Dragon Age Central

In case anybody missed them, Bioware recently released two sets of high quality narrated videos similar to those seen at the Leipzig and PAX shows. One is a gameplay video in 4 parts, the other a toolset video in 6. Check them out.

Bioware showed off Dragon Age at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) this year. They ran a similar demo to that previously seen at E3, Gen Con and Leipzig, but also walked through usage of the toolset for the first time.

Clips of the demo (with our first video footage of Morrigan) are available here and here. The first high-res screenshots of the toolset are also available.

Reports on the PAX demo are still trickling in, the first informative one being this forum post. I’ve quoted some of the toolset-related highlights from it below.



Chris Priestly did audio and video interviews, though little new information was divulged.

[the following impressions were posted to the official forums, unattributed from another unknown source]

The demo was a guided demo, but run by the Bioware staff about 20 minutes long. Much of the first half of the demo was watching conversation/cutscenes. The second half of the demo was several combats. Character progression was not shown at all and inventory management was shown briefly. All of the demo existed inside one city, so I have no idea as to overall scale of the game. One of the primary writers on the game made it sound that the game would be ‘massive’ and on scale like the Baldur’s Gate games.

Graphics/Environment: Gorgeous. They were running the game in 1920x1200 (I believe) and it ran fairly well (slight pauses at time), but I’m sure it was on some monster machine. The city was highly detailed and had the illusion of being persistent. For example, a priest was giving a sermon to a bunch of army troops as the character walked by. You could stop and listen to the whole thing, or ignore it entirely. Character models had a lot of detail and good facial expressions (reminded me of characters in Mass Effect, but far more detailed).

Conversations/Cinematics: The game did an excellent job of carrying on conversations while other things were going on. It wasn’t always just characters lined up talking to each other. Often, the characters would be walking along while other things happened. They kept walking regardless of how fast conversation selections were picked (allowing for pauses in conversation if you let them keep going). Obviously they are following a script at this point, but this along with changing camera angles made the game seem a lot more cinematic than Bioware’s previous offerings. As mentioned above, characters are lifelike in movements and facial expressions. Conversation trees were very typical Bioware, except with seemingly more choices than "Good/Neutral/Bad." Like KOTOR and NWN, there were choices involving actions rather than speech (for example: "[kill him and take his key]") The Bioware guys claim that this game leaves their previous mold of having ‘good and evil points’, now going for shades of grey. They stressed many times in the demo that choices you make will shape the entire game experience.

Combat: Imagine Baldur’s Gate, except in a 3d engine that works well and isn’t clunky like the NWN games. Like BG, you can pause and give every individual order or let the AI decide things as you go along. The various abilities were reminiscent of NWN or even D&D 4th edition in the number of different attacks that are available (even for non-spell classes). Animations in combat were very detailed based on the attack. A shield bash looks just like you think it would, for example. Spells were the most jaw dropping portion both in visuals and how they worked. What was most impressive to me is how spells to interact. Cast grease on an area, and enemies slip. Cast fireball and the grease ignites. Cast a blizzard-type area spell and the fire goes out. It looked like all of the spells they were using in the demo had the capability of hurting your own party members if not setup/aimed correctly.

Overall UI/etc: 4 party members max, no coop multiplayer announced at this time (not ruling it out, according to these guys). The inventory UI I saw was clean and used a typical paper-doll system. Skills were on an assignable skill-bar along the bottom of the screen.

I left the demo very impressed and anxious for this game to come out. Sure, this is largely colored by the lack of good single player RPGs in recent years, but this game looks to be outstanding. If you guys have any specific questions on things I may have seen in the demo, fire away. I may sit in on the demo again to try to get more detail.

The official website for the game has been updated properly, no longer a simple teaser splash page.

Along with new official forums (old posts have been archived), there is now some information on the world of Dragon Age (history, creatures, characters), a gallery of screenshots not seen before, and useful news pages. There are also links to the teaser trailers here (including a new high quality 2m version). The website will be steadily updated as time goes by.

The website is attractive, seemingly well implemented and keeps things relatively simple. It seems they may have listened to forum feedback and changed the logo for the game: ‘Origins’ used to be written in a harsh white text; it is now a better blended yellow.

The official website was updated as promised (at 8:15pm Bioware time).

For all the waiting done by fans, generating 9 threads of anticipatory posts, the update was surprisingly spartan:

• Game name confirmed as ‘Dragon Age: Origins’
• Trailer confirmed as debuing on GameTrailers on Friday night, 1am
[clarification: strictly speaking saturday morning]

• The ability to sign up to some newsletters

Here’s looking forward to the trailer and more info at E3!

Update: the trailer is discussed in greater detail here: it will be a ‘teaser trailer’ ‘completely created in-engine’. There may be more than one video as well.

Update2: the other video is confirmed for 9am PST (4pm GMT) Sunday and will be similar to the first (some identical footage) but with something new.

Update3: both teasers are now available, and there might be a third on the 17th at 10am. Though this may be for a different Bioware game.

The official Dragon Age website changed recently to a mysterious splash page indicating that there would be ‘More July 9, 2008’.

Recently on the official forums there had been a thread calling for the official website to provide more comprehensive and up-to-date information. It, like other similar requests, had been met with assurances that new information would be coming ‘soon’, once they had decided to start marketing the game properly.

Has that time come? July 9th is a surprising date, given that it is just days before E3 this year (July 15-17th). But the website update may be the first step with a bigger announcement at E3.

Update: the official website will probably get updated ‘in the afternoon’, Bioware time. I’ll make a new post as soon as that happens, so you can get an alert by email or RSS and be amongst the first to see the new site.

Forum user ‘fleisch’ decrypted the following information about magic: