Dragon Age Developer Walkthrough

BioWare has posted a four-part walkthrough for Dragon Age: Origins, the company's upcoming RPG. This demo covers the same area that the company showed off back at E3. Here are all four parts, properly age-gated to keep the kids (or, at least, the kids who can't figure out how to work a dropdown box) away.

They made Mass Effect without needing to pay for Star Wars, so I guess they can make this without paying for LoTR.

Also, who's mamboozo?  An intern?

Why do they keep putting age verification on videos!?!? It's completely pointless!

The drop box wins.

Sooo excited for this. Can't decide whether I'm more pumped for Fallout 3 though.

Age gates are there cause companies need to protect themselves from sue happy consumers. Think it was Gears of War that started it when 1up posted some videos on Gamevideos and some kid not of age was caught viewing mature content.

On to the topic of the game though, looking good. Be interested to see how its turning out closer to release.

Use this engine for the next Mass Effect.

The party just ran past mobs, where they could just open the door and use it as a choke point, not exciting but it works.  Still very buggy, it reminds me of the early footage of Mass Effect before it got "fixed", okay it was still framey but not as bad as it was.

A little too generic in lore, I know it's nearly impossible to avoid comparisons to Tolkien, but Jesus.

I'd like to see an MMO eventually get to this level.

I hope your character will speak in the game.  There are great audio algorithms to take even one or two recorded voice tracks and turn them into a dozen or more unique-sounding voices.  Even if you just did the one male and female one like ME.

Oh god, come back to the page after clearing all the drop-downs and all the vids fire up at once.

@DukeTogo
I think I've heard them say your character won't do any speaking in this one. Looks like you'll just have to read your lines out loud to yourself before you click 'em.

Game looks wicked

I don't know how much people really liked the talking dialog in Mass Effect though. I enjoyed them but sometimes people would rather just read what they are going to say rather than pick a dialog choice, wait for their character to say what they are going to say then listen to the reaction. Either way is fine for me though, since the content and stories of all of Bioware's games have been great. Yes I even enjoyed Jade Empire.

This looks good. (as per usual with bioware). However I don't have a computer capable of running it, so the eventual 360 version will be my pick.

I'm not sure why I wasn't interested in this game before but after watching those videos I knows it's gonna  be like a medieval fantasy version of KOTOR, so I'm pumped! for this game.

God damn, thats awesome. YUM shaders, and thank god they can make plate armor that doesn't bend and shit with animations =))) Gorgeous gaame, great animations, spectacular voice acting, and the story sounds great =)

Combat animations need to speed WAY up though, I am tired of animations that are so sluggish.

I just have one thing i wonder about, do you create a character? I hope so, BioWare knows how to handle that stuff.

The animation is decidedly crap and the voice direction is incredibly dull, but the writing and gameplay seem decent. I might check this out in more depth later on. This really just makes me wish Black Isle was still around in it's full staffed glory... or that Troika hadn't gone bankrupt.

Bur really, why do the cheekbones move and armors bend and flex?

The voice acting for that golden guy is fucking terrible! LOL, they have ruined the fine VA elsewhere.

There are some very lame Endlish accents, they are real but they sound lame and flatly delivered,

it looks fine, well written
but i'm not sure if it's exactly for me
i'll buy the witcher and fallout 3 before this

Game is looking really good, im starting to get excited about it.  It definitely has a little bit of the Baldur's gate feel, and the voice acting is really well done so far.  This will hopefully help me out considering my disappointment in NWN2 (NWN1 was soooo much better).

Edit:  Other people can complain about the VA as much as they want, but after playing through The Witcher (original) this is fantastic VA.  This genre does not always get polished livable VA, and so far I'm glad to hear the quality as it is now.  I think people may have been expecting Mass Effect quality for all bioware games, but they dont have a mass effect budget for all their games........ especially this style rpg.

This game is looking more and more awesome. Bioware sure knows how to make games.

This game is looking more and more awesome. Bioware sure knows how to make games.

Weapons with out scabbards and holsters is starting to annoy me. A wile ago when graphic assets needs to be rationed it was understandable now its just looking lazy.

That one guys voice reminds me hardcore of Oblivion.

1) Age gates are there to safeguard against being sued for distributing content that might "harmful towards minors." Why the gripe anyways? Put in your DOB and be done with it. I don't like always having to show my ID when buying beer. I'm almost 28 and I don't look like a kid. I put up with it because it protects the business from getting in trouble.

2) I think the voice acting actually seems pretty good. Yeah, it is cheesy, but what do you expect? Name me a game that doesn't have cheesy VA. At least it's not as bad as Oblivion.

3) The game isn't done yet. You'll notice frame issues and so forth, that's natural. Besides, it looks like they have the game pumped up to full. In the same vein as Crysis, when Dragon Age is released I doubt many computers will be able to run it at max settings. This called making a game "future proof."

4) Quit it with the BS "ripped off LoTR lolol" crap. Tolkien ripped off Germanic fairy tales, Norse mythology, and all sorts of other material. LoTR and The Hobbit aren't as original as everyone thinks they are. Well written, deep, wonderful stories, yes. But the ideas and creatures are nowhere near original.

5) The reason why your character doesn't speak is multi-fold. a) You can choose to be Male of Female, requiring 2 voice sets for all dialog. b) You can choose from seperate races, requiring multiple M&F voicesets for each race. c) There's a LOT of dialog. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to hire VA talent to do that much dialog? c) The idea is that we inflect our own idea of how our character sounds, hearing their voice in our mind instead of having a voice set forced upon us by the developers.

Anyways, I think this game looks great. The rest of you can trash this game if you want, but Dragon Age is going to be one of the best RPGs since Baldur's Gate II. Will it be able to dethrone BG II? I honestly don't know, that's a tough mantle to take. For those of you that skip this game, you'll be missing out on one of the biggest and most badass RPGs that has come out in over a decade. This promises to be much darker than any previous game, drawing inspiration from Frank Frazetta and George RR Martin. The devs have even commented on other more sublime influences, such as Sandman Mystery Theater. If you know any of these, then you know that DA:O is setting up to be something absolutely awesome. This game has been "in development" (I use the term loosely) for quite some time, bandying about ideas and building background. IIRC, this game as been in the conceprualtization stage since, at least, the near-beginning of BioWare working on Jad Empire.

Skip this game at your own peril, RPG lovers!

This game is going to be epic