Dragon Age:Origins and a question

Indeed the dialogue and acting in DA is extremely well done.

This is the first rpg since Final Fantasy 2 where I actually care about conversing with the other characters.

 

I've finished gathering all the races (Redcliffe Humans, Dailish Elves, Orzammar Dwarves, and the Circle of Magi). My favorite to actually play was the Dwarves, but the Elves had the most powerful ending sequences. Now I'm in Denerim, where (I'm guessing, I only have a 30% or so exploration rate, so there might be a lot more than I think) I'm preparing for the climax. I mean, I guess the rulership of Ferelden needs to be decided before the Darkspawn can be fought, but I imagine the two won't be far off.

This Denerim scene holds some pretty strong story sequences. I won't spoil it for you. Just prepare for shockers. More than one.

EDIT: Just finished it. Great ending. Dragon Age even utilizes the old Fallout-style ending system, with slides of nice artwork as it details the endings for all the different lands. In the resolution, you get to talk with any surviving or still present team members (I don't think there's any way that ALL of them can make it to the end, though I may be wrong. Certainly, it is possible for any of them to be there, with maybe one exception), and discuss their future plans. You may or may not even decide to join with them. I'm not really sure, though. I opted to be a member of the Ferelden leader's court.

With all the things the party members say right before the game ends, I'm kind of hoping that some of the DLC that Bioware releases will be related to the future experiences of your party members. Leliana in particular had some interesting plans.

Anything, everything ties together nicely, etc. etc., victory, great game. I'm going to restart as a mage this time, play up my personality a bit differently. Maybe this time I will try to become ruler of Ferelden.

 

The landsmeet is much longer than I thought it would have been. Are you 30% complete or 30% explored?

If the first it's because it takes all the origin stories into account as well as dialogue choices. If it's the latter, do more side quests.

 

Zevran: Hello, my stocky little friend!
Oghren: You have pretty small breasts for a girl.

The landsmeet was exactly what I had expected. I was a little disappointed, though, at the way the votes are tallied. I counted that I had won 3-2 (a 3-3 tie, if you include Loghain himself, but then that would make it 4-3 to account for Redcliffe's vote), but I still lost. Rather anti-climactic, really, though at least doing all the vote-gathering quests wasn't a total waste since it's really the only time the City Elf plotline intersects.

 

If you end the game in another way, the game will end with several cutscenes, and then it's the Fallout style slides.

Which ending you ask? Spoiler in black: You performed the Ultimate Sacrifice and slew the archdemon yourself.

 

Romano doesn't play Zevran, by the way. Jon Curry does. Curry is probably most famous for playing Merlin in Shrek 3.

 

Grak. Dude. If the bloke playing Merlin wasn't Eric Frickin' Idle I'll eat the bunch of roses sitting on my desk right now.

...I'm gonna regret that comment, I'm sure.

But yeah, no way in hell is beloved Rino playing Zevran. I think my Josh needs a head-slap.

 

Sorry, no lunch for you, Xiao. Eric Idle it was.

Feel free to beat Josh all he likes though.

 

You've obviously met him!

 

Don't have to. Any guy you hang out with would have to have masochistic tendencies.

 

Hahaha, fuck yes. Thanks to you, Ramidel, the coming days as Royal Guard won't be as boring anymore.

 

According to IMDB, Jon Curry definitely did play Merlin.

Except it was in the video game, not the movie.

You almost had me fooled, too, though. I have fond memories of Romano being my voice through Star Trek: Elite Force I & II. And Virgil. And Darth Revan from KotOR (wait, doesn't that mean that Rino Romano plays... YOU?!?). And Luis Sera from Resident Evil 4.

With those sorts of video game chops, it would make sense to bring him back. Unfortunately, he's absent because he's busy playing more animated TV roles. He played Batman for 4 years, and now he's playing Lone Starr on 'Spaceballs: The Animated Series'.

But, the voices you will recognize include:

Arl Howe - Tim Curry (Kind of caught me off guard, too, he sounds nothing like Frankenfurter).

