The story is top notch for gaming, and it really is much more of a draw than I expected. I doubt I'll skip any cut scenes. Storytelling in all games should be this good.

i'd hit it...

Well, six months later I've finished it (80% of all missions completed). I added one episode of in-game DLC and one episode of out-game DLC, and the whole she-bang took me a combined 110 hours. A really fun game from beginning to end. And krimson,
Play mechanics get a perfect 10/10 from me. The last tactical RPG I played was SW:KotOR on my older PC back in the day. A like the entire command style, the interface and the logic behind the tactics menus (once I added an advanced tactics mod).

In fact, I like how it played so much that I doubt I get DA 2 because they simplified the way you play. I hear pausing isn't nearly as important since aggressive skill and attack spamming works better than before, and that doesn't make me more interested in it (the repeating areas I've heard about are also a turnoff, as is the complete character change over).

The music in DA:O was superb, and it went a long way in keeping me entertained for over a hundred hours. The mission types were decently varied (until you get to the fetch-it city of Denerim), and the story plot elements were interesting for the most part. Only the Dwarf city was boring to me.

The graphics get an 9, but that's considering I added a HD texture pack to make it look a lot better. Some graphics looked rough when zoomed in to close, and not all character models got the same level of attention, but for the most part it was a colorfully interesting world to wander through.

Another important area of praise to bring up is the quality voice acting. Every single main character (including Shale) was very enjoyable to "get to know". The only one I never heard much from was the assassin elf because
If I had any complaints, it would be that the game gets way too easy halfway through. It took awhile for me to master the tactics menu so my teammates could battle decently without my control for every little thing, and once I got it down I was taking down the forces of evil without much fuss. I didn't realize you can increase the challenge at any time, but I still thought it would get harder by the end (it didn't):

I also wished that there was a little more enemy variety, but that's a minor point. The game as a whole was truly epic and while I won't replay it since my backlog is too large, I am glad I was able to experience it.