Guys, the press release for the DLC announcement mentions the king dying, as do most reviews, many previews as well. It's the very beginning of the game, once you play through your origin. It's quite hard not to spoil a dead king when the DLC is about revisiting the site to recover things from said dead king.
@Mike Fahey: Not to mention it's pretty obvious that the second you meet the king, and see his gung ho attitude about the Dark Spawn and the Wardens - that he was set to die, and to die soon.
Excellent news! The only question to ponder now is whether to go ahead and buy the DLC for the PS3 (which is currently what I'm playing the game on), or hold off until I buy the game again for PC after purchasing a new computer.
@PuffyTail: I thought I read somewhere that when you buy the DLC it is good for any of the versions of the game. I could have read that wrong (or not read it all), but you might want to check and see.
@(Zombie) Jölan: Yeah, it should be mentioned. However, in Fahey's defense, talking about that part is a bit like talking about the opening cutscene of another game considering the length the game runs.
@-MasterDex-: yeah I know, but thinking about it from the perspective of someone wanting to play it fresh it would irk me. Like saying (Mass Effect 1 spoiler written backwards) ertceps rehto eht sllik neras retfa. For example. Still an early on thing, but can still be a spoiler
I just hope it opens up the world after the ending (or just before) and lets you explore it some. I know that if you haven't completed the DLC it will warp you back to camp after the ending, but if you've already finished it you just go right into the ending. It would have been nice to be able to at least go back to ealry areas and get those missed chests.
@AlKusanagi: I finished the DLC before the ending and it warps me back to camp, world still open for exploring. You must be doing it wrong. (I believe it saves you at camp in an auto-save, so if you wrote over that you may be screwed.)
@Communist Pope:
Strange. The game autosaved me *spoilers* in the hall of the castle just before the main character steps though the doors before the text endings.
@AlKusanagi: VERY strange. Maybe it saves it in a normal save slot? I can't remember off the top of my head and I'm too busy with Assassin's Creed 2 right now to pop DA in (sorry), but I definitely had one save that was just labeled as "The Camp." When I loaded it up it gave a little "enjoy playing DLC, which will take place in your character's past"-type message. And I had definitely finished Warden's Keep and Stone Prisoner before reaching the finale. I'd say double-check all your saved games, and if it's not there then I guess you got screwed.
@EGBTMagus: I never explored the dlc in Mass Effect. Feel like it came too late. I think Bioware is completely hitting all the right notes with Dragon Age.
Way to get me to keep spending my money while my interest is high you horrible, awesome game designers.
@EGBTMagus: One of the reasons I'm not playing DA right now is because I'm worried the quests will be progress limited and I really want to experience everything in one go.
Personally, I think DLC in RPG games is horrible. New content should be treated as an expansion with a new story line and etc. Otherwise you run the risk of DLC "breaking" the orginal game and the main story line.
You also run into the problem of how to integrate the DLC into the story. You have to find that balance where the DLC is important enough to matter but not so important that it is required to understand the whole story.
I think Bioware is on to something but using the DLC as a method of exploring the worlds Past and recruiting new characters. But like I already pointed it, it won't add much to the main story.
I would like to see bioware go back to modules and the ability for user made modules.
@EGBTMagus: Wait.. so that's the calculation? $5 = 1 hour of play!?
It makes sense in some places, also including multiplayer, but I think I just found a theoretical mathematical formula stating how much we should pay for games!
@Taggart6: I don't always drink beer, but when I do...: Just to give you a heads up, hopefully without ruining anything... They put in an 'epilogue' save once you finish the game, which puts you back in camp theoretically before the big last battle. The mode is really specifically for access to DLC stuff after you've finished.
On that note, they did pretty well with 'adding' Shale into the main story... although, to be fair, I think it was more of adding her back IN to the main story, given how she was released. There are several pivotal moments in the game where she speaks up, other NPCs respond to her, etc. It'd be great if they did that with other DLCs as well (past references and such), but that'd require a lot of past voice actors to be rounded up again...
@ninjaDance: I'm curious to see how future player DLC will work. I think the Shale DLC was really stuff already developed with the main story in mind. Though it would be interesting to see how future character adding DLC played out.
Wow, a developer that continues to understand its PC market. They seem to be getting harder and harder to find nowadays. Not got Dragon Age yet but can't wait to try it, although I'll probably be disappointed hoping for it to be NWN3: Age of the Ass-Kicker. #dragonageorigins
omgwtflolbbqbye promoted this comment
Edited by ithyphallus, bonks morrigan at 11/08/09 3:58 AM
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Cutscene editor? Lipsync tools? Righty... This is for PC mod comunity, the less tools you give them the faster they are able to push their ideas out and more longevity the community has. If you expect people to actually voice act and lipsync their own cutscenes you are just dooming the projects. These are not funded stable jobs where you can tweak tiny details for years before releasing, these are modders that work on pure enthusiasm, and it rarely lasts years. Once it starts to fade, the project simply dies and never gets released. Back at the Quake day everyone could mod, things were so simple that one man team could push full conversion out, nowdays you need to be almost professional. #dragonageorigins
@Tre_Green: Don't you dare to talk sense to me when I'm ranting on my hangover morning. : P
But yeah... mm... I guess it's just that people shouldn't expect to see any cinematics or lipsyncing even as tools are available, modders don't have resources for such things. And fear that the ever increasing number of tools seem like "requirements" and scares the modders from doing their awesome adventures.
@ara: WTF point are you trying to make?
The less tools the faster they do stuff: Uh, what are you talking about?
These are not stable jobs: Yes... and so it's even better they can do it easier with tools. Now they don't have to put professional hours into it.
Quake was so simple to mod: yes, and now this is simple too.
nowdays you need to be almost professional: Can be easy and professional.
Seriously, there are so many contradictions in your post. And you probably have not opened the editor. I know I have not but if they are giving out tools, that makes it easier, no matter how hard it would have been to do with out any. #dragonageorigins
@wocalax19: True, true, more tools is potentially for the better, that post was a mess in many ways. I don't know if I manage to make any more sense but I'll try. In my opinion the tools should be very limited. take NWN toolset for example, if you wanted a tavern there were few basic tiles for it, you couldn't even move the bloody tables. That's great! It prevented you from wasting your time on meaningless details and guided your attention to the actual adventure. I just feel that all these voice acting, lip syncing, cinematic directing tools may doom many projects as they run out of their enthusiasm before they manage to do it all. #dragonageorigins
@ara: I do see your point - I often feel that have lots of customisation options in game sometimes annoy me, because I get bored trying to figure out the optimum placement or whatever for everything and eventually just give up. And then I'm dissatisfied with what I've done. I can only guess that it would many times worse when trying to make a whole new piece of game with tons of customisation options.
However, I think there are people who actually like all the micro-managing that these options require (I assume there must be, else why would game developers keep putting in all these options?), and I am quite excited to see what those obsessive modders come up with. #dragonageorigins
@ara: This is how Apple thinks and I disagree. Giving the customer freedom to choose what to do in anything but a very simple, easy to understand way is dangerous! They might get confused! Those poor modders that don't have to use the lip synching feature and such will be so confused and any meaningful mods will come out too slowly! Customers shouldn't actually have freedom or many options with products!
Obviously that was sarcasm (and re-reading it sounds ruder than intended, I was mocking Apple not you). On another note I see yet again for some reason I'm assuming the control freaks at Microsoft and Sony won't allow mods on their consoles. It's such a shame, but at least this gives the PC a strong advantage over the console versions for some games.
I understand your point but like I said they don't have to use those features.
My brother picked it up for PS3 a couple of days ago. The framerate is horrid but I was surprised I found myself really enjoying it so far (I'm not a big RPG guy).
It's probably because I have a jacked dwarf warrior with a Santa beard that goes by the name of Murphy. #dragonageorigins
@lolgreg: The PC version is almost a different game. The graphics, UI, framerate... I have it for both PS3 and PC and I don't think I'll be playing the PS3 version very much. #dragonageorigins
After seeing what awesome modules could gamers do with the Aurora toolset of Neverwinter Nights, I'm looking forward to the new content created to Dragon Age. #dragonageorigins
@Twik63: Toolsets? Relic usually does a good job, as does Bethesda, Epic and iD. A lot of the PC heavyweights still give to the modding community. #dragonageorigins
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stupid_mcgee: 1000 angels could save your soul ([k]) was starred
stupid_mcgee: 1000 angels could save your soul ([k]) was unstarred
@stupid_mcgee: 1000 angels could save your soul ([k]): I wouldn't put Epic in the list nor would I any longer classify them as a PC heavyweight. It took them till now to release a public SDK and otherwise their recent support has been pretty much non-existant. #dragonageorigins
@-MasterDex-: Well, that's true. Although they did do well with releasing an editor for UT3, for whatever that's worth. I agree that Epic isn't much of a PC heavyweight any more, but back in the Quake 2 days, they were quite beloved on the PC front. I guess I'm just nostalgic for those good old days... :p #dragonageorigins
@-MasterDex-: In some ways it still is. There's still a lot of great quality, and I keep hearing more people wanting to get into PC gaming. I think one of the main problems with the PC is that, for most people, the PC is an isolated experience. It isn't as easily and regularly as sociable of an experience as a console. The idea of being able to have a friend over and both play a game isn't part of the PC subset. Back then that didn't matter, as gaming was still fairly niche. The NES and SNES really began to change that and now people expect to be able to pal around the TV and trade the game off.
