Tag: rpgs

An Intro to the Grey Wardens (Dragon Age: Origins)

Posted on by Nimgimli

Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of Dragon Age: Origins posts. There’re two reasons for that. First & foremost, I’m very excited about the game. And second, Bioware’s PR has seen fit to provide Dragonchasers with an on-going stream of press materials.

In Dragon Age: Origins, your character is a Grey Warden. So who are these guys and girls?

The Grey Wardon is a military organization dedicated to fighting the Darkspawn. They have no allegiance to country or kin: they’re feared by many, due to their independence and military prowess. Their only purpose is to fight the Darkspawn and many people don’t even believe Darkspawn are real.

Maybe I should back up. The Darkspawn are a race of corrupt, basically humanoid people living underground. Their warrens are filled with fungus-like growths and weird hanging flesh sacs. They’re filled with a smell like rotting meat. The skin of the Darkspawn is described as rotting or tumescent, but they have sharp fangs and talons. Their bite is toxic and anyone bitten will either die from the poison or turn into an insane, ghoulish creature. There are various ‘classes’ of Darkspawn. Think, y’know, orc-kind, where you have goblins and orcs and cave trolls.

The Darkspawn are driven to search for The Old Gods: ancient dragons sleeping in lairs beneath the earth. When they find one, they infect the dragon with their corruption. Eventually the dragon wakens and bursts forth from its lair. The Darkspawn then follow it to the surface and set about trying to kill every living thing they can find. This event is known as a Blight, and they happen infrequently enough that memory of them fades into legend.

The Grey Wardens remain ever vigilant in the centuries between Blights, fighting skirmishes with the Darkspawn during their infrequent smaller raids on the surface. The Wardens can detect the Darkspawn and vice versa, because to become a Grey Warden you have to drink the blood of a Darkspawn (many candidates die from this), thus taking their taint inside yourself.

If a Grey Warden lives long enough, he or she will start to lose the battle against the corruption living inside them. When that happens, they undertake a ritual known as The Calling, in which they enter the warrens of the Darkspawn one last time, alone, with their intent being to kill as many of the foul beings as possible before dying in battle. Before this journey they, along with their close friends, feast among the dwarves who also live underground. The morning after the feast, the dwarves open the massive portals that lead to the Deep Roads where the Darkspawn now dwell, and the Warden enters alone. The portal is re-sealed, leaving the Warden to his or her fate.

Dragon Age: Origins – The Broodmother & DLC announcements

Posted on by Nimgimli

The Darkspawn are a subterranean menace in the world of Dragon Age: Origins. At first they were a threat mostly to the dwarves, who (for the most part) spend their entire lives underground. Recently it seems the Darkspawn are starting to plague surface dwellers, too. Maric encountered the Darkspawn in The Stolen Throne and lived to tell the tale, but where do they come from?

Now it seems we know:

No one knows how the Darkspawn truly live in their tainted warrens beneath the earth, although a few Grey Wardens have, on occasion, delved deep into the old Dwarven tunnels in an effort to find the heart of the Darkspawn corruption and scour it clean. Those who ever returned, did so with ashen faces and spoke only of a creature called a “Broodmother” that haunted their dreams for the rest of their short existence. What the Broodmother truly is, only the Grey Wardens know for certain.

Before we get to the trailer (which is not for the squeamish) let’s talk DLC. Bioware and EA are doing their best to fight the used game market: those of us who buy the game new will get a code The Stone Prisoner, a DLC package which unlocks some quests and adds a new potential party member (a stone golem named Shale) to the game. If you buy a used copy of Dragon Age: Origins, The Stone Prisoner is going to cost you $15.

There’s another package of DLC that’ll be ready on Day 1 called Warden’s Keep. I’ve seen some sources claim this is an XBox exclusive, but my contact at Bioware says it’ll be available for $7 on PSN and PC, and 560 points on XBLA. The Warden’s Keep unlocks Grey Warden Armor, a chest to store your belongings in, and a quest line involved a haunted Grey Warden Keep.

Here’s the trailer for the Brood Mother. The creature is pretty vile, and the amount of blood spatter in this clip is way over the top. Make sure the kids aren’t looking over your shoulder when you view this one. A couple of stills follow the clip. This thing is nasty!!

What's a mother to do??

We're going to need some Oxy-Clean after this fight...

Building a Living World – A Dragon Age: Origins video

Posted on by Nimgimli

When it rains it pours. New screenshots earlier today, and tonight the second Dragon Age novel by David Gaider arrived: Dragon Age: The Calling.

And this evening Bioware has released an interesting ‘behind the scenes’ video which features some of the Dragon Age team talking about the techniques they used to try to build a living world; that is, a world that players can lose themselves in because if feels so real.

Enough of my blather, why not have a look (watch it in HD if you have the bandwidth!):

Check out the Dragonchasers YouTube channel here.

