Dragon Age: Origins - Page 3

It probably will, but it just lacks much of a punch for me after that gameplay video. If it came out in May or July or some barren month for games, I would probably be more inclined to be extremely excited as opposed to waiting for it to hit $20.

Hey, fellow nerds. The character creator is out now. Should be a fun couple of hours.

EDIT: Don't try it right now. Their site's getting hammered.

EDIT No2: Direct link to the creator. No registration necessary, at least for downloading.

Thanks Bioware now I can make virtual mongoloids in advance

Wow, I honestly had forgotten it. No thanks to Billy and bendrix for remindsing me of the existence of that excerable piece of shit.

Let me amend what I said then and say that if that was a trailer for a 'proper' Dungeons & Dragons film, I'd be there opening night.

Either way, it's a fucking impressive little trailer for my money.

God damn I could lose a fair amount of time just with this.

This looks great. A dark, bloody Bioware RPG - my family may not see me much this holiday season. Nothing like a good Western* RPG where I have complete control over how my party levels and their every action in combat.

At first glance it appeared that there were only three classes, but they can each be specialized four ways. Can't wait to find out what a Blood Mage is, and the specifics of the Shapeshifter.

The spell descriptions mention 'friendly fire', so watch where you're slingin' those AoEs!

*Not trying to be jingoistic, but people make assumptions when I say I like RPG's. Not that JRPG stuff.

I actually managed to get the full facial-stubble working. Nice. Stumbled upon it by accident while making a Mage, but apparently choosing a different preset face to build on did the trick. Either that, or fiddling around with different beards during creation somehow messes with the stubble. At least with this new information I finally got my Human Noble to look like I wanted him to look.

The tattoo bug still bothers me. Unless someone can confirm that despite what you may see when going to "Modify/Delete Character," the actual save you made of say, a Dalish Elf, still looks exactly how you saved it in the first place. Are the changed tattoos and portraits in the Modify/Delete Character function just an illusion, or would some of my characters actually have a different tattoo/portrait if were to (hypothetically) import them into the actual game?

At this moment, though, I'm still struggling to think of reasons *NOT* to get it for the Xbox 360. Everything I've seen and read so far about that version looks great. Including, for the first time ever, downloadable user mods.

I have a gaming-quality PC, but honestly, I'm not into the whole install harangue, the bugs, the patching, and fighting with the horrifying POS that is Windows Vista.

Don't worry about it. I believe there's a thread around here where I presented a logical proof that JRPGs are for pedophiles.

Other than better graphics and modding, there's no reason. I'll be picking it up on the 360 for sure.

Well my return to the geek-side is complete. The prequel novel by head writer David Gaider, The Stolen Throne (set 30 years before the events of the game) arrived for me in the mail last night and I got to reading.



I am shocked to report it's actually surpisingly readable and not the sub-standard, barely legible, poor-mans-DragonLance I was expecting. In fact, so far, it's pretty darn engaging and enjoyable.

Sure, it won't win any awards any time soon (certainly not for originality) and it reads like what it is; a book written by an above average game writer, but you can at least see that Gaider's gone all out with his world creation, complete with histories, cultures and lore and is really trying to create an environment with some good old fashioned depth to go with the pulpier aspects of it all.

I'd rate it around a notch above your standard Dragon Lance/Forgotten Realms fare, which as I said, considering I thought it's be a few notches below that, is a rather pleasant surprise.

I don't feel so bad about having ordered the next book in the series now, and I'll try to have them both read before starting the game.

What about kids who like JRPGs?

What do you think a psychologist would say if I told them all the RPG characters I make are evil female mages? (IRL I'm a neutral male)

Anyways, my sorceress Jelena is all sculpted and ready to go. Spent about an hour on the facial features...

Actually, there's gonna be modding on the 360 version (confirmed by BioWare).

So yup...one further reason not to invest in hugely expensive, checking-account-destroying PC graphics cards and heatsinks just to play one or two new games.


Was thinking about picking this up, but probably after I dove head-first into the game itself. Which would be the opposite of how I handled Drew Karpyshyn's Mass Effect books -- the prequel novel, Revelation, hugely enhanced the first game's backstory for me when I played it afterward. But for right now, it's more of a time-thing than anything else.

That said, BioWare always does a great job handling their tie-in projects; John Jackson Miller is writing the Mass Effect: Redemption comic series for Dark Horse, which drops in January. To say that I'm stoked for it would be a gross understatement.


You and me both. Or, at least 75% of the time for me -- that's how it was recently on Fable II and Oblivion. It's probably the wife's influence.

It's been a while since I wrote that thesis, but I believe kids are exempt. Besides, a kid who has sexual impulses towards kids... is a kid!

Your therapist would likely ask you if the character was a slutty mage?

I tend to make female characters in games where sexuality is a non-issue (like MMOs). But when the game's storyline features romance/sex, I nearly always go with a male character. I don't want some greasy man trying to rub up against me!

Looks like the Steam pre-order will be up and running soon, for both regular and collector's editions. I really want to order this on Steam rather than console, but I'm getting close to the low end of the system requirements. Decision time.

You know, some of already have great gaming rigs and enjoy playing pc games on them.

That's impossible, Jacob. Everyone knows that to set up a PC that can play modern games, you need to spend millions of dollars. Leto II said so.

There's only like one or two games for that system, anyway. Why bother?

Porn, mostly.

Have fun investing in kleenex intensive, relationship-destroying internet and Jergens lotion just to look at one or two ladies.

And a cup.

Is it possible to seduce a dragon in this game?

