NOTE: I ordered the game via Steam and therefore did not have time to read the manual while on my throne. How’s that for opening a First Impression post? Some things may be revealed in the manual so understand that his post is based on just jumping right into the game.
EDIT: I will likely add to this as I remember items. I’ll do my best to make sure I note it’s an addition.
Character Creation
First I’ll start with what everyone starts with, creating a character.
The interface for this was quite intuitive and easy to use. That should be expected at this point in time, Bioware has done enough of these types of step by step character generators.
The complaint I do have is that they went with the same old races; Human, Dwarf and Elf. After seeing what they came up with in Mass Effect, I have to say I was disappointed with them choosing Dwarves and Elves. Yes, they’re the staple of most fantasy settings, but I was hoping for something different. Of course, if it was something different I’d likely have complained that it was a little too alien for my liking and I suspect a lot of fantasy loving types would pass on the game entirely. Still, only three race choices seems a little disappointing and I am talking solely about number of choices – they executed the look and feel of the races with excellence you expect from Bioware.
They did try to make up for the lack of races by having different ’status’ for the selections. You seem to have commoner, nobility and magi status options which presents some differences in your starting experience. I don’t really see a difference otherwise, which is a little disappointing.
The attributes are pretty simple, though a little alien in that you’re not really sure how the scale works. With a D&D based setting, most people know the stat ranges (or learn them quickly). The descriptions are pretty clear, it just feels different after playing D&D for so long. Several attributes appear to tie to advancing certain skills so you will want to take careful note of that when assigning points to attributes as you advance through levels.
The initial classes are, again, more of the same. You have your warrior, rogue and caster classes. It’s apparent that some other options open up later on in-game where you have to meet some requirements or unlock these extra classes some how. You will note Allistair, when you have access to him, does have access to the Templar class as well. Overall, it was a little disappointing to see these very basic classes but I do believe they’re hoping to add flavor options to the character by those locked classes.
The skills available to your character are fairly simple, which I like, though a little too general, vague or ambiguous. For example the social interaction skill (persuade, I think) is either based on Strength or Cunning which makes sense. I’m not really sure how these all work, I’ve mainly played a melee type so I had the combat training. I didn’t see any obvious bonus to this so I suspect a lot of the passive skills have under the hood type impact.
Actually customizing the look of your character goes beyond what we’ve seen from Bioware previously (aside from Mass Effect). You get a lot more control over the look of your character in this game, even down to the point of your portrait that is assigned to that character. That’s right, you can adjust the portrait of your character; move the camera for it up, down, left or right, change the background, change the facing of your character and even change the expression of your character’s portrait (pushing the slider all the way to the right is quite comical). They even included presets for all the races for people who don’t care and just want to jump right in.
Overall the character generation was positive aside from the feeling of not knowing how everything works and what each little choice could mean down the line. (As a powergamer or min/maxer type I really do enjoy systems and knowing how things work.)
Graphics
I’m going to lump camera views and animations in with ‘graphics’. My first thought of the graphics was based on the character generation, I thought the character models and options available were quite good and resulted in some good-looking characters… graphically speaking.
My second thought on the graphics wasn’t as positive and came when I started the game and was presented with the zoomed out mode to start. I didn’t like it. I found the zoomed out versions of the characters and area lacked a lot of detail and some of those bells and whistles that are common in newer games. It just didn’t look right to me.
Zoomed it? Ahhh… nice. Zoomed out? Meh.
It’s weird and my own personal feeling.
I also found the camera didn’t automatically rotate to make things viewable and I often couldn’t see what was going on in certain angles. Rotating the camera manually helps but I’m still not keen on that. Now playing while zoomed in felt a lot like playing a MMO or a game like Mass Effect (some people might think it sort of a console view).
Bioware makes use of all the latest bells and whistles as far as the graphics go but I did find some of the textures sort of uninspiring. Nothing that really stood out, just some items that you might pan by as you’re running along.
Overall I like the animations I’ve seen so far. It doesn’t feel as plan and hack and slash as you’d expect. The abilities I’ve used so far have had good animations. When I Shield Bash, I see it happen and the target gets knocked over. When I Overpower, I see the three hits and the guy get squashed. When I decapitate an enemy… well, it’s really messy.
Blood and gore, but mostly blood. They make liberal use of blood in this game. Apparently we’re all just walking bags of blood waiting to rupture and splatter everywhere. It is a little over the top in several places but I do admit, coming out of a fight with blood splatter is likely truer to form. Still, lots of it.
I wish there was a /wipeface command or something because all the characters seem unphased by the blood. That is a little weird because there is a part where a sergeant is talking about the Darkspawn and telling people not to touch its blood. They also go on about how the hounds that bite the Darkspawn end up… wrong if they bite them too much. Yet here I am, covered in blood.
