Wow, this is the best one in a long while.

I STAB YOU DEAD.

Upvote for Shadow Humper. Also because there was no ad at the end.

This game owns my soul.

Great vid, especially after the travesty that was last week. My question is though... can we download and play those top three games from his comp, they look like a bit o' the ol' fun gov'na

I have enjoyed the game so far, and I don't have a beef with it using 'standard fantasy' as its chosen backdrop. I think they changed it up nicely enough with the elves being 2nd class citizens, Dwarves being anti-magic gurus, and humans being Theo-political mixes. I have to agree with Y's sentiment of being tired of humans always being the prats in the story. Oh well. Anyway, an enjoyable game and that's what matters. I don't need games to be radical new innovations to like them.

Ha. I'm on my second time through now. I actually like it. The story is where the originality is, which is why it's important there are so many novels of content. According to the game, I've seen 53% of the game so far.

He's pretty much spot-on in talking about how the game lacks innovation (combat, dialog options, loot, questing, etc.), but I just finished the game on my first time through it earlier today, and I really enjoyed it. It took me 60 hours, and a short while afterwards, I created a new character to play through the game again.

One thing I'm disappointed to hear about in the review is that playing an evil person pretty much just means people will attack you faster and you'll have fewer opportunities and/or less loot. I was planning on setting out to play as a bad guy, but now I'm not sure that's the way to go. What the hell is the point of allowing you to play as a badass when it just means it'll make the game harder and less fun?

*promote... do not smite me.

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 12:28pm PST - promote requested by MycroftHomlz.

Bah, I lost my bet thinking that Yahtzee was going to poo all over Modern Warfare 2.

One of the only fantasy RPG conventions not included in Dragon Age is the thing about freedom--an open world to explore, where the main quest can get eclipsed by the much more interesting side quests. This was present in Oblivion, Morrowind, and the Baldur's Gate series, so I'm surprised no one's really commented on it. Dragon Age is incredibly focused on the main plot, which makes the few side quests totally out of place, such as helping an elf win over a girl he likes (while the horde of baddies just wiped out a neighboring town).

The physical area of the game seems tiny. There are less than 10 major areas to visit, and two of the towns I've seen so far have something like 10 buildings in them and 20 or so NPCs. It feels like I'm walking through Disney World. Within these small areas, you're always hemmed in to a single path much like the Final Fantasy series. While exploring a forest, you're stuck on the trails. What's so hard about making an open zone? Baldur's Gate 1 did it just fine.

The only way I can start to understand this game's appeal is by thinking back to Mass Effect, because I really enjoyed that game and the formula seems identical. I think the difference is originality and the script. Mass Effect was an original story (at least to me and most gamers) and the cutscenes were almost TV-worthy, whereas Dragon Age's story is familiar to just about everyone and is executed poorly.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I have enjoyed the game so far, and I don't have a beef with it using 'standard fantasy' as its chosen backdrop. I think they changed it up nicely enough with the elves being 2nd class citizens, Dwarves being anti-magic gurus, and humans being Theo-political mixes. I have to agree with Y's sentiment of being tired of humans always being the prats in the story. Oh well. Anyway, an enjoyable game and that's what matters. I don't need games to be radical new innovations to like them.


Yahtzee is all wrong about it being standard fantasy. and it's actually bad that it isn't. if by standard he means tolkienesque. and dragon age ain't tolkiensque.

edit:
Also, it is a bit dark. but it's more horror dark than fantasy type dark.
Rape, eating flesh, torture, cannibalism. I'm surprised no one's commented on that.

>> ^Lodurr:
One of the only fantasy RPG conventions not included in Dragon Age is the thing about freedom--an open world to explore, where the main quest can get eclipsed by the much more interesting side quests. This was present in Oblivion, Morrowind, and the Baldur's Gate series, so I'm surprised no one's really commented on it. ...