Oghren - Steve Blum (He's done countless video game roles. Recently, he did Killer Croc in Arkham Asylum and Jack Cayman (the main character) in Madworld. In the past, he's also played the Sabbat in Bloodlines and Ares in God of War, and will be in the next Metal Gear Solid. He usually just plays "Additional Voices", so I guess all the generic people you hear in video games is him)

Sten - Mark Hildreth (You can catch him on V as Joshua right now. He also played Cardinal Reginald Pole on Tudors for a short while)

Loghain - Simon Templemann (He was Kain in the Legacy of Kain series)

Duncan - Peter Renaday (He's been working for 40 years, and has a voice-over history almost as long. He was Richard Ames in Metal Gear Solid 2. He was also Splinter on the 1987 Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles mini-series)

Shale - Barry Ellis (I skipped a couple newcomers because I was listing off recognizable people, but I lolled at the fact that they made a big deal out of Shale being fully voiced, and his experience is in quality assurance and customer support for WoW)

Alistair - Steve Valentine (Played a role on Crossing Jordan, as Nigel Townsend. My grandpa loved that show)

Morrigan - Claudia Black (Recognizable from Farscape and the final season or two of Stargate SG 1)

 

I'm completely skipping over on this thread, because I don't want to ruin the game for me. I'm still (slowly) working on my first play through. It's a perpetual battle between my desire to play DA:O and read Sourcery. So far, I'm enjoying it. I have a few gripes I'm going to voice.

1. 
   Right clicking to move/attack
   Lack of camera modes

These are the only two I can presently remember, but I think I have one or two more. Overall, it's an excellent game.

 

Use mousewheel to change the camera.

 

How about the utterly brutal boss fights? The only times throughout the entire game I've had to reload due to party genocide is from all the boss battles. And I'm mean reload/retry several (10 - 20) times each boss encounter. I'll admit, it's most likely my refusal to micromanage my party's tactics because I don't want this game to be as tactic-dependent as it was most obviously designed to be. But truthfully, I don't think the normal enemy encounters from one mission to the next prepare well at all for the bosses. Most of the scrubs I fight are very easily defeated with one or two challenging rage or desire demons thrown in that keep me on my toes. But after trudging all that way through a mission, not once feeling the safety of my party being threatened, then starting a boss fight and getting absolutely smashed within seconds is direly frustrating. Sometimes all it takes is a few reloads and tweak or two to my approach of the fight, but other times it literally takes me an hour to reload-try-again, reload-try-again, reload-try-again.

Which brings me to the next point of my post, major spoilers involved:

Spoiler

I've fought all the way through the Circle Tower, clearing it of demons and abominations, finally getting out of that damn nightmare from the Sloth Demon (pretty cool level by the way), and got to the imprisoned Templar. Now here's the kicker: due to the way I'm RPing my character, I inadvertently started a fight with Wynne during the dialogue scene, and killed her in the resulting battle. She was clearly the key party member in my making it this far, because I'm very low on healing poultices and Wynne was loaded with Heal, Rejuvination, Revival, Group Heal, etc...So now my party of 4 (even at full strength, the inevitable battle with Uldred would still be a steep challenge) is now down to 3. I knew I'd screwed myself horribly as soon as Wynne's lifeless body slumped to the ground. Now I'm stuck facing Uldred in demon form flanked by 3 other demons (and a 4th that gets summoned half way through the fight) and just absolutely devoid of the firepower required to bring him down before he crushes my party. I, a mage, found limited success in trapping him in a Force Field right off the bat while my party (Liliana and Alistair) took out the 3 demons with relative ease. But as soon as the Force Field wears off, Uldred stomps us. So changed tactics and tried to incapacitate the 3 demons first with Horror, Mind Blast, and Force Field while the party focuses fire on Uldred. That plan always fails miserably. So I'm asking if anyone has any advice for me, because do not see myself able to get past this point at all, and I'm afraid I'm now stuck from progressing through the game any further. Ideas?

