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Dragon Age: Origins Expansion Coming In March
ishanjain tipped news that BioWare has announced an expansion for Dragon Age: Origins, called Awakening, that is due out on March 16th. Awakening "is supposed to run about 15 hours and will allow for players to import and edit characters they've broken in from the core game," and it will take place "in the in the role of a Grey Warden Commander who's been tasked with rebuilding the order of Grey Wardens and finding out how the darkspawn survived following the death of the Archdemon dragon." A trailer is available at the official site, as well as some information on a new bit of DLC that will be out shortly, entitled Return to Ostagar. (It was originally due for release on January 5th, but was delayed.)
fp cocksuckers!
Because your life wasn't short enough.
A friend got me thinking about memories. I thought of how it's usually imposible to know, what is really a memory and what is just remembering the story. It's part of the computer code, it saves the data but just like how text takes less space than video. Anyway she talked about specific things, like colors, stand out for her. My memory is pretty vague. I just remember some basic rough draft type info and a feeling, maybe an image or two. It's the feelings though that really stand out. Feelings, they're so primal and simple. I can't always tell you why I like something, wine and movies come to mind. I can't always explain why one stupid comedy is hillarious and another is just stupid. But there is a difference. My dad has a great method for judging a live singing of the star spangled banner. Side note for all the shit I give our country for not living up to our own ideals I must say we have a pretty bad ass national anthem, done right it's impressive. You can tell a good rendition of it because the hair on your arms and neck stand up. Which is my fathers test. Feelings, they're strange things, sometimes they're a real pain in the ass. But sometimes they're great. Didn't mean to sound emo there, most of my life is reasonably happy, some things are great. And because as I already said most of my memories are just vague images attached to feelings it's really easy to sort the ones to keep, the good days, from the less important ones, the bad days. Then again that means I could have a pretty terrible life and barely even know it. Nah my life doesn't seem terrible, Oh no! Trapped in my own pointless lodgic. I was about to say that I lost track of the point of this a while ago, but I'm not sure this post ever really had a point. I think I'm just confused as to why I'm not asleep. Well thank you to the person who made me think about the past. You know who you are. And thank you to ABC for being mostly awesome. Or was it amazing?
I am amazed at the resilience of the game industry in this time of massive unemployment and layoffs.
In hard times when most of the economy is tanking, there are some products which see a heyday. Bologna, for example, seems a dramatic rise in sales during economic slowdowns. Now too, I think it might be possible to say that the game industry is a contra indicator of economic success. Not only does it hold that game sales goes up during downturns, but that the people who play them are more likely to be affected negatively by the economic environment.
It'd be an interesting phenomenon to research, I think.
I don't get it. Can someone reconstruct this as a pizza analogy?
I'll start playing Dragon Age when they unlock the camera on the PC version so I can tilt anywhere from 90 to 0 degrees. I hate not being able to zoom all the way out and tilt the camera down so I can see the horizon. They should have just made the camera control like the same as what was used in Neverwinter Nights. Mod me a troll if you like, but I doubt I'm the only one who got frustrated with the artificially restricted camera control.
It's an escape from reality. Movies were hugely popular during the Great Depression even though nobody had money. And, nowadays $50 isn't that much for days of entertainment. Especially when I could easily blow that much in a night...hell, in just a couple of hours out on the town.
If it doesn't feel like I'm flying on my trusty Chlorine Dragon, I ain't buying this expansion.
First, you take a hot, cooked pizza. Then, you fold it in half like a taco and fuck it, coming inside of it. After that clean yourself up, flatten the pizza, and keep it warm in the oven.
Feed it to your friends when they come over.
I'm normally not a fan of DLC but at least the are doing it the right way...the game is complete and at 18% completion (hey I just got it for christmas and have a job) i have already put nearly 10 hours into it. From what I have read its around 45-60 hours for most people, decent value for the money IMHO. It appears they plan to support it for quite a while, DLC is affordable and offers a good amount of content for the money. I have the Wardens Keep and will likely buy them all. It was a bit obnoxious though to find a character basically asking you to buy Wardens Keep to "help" him, it was kind of cheap but at least gives the DLC some continuity within the game and is in no way necessary to continue. Between this and Torchlight I'm going to be busy for quite a while.
"the darkspawn survived following the death of the Archdemon dragon."
Thanks a lot for the spoiler, you insensitive clod.
...is a Hot Coffee mod.
Scenes like this, this and this aren't doing the game justice without a Hot Coffee mod.
...just sayin'
The cost of a game is worth it sometimes, especially one that has player written stuff and DLC. One good example was NWN1. Probably by the time I did the original campaign, both expansions, all three paid for modules, and an insane amount of player written stuff that was as good (or in some cases better) than the included campaigns, the cost per hour would be insanely cheap.
One of the reasons why MMOs are selling so well is because their cost per hour played is very low, so it doesn't break the budget. A heavy raider who puts in more than 100 hours a month will be paying about 15 cents an hour for their entertainment value, not factoring the cost of hardware.
