Dragon Age: Origins: Thread III [some SPOILERS]

[a wooden chair]

I wonder if in a sequel the next and possibly final Blight will involve two Archdemons. Of course, this would suggest that there are in fact only Seven Archdemons at all, but I could see where maybe two could be found/awakened at once.

As for possible future quests, expansions, etc., I could see them moving the story to Orlay or otherwise expanding the focus of the game to more of the world, though BioWare seems to like to limit these fantasy adventure games to certain specific regions (both Baldur's Gate games were kept pretty geographically local). Ferelden is a pretty limited sized kingdom, it seems. I imagine it being roughly the size of France, or maybe even only England.

Dragon Age 1920x1200

There is much more they can add based off the map. Dales, Orlais, Free Marches, Tevinter, Navarra, Antiva, Anderfels...

edit addition: The hidden character you can pickpocket "Arl Foreshadow" is in the same vein as Lord Foreshadow from the BG series. The papers you can get off him say the following..

Codex Entry 245: The Notes of Arl Foreshadow

Books to pursue for future endeavors.

Lost countenance: Ferelden to Orlesian Phrase Book

-Must not offend the potential landlords

Raising Spirits: Offsprings and the Fade

-Terrible two's indeed!

Forest Fall: Truth and Legend in the Search for Arlathan

-Survivors? Poppycock!

The Origin of Theses: Knowing more than Everyone without Looking Like a Jackass

-Never get the time to read this. Maybe there's a stage play?

If I had to guess there will be an Orlesian expansion DLC or full on sequel game that deals with Morrigan's child at age two.

[Mackaxx]

So, how about that Flemeth starting this particular blight.

Pretty clever of her.

Tell your grey warden friend this blight is a far bigger threat than even he believes eh?

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

Bioware have planned for 2 years of DLV, what would everyone like to see.

The DLC will have to be pretty impressive to get me to spring for it, and neither Soldier's Peak nor Return to Ostagar interest me in the slightest.

[Jon AS]

From the way Morrigan amongst others talks about the old Gods they do seem to have beena higher class of creature than the high dragons. Perhaps they were simply high dragons that were controlled/influeced by spirits from the fade, but they did seem to be special.

The thing is that, once again, nobody really knows. The Old Gods haven't been around for at least a thousand years, if they were ever more than products of Tevinterian imagination.;)

Yes. Bann Teagan is the bann of Rainsfrere. Don't tell the fangirls that he had a cut side-quest though, they'll be heartbroken ;)

I don't quite get the attraction, but there was no sidequest cut. That note just accidentally ended up under "quest related" when it was just supposed to be flavour.

The DLC will have to be pretty impressive to get me to spring for it, and neither Soldier's Peak nor Return to Ostagar interest me in the slightest.

Yeah, the way DLC is set to work in the game, it will only be truly worth it if you play through the entire campaign with it. Otherwise you pick your post-game save and play for an hour and then you're done again. Seems boring.

Warden's Keep is quite good, as far as sidequests go, with some nice backstory on the Grey Wardens in Ferelden and why they were banished. And of course the items are useful for the rest of the game if you pick them up early. You get a nice suit of armour (which will scale to your level if you later sell it to a merchant and buy it back, making it useful for the entire game) and the weaponsmith who sets up shop there will forge one of the best swords in the entire game (either long- or greatsword) out of the meteorite from the "Superman" random encounter.

That said I probably wouldn't have forked out another five bucks for it if I had paid full price for the game, but as it was even with DLC it still cost 10€ less than it normally would have in Germany, so I bought it.

[Galactus]

I managed to fix the DLC and is now running around as a human noble fighter (dual wield spec)

JESUS CHRIST you're like a cuisinart. That-meat party you get with Alistair, Daveth, Jory and me just ran roughshod over everything in the Korcari wilds. I suspect a rogue could easily get even more damage potential, but I'm liking the fighter's ability to just deal good damage over time.

[Daeric]

Dual wield is just the talent tree of choice if your going melee damage, great weapons while can hit fairly hard and have some decent moves just fall by the wayside eventually under the speedier blenders that is two weapons.

[Fenny]

If I had to guess there will be an Orlesian expansion DLC or full on sequel game that deals with Morrigan's child at age two.

Funny, it looks like we'll be getting the BG prequel that fans have occasionally hoped for - but one set in the DA universe.

I'll buy Return to Ostagar - the camp there had one of the best maps in the game, one of the few that seemed really equal to the ones in The Witcher. And a frozen battlefield seems likely to have an awesome atmosphere. Also, I'm hoping for a little bit of companion dialogue at least. It would just be too ridiculous if you went back without Alistair or

Loghain

saying something about it.

But the basic idea of DLC doesn't thrill me - too short, too meagre and too hard to integrate with the game proper, since Bioware can't get back the original voice cast each time they add something, and everything in DAO is voiced. I hope they announce a full expansion soon.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

A post on another board made me realize I really, really hope Bioware has Obsidian do an interim Dragon Age title before the next major release.

[Tobin]

A post on another board made me realize I really, really hope Bioware has Obsidian do an interim Dragon Age title before the next major release.

As long as they don't make it the clusterfk that the second NWN Mask expansion was. That soul-devouring maintenance crap was vile.