 

Spoiler

There's only three of you? Make sure you have a party of four. I didn't find the end boss of the mage tower to be as hard as the Sloth Demon (though, admittedly, I still had Wynne). My team was composed of my dual wielding rogue main character, Sten, Wynne, and Morrigan. I just used cone of cold on him whenever he tried to stand up. Did you get the item that prevents him from summoning more buddies? I think it's necessary to save the First Enchanter, though I am not sure. If you got in a fight with Wynne, that's probably not important, though.

Just cone of cold him. Morrigan never left my party throughout the game because of that spell. Other players abide by the idea of having her use as much mana as possible at the beginning of a fight and then transforming, but I never saw the point of her shapeshifter abilities at all. In fact, Cone of Colds, Flame Weapons, and the occasional Winter's Grasp were the only spells I bothered to give her. There is literally nothing, even the most powerful opponents in the game, that Cone of Cold is not effective against.

I'd even give it to your mage. It's totally worth it. Friendly fire isn't that bad because friendly fire effects always wear off first for some reason. Only time Morrigan ever killed anybody with it by accident was the final battle of the game, but that random soldier was going to die soon anyways, I tells ya!

Anyways, my advice is just to cone of cold it. You can even get the demons that way. Cone of Cold is Dragon Age's answer to Harm (not really, it won't make you invincible, and it does harm your own people sometimes, but it's still awesome).

If you have the litany that the guy in the Fade gave you, stand in the pile of mages and use it whenever the light gets all glowy, it will prevent more abominations from forming. My rogue didn't actually participate in the battle, she just stood here and used the item while the others fought.


If you think Uldred is hard, wait til you're in the last Act of the game. I started having to retreat my entire party into narrow passageways to escape death. One time, I split the entire enemy force into two groups this way, and both of them almost killed me in turn.

 

I'll try that. Problem is, I can't give myself cone of cold till I or another mage in my party levels again. Also, since I'm the only mage left in the party, that makes things a bit difficult. And...

Spoiler

Wynne was the 4th member of my party. But when we found that imprisoned Templar right before the Uldred fight, I picked a fight with her and the result of that conversation was her abandoning my party and dying at our hands. So we'renow down to 3 in the party with no way of adding a 4th since we're in the middle of the mission.

As for the littany, I completely forgot about that. I'll give that a shot too. Thanks.

EDIT: holy shit I did not know you could add party members when your party has less than 4. stupid me.

 

Cone of cold is obscenely powerful... the chance of freezing solid should be tuned down. When you have two mages casting cone of cold in turn, nothing have a chance against you.

 

I have noticed on the forums that a lot of players were crying that the mages are way too powerful and need to be toned down a bit in future patches. I would assume Cone of Cold and the frozen solid effect is one reason of many. In my own experience, the only Primal spell I have is Winter's Grasp, which freezes enemies about 50% of the time and buys a lot of time for my party to focus their offense elsewhere or to pummle the frozen creature to death. I've tried shattering frozen enemies with the Telekinetic Prison spell, but rarely ever have success with it.

Spoiler

Anyway, an update to my dilema above: after realizing I could add a 4th member to my party after killing Wynne, I brought Morrigan on board, effectively doubling my ability to incapacitate the enemies as well as offensive magic. It only took two tries to finally bring Uldred to his knees. What also really helped was remembering to use the Littany to counter the other demons being summoned (thanks Grak) as well as stun the ones already present.

So now I'm off on my way to stupidly get myself into another jam I'll most likely come to back to the boards here and cry about. Great game so far, though. Great game.

 

I have a love/hate relationship with Winter's Grasp. It is severely OP in the beginning but around level 12 or so I noticed a drastic drop in its chance to freeze opponents. By level 20+ the chance to freeze was so low that I had to take it off the hotbar. I find shattering works better getting a crit or using the stonefist spell. Shale seems to be great at getting shatters, as does any auto crit skill.

Mages aren't OP. Anyone can be made OP as long as you play to the class's strengths.