So, I got a huge game boner for Dragon Age. It came to my attention through podcasts, CommonSenseGamer I think was the final straw, hearing Darren rave about it... I rushed out with my money and I bought it.
In some of my earlier posts I mentioned my not being very happy with this game, I really found it to be a crashy buggy mess. So, I've left it alone for a while, I've let it mature.
This evening I was happy to find an hour, grab the DVD off of the shelf and find the latest patch. It took a few moments to come down, but at just over 62 megs [I consider this large] it may have dome more than just balancing gameplay. Indeed, once I was in the game, things started to flow.
Originally I rolled through the game as an Elf, I read their back story, I read how they were put down by being "enslaved" by the humans, and I figured... "I've always played Human First in MMO's and then tried the other races. I'll try something else first".
Now, I looked at the dwarves and thought they looked really daft, so I went with the elf. I went with the forest elf style story line, and I decided to play the character as a total psychopath.
So, here is my original character meeting some "humans" in the forest. And you know what. I killed these guys. Yeah, I nailed them to the floor by their testicles and I danced a happy jigg.
And you know what, the game stopped me playing like that. It mentioned it slightly, but it didn't go on about it.
Later on, I slit the throat of an injured guy, rather than helping him. And all that happened was one chap in my party didn't like it... the rest were just like "whoah dude, you killed that dude... so, shall we go for tea?"This bugged me, it made the game feel like it was making me pass down a decided path, and there wasn't actually the degrees of freedom I had envisaged.
This is a big problem I have, it's the main source of my not liking games after time, I expect things of them; I probably expect too much, or rather too subtle a plot progression; and I never expect the obvious crowd pleasing "blockbuster" movie style plot mechanics.
It's probably very unfair of me, but heck, this is my blog so I'm going to spout my own clap tap.
Anyway, tonight, I came to play again, and I decided I needed to completely restart the game, between it previously crashing constantly on me, and my dissatisfaction with the character progression, I figured, I'd start over and give it a completely fresh start.
So, I did, I created a new character, a Human this time, and I set to listening to all the little story lines. I was very happy that after brief introductions and a few quests that the game was not crashing on me. I was VERY happy with that. RESULT!
However, I soon ran into a part of the story line which I had met before, this is the meeting of "me" with another character, and a plot move. Basically, this is the "obi wan meets luke skywalker" moment in the plot. I've seen it as an Elf, and now as a human... and I was disappointed that no matter what options I used in the conversation with this guy, it just always came back to "come with me luke, come see my light saber". I refused this to the point that the plot moved onto "you've got no option".
Sure, the plot subsystem here gave me 3 or 4 conversation options, but they all resulted in characters going "go with obi wan".
I was properly pissed off with that.
Infact, I started to get so narked off with listening to this innane babble, that was forcing my hand, I started to do other things... for example, I'm convinved the guy in the right of this screen shot is Tim Curry...
BTW - Darren at CSG is a great source of the pulse as to what games to look at buying... I'm just trying to avoid listening to his psiren call because so far he's got me to buy DragonAge, and it's sat on my shelf gathering dust for a hunk of time. He talked me into playing STO, and I hated that... he's currently pointed me at DCS Blackshark and I'm seriously considering shelling out for it... heck he even have me off doing RMT in The Hunter! Darren - you're a liability to my wallet man!
In some of my earlier posts I mentioned my not being very happy with this game, I really found it to be a crashy buggy mess. So, I've left it alone for a while, I've let it mature.
This evening I was happy to find an hour, grab the DVD off of the shelf and find the latest patch. It took a few moments to come down, but at just over 62 megs [I consider this large] it may have dome more than just balancing gameplay. Indeed, once I was in the game, things started to flow.
Originally I rolled through the game as an Elf, I read their back story, I read how they were put down by being "enslaved" by the humans, and I figured... "I've always played Human First in MMO's and then tried the other races. I'll try something else first".Now, I looked at the dwarves and thought they looked really daft, so I went with the elf. I went with the forest elf style story line, and I decided to play the character as a total psychopath.
So, here is my original character meeting some "humans" in the forest. And you know what. I killed these guys. Yeah, I nailed them to the floor by their testicles and I danced a happy jigg.And you know what, the game stopped me playing like that. It mentioned it slightly, but it didn't go on about it.
Later on, I slit the throat of an injured guy, rather than helping him. And all that happened was one chap in my party didn't like it... the rest were just like "whoah dude, you killed that dude... so, shall we go for tea?"This bugged me, it made the game feel like it was making me pass down a decided path, and there wasn't actually the degrees of freedom I had envisaged.
This is a big problem I have, it's the main source of my not liking games after time, I expect things of them; I probably expect too much, or rather too subtle a plot progression; and I never expect the obvious crowd pleasing "blockbuster" movie style plot mechanics.
It's probably very unfair of me, but heck, this is my blog so I'm going to spout my own clap tap.
Anyway, tonight, I came to play again, and I decided I needed to completely restart the game, between it previously crashing constantly on me, and my dissatisfaction with the character progression, I figured, I'd start over and give it a completely fresh start.
So, I did, I created a new character, a Human this time, and I set to listening to all the little story lines. I was very happy that after brief introductions and a few quests that the game was not crashing on me. I was VERY happy with that. RESULT!
However, I soon ran into a part of the story line which I had met before, this is the meeting of "me" with another character, and a plot move. Basically, this is the "obi wan meets luke skywalker" moment in the plot. I've seen it as an Elf, and now as a human... and I was disappointed that no matter what options I used in the conversation with this guy, it just always came back to "come with me luke, come see my light saber". I refused this to the point that the plot moved onto "you've got no option".
Sure, the plot subsystem here gave me 3 or 4 conversation options, but they all resulted in characters going "go with obi wan".
I was properly pissed off with that.
Infact, I started to get so narked off with listening to this innane babble, that was forcing my hand, I started to do other things... for example, I'm convinved the guy in the right of this screen shot is Tim Curry...
BTW - Darren at CSG is a great source of the pulse as to what games to look at buying... I'm just trying to avoid listening to his psiren call because so far he's got me to buy DragonAge, and it's sat on my shelf gathering dust for a hunk of time. He talked me into playing STO, and I hated that... he's currently pointed me at DCS Blackshark and I'm seriously considering shelling out for it... heck he even have me off doing RMT in The Hunter! Darren - you're a liability to my wallet man!
Holy Shit, it is Tim Curry: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1541718/
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