T w e n t y S i d e d

Once again, bold text is from my Twitter feed, and the rest is my elaboration on it. Also note that you’re reading these in chronological order.

Alistair just said “Down you go!” Carth, is that you? #DragonAge

Alistair – despite his occasional tendency to mope – is probably my favorite character. On the right is my Elf mage. Not pictured: Her silly, silly hat. (Headwear is removed during the cutscenes.)

Carth from KOTOR had the same combat taunt. I thought it was funny. It’s worth noting that both Carth and Alistair draw from the same BioWare archetype as well. (I have an article about this very thing going up at The Escapist tomorrow.)

Steven Blum has joined the party. #DragonAge

To the right is the Dwarf voiced by Blum. For some reason, it left our headwear on for this cutscene.

He voices your Dwarven companion. Although here he uses his gruff voice, pretty much the same thing he uses for the Wolverine games.

Wow. The start of the game for Dwarven commoners is really dark. #DragonAge

I didn’t go any further than the origin story, but it was short and ugly. Not in a bad way, but it was quite a contrast with the Mage origin.

Wow. There are SIX opening stories? This game wants to eat my LIFE. #DragonAge

Each origin takes an hour or so. Some are class based (mages) and others are race based (Dwarven commoner) but I haven’t figured them all out yet. I’ve only been a mage so far, so I’m not sure how much of an impact your origin has on the rest of the game.

I’m certainly not going to go through six times.

Feels like #DragonAge on Easy is still a little harder than #KOTOR on normal. I guess I need more micro-mgmt.

The difficulty in this game is a mess. Some people are saying it’s too easy even when playing on hard. Some say it’s too hard even when playing on easy. Some say it goes from boring to impossible on a whim. There are two broken things here.

One is that mage powers tend to dominate the game, and not all mage powers are created equal. When I was talking about how hard the game was, people responded with:

Just use [Forcefield, a power I didn’t have] and then follow up with [another power that was way down a skill tree I’d never even looked at] and if you must, then have someone else follow up with [another power I hadn’t acquired]. This game is TOO EASY.

It’s very easy to miss or overlook key game-breaking powers, and there’s no way to respec.

The other problem is that the system of auto-scaling enemies is broken. You’ll get wiped by a room full of common mooks. Then you work past that and end up steamrolling a boss. The difficulty is all over the place.

I’ve been through the bulk of the game twice now, both times as primal mages, both times using the same play styles. And the challenge level of the game feels more or less random. The first time I did the Deep Roads the game was insanely hard, to the point where even regular encounters required multiple attempts.

The second time through the game I did the Deep Roads and it was pretty average. A couple of hard boss fights, but nothing game-ruining.

This takes away all sense of accomplishment for me. When I win handily, I don’t feel like I out-maneuvered a tough opponent, I feel like the game under-estimated me and gave me foes that were too weak. When I lose, I don’t feel like I did something wrong, I feel like the game just murdered me with tough foes.

The obvious answer is, “If it’s too hard, go somewhere else and level, then come back.”

But this is the problem that auto-scaling foes is supposed to fix! People don’t like giving up and going away. The story stops making sense. (We got into the bowels of the earth, changed our minds, went back out, adventured in the city for a few days, and then returned to the center of the earth and fought the Deeplords of Asskicking, even though we’d been in their vestibule weeks earlier.) It’s a time sink and it takes the momentum out of the story.

Usually the problem with auto-scaling foes is that the game feels uniform and bland, and that you’re robbed of any sense of accomplishment. The tradeoff is that you’ll never run into a wall where you can’t progress. But here we have the worst of both worlds. What they’ve done is taken away the ability of the player to decide how much challenge they want, and instead it’s a crapshoot based on whether or not you happen to pick the right powers and what mood the auto-scale-AI is in. And even the difficulty slider itself doesn’t have enough delta to compensate for the massive swing from auto-scaling + mage powers.

I now see all combat in the game as an unwelcome time-sink, since I get no satisfaction from it. I’m leaving the game on easy, and I’ll probably get some cheats to just make all fights a cakewalk. The combat is just pointless and not worth the time.

Broodmother #DragonAge Thorian #MassEffect TheMother #JadeEmpire – I guess someone at BioWare REALLY likes this idea.

Actually, the story with Witherfang and the werewolves is much closer to this BioWare trope. The “go underground and face a creature who has been turning people into monsters, then face a moral quandary.”

Broodmother fight was HARD. I don’t think 100+ hour games need this much trial-and-error. #DragonAge

I was pretty pissed at this point. I’d turned the game down to easy, and I was still getting party-wiped and a regular basis.