I am a huge fan of open-world, sandbox style games. The first game that I got massively intrigued with was Ultima 6 -- I played it at least semi-regularly for around 2-3 years, yet I almost completely ignored the main story. I just enjoyed exploring the extremely large world, building up my character, etc. Morrowind came close to that for me. Oblivion was good, but seemed like a step back in gameplay and overall experience from Morrowind. Having everything in the world be scaled to your level bothered me a lot -- Dragon Age scales enemies and loot, but it doesn't feel as forced to me, at least not yet.

I also loved the Baldur's Gate series, but I don't feel like they were open-world games. They had multiple distinct location maps, just like Dragon Age does. There were more areas in either BG game than in DA, but it takes a lot less time and fewer artists on the development team to crank out (notably well made) 2D areas than 3D maps.

So I guess that in my opinion Dragon Age is more directly related to Baldur's Gate than Oblivion/Morrowind or Ultima (not surprising since the developer is the same, and refers to it as a 'spiritual successor'). I am 100% happy with Dragon Age as a new Baldur's Gate-esque game. It doesn't innovate, but it didn't need to for me to enjoy it.

I would be greatly pleased if there was a new, entirely non-original rehash of the design philosophy and sandbox experience of the Ultima games but put into new graphics and interface. In other words, Dragon Age is to Baldur's Gate as this would be to Ultima. Unfortunately it seems that sandbox style games are falling more and more out of favor, which I understand to a certain extent due to the fact that it would be a massive undertaking to create a world as large as Ultima 6's with 3D environments instead of sprite tiles...

I absolutely adore Dragon Age: Origins. Still found this funny, and he's got a few good points, but it doesn't take away from my infatuation with this game (...and everything else Bioware does...).

Hahahaha! It's soooooo true...

But the game is SO good. It's not ground breaking - it's just the best implementation of this style of game, so far, imo.

(Goes off to play more Dragon Age)

Wow guys, that is quite a lot of praise! I have am very pleased with his review of our game. A lot of us were dreading what he would say, but I love the part where he said "25 hours in and I still want to find out what happens next". I will have to point this page and comments out to my co-workers.

It might be formulaic, but it's a great formula. I don't think this type of game-play has been done since SW:KotOR2:TSL back in 2004. I missed it.

As I was playing, I was thinking that the game felt like a mix of Baldur's Gate and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, although the latter is still a better game in my opinion (I just really enjoyed everything about it, particularly the feel of the world). I was happy to find the game got rid of some of the baggage that Dungeons & Dragons brings with it, from a gameplay system point-of-view. A minor annoyance was having to occasionally change from "normal" to "easy" difficulty during a few extremely difficult fights.

I did have issues with the dialog system, although I'm glad conversations aren't linear. I don't like going through a dialog wondering if I asked or said the right thing, only to have to reload a saved game because I didn't like the outcome. There's a point in the game where you're trying to win people over by making your case during a verbal tug-of-war, and it's near impossible to know which dialog options will work for you or against you. There are also times when you say something in dialog without realizing that it permanently shuts you out of a quest, not allowing you to complete it.

Minor problems overall though. I haven't played a great game in several years (excepting for the games in The Orange Box), let alone a great RPG, and Dragon Age is a welcome end to that drought.

The over the top cliché story really puts me off... although I really liked Kotor I cant get myself to play this..

Why do all the rpg's have to be in a fantasy world wouldn't it be more fun to play as a roman a viking a samurai or a knight?
You know a real knight in the middle ages .. no dwarves elves goblins just thiefs and invading turks or crusaders if you will...

ahh the memories

http://www.mobygames.com/game/conqueror-ad-1086

I would play one of these games if it was a western. You know that playing as cowboys, indians and mexicans would be a hoot!

Dragon age origins, or the game you buy when you don't feel like paying for your wow subscription, want to play alone, and have a pause button at all times.

