Dragon Age is a series of fantasy medieval role-playing games by BioWare. BioWare considers it a spiritual successor to their Baldur's Gate RPG gaming series. It is furthered upon through the creation of comics, books and other forms of media. Truly this is the age of dragons.
Just completed all the content in the DA:O Ultimate Edition, including all DLC and the add-on Awakening (PC version) in preparation for next week's release of Dragon Age 2. Now having played all of the content, this is what I've learned. Most DLC for DA:O was utter garbage. Players did better stuff with Bioware's editor for Neverwinter Nights.
More importantly though, I very much prefer Awakening over Origins. I love being overpowered (even hard was a cakewalk). The pacing was so much better. The whole 'having impact on the world bit', with politics and rebuilding the Vigil and all - totally awesome. Finally the crafting system is more worthwhile and no longer kinda broken. Some seriously awesome characters and a couple of honest to god bossfights, that aren't just simple tank and spank encounters. So much better than Origins indeed.
From what I know of Dragon Age 2, it's much more like Awakening than Origins. In my book, that's a great thing!
Origins,i mean Awakening is an add on, can't be better then the original,though its nice for the level cap increase and there are some really interesting characters there.
" @TheDudeOfGaming: Tell that to The Ballad of Gay Tony "
Not to derail the thread too badly, but I couldn't stand BoGT. I liked Gay Tony and most of the supporting cast well enough, but Luis was just a psychotic animal, and featuring him as the protagonist in a game like GTA 4 was jarring and out of place to me.
I've said it before: Awakenings is the Throne of Bhaal to Origin's Shadows of Amn. Still an enjoyable product, but there is still a noticeable drop in quality from base game to expansion. The characters aren't nearly as good, the plot is interesting, if somewhat inconsequential until the end, a lot of the ability balance is out of whack (what's that? They made archers overpowered instead of underpowered?), and it's way shorter than the actual game. I finished it in around 10 hours.
I really liked Awakening. The side quests felt rewarding to do, and the in-game rewards were meaningful. In Origins you walk all across Fereldan to tell three widows their husbands are dead to earn a measly 50 silver, but Awakening gives you side quests where you're collecting trade goods, convincing a mage to return for a debate, solving a magical puzzle, and hearing two haunted statues argue with each other... all in the same area, all with meaningful rewards.
Also, I prefer running around with named weapons and armor that look awesome and unique than spending the first 30 hours of Origins in plain chainmail that everyone else wears.
I found Awakening a bit disappointing as I noticed lot of the dungeons were recycled from the DLC quests but re-skinned. Also not being able to have in-depth conversations with your party members, unless doing a few something specific things, made for a lot less character interactions and feeling less connected to those new characters.
Honestly, I preferred Awakening. I enjoyed the higher-level combat, the narrative that went along with running the keep, and the story tie-ins with the novel. Truthfully, I kind of take DA:O and Awakening as a whole product, but if I had to choose I'd say Awakening hedged out a bit for me.
@Pickingwings: I preferred that method. That the long conversations that allow you to raise your loyalty only happen if you're using the character enough for them to see the trigger. It was always weird for me to have teammates talk about the great times we spent together despite the fact that I've never put Zevran in the party at all.
I also hated when I would be running around picking up all the loot and have to stop because of a mis-press for "Something you need, my dear?", button out of that menu, go back to buttoning around, head to the next area, see something out the corner of my eye, swing the camera, hit the button, "Something you need, my dear?"
If they got something to say, they should stop me to say it instead of relying on me to prod everyone in the party for interaction. In-universe, that makes the Warden seem really emotionally needy.
Awakenings was good, a nice fix for the fan and it coulda been slapped on and it'd be an excellent addition to the maingame, really felt like a mini sequel. Origins tho, that world is so massive and awesome...how the bloody hell do they come up that stuff?
@TaliciaDragonsong: They read this. I put over 600 hours into the game, and I'm working on a new playthrough to get a master save file for DA 2 even though I just finished an other one two days ago, but there is next to nothing original about DA. It's all just bits and pieces from a bunch of different places thrown together.
On the PS3, I encountered far too many bugs in Awakening to tolerate even trying to finish it. I know that Dragon Age: Origins isn't exactly the most stable game in the world, either, but I never had some of the problems that Awakening gave me.
" @TaliciaDragonsong: They read this. I put over 600 hours into the game, and I'm working on a new playthrough to get a master save file for DA 2 even though I just finished an other one two days ago, but there is next to nothing original about DA. It's all just bits and pieces from a bunch of different places thrown together. "
Ya that part where the Warden met Gandalf was awesome, also the battle for Helm's Warden's Peak was ace. We also must not forget how the fellowship got into that orgy at the Pearl with Ohgren and Elrond...sick stuff.
Its fantasy, I expect nothing but what you read in Lord of the rings and similar stories but its not a bunch of pieces thrown together. Feel free to think that way but there's loads of original takes on familiar concepts and some great fiction.
