dragon_age_delayMany apologies for my lack of posts lately. Real life has a tendency to take precedence over my free time. But I picked up Dragon Age yesterday, and because it will be a while before I can half ass a review, I thought I’d throw out some quick thoughts on my first couple hours in this game.

Hey, do you like role playing games? Are you a fan of a medieval setting? Maybe have an enjoyment of rich storytelling and character progression? Then hot damn will you like Dragon Age. But seriously, this game is amazing. I took off a couple hours early from work yesterday to get it, which isn’t really uncommon for me with a new game release. I stopped by my local brick and mortar store (help keep them in jobs people!) and picked up my preordered copy of the game while having to listen to the guy in front of me tell the manager of the store about how he needed to switch his preorder from the Xbox 360 collectors edition version of Dragon Age, to the standard PS3 version because his 5th Xbox just red ringed. Soon enough though, I hopped back into the Slurmobile and sped home to start my install. A short while later, I began my origin story.

Having already premade my character a few days ago, I was in the game lickety-split. I really didn’t think my dude looked too bad on the creation screen, but something about how he reacts (or the lack of reaction) in the cut scenes is hilarious to me. He seems so dopey. I went with a Human Warrior, and for now, he is your standard fare of warrior. I use a sword and shield, and I’m tossing most of my points into constitution and strength. I like being on the front line in any RPG I play, and I figured I should make this guy as tank-like as possible. I did see that there are advanced classes in the game that you can unlock. For the Warrior, those are Champion, Templar, Beserker, and Reaver. As soon as I saw that Reaver was an available class, and read its description, I was sold. Just like the Reavers in Dark Age of Camelot whom I loved so much, it’s basically a Shadow/Death Knight. You are a hybrid tank, who steals the life from your enemies. Groovy.

I really enjoy the pace of the combat. You can pan out the camera to see the playing field more tactically like in the Baldur’s Gate games, but as I’ve said before, I want to feel like I’m in the thick of it, so I keep the camera low unless there’s something hard to click on. You can spacebar pause the game and set up your moves, or set up your tactics ahead of time and play it more like an action rpg. I tried doing this and I died. I feel like there are spots where you can get away with this, but most of the time I resort to pausing and setting up attacks. It usually doesn’t take too long to do so though, so I don’t ever feel like I’m playing a turn based game. The animations are somewhat slow, but very realistic and seem to give everything a sense of weight. The side bonus from the slower movements is that it’s not so fast that you can’t keep up with the multiple group member’s actions and needs.

The graphics are fantastic, and I’m actually in awe that it looks this good, and runs at a solid 50-60fps on my system. I currently have it set to 1680×1050 with everything set to high and 2x AA. I have caught a few graphic anomalies, but they were small, and insignificant when basking in the rest of the games scenery. There are some areas that I thought were kind of half assed, but when considering that this game can be viewed from both a behind the back and a top down perspective, it’s pretty damn amazing.

This is the story section, although I’ll keep it to a bare minimum, if you don’t want to read ANYTHING about the story, stop reading.

I’ll just say that the story is somewhat standard. There is a scourge in the world which you must help smite. Regardless of which origin story you choose, you meet up with these cats called the Grey Wardens who, centuries ago, rid the world of the same menace (or so they thought I guess). The human warrior campaign has you pegged as a king’s son, who is quite the fighter, so you draw the attention of a Grey Warden as a potential recruit. I won’t say what happens next, cause it’s spoilerific. I will leave you though, with a part that had me laughing my ass off. After retrieving some hellspawn blood for your initiation, you have to drink it and see if you are strong enough to survive. The quote from the Grey Warden is, “you must drink of their blood so that you can master their taint.”

But don’t just take my word for it, check out all these other bloggers thoughts.

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