Dragon Age: Origins E3 Previews
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The first is at Mercury News:
The gameplay reminded me of Diablo a little, but perhaps, it was just the look of the place that led to that comparison. The X, Y and B buttons were your special attacks. You pressed the button to set up the attack such as Fury and then hit the A button to actually activate.
I hit the RB button to heal with a potion. The LB button let me switch to the other character. The game felt right. It was more action-oriented than I expected. BioWare always said that Dragon Age was going to be the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. I thought there would be more pausing and starting as you set up your attack just like in the PC game, but everything seemed to work all right in the real time environment. And for those who miss the pausing and start, you do have the option of stopping the game to set up attacks.
Next we have Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
Our hero - one of the Grey Wardens, the group to which players will belong in an effort to fight back against the Blight, and the evil Arch Demon bringing it about - has a present for a lady, Morrigan. It's a magical book that she has been looking for. She's going to be very pleased to receive it. Once it's dragged from our inventory to hers, she responds with some of the most excruciatingly dreadful flirtation I've ever seen. The acting is very weak, my face screwed up as I wrote the word (AWFUL) on my pad in the dark. She's dressed as you might imagine a girl would appear on the cover of a 1980s D&D book, wearing what appear to be a couple of straps of material, most of her breasts hanging out. We can respond to her elephantine attempts at flirting by suggesting we're open to her ideas. Once we've ambiguously agreed to her advances a couple of times, it cuts to a glimpse of an awkward sex scene that saw everyone in the room burst out laughing. Possibly not the desired reaction.
And then RPGamer:
After dumping her, the player in the demo jumped back in time to show how the quest item allowing all this domestic drama was obtained: by fighting an 800 year old witch. Who can shapeshift. Into a dragon. She was an unpleasant woman voiced by Kate Mulgrew of Voyager fame. It's always sad to see a starship captain die, but at the same time, being eaten by a large dragon is even more unpleasant. So down she had to go, though after already eating several party members. Combat worked as most players of the series would expect, with the player selecting each character in turn, choosing some skills to use on the dragon, and then waiting for any major issues that came up in combat that require the use of more interesting spells or items. In this case, the dragon's many sharp teeth necessitated choosing the mage and casting the raise spell on a fallen member. Oh, and while the witch could turn into a dragon, after the raising of the fallen the mage was able to shape shift into a large spider to poison the dragon. Eventually, even dragons fall, and this one was no exception. As the dragon went down, the main character was able to jump up on her head and run her through with his sword several times, demonstrating the cinematic presentation players can expect when they take down the bosses in this game.