I much prefer Origins to Awakening. I mean if we're taking about it as stand alone products, Origins gives you 6 Origins to choose while Awakening has the utter pointlessness of adding in an Orlasian Warden origin, with no actual Origin to it. Awakening is also far too easy, and I barely ever even required to pause the game. Too much loot as well, which sounds insane for an RPG, but during Origins when you found or bought this amazing gear, it felt pretty damn satisfying to other found it, or saved up for hours to finally afford it. Awakening essentially drops new fantastic loot every hour making it loose the impact. The whole ''you becoming Arl'' felt pretty forced at that. I just arrive, and wulah, I have my own Keep and I'm ruling over these lands.. The choices that premise sets up are at least pretty interesting, giving you much more ambigious decisions instead of pure black/white choices that Origins was so full of.
The story was a little disappointment in Awakening, as well; why no talking Darkspawn party member??? Dx Far too short at that, and considering I paid more for Awakening than I did for Origins, having my potentially 100 hours diminished to at around 13 is fucking crazy. I bought it on the PS3 in the UK, to which can only be downloaded for the price of £32. Awakening is also insanely buggy on the PS3, with some sections of sound always cutting off during the same areas, and some of your choices not registering entirely. Such my human noble chick who was married to Alistair, to who (Alistair) sacrificed himself against the Arch Demon, returning to said husband during the epilogue.. unless this is implying that my Warden is logging around her dead husband?? @_@
I did at least enjoy most of the party members, though the fact that there's so little to talk to them about was really disheartening, and overall, the entire expansion was rather disappointing. It's the best DLC for the game, no doubt, but Origins still greatly surpasses as the better adventure to play through for me.
awakening is really badly written. even returning characters from origins don't seem like themselves in awakening. it's somewhat enjoyable just to see the new environments which look as good as anything in origins, and what little lore it has to offer to the universe, but i had to actually summon willpower to slog through the game's crappy writing.
About becoming Arl. That has actually been setup in the ending of Orgins. Out of gratitude for saving Ferelden from the Blight, the Wardens are given the late Arl Howe's territory.
At least for me, it's pretty consistent with all my playthroughs.
Awakening had better gameplay and some great characters. However it was also pretty short and not quite as epic as Origins. I'm going it up to Origins purely because of Morrigan though.
Story had more potential but fumbled, runecrafting very easily turns into an infinite money/rune exploit. Playable characters were mostly boring. It coulda been better but wasn't.
I really liked Awakening but the one thing I disliked was how you could only talk to your party members back at the castle when you upped their liking for you . I loved how in DA:O you could have a conversation almost anywhere with your party members.
There was some good changes in Awakenings but it did have alot of bugs when i played it. They probably patched it by now, maybe i'll check out it out again after i'm done with my 4th playthrough of Origins.
" @TheDudeOfGaming: Tell that to The Ballad of Gay Tony "
Not to derail the thread too badly, but I couldn't stand BoGT. I liked Gay Tony and most of the supporting cast well enough, but Luis was just a psychotic animal, and featuring him as the protagonist in a game like GTA 4 was jarring and out of place to me. "
Nico and Johnny weren't any different to Luis at all. Luis actually had some moral compunctions too, as did both Nico and Johnny. Have you actually followed any of the characters stories?
Awakenings had terrible characters that you couldn't even talk to, so they were very one dimensional. The plot was almost non-existant, only coming together at the end and even then it really didn't matter. Pacing was slow and poorly done. Gameplay consisted of fight after fight after fight to drag it out.
The characters are what is most important for a Bioware game IMO. It's not that they are the best at making overall story, but I think they are unrivaled when it comes to characters. So for me Origins is a lot better since the characters have a lot more depth.
Awakening was awesome indeed, but as someone who had read the prequel novels I couldn't help being disappointed by the story. Also, the balance was pretty bad. I had a 2H warrior with full crit runes. I was doing 747 spirit damage to huge mobs with a single attack.
" @TaliciaDragonsong: I put over 600 hours into the game, and I'm working on a new playthrough to get a master save file for DA 2 even though I just finished an other one two days ago, but there is next to nothing original about DA. It's all just bits and pieces from a bunch of different places thrown together. "
Ya that part where the Warden met Gandalf was awesome, also the battle for Helm's Warden's Peak was ace. We also must not forget how the fellowship got into that orgy at the Pearl with Ohgren and Elrond...sick stuff. Its fantasy, I expect nothing but what you read in Lord of the rings and similar stories but its not a bunch of pieces thrown together. Feel free to think that way but there's loads of original takes on familiar concepts and some great fiction. "
A) The entire fantasy genre, books and games, would not exist in the way it does now, had it not been for LOTR. B) Almost every story ever written takes pieces from other stories and gives them a new spin. Shakespeare straight up rewrote already existing stories for some of his stuff. This is to be expected, and really isn't much of a problem most of the time. C) As much as I love Origins, it really was too derivative, for my tastes at least. Maybe not derivative of LOTR directly, but definitely from the basic fantasy tropes that stemmed from it.
As much as I love Origins, it really was too derivative, for my tastes at least.
That. Indeed most stories are inspired or based on other works, but if we made a problem of that we'll be busy a long time. Sure its nothing new, but the way they handled it, made it feel fresh and its own Dragon Age touch made me love it.
i got the ultimate edition of dragon age (thats with al the dlc) i finished dragon age loved it one of my fav 360 games of all time i have da:o Awakening sitting there but i just cant get myself to start it up so i dont know
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