Dragon Age: Origins reviewed

Posted on by Nimgimli

We’re still nearly a month from launch, and Game Informer has already reviewed Dragon Age: Origin (the PC version). Wow, that seems early considering what an epic game we’ve been promised. The good news is that they gave it quite a nice rating (9).

I haven’t read the review since I already know I’ll be playing Dragon Age and would prefer to go into it with a ‘clean palette’ (so to speak). So it’s back to waiting for me.

In the meantime, Bioware has released a fresh set of screenshots, and as always, I’ve hand-picked a few to share with you.

Dragon Age: Origins — The City of Denerim

Posted on by Nimgimli

More teases from Bioware about the upcoming Dragon Age: Origins. This time we’re looking at Denerim, the capital of Ferelden and a place that will figure prominently in your adventures.

Denerim is an ancient coastal city that got its start as a Mage Tower (now used as a fort). Over the years the city sprang up around the tower, but space was limited by the surrounding cliffs and mountains, so Denerim is now a densely populated place with various districts, including the labyrinthine docks and the Elven Alienage (remember, elves are 2nd class citizens in Dragon Age and so are kept segregated from the rest of the populace). In the Palace District is the Birth Rock, a memorial honoring the prophetess Andraste, who was born in Denerim.

I encourage you to watch this one in full screen, HD mode:

Here’re a few still shots to give a bit more detail:

More Dragon Age goodness

Posted on by Nimgimli

Bioware released another handful of screenshots from their upcoming RPG Dragon Age: Origins. The one that interested me most showed the UI and what gameplay is probably going to look like most of the time. Very evocative of loved Bioware games of the past.

Click to enlarge:
gameplay

Can’t wait to get my hands on this one.

The rest of the shots are just full of pretty, so I’m just going to offer them as a gallery for your enjoyment. Just a bit over a month to go! (Click to see full images!)

Dragon Age: Origins – The Music

Posted on by Nimgimli

If you’re anything like me, some of the early Dragon Age trailers has music that felt a bit off-putting. I, at least, just don’t want Marilyn Manson in my fantasy RPGs.

Fear not. Giant Bomb ran a video today talking about the music and the score in Dragon Age: Origins. Take a lot and have a listen. Of course, if you were super-stoked for the Marilyn Manson stuff, you’re gonna be disappointed!

Dragon Age: Origins — The Assassin

Posted on by Nimgimli

One of the single player games I’m very much looking forward to is Dragon Age: Origins. I know I’m not alone in my anticipation, so I’m delighted to share some new video and screenshots of the game. With a bit of luck this will be the first in a series of posts about Dragon Age: Origins, running up to release on November 3, 2009.

# # # # #

In the world of Dragon Age: Origins, Bioware’s upcoming RPG, elves don’t have things easy. Contrary to the stereotypical portrayal of mystical enlightening beings, the elves in Dragon Age are oppressed, second class citizens.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of the members of the Antivan Crows, “the most infamous guild of thieves and assassins in all of Thedra”, is an elf. Zevran the Assassin is one of the characters you’ll be spending time with in Dragon Age: Origins:

Bioware is crafting an RPG with a very dark, adult feel to it. Hand to hand combat is a messy business, and it shows.

Here’re some shots of a couple of the monsters you’ll be fighing: an ogre and a sloth demon.

Related post: My review of Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne (a prequel novel)

What can MMO devs learn from Fable 2?

Posted on by Nimgimli

As a comment to yesterday’s post, DM Osbon of Construed asked if Fable 2 had anything to teach console MMO developers.

I thought this was a great question and worth a post of its own. I don’t have any answers, just ruminations. But I do like to ruminate, so without further ado…

Let’s start with character development. Fable 2 is not class based. It has three ‘schools’ of combat: melee, ranged and magic. There are 4 kinds of experience: one for each of the schools and then some “generic” experience that you can apply as you see fit. Using a school of combat to defeat an enemy causes that enemy to give more experience in that school of combat. So if you prefer slicing and dicing with a sword, you’ll get more melee experience than ranged or magic experience.

Fable 2 is not level based. (Incidentally, Syncaine just posted a good essay on the topic of levels: How important are levels in our MMOs?. Ironically, I argue for them.) Instead, you spend experience points to buy skills to better your ability to perform a particular school of combat. There are three ‘branches’ of skills in each school: these could easily be expanded for longer-term play.

In Fable 2, your actions have consequences. This, I think, is a big one. You have a Good/Evil and a Purity/Corruption rating, and those ratings change depending on your actions in the game. In turn, these ratings impact how others treat you and what opportunities are open to you. Some MMOs have tried to embrace this kind of system, but the problem is you can’t code player behavior. So if my character is evil and corrupt, but I, the player, am a genuinely nice guy chatting with you… is YOUR character going to react to mine as an evil and corrupt entity, or are you going to react to me by having your character treat mine as if mine was nice. Erm… does that make sense?