Dragon Age is another live-action roleplaying game where you have no choices, and the options you're given are all in dialogue trees that all lead to the same results to give an illusion of freedom. Why people keep buying these heavily scripted rollercoaster games, from Dragon Age to the hugely overrated BioShock, is beyond me.
Having actually *played* DAO, this comes as no surprise to me.
I guess maybe it's because everytime I wandered into a tavern, there would always be a sneaky NPC who came up to me and tried to make me pre-order it!
Man, this one time, I slew a huge dragon after an epic battle; then after he died, while I was plundering the gold, he popped back up to life, did a little song and dance about this expansion and tried to sell me a magic weapon if I would pre-order it. To add salt to the wound my browser launches sending me to their website and I got some popups.
Liberty.
First they make DLC that can be covered in 30 minutes for 5$, then they make an expansion that is said to take 15-20% of the time it took to complete the original game and sell it almost full price (for a PC game). I preferred the not so old days where an expansion meant something as good, as long, as awesome as the original game (or better). Now it seems that they are just throwing bits and pieces and charging the big price for it. And don't get me started on DLC which is an even bigger joke, very small feature for 5$ most of the time. I bought the original game as part of a special, so I had both the DLC of the launch for the price of the game alone. But I doubt I will be getting the DLC this time unless the reviews are pretty damn good. Same with the expansion because it's hard justifying 40$ for something that's a fraction of the original game.
Anyway, I am currently going through my games I bought during the holiday sells and hopefully, by the time I'm done with them, the expansion will have gone down in price or someone will inform me that it's worth the price and I need to stop crying.
You forgot about hookers and booze. I don't know if they do well in a recession, I'm just saying that you forgot about them.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is exactly the sort of spin I've grown accustomed to seeing with regard to so many EA-tainted products.
The expansion was due for release yesterday. The headline should read that it's delayed, not "hey wow it's coming in March."
Who got paid to minimize the real story here?
How about the rave reviews of Spore which ignored the fact that the game turned out to be an EA-dumbed-down casual game less engaging than Peggle? (and which more or less ruined Will Wright's and Maxis' reputation)
How about the shameful dumbing-down of the Sim City franchise that Societies represented? How many major reviewers ignored that fact and put EA's positive spin on their reviews?
What of Sims 3 lacking most of the modability that *made* Sims 2 such a success, largely ignored by mainstream game reviewers.
When does a mega-publisher's deep pockets effectively undermine any chance of objective reviews of their products being published in the mainstream?
When does it become a publisher's best strategy to acquire genuinely powerful franchises and put out sub-par products under their banners, instead relying on spin to generate financial successes from critical failures?
I first began playing with rogue but hardly passed Lothering. I then chose a mage, and got through the game first time around 60 hour mark, add or take 10 hours, not sure. After that I decided to play it through again (this time with elven rogue) and complete every minor sidequest I can. Nearly finished this, too. Though I will need another playthrough: I realized that I should try playing it through with a female character, just to see how the ending works (Those who have gotten through with a male character know what I'm talking about. The dark deal.).
I have never gotten so much enjoyment out of the 50 euros I spent. The game is awesome and I am hungry for expansions: I want to visit Orlese, I want to go looking after her, etc.... But this expansion? 15 hours more? Even if I play it through twice, it isn't that much. (Assuming the standard 50€ price. If it is cheaper, nevermind)
That all said... The game has certain definite downsides. It is awesome but has stupid problems. For example, the camera angles are HORRIBLE and zooming out, rotating, etc. is practically impossible in some areas (back alleys of Denerim, for example). In addition, some party members are clearly inferior to others: I liked the Mabari warhound concept but there is just no reason to keep him in the party after you arrive Lothering and get Sten. And some of the party related issues are absurd: If you visit mage tower before you recover the Urn, have Wynne with you (wether she is at the camp or in your group) and side with the cultists, she will leave your party the next time you visit your camp (or immediatelly if she is in your group). You get no warning where she would shout "No, don't do it or I'll leave!", instead you complete the major quest, overwrite your last save and then notice that you can never visit your camp again or you lose a valuable party memember. Did the devs really think "That will increase the enjoyment!"
You can have it. Dragon Age is highly moddable and has a very active modding community. No surprise nudity mods are among them. Have a look at http://www.dragonagenexus.com/ that is one of the biggest mod pages.
PC version only, of course.
How do you think Starcraft got its start in Korea?
...is if they took the ending and choices you made in the main game and integrated them into the expansion, since you can import your original character.
They did a pretty good job of making small choices have relatively wide repercussions over the whole game (even if some of them were annoying... damnit for telling Leliana I considered her a friend *cough*), but over expansions would be awesome.
It is pretty simple. There are a couple of factors to look at, one is "It's an escape from reality" as mentioned below. Another is folks have less money to spend on travel, etc, so they stay home and require more forms of entertainment. Video games is one answer.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
Damm!
http://www.gamestop.com/browse/search.aspx?N=0&Ntk=TitleKeyword&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntt=%20%09Dragon%20Age%20Origins:%20Awakening