Dragon Age: Origins E3 Previews
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This is based on an original intellectual property created by BioWare, which means that it doesn't have to operate under the restrictions of a license. As a result, Dragon Age is going to be a dark fantasy, with subject matter that will get it an M rating on purpose. Dr. Greg Zeschuk, one of BioWare's co-founders and its general manager and president, told us that the company didn't want to do a PG-13 style of fantasy full of the familiar and tired fantasy clichés. It also means that BioWare has a universe of possible games.Additionally, Evil Avatar has a single paragraph in their round-up E3 first impressions.
As an old school Baldur's Gate fan, I'll get the key parts of what I saw, first. Dragon Age can be played two ways. For most of the demonstration, it had a Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic style of camera, where you watch from third-person as your character runs around the level. Conversations happen in Mass Effect style, with cinematic angles and cuts. However, the game features what is called a pause-and-play feature for combat, which lets you pause the game at any time and give orders to your squad. You can also pull the camera back to top-down point of view similar to that of Baldur's Gate. Zeschuk told us that you could play the game entirely from that angle, as well.
Yes, they did show off a bit of Dragon Age. It is a 3D RPG game that seemed to be built a lot around the KOTOR system where you could switch between your party's characters in order to do commands and other things. This is not built on the Unreal Engine, instead it is built in-house. The game looked okay, but there was a lot of video stuttering going on and there was no talk about minimum requirements or anything. Have no clue what kind of PC they were running it on, but it seemed slow. You can pause the action and change your party's actions at any time, another thing that made me think of KOTOR. Not sure whether they should have shown this off given the graphical slowdowns, but I guess they wanted to show off something. Sessler asked about Mass Effect 2 and the guy got amnesia...heh.
