BioWare has been good to RPG fans over the years, with games like Mass Effect and Jade Empire. But for players that prefer elves and orcs to aliens and kung fu, it’s been a long wait for a more traditional, D&D-style adventure. With Dragon Age’s release just a few months away, the wait is almost over. After some more hands-on time with the PC version, it seems all of BioWare’s hard work is ready to pay off.
The most impressive aspect of Dragon Age thus far is BioWare’s continually refined storytelling abilities. Usually, the more narrative freedom a game offers players, the more diluted that story becomes, with generic cutscenes and a series of isolated plot points. Dragon Age seems like a prime candidate for such a problem, with its six different introductions to the game via the Origin stories and the continued effects that your race and class choices have on your interactions with NPCs – not to mention the innumerable decisions you make throughout the game. But in our time with Dragon Age, something strange happened; BioWare somehow kept the plot potent, the characters unique, and cutscenes cinematic – all to a level usually reserved for highly linear games. We’ve yet to see everything Dragon Age has to offer, but ultimately the game’s biggest success might be the balance between telling you a story and letting you meaningfully affect that story with the choices you make.
Which is not to say that the gameplay disappoints; although combat seems deceptively simple at first, the complexity multiplies as you unlock new talents (moves) and acquire items. Battle Tactics add another layer to the strategy, allowing you to select basic behavior patterns for party members or script your own individual actions. This helps take advantage of spell combos, and allows for you to tweak your approach for specific skirmishes.
Trust us, it all comes in handy; some of the enemies you face are as cunning as they are dastardly, employing traps, ambushes, and powerful spells. The game successfully endows a real sense of survival. The first few missions we played outside of the main camp not only left our party (and gaming ego) mortally wounded, but imparted a sense of urgency to get back to safety so they could rest and recover – and to give us a break from the tense and tactically heavy battles. While the combat can feel overwhelming at times, health and stamina quickly regenerate after battles, and a forgiving autosave staves off any feeling of frustration. So far Dragon Age has just been *** fun. Check out our timeline on the right, and prepare yourself; the adventure starts November 3rd.
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