And the finishing attacks on key enemies is admittedly quite cool… if not bloody.
User Interface
The design is pretty simple, if you’ve ever played a MMO or CRPG before you will quickly know what is what.In the top left you have the character portrait and statuses. Each portrait is wrapped by the health and fatigue or mana of the character. To the right of that portrait you can see what action that character is performing.
Below that is the hotbar which also includes your XP bar. Moving abilities around is simple enough, as is triggering some of the abilities.I could see casters running out on bar spaces so I suspect there is a way to add more.
Overall it is responsive, though I have had occasions where none of my abilities were on cooldown but they were all darkened – I’m not sure why that was. Clicking on the portraits selects that character (I suspect F1-F{whatever} selects the characters by portrait) and focus quickly switches over to that character’s view and abilities.
In the upper middle you have your menu bar which contains all the typical buttons needed for navigating through the game aspects; Inventory, Character, Journal, Quests and Options (there are more).
The journal, or codex, has an interesting system of tracking the bits of lore. Given all the pages and numbered entries, there looks like there will be a lot of lore, information and tips to sort out.
Dialog options are about the same as all previous Bioware games. You hear what is said and have an opportunity to respond. Unlike some of their other games (like Mass Effect) you don’t hear yourself speak which I find a little jarring.
The controls seem to make sense, though I’m not keen on how some of the combat abilities work in that they seem to require some extra clicks for targeting when you’re not already attacking something. I will have to look into these some more.
I couldn’t figure out how to rotate the camera at first, but eventually found it and it does make some sense and after a short while of play (zoomed in) I was used to it. I thought it would have use the numeric keypad or the Insert/Page keys, but I was wrong. The default seems to be using the arrow keys or the A and D keys. Alternatively, you can right-click to mouse look – that might be limited to zoomed in mode.
The inventory is much as you’ve already seen, but it is a bit different in that it appears to be a shared inventory. No more rooting around looking for that item one of your characters had in a bag. All inventory appears to be lumped together and there is a lot of room. You can expand this further by purchasing bags. I worry about this a little because it seems you could make it possible for everyone to dip into the same resources. I remember previous AIs being somewhat wasteful…
EDIT: One of the fellows in my D&D group was talking about the radial menu last night. I had completely forgotten about this bit of UI.
Why?
Because I avoid it as much as possible. DA:O has a context sensitive radial menu that can be used for examining, things, destroying or using items. I’m sure there are other uses for it but I haven’t ventured far enough into the game to discover them.
I’m not a big fan of radial menus and prefer they work off of clicking rather than completely off of mouse hover. Mouse hover is prone to slipping and sometimes unintentionally closing the menu. It’s a little frustrating, especially at first. Most PC users are used to clicking to get what they want where as a console gamer might be better equiped to navigate radial menus because when they invoke it, the context of their input is on that radial menu. On a PC… not so much.
In my opinion, you should click to bring up the radial, then click on the next item to invoke it or set it as an anchor if it has subitems. The menu should not disappear unless a selection is made or another click is made to change focus. This closer mimics what a console gamer might experience as opposed to mouse moving out of the radial bounds causing the radial menu to close.
Coming back to working with items, I found using items a little different. The catch for using items is that for some you need to exit the inventory for the use to actually happen.
An example would be some of the pre-order books. I got two books; one book adds three attribute points as a bonus and the other adds a skill as a bonus. I used both from the inventory and closed the inventory to discover only the last one took effect. I had to go back into the inventory and use the first one again.
I’m not too keen on this. In some cases (like drinking a potion) it makes sense, but in other cases, not so much.
Mechanics
Combat plays sort of like the way Knights of the Old Republic did, third person over the shoulder type view where you can target enemies and start attacking. You’ll automatically path to them or you can manually control where you go – I tend to do this and it almost feels like I’m playing in a MMO.
From what I’m hearing from my friend who is playing the XBox360 version (I’m playing the PC version), he hasn’t found a way to zoom out or pause yet but it is definitely an option of play for the PC. You can zoom out for a 3d isometric, top down type view you had in NWN (Neverwinter Nights) or Baldur’s Gate (which is the correct spelling…). This sort of mode is great if you like the top down, micromanaging of your party type play.
Personally, I haven’t used it a lot, but I might get it a shot once they shiny new game smell fades. I don’t really like the look of things while zoomed out, so that is a hurdle I’ll have to get over some how. I could see some people using a hybrid of moving or exploring with the zoomed in mode then switching to zoomed out mode to handle combat. I could also see someone exploring while zoomed out and fighting while zoomed it.
Whatever suits you best.
They’ve gone and made life a little easier for players to manage their character or companions by adding “tactics” you can define for each of the characters. They’ve also tied this to an attribute (Cunning) and some skills that add more slots. In each slot you can specify a condition and what that character will do when that condition is triggered. Conditions include things like; “your health < 25%”, “enemy’s health < 25%”, “attacked by ranged” and things like that.
