Dragon Age on the PC is a world of difference
By DJ_Lae 3 Comments
I picked up Dragon Age: Origins on the PS3 shortly after it released, thanks to a bizarre (but welcome) EA sale here in Canada that put the game at $40, down $30 from the original retail price. While I'm sure everyone who bought it immediately at release was pissed beyond believe, I was a bit happier.
And I loved the game. I'm still working my way through my second playthrough as an evil mage, and none of the supposed issues really bothered me.
Then my cousin gifted me a copy of the PC version on Steam last week.
Holy shit.
I don't have a cutting edge PC by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same token I suppose it couldn't be called pathetically slow (X2-7750, 4GB memory, Radeon 4830). Miraculously, it runs Dragon Age at 1920x1080 with everything but AA maxed and pulls over 30fps, which is plenty smooth for the kind of game it is. It's also smoother than the 360 version and (far) smoother than the PS3 version. It looks about ten times better than both, too, which is sort of mind boggling. The load times are far quicker, too, and the save times are MASSIVELY better. The PS3 version takes up to 20 seconds to save, although to its credit at least it pops you back into the game to move around while it finishes the same (with an even further reduced framerate).
And then come the interface tweaks. The game can be played like the console version, in a way, but I love the ability to pull back to an Infinity-engine style camera, pause with the spacebar, and issue orders that way. Yes, the command wheel is functional enough and probably the only way you could dig through to so many commands without having a keyboard. But after playing the PC version it goes from functional to clunky as hell. Issuing simple orders, like instructing your entire party to attack a single enemy, requires a few buttons presses on the console version and some arbitrary swooshing of the stick. On the PC version you just click and drag over your party and then right-click on the enemy.
It's no wonder they decided to cut the difficulty on the console versions, as it's a lot harder (or just more awkward) to micromanage your party, and I'd be the first to admit that most of the time I just ran my main guy around instructing him to bash in the nearest enemy skull, and to hell with the rest of my party. If they helped, great, if they died, I'd just mop up the rest.
It also brings to light a bizarre thing I noticed with the console versions - the teeth texture is awfully low res, causing anyone talking to look like they've had their teeth melded together or that they're wearing a mouthguard. It still looks a bit odd on the PC, but it's one of the textures that benefits the most. You can also tell that Morrigans 'beads' are actually a texture, though I'm still not sure if that's supposed to mean they're a tattoo rather than a lazy attempt to make it look like a necklace without rendering polygons.
My only complaint with the PC version is that it's integrated horribly with Steam. Steam achievements would be nice, and the method of linking your EA account to your DLC is a pain in the ass. It was a pain in the ass on the PS3 too, to be fair (and you had to enter two codes instead of one), but at least the PS3 copy never bitched about me not being signed in and locking my DLC out because of it.