No, perhaps not, but I look forward to the first game that does do this correctly. One of my guilty pleasures about LotR movies is that they did dress up / down and they did show them hauling all their equipment with them.
Only thing I noticed about that girl was the constant, “who took a shit in my breakfast this morning?,” look on her face. It’s the Raistlin effect, I guess mages must always be moody and brooding
Hugin
1883
I also just generally wish they didn’t do a straight gender split of “Big male melee fighters in heavy metal armor vs female ranger and magic user in cloth of dubious combat practicality.”
I am looking forward to recruiting Wynne because she doesn’t seem to be the moody, brooding stereotype. She’s also not in her early twenties and dresses like a normal person.
Joe_M
1885
Like marketing to a younger demographic?
I don’t suppose this game is going to be available for digital distribution outside of Direct2Drive? Stupid region lockouts…
Killzig
1887
Impulse and Gamersgate both have it listed, I think someone mentioned in this thread that it would be available via Steam too.
Not sure if it is old news, but the dlc page is up.
Warden’s keep: $7. It looked pretty involved from the video and it has some nice sounding features.
New features - a base of operations with party storage. Inventory full? Stash new items as well as loot from the main Dragon Age: Origins campaign
New items and abilities - talents and spells from the Power of Blood school, unique achievements, and powerful items including a set of Grey Warden Commander armor
I’m a sucker for the player bases thing. Hopefully it is like the one in nwn2 in that there are a lot of quests involved with having it instead of it just being a featureless bank.
$15 for the shale pack that comes with the game kind of removes the used market for people who care about that.
Has anyone read the two Gaider DA novels? They’re pretty TSR-ish in quality, but provide some limited backstory on the world and characters.
Please get your unrealistic Ren Fair porn outta here and get back to me when you’ve found more realistic depictions of female battle attire from comic book conventions. KTHNXBYE!!!11!1
jfletch
1891
PROTECT THE QUEEN, MY LORD.
FREE FOREVER.
liminal
1892
$7 for a base of operations? Isn’t something like that usually built in to Bioware RPGs? Is Dragon Age designed to not need a home base, or is Bioware charging us for something that really should be on the disc?
Sarkus
1893
See earlier posts on this debate. Bioware claims the DLC (well except the Shale thing which is basically a form of copy protection) is all stuff their designers came up with while they have been waiting for the console ports to be finished. So, it’s not stuff that would have otherwise been included in the game.
That’s the official line, anyway. I gather that in the main game there is some sort of base or camp where the NPCs you aren’t using hang out so you’ll still have that even if you opt not to get this DLC.
Squee
1894
Except now it’s done. Before the game is released. So they could include it in the game. Since it hasn’t been released. Nnnnngh.
Chris
1895
Nah, they have the DLC out of the way, that will leave free time to work on the inevitable patch.
But then they would have to go back and re-test it, dragging back the approval process. These days you have to be done with the game so long before it releases that I am not surprised so many games have Day 1 dlc. I agree that it does totally suck, however.
There are already two “included” dlc’s though. A third one wouldn’t exactly be some new thing.
I don’t know how i feel about it. It does kind of feel like a retail+$7 game in a way, especially since the dlc includes new powers and such. If anything, i’d say it has a negative feel to it, but not so much that i won’t buy the game anyway.
I can’t say i really support the shale/dragon armor code thing either, but since i don’t buy used pc games, it doesn’t really affect me. Honestly though if someone pirates the game, chances are they will be able to download the dlc too. So i can only see it as a move to combat the used console game market.
liminal
1898
Yeah, I read that stuff, Sarkus. I know Bioware’s justification for their DLC. I’m asking if the DLC party-storage base is a nice little bonus, superfluous, even, or if it fills a void intentionally left in the base game. I should have directed the question at someone with lots of hands-on time, like Desslock.
Glad to hear there’s at least some sort of base. I hope it has a chest for items!
DA’s spells are divided into four categories with 16 spells each: Primal (elemental), Creation (heals & buffs), Spirit, and Entropy (mostly debuffs). AFAIK mages can take spells from any and all four spell groups, but spells are grouped into four-spell chains and you need to take the lower-level spells in a chain before you can get the higher level ones (e.g., “Heal > Cure > Regeneration > Purify”). [Same thing with the talents of rogues & warriors.] I think you only gain one spell per level, so it probably makes sense to specialize in one or two schools rather than spread yourself too thin.
In addition, there are four specializations for each class, which give you stat boosts and access to a new chain of talents (rogues & warriors) or spells (mages). Like you said, you can gain one specialization at level 7 and another at level 14; I don’t know if you can gain more than that.
Wasn’t there a blood school?