I love everything about Dragon Age: the level of polish, the gender equality, the autistic savant dwarf, the level of difficulty (started on Normal, at LVL 20 atm and cranked it up to Hard), the dialogue (hadn't actually laughed at anything an NPC in any game would say in years), the darker parts (oh and there are a few). I even love the, let's be honest, somewhat outdated graphics, because my PC is actually able to run it on max settings. I love how the game doesn't have the massive, frequent memory leaks ME had. I haven't even played MW2 because of how much I enjoy it. Clocked 60 hours and I'm only at 46%, having done all side quests that have been thrown at me so far, I am loving it, and so is my wife. Thanks so much for the quality entertainment, CrushBug

He should now go play and review the PC edition because frankly it is an entirely different game. And going evil doesn't actually change anything in the game? Did he never play evil? Because it can create some massive differences.

In the end he gave it a good review, even if 90% of the review was about how much like every other tolkien-esque RPG out there, which is is. The game does not try to innovate very much and sticks to typical fantasy cliche's in a big way. But what it doesn't do for innovation it does for everything else. It's beyond the best RPG to come out since BG2 and is far better than anything else they have done, including KotOR.

>> ^thyazide:
Dragon age origins, or the game you buy when you don't feel like paying for your wow subscription, want to play alone, and have a pause button at all times.

Or play something new, that you haven't been playing for the last 6-7ish years. If you're on the F&F list, who got to see what a interesting game it was back in the early alpha.

Because despite adding content, it still does get boring after a few years. Not to mention repetitive, and monotonous.

I'll pipe in too, even though I can't listen to the zero-punctuation reviews (FYI, I'm -not- going to work that hard to understand what you're trying to tell me).

Dragon Age is, as virtually everyone agrees, a wonderfully polished example of the genre. I absolutely love it, and at the same time I'm finding that my gaming tastes have apparently changed. It didn't take long to learn that the game has that terrible ability to suck you in, and make you forget about the time. And nowadays, unlike all the rest of my life, I find the idea of getting lost in the game for a minimum of 3-4 hours at a sitting to be, well...intimidating.

I used to play games like any hardcore gamer does...6-8 hours at a stretch for a decent game, and 10-12 for the exceptional ones (as life's schedule allowed). But now...even though my schedule doesn't really stop me from playing for big chunks, it's just not my preferred arrangement. I like to play for an hour or so, and then do something different for a while. I suppose I'm finally growing out of my 20-year-long hardcore gamer phase. What a pity. Especially when I finally have a wife that understands gaming, and isn't bothered by my habits. LOL

I do swear that I'm going to push myself to break through this intimidation for this game, though...it's just that good.

I've heard comments from several sources about the graphics being dated, but I just can't agree. For the most part, the graphics look perfectly modern to me. Am I the only one?

The graphics on the 360 are rather downgraded compared to the PS-3 and even more so compared to the PC. The textures are heavily compressed, and the color saturation is very bland compared to the other platforms. It's my guess that that's where most of the complaints are coming from.

Here - http://www.gamespot.com/features/6239466/index.html

I think the game's beautiful on my PC. It's not Crysis, but for a game of this size it's great. I also think this game has some of the best facial expressions.

For everyone commenting on the game I'd like to hear the platform your playing on. I can't undersand people comparing it to Mass Effect or KotOR. With those I played in third person/FPS perspective. With Dragon Age on the PC I mostly play from an isometric point of view. This gives a much better tactical overview and is quite necessary when using the powerful area of effects spells (but only if friendly fire is on).

I've played it for about 20 hours and I still don't know if I really like it. It's good, but the worlds of KotOR, Mass Effect, and especially Fallout 3, and Morrowind, and even Risen had much bigger draw on me.

Big downside of Oblivion was the level scaling and quite repetitive world. But this could be solved by installing the overhaul which removed leveling and made the game much more interesting.
The level scaling in Dragon Age can be pretty annoying when you have quite high level characters and suddenly a large group of wolves become a danger. Or a large group of thugs which you should be able to kill easily. Also making a good party is quite tricky. Because if I just want to using a quite important skill like lock picking, that means I have to have a 'weak' rogue in my team.