And the worst was yet to come.

Unrelated, but, here is a picture of our hats:

I’m wearing a winged helmet. Wynne is wearing a floppy bit of cloth, as if she just decided to put a handkerchief on her head. The designers realized how stupid the hats look, so they’re generally removed during cutscenes, but we still have to look at them during the other 50 hours of the game.

I think my #DroganAge review should bee all these tweets with accompanying commentary.

What an idea! You sir, are brilliant!

Wicked hard boss fight + LONG load times = I stopped having fun 20 mins ago. #DragonAge

The fight at the end of the Dwarven Deep Roads. This was the game killer for me. I was trying to fight Branka and she was way, way, waaay too hard. No, don’t tell me about your ‘leet strategies or your awesome character builds. She was clocking people for half their health. There was simply nothing I could do to get through this fight. Through repeated attempts, I never even got her below half health. And I was playing on “easy”. I wasn’t even able to put down her henchmen. (Who would have made for a really tough fight even without the boss.)

The auto-scale system had picked wrong and given me way too much opposition.

My second time through the game – using much the same party and powers except that I’d traded Leleina for Shale – it wasn’t much of a problem. The party was even about the same level. The Boss was doing a fraction of the damage she’d done before. We were hitting much harder, and the mage’s holds were more reliable. Why? The auto-scaling.

It’s all arbitrary.

Sometimes the characters use this really aggressive walk / swagger during cutscenes. I recognize it from Mass Effect. It’s funny seeing little old lady Wynne (left) use that stride.

“Here is a treasured heirloom for saving our Kingdom” ME: “Here is me taking the heirloom to the pawnshop next door.”#DragonAge

A Dwarf gave me a magic staff that was obviously of great historical significance, but wasn’t very useful compared to what I already had. I hate when games do this. What am I supposed to do? Lug this thing around? You can’t take it to a museum, which is where it belongs.

So you pawn it.

“Oh, thank you for saving America. Here is Lincoln’s top hat. May you treasure it forever.” And then next door to the White House is a pawn shop that:

1) Recognizes the authenticity of the artifact.
2) Is willing to buy it.
3) Has the cash to buy such an item.
4) Isn’t offended that you’re pawning a national treasure.

Oh RPG tropes, you are so silly sometimes.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

My Twitter based review continues. Note that this just just an experiment. I’m not planning on reviewing ALL games this way. In the meantime, it’s kind of a nice change of pace for me.

Again, stuff in bold are the comments I made while playing. The rest is elaborations on that.

I KNEW at the opening of the game I’d get stuck in the Fade sooner or later. And that I would be sick of it long before I got out.#DragonAge

The Fade is a dream world. If you’re a mage, the tutorial section involves entering the Fade as part of a test. It was pretty obvious that all these dreamworld models, scenery, and special effects weren’t just for a short one-shot deal for one of the six origin stories.

Sure enough, there is an extended section of the game where you get pulled into the fade and have to fight your way back out.

There’s no looting or shops (since it’s all a dreamworld) and you do it without your teammates. So there’s no dialog, no companion banter, and little story progression. So, you don’t want this part of the game to go on too long.

Looking back, I’m not sure that it was really “too long”. When I wrote the comment above, I’d been at it for a long time and I thought I was only at the halfway point. I was actually very nearly done, but since I couldn’t see the finish line I was getting restless.

Again, this is something that would never get mentioned in a full review, because it seemed annoying at the time but didn’t really hurt the overall experience in the long run.

Ah, out of the Fade. Again. Good-bye screen-buffer blur effects. Again. #DragonAge

Oh yeah. I was pretty tired of how everything looked blurry.

…although I’d be very, very surprised if I didn’t end up in that madhouse again before the credits roll. #DragonAge

I stand by this prediction. I’ll bet I have at least one more trip to the Fade in store for me.

But no spoilers, please.

If you do a spoiler in the comments, just block it off with punctuation or something. Like this:

============SPOILER===============
Voldermort is Luke’s sled!
=================================

Thanks!

Badahn (DragonAge) is clearly the same voice actor as O’aka XXIII (FFX). Who gets typecast as a merchant extra? #DragonAge

He plays much the same character here: The down-on-his-luck merchant who you help at the start and who then clings to you for the rest of the game. He’s got a positive attitude and is always cheering you on.

Zevran wants to sell me some fine Corinthian leather. #DragonAge

I can’t help but think of Ricardo Montalban. I don’t even know if the accents are even related, but they both tickle my ear.

