That’s one of the mage specializations.
Yeah heh, i just noticed it was a specialization and not a spell school.
hmm i wonder if a blood mage, arcane warrior would work…
It reminds me of the Titan Quest expansion. While the added chapter was fantastic, perhaps the most commented on parts were the new mastery (taking the place of the added specialization) and the storage chest (taking the place of the base) because these were available immediately to players who hadn’t finished the base game.
I’ll admit with my playing style, being able to hoard as many items as I wish would be wonderful. Oddly enough, I enjoyed the inventory system in Gothic 3 so much because of its unlimited space that I played the game disproportionately more than I should have given its overall quality (however, I do have to give major respect to the community patch which made it much better). Having a base to go back to would help with the immersion factor while satisfying my hoarding needs.
Anyway, I’ve never been happy with the idea of exclusive in-game content. I don’t mind paying for proverbial horse armor if it’s something I want, but locking people out of it because they don’t preorder doesn’t strike me as quite right. Perhaps that’s due to my completionist/hoarding personality, or perhaps it’s due to my secret membership in the communist gamers party, but I really think everyone should be able to have the same game experience if they want to pay for it. Of course, I also recognize that such idealism would be squashed in a board room when people are bringing up ways to enhance a company’s profit. Such is life.
The complete, slightly different, Sacred Ashes Trailer is up at GameSpot.
That trailer would be way better (and a far better example of “dark” fantasy) if the dragon just ate them all at the end.
SO is the blood specialization only available if you order the warden’s keep dlc? The blurb on that dlc kind of sounds like that, but then blood magic has been shown in an official trailer for the game too…
sam16
1907
Fron the official forums:
There are new blood based abilities but these are not the same as blood magic. The DLC abilities are a brand new ability chain.
http://www.dragonagecentral.com/single/1255194120
Kael
1908
Not that anyone really cares. But “dark fantasy” doesnt mean that it has to have a tragic ending. Only that the setting is halfway between typical fantasy (dragonlance, tolkien, etc) and horror (lovecraft, poe, etc).
In fantasy ghosts may hang out with students attending a magical school. In horror glimpses of the ghosts may be driving the students mad. In dark fantasy we get a little of both.
Kunikos
1909
I have yet to see anything that resembles “horror” here in any sense. The darkest anything shown thus far is about on par with Tolkein stuff. Show me something on par with mindflayers, beholders, etc.
Kunikos
1910
I’m looking at how the spell trees work and I have to say that I’m not a big fan of how you have to put in 3 spell points just to get to Animate Dead. I could care less about Walking Bomb and Virulent Walking Bomb, since they do AoE splash damage that can hurt your party’s meleers. Some of the spell trees themselves are pretty haphazard too, mixing buff effects with debuffs, summons, or damage spells.
Sure, sure, was just saying it’s about the only thing that would have surprised me – let’s get a little George RR Martin in our RPGs eh?
An ending “think you can do any better?” with a nice smug dragon would be a better ad in my opinion, although probably out of line for the musty seriousness of recent Bioware titles.
At least there’s no more “There’s no dragons in Dragon Age” nonsense.
Judging by KD’s spoiler in his latest preview, there is enough “dark” in this “dark fantasy”.
BTW “think you can do better” would be so cheesy.
I was aiming for campy, which is what all of Dragon Age’s trailers have been already (just without realizing it).
Don’t get me wrong, the gameplay vids make it look like it could be a pretty fantastic game, I’m only commenting on the marketing.
Enough with the beauty shots! Show me something really dark!
I’ve never felt any traditional fantasy RPG had done “horror” in a manner that exemplified what is generally meant by the term. The closest an RPG got to “horror” was the wonderfully creepy atmosphere of the mansion in Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, and that was more of a fun edge-of-your-seat tension than anything frightening. I don’t think that developers try to make players feel fear through creature creations or atmosphere; they are more often just trying to make something different or cool or entertaining or grotesque and mix it up with the action and story.
I’d love to be pleasantly surprised by a fantasy RPG that can offer a truly unsettling and disturbing atmosphere. I’ve not seen anything about DA:O that suggests it’ll have anything resembling “horror”.
Kunikos
1918
Well, that’s closer. Is this one of the hunger demons or something? Is kind of monster that will evoke a real sense of dread for players if they see it? Is this one of Dragon Age’s equivalent of the D&D “party killers” (mindflayers, drow, beholders, dragons, etc) ? (Aside from the dragons) In D&D a lot of players are familiar with the really nasty creatures, which is something that you don’t get with a whole new system like DA:O. You have to re-familiarize yourself with everything.
Edit: The wikia doesn’t really have any more info. http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Broodmother
idrisz
1919
looks like one of the Fate sister from God of War 2.
Kael
1920
In general I agree. The level of immersion required to pull off effective “horror” game play is very difficult to do. I would say several games attempt it, though not usually RPG’s. Silent Hill and Fatal Frame being great examples.
RPG’s tend to be so much about strategy and mechanics that its hard to really dig into the atmosphere. Players feel outside of the action taking care of their characters which is a difficult position to feel fear from.
But regardless of the effectiveness of fear component games can still have a horror setting. Diablo can be considered an RPG set in a Dark Fantasy world, but without any effective fear for the player.
For DA:O it will depend if the threats are psychological in nature, are they beyond human understanding, or if they tend toward piles of stats waiting to be defeated by the player. Not that either option is more fun than the other. But it will help decide if they mean “Dark Fantasy” in that they have horror aspects in their world, or if they mean it as a way of saying that they have lots of gothic architecture.
