Dragon Age: Origins E3 Preview
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Today's Dragon Age demo took a little while to get to the swordplay, but once the fake dice started rolling, it became clear that there's more to Origins than talking heads and text selection. The over-the-shoulder view you'll notice in a lot of the screen shots is a little deceptive. When the need for strategic acuity arises, you'll be zooming the camera out so as to spy the action from a better vantage. BioWare's trademark "pause 'n play" mechanic (which has earned a snappy name, apparently) is present, and it works just like you remember. You can queue up commands when you freeze the action, and watch them play out when you resume. The pace playing out on-screen felt familiar, and the nigh-fully-populated MMO-style hotbar dressing the UI would lead you to believe that BioWare's designers also thought that Mass Effect's PC version was a big improvement over the original.
Tudge played a melee-type for about half the demo, and the abilities on display were more or less what you'd expect: shield bashes, multiple-slash flurries, and plain old auto attacks. Things got much more interesting when he switched to a "mage" (his words; he also confirmed during a brief Q&A demo that "There will be 'classes' in Dragon Age for sure."). While the spells his mage hurled comprised your typical fantasy fare (fireballs, blizzards and the like), the ways that their effects interacted seemed straight out of BioShock. Example: after spilling a "grease" spell effect on the ground, Tudge's mage set the puddle ablaze by following up with a fireball. In another instance, an enemy's grease fire was extinguished by a blizzard. When he unleashed a tempest (think: a low-grade local thunderstorm), it almost looked like he agitated the targeted grease fire. Tudge referred to this as the "spell combo" system, and said that while many effects will be spelled out throughout the course of the game, others will be revealed through experimentation.