Ah okay. I played on PC as well, so perhaps that's why I didn't understand the graphics complaints.

Well, for the record all the level scales in DA have caps. They all fall within a certain range (Which Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul does to some extend too), vanilla Oblivion scaled with you all the way through.

>> ^Drax:
Well, for the record all the level scales in DA have caps. They all fall within a certain range (Which Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul does to some extend too), vanilla Oblivion scaled with you all the way through.


That's interesting. It would explain why, if you just go stubbornly down in one direction from the outset, you eventually run into stuff that's just out of your league. If by chance the first place you go is to fight the god damn dragon on the mountain, his difficulty isn't going to scale down to your crappy equipment and skills.

I sort of like it, even if it means I have to go back to certain areas later. In Oblivion, you got the sense that armor just gets progressively prettier, and monsters get larger, but behind that it's all calculated to be of a bland unchanging difficulty.

I'm watching this video while waiting for my wife's television program to end so I can play Dragon Age til 3:00 AM again tonight. Which I've been doing nearly every night since the game came out.

I was expecting Yahtzee to mention the Revenant. Fucking Revenant. Usually when they show up my entire party is dead before I can figure out which button to push in order to get control back after I accidentally push every button on the controller in a blind panic.

Despite being ported to multiple systems I've noticed a distinct lack of consolitis, which is a lot more than can be said of many of Bioware's multi-system games. Mass Effect while a fun game, had a terrible UI. The inventory system lacked anyway to sort items and the item upgrade comparison was limited to who was in your party ATM. The in game video options menu was just horrid. You actually couldn't select some video settings because the interface was so screwed up it made clicking on them impossible. Anyways, Dragon Age didn't have any of that, I couldn't guess by playing the game it had counterparts on console systems. So to that I say, thank you Dragon Age development team for making the PC version a true PC version and not some hastily cobbled together port. Only problems I've noticed are some map and clothing clipping problems.

Milkman dan is exactly right. It's not quite as free a baldur's gate, but baldur's gate was by no means a fully open world either. It's easier to crank out maps and locations in a BG style environment hence easier to create a game and make good profit from the work you put in.

Have we had a PERFECT reincarnation of BG using modern day gaming standards? Not yet, but it was close. Maybe it's a holy grail we're looking for, all us die hard BG fans.

I will however admit that the side quests and storyline in BG were so incredibly involved and engorging. Dragon age did not drag me in as much. I was absolutely infatuated with Leliana's accent and when i realised i could get my sexy redhead elf girl to get it on with the sexy orlaisian bard temptress, i was obsessed with getting that to happen.

I don't think that counts, though. I believe it was Durlag's Tower that i always remember most of all from any game, ever. The story and depth of that place was immense, you were slowly taken through the dwarf's footsteps and his eventual decline into insanity which led him to kill all his loved ones. That storyline really blew my socks off, and it didn't need lesbian sex or a hugely attractive exotic accent to do it.

Alright, Dragon Age isn't QUITE our new baldur's gate, but it's been the best contender by miles and miles. Maybe if this one does so well and we show our appreciation for the display of quality in areas that we most wanted it, they'll be able to improve on it and give us more. And maybe then we'll have our new baldur's gate.

I'm maybe 10 or 15 hours in to Dragon Age on the PC and I've got to say the game has me hooked. Background: I'm an experienced RPG and MMO gamer, but haven't played any of Dragon Age's predecessors.

The combat has a steep learning curve, even for an experienced MMO'er like me, but outside of that I'm very impressed with the level of polish in the game. The voice acting and story and facial animation are surprisingly compelling. I even find the slightly alien "neutral" look that characters usually wear interesting. Maybe it's good enough that it's not in the uncanny valley, so instead of evoking "kill it with fire" it evokes stoic confidence.

I'm certainly liking this game much more than Oblivion, which I felt was a let down compared to Morrowind.

*dead

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