My crew: Leliana (Rogue) Wynne, (Heals) and Alistair (meat shield). I’m a mage. (Elemental damage.) #DragonAge

I abandoned that game and started over, and I’m still using this team. You need Wynne for heals. Since I’m also a mage, that means we have two very squishy casters. So I need two meat shields, one of which needs to be a rogue for the purposes of opening chests. Dual-wielding Leliana seems a better rogue than bow-using Zevran, since I need someone who will stand in front. If I was a fighter, I’d probably swap Leliana for Zevran.

The position of “main tank” rotates every once in a while, for the sake of variety. Every once in a while I take Sten or the Shale instead of Alistair.

But Alistair is my favorite, and the one who makes the fewest protests with my moral choices.

Oh, hullo plot thread which will take me back into the fade. Sigh. #DragonAge

This trip was to save the life of one specific character. This trip was also short.

I still maintain that a major trip to the Fade will be part of the endgame.

Wow. I’ve been playing for a long time. How far along… ONLY FIFTEEN PERCENT COMPLETE?!? Wow this game is big.#DragonAge

AND YET YOU STARTED OVER ANYWAY.

IDIOT.

The usefulness of a magical item is directly proportional to how ridiculous it looks when worn. #DragonAge

This goes double for mages. If you were to offer one of these mage hats to a clown he’d refuse, “No way, man! I’d look goofy!”

This game should let you toggle the visibility of headwear. Everyone looks so much better without it.

Actually I’d love for games to completely divorce appearance from performance, as with the superhero games. Being dressed like mismatched savaging idiots isn’t really a central theme in fantasy stories. People usually have themed costumes.

Oh hello Steven Blum… VOICING A DWARF?! #DragonAge #castingfail

I like Steven Blum. I really do. But his natural speaking voice does not sound right coming out of a Dwarf.

Actually, there’s obviously no hard rule that Dwarves have to all talk like Scotsmen. I know I’m just dragging my high-fantasy preconceived notions with me, but I can’t help it. These guys are short, broad, and burly. They shouldn’t sound like gameshow hosts.

I think someone should make Dwarves that all have German accents.

Wynne needs to stop complaining about how incredibly old she is when she’s built and dressed like a 16 year old. #DragonAge

Full credit to BioWare: The AI companions in #DragonAge are not idiots and can be trusted to do something sensible most of the time.

Actually, I’ve heard this isn’t true for the offensive magic users, but for melee fighters and the healer, they can almost run themselves using the default tactics. (Of course, you’ll do a lot better if you take care of them.) Since I’m a mage, I don’t have to worry about the other characters very much except during boss fights.

On my next play through the game (assuming) I’ll probably go for a Warrior but directly control the mage. (Which I guess would be Morrigan.)

This whole “activation” for part of the game you own is hopelessly cumbersome, confusing,buggy,and asinine. #DragonAge #sucks

I won’t weary you with the tale. I got the game via Steam, because of a steep discount and in spite of my better judgment.

Why do so many humans have gruff voices and Dwarves sound like gameshow hosts? #DragonAge

Again, I suppose I’m just mired in the Old Ways, but I just can’t get used to this.

Sigh. A female Dwarf with a California accent. #DragonAge

She was actually a cute character. A Dwarf who wanted to study with the mages. I enjoyed her story, even if her SoCal accent was… difficult to accept.

I am a mage, a hero, and an adventurer. And I am dressed like a complete idiot. #DragonAge

Fear my orange Dunce Cap of Awesome Magics!

TWO NPC thief buddies, and neither one ever has enough skill to open the chests we find? Like this, they’re just lousy tanks. #DragonAge

At this point I had both rogues with me, which is a stupid idea. It was also pointless, since neither of them could ever open any chests we found. It should be noted that my character was already doing the raw damage. I just needed someone to stand in front of me and keep the bad guys off while I work my deadly mojo. So the only reason to ever bring a rogue instead of a warrior would be to open the (sigh) invincible wooden chests we’re always finding.

WHAT ARE YOU IDIOTS GOOD FOR?

After re-starting the game, I’ve made sure Leliana is focused entirely on Opening Stuff. I’ve made sure she gets each new lockpick ability as soon as it becomes available. And she’s still stumped by about 1 in 2 chests.

What the hey? How does this work? Do the chests auto-level? Am I supposed to come back later? What?

At one point there was a chest I NEEDED to open for a quest. She couldn’t do it. I left and leveled in another part of the world. I dragged her back, stood her in front of the chest, and did her level-up right there. She opened the chest. Whew.

The very next chest was once again beyond her skill.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.