Oh poor deluded console players. You'll never know the joy of playing on multiple monitors so you can masturbate watching French softcore porn, while you're waiting for your group to catch up and ordering pizza online, all without lifting your hand from your mouse. These kind of experiences made my spending 10000€ and 30 hours installing my new graphics card worthwhile.

Waldo Shepard is here to set this thread back on track

Very handsome Trevor - I made a likewise hideous dwarf just by playing around with the nose sliders.

I'm torn -

This seems like a click-happy, menu intensive game, which makes me lean towards the PC.

On the other hand, I'd rather see it on my big plasma that my tiny monitor, which makes me lean towards me PS3, even if that means I have to wait a few more weeks.

And I'm one of these people. I can play Crysis and Oblivion with (relative) ease on mine. But Dragon Age still isn't high up on my short list of potential PC-inflicted tweak-fuckery abuse at the moment.

Also, we don't really know yet how the game looks at the lowest settings -- they don't tend to show it off much. Supposedly, however, BioWare's version of minimum requirements is actually the minimum it's playable at, and not simply the minimum you can run it. So as long as you put the settings down, you should be playing it pretty smoothly. But then you run into a whole host of other issues (lose the blood-spray, lose most of the subtle particle-effects, etc.) that probably won't even be issues on consoles. But I never say never. I may yet pick up the PC version at some point down the road.

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried hacking the charater stats? Just thinking. I haven't had the time to check it yet, but it shouldn't be too difficult. The packed files are .erf ones, so many editors that work for them (like NWN 2 editors) should be able to unpack them without too many modifications.

Though it remains to be seen if the files can be modified freely, or if some other tool for editing is needed after you unpack 'em all.

horrifying
HORRIFYING

ETA: Sorta looks like a grizzled John Hawkes.

It's like claymation John Leguizamo got hit in the face with a pipe!

LINE UP, LADIES

I like that all of the BioWare freaks have Eric-Stoltz-in-Mask cheekbones.

Or Mary Matalin, at least.

Eyuuuuuugh, Brad's last one has facial skin that looks scrotal.

God, the idea of Grampa Shepard is killing me.

A sampler of the game's soundtrack is up on the site. Nice and epic, if a little too much like LOTR.

I'm geeking out about this game so hard I'm starting to sound like a shill.

Make the lips thinner and that's pretty much identical to my Renegade male character.

Egads, it's like he burned his face off in an accident and replaced it with testicle.

Thanks, now I can never look directly at my own junk again!

(and it was difficult enough before)

I really wish I had the PC version of ME now, just so I could expose the world to my Shepard, who looked like Kathleen Turner (now) after a botched face lift, skin bleaching, head shaving and the growth of a 5-o'clock shadow.

I tried to make an Autolycus that actually looked like Bruce Campbell. He pretty much looked like any other male character I created. For how many sliders there are, if you make a character look remotely normal they'll all look pretty similar.

One of mine:



I even took down the formula:

FL = From Left (00 FL is Zero)
FR = From Right (00 FR is Maximum)

FACIAL STRUCTURE

Facial Structure = 01 FL
Skin Tone = 01 FL
Complexion = 00 FL (ZERO)
Scar = 00 FL (ZERO)

HEAD

Neck Thickness = 08 FL
Face Size = 07 FR
Cheek Width = 00 FR (MAX)
Cheek Bones = 06 FR
Cheek Gaunt = 00 FR (MAX)
Ears Size = 00 FR (MAX)
Ears Orientation = 00 FR (MAX)

EYES

Eye Shape = 02 FL
Eye Height = 09 FL
Eye Width = 13 FL
Eye Depth = 12 FL
Brow Depth = 04 FR
Brow Height = 00 FL (ZER0)
Iris Color = 00 FR (MAX)

JAW

Chin Height = 00 FL (ZERO)
Chin Depth = 00 FR (MAX)
Chin Width = 00 FL (ZERO)
Jaw Width = 12 FL

MOUTH

Mouth Shape = 02 FR
Mouth Depth = 00 FR (MAX)
Mouth Width = 00 FR (MAX)
Mouth Lip Size = 00 FR (MAX)
Mouth Height = 02 FR

NOSE

Nose Shape = 02 FR
Nose Height = 13 FR
Nose Depth = 04 FR

HAIR

Beard = 00 FL (ZERO)
Brow = 02 FR
Hair = 00 FL (ZERO)
Hair Color = 00 FR (MAX)
Facial Hair Color = 00 FR (MAX)

Play around with that, and you should be able to come up with what is (more or less) B.H. Shepard.

I know a number of people who played through Mass Effect as Barack Obama.

1up reports that console versions of Dragon Age will have a more limited camera - no classic overhead option will be available evidently.

They finally populated the prices on Steam tonight, the deluxe digital download is only $55 which is only $5 more than the regular version. Here's hoping my computer runs it fairly well because I figured for that price I'd grab the deluxe before the possibly increase it.

Jesus Brad, you created The Shepherd of the Opera. Where's his mask???

You played through the entirety of Mass Effect that way??? He's going to be your Shepherd in the sequel??? Or is that going to be Waldo?

Combat tutorial. Much more indicative of the game's proper way of combat than the other videos released.

Jesus, that guy's voice sounds like it's getting ready to invade Poland for the glory of Das Führer.

Agreed. Fair or unfair, after a lifetime of WWII movies and History channel, the German language always sounds sinister to me.

That one wasn't actually mine. Waldo was, but I deleted him after taking a few screenshots. This was my main Shepard on PC.

Nice and rape-y.

Why does everyone say that? He's a very nice man.

Yeah, just look at his gentle baby-blue eyes.