Sarkus
1921
I guess I don’t see “dark fantasy” as requiring much of a horror aspect. In my mind it’s a way to alert that it is not a typical fantasy environment, a la a Tolkien clone. In fact, I’d argue that even LOTR has some “horror” aspects to it, from the trees that try and kill people to spending days underground in dark ruins to being attacked by a giant spider.
Instead, dark fantasy signals to me that the story is going to be more mature and that some real-life horrible things are going to happen. A more “gritty, real” fantasy world so to speak.
Yeah. Dragon Age needs more stuff like this!
I sometimes wonder how many people have read Tolkien and paid attention.
Awesome! If Jack Burton shows up, I’m in.
Kael
1925
The Lord of the Rings is a massive collection in which you can find examples to support just about any conclusion. But looking at it as a whole it is not Dark Fantasy (in my opinion). If you define dark fantasy as any fantasy with scary or tragic elements then it does (which I believe is a fairly common over-generalization).
But horror should expose us to evil beyond human understanding. It can be by taking us into the mind of a particuarly depraved serial killer, but it more typically exposes us to the supernatural. Those things unfathomable, from places we cannot go. The heroes are typically no more than normal men. The theme of dark fantasy is pessimistic while fantasy is dualastic.
The evil in the Lord of the Rings isn’t any of these things. It is knowable, it is human. In fact it is its closeness to us that makes the LotR resonate so much with us. We understand gollum, we understand the ring-wraiths, we understand sauron and suramon. These are great villians, it is a great story. The main characters are heroes in every aspect. The tone is unforgivably dualastic. It is genre defining high fantasy, not dark fantasy.
Many people said Jackson’s movies potrayed the LotR more as dark fantasy than the books by cutting things like Bombadil and playing up the psychological aspects of the books. Thats probably true, but the evil remains limited and defeatable, the heroes powerful. So I dont agree.
This is all my opinion of course. And I admit to spending to much time considering what it means to be dark fantasy, reading poe, lovecraft and tolkien. So I have an unusual interest in the subject and Im hopeful that DA:O really is dark fantasy.
My apologies, Kael. I could have been clearer. I meant that one would be hard pressed to recognize Tolkien’s work based on the contrasts usually made in these discussions. He often serves as a stand-in for his pale imitators. While I agree and disagree with parts of your description, I’m sure this isn’t the place to debate it. I will say that I agree Lord of the Rings is not dark fantasy, which is a good thing for me as I’ve never found anything meaningful, useful, or entertaining in that genre.
idrisz
1927
I think I don’t agree with your saying of
which is a good thing for me as I’ve never found anything meaningful, useful, or entertaining in that genre.
because I consider Song of Ice and Fire series to be somewhat of Dark Fantasy and it’s extremely good.
Also some of the best games comes from Dark fantasy genre.
…I don’t think you have to worry about dragons not being strong enough in the actual game. They make BG2’s dragons looking like overgrown iguanas – this is an actual combat scene.
Nice job desslock, now we’re going to get another 10 pages about how that outfit is unacceptable in a blizzard…
Nice picture though, but if you had just cast lightning something rank 4, that dragon would have died instantly!
Is that your party there? Can you go through the game being a mage with another mage companion without hurting yourself too much? That witch kind of forces you to be a healer though i suppose as it seems unlikely she can heal while shape shifting.
Sideboob!
How is the flow of the combat compared to Mass Effect? From the Giant Bomb quicklook I was a little disappointed it had the same clear-the-room-to-revive gameplay, not because of realism but just from the feel of it. They make you stretch a little longer before you catch your breath but I never found it that thrilling in ME, despite enjoying the game overall.
Those things eat photons and fart anti-gravity.
Squee
1933
Nah, man. Look at how her arm is bending! Jesus!
RepoMan
1934
That there, um, that there dragon, that’s a mighty big dragon there Bob.
Yeap, yeap, dragon there darn big alright.
Any mage can acquire any spells, so you can transition them to any role you want. But there’s so much variety that you’ll want to try out different branches – I mixed my party up a lot because I like a variety of challenges and wanted to see as many interactions as possible, but when I wanted to get shit done and deal with big battles, I generally had 2 mages (both of whom could provide healing but different offensive capabilities), a warrior and my main character Rogue.
I love magic in this game - like Dragon Age in general, it’s essentially “freestyle D&D” — without legacy baggage and billions of redundant spells that basically do the same thing. And you can’t just spam your most powerful area of effect spells because they have cool-down periods that are very well-balanced to reflect their potency.
I much prefer BioWare’s character development/magic systems to 4th Edition D&D, for instance, even though I think they had a lot of common goals for how to evolve a fantasy RPG beyond the limitations of older editions of D&D and similar games.
…and playable at 2560x1600 apparently.
Haha, that was my first thought from looking at that shot too.
Yeah, silky smooth too, but I do have a geforce 285xt. My CPU is three years old though - dual core. Performance seems very video card driven.
Unsurprisingly, the Dragon Age forums have shit themselves and stopped responding just as they were supposed to link the character generator.
So, is this going to be better on the 360 or the PC? I mean, if it’s more like KOTOR or Mass Effect the Xbox seems like a good choice. If it’s more like BG or something then the PC maybe?