People who have played Final Fantasy XII might recognize this as being similar to the “gambit” system they introduced, although, FF12 did not make all the conditions available immediately, you had to learn them or purchase them and then you could use them.
Traps can become involved in combat, either as part of the set up (such as an ambush) or as something that gets in the way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t micromanaging the Rogue companion so I didn’t really make use of this. However, I did trip over one that was particularly nasty (videos may have shown this wonderful puddle of grease/oil lit up by an enemy’s flaming arrow. It hurt, a lot.
Your character can also make use of this by making their own traps, assuming you pick up the trap making skill, and finding/using materials you come across (loot, chests/bags, herbs or merchant items). I have yet to get into this.
There are also skills for creating potions from various components or herbs. This sort of thing appears to be one option of staying alive. Using poultices appears to be an instant action, almost like taking a potion. This is pretty important to know and think about while in combat and likely something that you should spread around. Magi classes also seem to be able to learn Healing type spells which are definitely useful.
The character’s natural resources are (effectively) Health, Mana and Fatigue.
Health is a measurement of your condition, if it is expended you are ‘dead’. It regenerates pretty quickly while out of combat so it’s a good idea to sometimes wait it out instead of burning healing resources outside of combat.
Casting uses a mana system, so as you cast spells it consumes mana. I didn’t play my Magi enough to note how the Mana regeneration works, I’m pretty sure there is some, but it didn’t appear to go as fast as Health regeneration does.
Fatigue is an interesting system I haven’t entirely figured out yet. I believe it is a pool you draw from for special melee attacks and it can have it’s ceiling lowered based on gear you have. For example, naked you’d have 100 but wearing a full suit of chain mail you might only have 80. I might be wrong, as noted way up top, I have yet to read the manual but this is what I observed. I did not appear to run out of fatigue.
You appear to only ever have Mana or Fatigue, not both.
I mentioned above that when you lose all your Health you are ‘dead’, note the quotes. You’re actually disabled and once the combat is over, you will pop back up. I’m not sure if there is a catch to this because I only had one guy drop one time. He popped back up when I moved close to where his body was so I suspect there is a degree of recovery involved.
Unfortunately, I did not play a Rogue or ranged combatant type yet so I have no idea how any of their abilities work, I did observe there are abilities available for those types. There is a (short) skill tree for dual weapons, ranged weapons, weapon and shield as well as two-handers. As mentioned there are skills for traps and potions but others include making poisons and thievery (I’m not sure if that covers skulking about).
I intend to try out these two other aspects of the game as soon as I can.
Storyline and Environment
I don’t want to talk too much about the story so I don’t ruin anything for people, but so far it has been interesting and set out really well. A lot of the world factions, beliefs and superstitions have some reflection on our own but they’re all presented in a manner that makes you feel part of the world. A lot of that has to do with the voice acting and script – it is far more involving to hear someone say something than to read about someone saying something.
I’ve been really impressed with the environments I’ve seen and been involved with so far; the keep (noble human), the tower (magi), the ruins in the south, the surrounding wilderness and the tower on that site as well. The ruins area definitely has an epic feel to it, they did an excellent job there. The tower is excellent as well – I recommend, despite feeling rushed, that people stop every now and then and look around, including up.
Online Site
You can use your Bioware Community profile to log into the game (and the community site) which will allow you to purchase some extra downloadable content (I had access to all of it because I pre-ordered the deluxe version of the release).
It also allows for some neat automatic features as well. This includes automatic screenshots of certain parts of the game that get uploaded to your profile under Dragon Age: Origins, tracking of your achievements as well as game progress (quests completed and which ones you’re on). If you upload your character you (and others) can view the character’s stats, abilities, skills and gear. You can also use that character’s portrait for your online profile. Which is really cool!
The community also has other built in features like being able to create groups with a forum, organizing projects, creating your own albums (20mb of space) and keeping a list of friends.
I don’t really feel the need for yet another online community, but I definitely like how it tracks achievements and takes automatic screenshots.
The Bottom Line
Most of my complaints so far are ridiculously minor compared to the positives I couldn’t possibly claim to not like the game so far. I am pleased with my purchase and I would recommend the game to people who like CRPGs.
I would submit that the game is closer to NWN2 than BG, but I’ve heard people argue the other way. Either way, it’s pretty damn good game!
If you’re looking for a hack and slash game, this probably isn’t for you but if you’re the type that likes rich environments and great story elements, you should love this game.
All jokes aside, I did only play it for three hours. I will put a first impressions post up as soon as I get some more coffee into me and collect my thoughts on it – which are all positive aside from the ones in this thread.