[Jon AS]

And maybe they can get LucasArts on board as publisher!

ETA: I do think that Obsidian have their hands full at the moment, though maybe in a year or so that'll change, as two of their 3 projects are scheduled for release next year.

[Brude]

Into my first real replay (not counting playing through the various intro stories). When I first played the ogre in the Tower of Ishal was insanely difficult for me, I think it took me seven or eight tries and even then I just barely got the thing (had to kite him all over the place, endlessly as we plinked him down with our bows and magics). Maybe it was my party balance and my spell choices for my PC, but playing it this time with a rogue (and getting the mage they give you to join your party), it was SOOOO much easier. The mage had no trouble Paralyzing the thing, and Weaken helped too. Between the Paralyze, my rogue and Allister, we had it down to 1/2 HP before it even got a chance to land a blow on any of us. I think it got one or two hits in (enough to nearly one of my PCs down), before Allister landed the killing blow. I guess that's the benefit of 108+ hours experience with the game.

[Tobin]

Into my first real replay (not counting playing through the various intro stories). When I first played the ogre in the Tower of Ishal was insanely difficult for me, I think it took me seven or eight tries and even then I just barely got the thing (had to kite him all over the place, endlessly as we plinked him down with our bows and magics). Maybe it was my party balance and my spell choices for my PC, but playing it this time with a rogue (and getting the mage they give you to join your party), it was SOOOO much easier. The mage had no trouble Paralyzing the thing, and Weaken helped too. Between the Paralyze, my rogue and Allister, we had it down to 1/2 HP before it even got a chance to land a blow on any of us. I think it got one or two hits in (enough to nearly one of my PCs down), before Allister landed the killing blow. I guess that's the benefit of 108+ hours experience with the game.

I noticed that too. I've also seen that things are subtly different from my first play - sometimes not even because of choices I made.

One of the biggest benefits of replays is you know when to strip down the npcs to their skivvies before you lose them.

[Jon AS]

One of the biggest benefits of replays is you know when to strip down the npcs to their skivvies before you lose them.

In most cases you get their equipment automatically, I meant to check for exceptions (I'm not sure about the tower guard and mage in Ostagar), but didn't remember until after I had left Lothering long behind.

And of course even if you didn't get their stuff, it is barely worth the effort.

[Daeric]

One of the few things that I really regret about this game is the fact that its only single player, I know it was built around that, but I would love being able to run around with a friend doing these things, it probably make me actually want to go into the dorf deep roads as I hate that place just for the sheer length.

The way I see it could be done two player is to allow each person to take control of one Npc each, of course this could lead to fighting over who gets Alister!

[Brude]

The way I see it could be done two player is to allow each person to take control of one Npc each, of course this could lead to fighting over who gets Alister!

Baldur's Gate 2 had a mode like that (can't remember if #1 did). I tried it once and it wasn't for me. What a lot of people did was use the multi-player system to trick the game into letting you build your whole party. You could make and run an entire party of customized characters, rather than picking up the NPCs in game.

They could probably do it, but maybe the gameplay isn't so good for that. Dunno. I think if all you are playing is your own character, the pause mode probably isn't necessary.

[Jon AS]

One of the most important arguments against multiplayer is the amount of dialogue in the game. If you had a second player in the game as it is now, that person would be reduced to a completely passive spectator for 1/4-1/3 of the game. Not that much fun, so they would have to redesign the game to accomodate a second (and possibly third and fourth?) player. I wouldn't even know where to start with that but I'm sure it would consume a lot of resources, maybe we would have ended up with a game that was half as long if they had implemented a multiplayer mode. I'm quite happy that it's single player only.

[Cuellar]

Yeah you kinda have to design it to be multi-player. I think overall though it'd be pretty cool if they designed it so you could have 2 people at once.

The BG thing worked ok, just was annoyingly laggy when I played. Plus you completely miss out on the story.

[Galactus]

The game became INCREDIBLY easier when I patched it. Seriously, I had absolutely no trouble with the Brecilian Forest Revenants (Sten in Juggernaught Armour!)

I love the storylines though. There's actually some genuine "What's the right decision?" kind of choices around.

[Jon AS]

The game became INCREDIBLY easier when I patched it.

I think they reduced the diffifuly on Easy and Normal with one of the patches.

There's actually some genuine "What's the right decision?" kind of choices around.

Some are like that, others are completely ridiculous:

Forest Spirit: We want to negotiate to find a peaceful resolution to our conflict with the elves,

PC: I've got a better idea. Let's kill all the elves! Even though they are the ones I'm trying to get to help me!

[Tobin]

EA posted the "complete" soundtrack, including the score, on iTunes - and of course, Lake Calanhad isn't included :(

Would figure that I fall in love with the most obscure stuff (*plays with painted skyball*).

Got the Warden's Keep DL - it's pretty short, but the armor is kickass (and looks hot on Alistair, as if he needed help in that department).

Haven't messed with the new skill, but I'm curious to see how that pans out.

Unlocked Arcane Warrior finally, but opted not to take it after all. There is something a little twisted about teaching Wynne BloodMagic...but I haven't gotten to use it yet, waiting until I get the BloodBoil AOE spell.

I still have Orzamar and Andraste's Ashes to clear out - so I'm sure I'll get a chance.