Edited by stupid_mcgee: 1000 angels could save your soul ([k]) at 11/10/09 2:37 AM
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@stupid_mcgee: 1000 angels could save your soul ([k]): True, local multiplayer games on the PC seem to be few and far between..unless you have a LAN setup which many don't.
I don't know, I still love PC gaming and as you said there's still a lot of great quality but it seems like most publishers just want to change it into a console experience and get control of the reigns. Sure we still have great devs like Valve, Relic and Crytek on our side but there's something disheartening about hearing John Carmack saying he probably won't be using dedicated servers for the multiplayer part of Rage on PC. #dragonageorigins
@-MasterDex-: Really? I hadn't heard that about Rage. This move away from dedicated servers is troubling.
While there are probably other benefits for moving away from dedicated servers, I wish publishers and developers would stop trying to ignore the elephant in the room and just be honest about it: this move is (at least partially) due to rampant piracy. #dragonageorigins
@stupid_mcgee: 1000 angels could save your soul ([k]): Exactly, if they were at least honest about their reasons (piracy and content control) instead of trying to say it's for the betterment of the experience, I could at least maintain some semblance of respect for the move but as it stands they're basically telling us the sky isn't blue when we know it is. #dragonageorigins
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Strange. The game autosaved me *spoilers* in the hall of the castle just before the main character steps though the doors before the text endings.
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I want this now. Damn. Must spend american dollars now. Dammit!
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I just hope it's not limited to your progress in the game, as in you can't do the quest after a certain point like in Mass Effect.
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Way to get me to keep spending my money while my interest is high you horrible, awesome game designers.
11/19/09
Personally, I think DLC in RPG games is horrible. New content should be treated as an expansion with a new story line and etc. Otherwise you run the risk of DLC "breaking" the orginal game and the main story line.
You also run into the problem of how to integrate the DLC into the story. You have to find that balance where the DLC is important enough to matter but not so important that it is required to understand the whole story.
I think Bioware is on to something but using the DLC as a method of exploring the worlds Past and recruiting new characters. But like I already pointed it, it won't add much to the main story.
I would like to see bioware go back to modules and the ability for user made modules.
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It makes sense in some places, also including multiplayer, but I think I just found a theoretical mathematical formula stating how much we should pay for games!
MW2 is worth $25! Dragon Age: Origins is $400!
..wait...
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On that note, they did pretty well with 'adding' Shale into the main story... although, to be fair, I think it was more of adding her back IN to the main story, given how she was released. There are several pivotal moments in the game where she speaks up, other NPCs respond to her, etc. It'd be great if they did that with other DLCs as well (past references and such), but that'd require a lot of past voice actors to be rounded up again...
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#speakup
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[ve3d.ign.com]
This is awesome and what made NWN1 and NWN2 so great.
#speakup
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or just make a box, chest, whatever for the camp.
also, moar desire demon tits.
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But yeah... mm... I guess it's just that people shouldn't expect to see any cinematics or lipsyncing even as tools are available, modders don't have resources for such things. And fear that the ever increasing number of tools seem like "requirements" and scares the modders from doing their awesome adventures.
11/08/09
The less tools the faster they do stuff: Uh, what are you talking about?
These are not stable jobs: Yes... and so it's even better they can do it easier with tools. Now they don't have to put professional hours into it.
Quake was so simple to mod: yes, and now this is simple too.
nowdays you need to be almost professional: Can be easy and professional.
Seriously, there are so many contradictions in your post. And you probably have not opened the editor. I know I have not but if they are giving out tools, that makes it easier, no matter how hard it would have been to do with out any. #dragonageorigins
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However, I think there are people who actually like all the micro-managing that these options require (I assume there must be, else why would game developers keep putting in all these options?), and I am quite excited to see what those obsessive modders come up with. #dragonageorigins
11/08/09
Obviously that was sarcasm (and re-reading it sounds ruder than intended, I was mocking Apple not you). On another note I see yet again for some reason I'm assuming the control freaks at Microsoft and Sony won't allow mods on their consoles. It's such a shame, but at least this gives the PC a strong advantage over the console versions for some games.
I understand your point but like I said they don't have to use those features.
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It's probably because I have a jacked dwarf warrior with a Santa beard that goes by the name of Murphy. #dragonageorigins
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Not that that's really a bad thing #dragonageorigins
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Aren't we all. It's not like PC gaming in the modern era is the great thing it was back in the day. #dragonageorigins
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I don't know, I still love PC gaming and as you said there's still a lot of great quality but it seems like most publishers just want to change it into a console experience and get control of the reigns. Sure we still have great devs like Valve, Relic and Crytek on our side but there's something disheartening about hearing John Carmack saying he probably won't be using dedicated servers for the multiplayer part of Rage on PC. #dragonageorigins
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While there are probably other benefits for moving away from dedicated servers, I wish publishers and developers would stop trying to ignore the elephant in the room and just be honest about it: this move is (at least partially) due to rampant piracy. #dragonageorigins
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