Fable 2 has business ownership. This is an interesting ‘sub-game’ in Fable 2, and one I enjoy, but I’m not sure how you’d implement it in an MMO. So you have a coin purse bulging with gold, you see a nice house, and you buy it. The people that live in it become your tenants and pay you rent. Or you buy a business and get profits from it. You can tweak prices and so forth, which can impact your Good/Evil and Purity/Corrupt ratings.

This works well for Fable 2 as a single player game, but most MMO’s struggle to put in gold sinks, not gold fountains. Plus, cities would have to be huge in order for everyone to get a chance to buy a few businesses. Otherwise players joining the game months after launch would have nothing to purchase.

But speaking of gold… creatures in Fable 2 don’t drop loot when you kill them. You get experience and that’s all. Doing quests gets you renown and impacts your Good/Evil rating. Gold comes from Treasures you find, gifts that people give you, jobs (blacksmith, wood cutter, bartender, bounty hunter, etc) you can take, and goodies you dig up. Most gear comes from vendors. This is far different from the lotto-corpse system of most MMOs. I’m not sure how well MMO players would take to such a radical change, honestly. Oddly, this has been pretty transparent to me so far… I had to stop and think about whether I’ve gotten any gold or gear rewards from doing quests in Fable 2. I assumed I had…but then couldn’t think of any. So I guess I haven’t!

I wanted to add story here, because I while I am very confident that Fable 2 has a really interesting story but I have to be honest: I haven’t seen it yet. I’ve been having so much fun just being “immersed” in the world that I’ve been very slow in following the main quest/storyline. But it’s hard to put a good story into an MMO without instancing the game into a single party experience.

/end rumination

But getting back to Fable 2 as the game I’m playing now, and story progression…

WHOA. Some stuff happened last night that I can’t really talk about yet, because I was forced to stop playing right in the middle of it. Suffice to say that so far the game has been pretty upbeat in tone, even with all the bad things happening. It’s felt “light.” Last night…that changed. I felt it in my heart, not in my head. Which I found pretty freaking astounding for a video game. The only analogy that springs to mind is the feeling I had when reading about Sam & Frodo’s journey into Mordor. Tolkein wrote such heaviness into those pages that I felt their struggle and it seemed like the very pages of the book I was reading were getting hard to turn. (And no, I’m not comparing Molyneaux to Tolkein.) And maybe it was just my mood or how tired I was or something. But events in the game really hit me in a pretty emotional way, and when I shut down the console to head to bed, I felt dazed by the experience.

I can’t wait to get home and get some closure to this situation and see what happens next!

Bigamy + Veggies = Purity

Posted on by Nimgimli

When last we left our intrepid adventurer Sparrow Dumpling Blade Lionheart (a hero’s title is ever-changing), he’d taken on a wife and she’d born him a daughter, Gemma. And he thought that life was complicated.

So innocent and naive, was he.

As it turns out, Deb the Villager is fairly low maintenance. A modest gift here, a good rogering there, a decent allowance for running the house, and she stays pretty happy. In fact things were going so well that a second wife seemed in order. Well, not really. Actually, our man found himself on the horns of a dilemma where he had to be either mean or immoral (if you consider bigamy immoral, as a fairly large percentage of us do). Unless I’m angry, I’m not good at being mean, and I wasn’t angry at this lass, so after much thought, I had our hero marry her, and set up a home in Bowerstone with her.

I expected his Purity rating to plunge, but it didn’t. In fact the only indication that something odd had happened was that I got a Bigamist Achievement! Deb seemed slightly more suspicious the next time her hubby came home, but that might have been my guilty conscience. Yeah, I really felt a bit guilty about the situation!

The thing is, now Lionheart has two places where he can bed down for the night, with a bit of extra warmth in each one. And he gets a nice Purity boon for sleeping there with his wife. After sticking to protected sex with wifey #2 for a while, I hit the wrong button once and now Lionheart has an infant son, Georg, to go with his daughter Gemma.

Between this bonus, and eating lots of fresh veggies (each of which give purity points) he now strides about the land, pure as the driven snow, with a halo floating over his head. I’m not sure what message Fable 2 is trying to convey here… that it’s OK to have several wives as long as you eat your veggies?

He’s pretty Good too, and attractive, and honestly it’s almost becoming a nuisance. He walks into town and half a dozen women surround him, badgering him for a ring or just offering to jump his bones. Y’know, now that I think about it, it’s just like real life!! 🙂 Seriously, it can be pretty annoying trying to push around these crowds all the time; I wish there was a “Let her down easy” emote our hero could use to tell a lady “You’re a wonderful woman but I’m already married” without making her afraid of or angry at him. The most subtle technique he has now is “Point and Laugh” which evokes reactions that just make me feel terrible!!!

Oh yes, and then there’s this whole adventure…. Lionheart was warned by his mentor and his fellow hero Hammer, that he should put his affairs in order before taking the next step in his quest for vengeance. So he’s been doing that…helping archeologists and breaking gargoyles and protecting the Temple of Light and protecting farmers from robbers and freeing slaves: he’s been a busy fellow indeed.

But I think its about time that he pushed forward on his quest.