If it weren't for EA's marketing power the quality of the title would perhaps not come under this much scrutiny, wouldn't it?

And what if the title is indeed great (haven't played it yet) but EA won't push it the way it could?
It would be another swell reason to bash the mighty giant, wouldn't it?

That's the way the news work - you can spin it either way to find a bad guy (in your case: Does Bioware deliver?)
 

It certainly seems competent so far; I started off as a mage, played a bit of the origin story, then decided I wanted more dynastic strife and went with a human fighter.

I'm happy to say that combat has gone back to being more thoroughly party-based. I got myself fairly well clobbered in some of the early fights before going back to taking things slowly, pausing to manage my party, and continuing.

I'm happy with the general combat mechanics - though it still has KotOR-style pseudodeath (KO'd party members get back up after a fight) and fairly rapid out-of-combat health regeneration, the mechanic of taking debilitating injuries which need rest or more expensive healing items still gives you an incentive to keep people up. It's a reasonable tradeoff between early-BG party member death (Okay, theoretically you can drag these guys to a healer, but wouldn't you rather just restore?) and KotOR, and (along with skills and spells operating on a cooldown rather than per-day basis) reduces the need to sleep after every significant fight.

Too early to say much about plot and character, but it has promise, at least. Also, plays reasonably on my 2ish year old box.

I really, really wish Bioware would ditch the "Intro-> main quest with 4 areas which can be completed in any order-> Finale pattern they've fallen into since NWN. Maybe it won't turn out to be *quite* so encapsulated, as I've only yet gotten to the part where it begins to open out, but that pattern has always felt a bit hackneyed to me. If the sidequests are fully realized and not the interchangeable modules of Mass Effect, I will forgive.

Morrigan's basic outfit is just silly, though. I mean, really.
 

Well, the toolset's great. I found the backstory and history of the setting interesting. But as the game's not out yet here, I've no idea if that makes it into the game or whether it emphasises the generic fantasy bits over the not so generic ones.

disclaimer: I have been obsessing over the game since 2004, so I might be a little biased...
 

I bought Dragon Age, but have yet to actually play it. I keep waiting until I can devote the mythical "enough time" to it. I generally can play a game for at most 20 minutes at a sitting--and lately, Torchlight (sort of/kinda/psuedo indie!) has been nicely filling that niche.
 

I cunningly only followed the hype backlash -- I read the posts bitching about the music in the trailers, and making fun of the sex and violence.

So now I've got the game, and it's a lot of fun. Very Bioware.

Essentially, if you liked Baldurs Gate 2, you'll like this.
 

@Art - True enough. And I'm not really bashing EA here - but the marketing effort is stunning almost to the point of being downright irritating. I really hope the game proves worth it.

@Anonymous & David - Good to hear about the party combat and BG 2 comparison. BG 2 one of my all-time favorites, so this makes me hopeful.
 

I've got it on console. You can pick nits, but it's excellent, on balance.

Some nits:
1) There are UI issues on console. This is a common problem for console rpgs, and I've learned to deal with it.

2) The npc ai/tactics/micro is...well, let's be charitable and say it's unwieldy and chalk it up to my not having got my head around it properly. I imagine micro, at any rate, would be less difficult on pc. My solution here is to be a big wuss and toggle the game difficulty down to casual when I need to.

3) The presentation is a bit disappointing in that it looks worse than Mass Effect, but it's not awful by any means.
 

I think my fear of Mass Effect might be driving most of my concern. Not that I DISLIKED Mass Effect by any stretch. I just --- uh, got bored with it pretty quickly. Which was disappointing - I mean, finally a AAA non-licensed sci-fi space opera RPG, and ... it left me feeling kinda blah. As did FF XII - another game that was technically excellent and I *should* have loved, but still don't get why I didn't.
 

Bioware wins again.

Bought Dragon Age for the xbox 360 and I have played for about four hours finishing the origin story for the Dwarf Noble and the following act. With five more origin stories to play through still and probably two or three ways to do each one even the prologue of this game has replay value.

Story - Without spoiling anything the story is good and the acting has been well above average. My Dwarf Noble has had plenty of conversation options to 'define' what sort of Noble I am. I guess I will find out later if the 'burn kittens' option goes away when I play some more 'pet kittens' noble.

Combat - Being a 'Sword and Board' based fighter melee is getting crowded a lot. My allies are usually in the way and there is a lot of colliding. Abilities are easy to use as long as you don't want access to more than five, you get six but you will probably save that one for heal potions.

Character Building - The fighter along has 3 archetypes that I can see. You get sword and board (shield), two-handed, and two-weapon. Crafting seems to be a little light so don't expect much there.

"Morrigan's basic outfit is just silly, though. I mean, really"

Outfit? She practically has two band-aids covering up the naughty bits.
 

I'm a college student, so I got insulated from a lot of the hype, actually. That was good because the game itself intrigued me, I like Bioware's writing and they make interesting worlds I enjoy exploring. That said, when I did start seeing the commercials I'm glad I was already interested, because even knowing it was Bioware and being excited, the ads were such an obnoxious mix of pseudo-sex and flippant violence, it was like watching my little sister start cussing around age 12, hoping to appear adult. Which is to say, it doesn't work, and makes them look terribly silly, but still it's counterproductive because Bioware fans are going to see all the 'edgy' sex and violence, and assume Bioware has been ruined by contamination from EA.

The game isn't perfect, anyway. It's a very interesting world, but right now my main complaint is that every single party member is the same monotonous "sharp-tongued British-accented belittler", which has swiftly come to get on my nerves. I also agree with #2 above in that the opening, four modular worlds, then finale style of gameplay is starting to drag a little, but I'm still stuck in Lothering so I have no idea whether it opens up or not. Overall, however, I've enjoyed it, Bioware is still giving me the things I want, which is nice.
 

Have played it for a few hours on the PC. Combat isn't perfect (why just three active party members?) but better than anything Bioware have done since, say, Throne of Bhaal. However, they still can't avoid creating awfully generic game worlds and writing endless, dreadfully boring dialogue scenes.

So far I wouldn't say Dragon Age is Game of the Year material (that would be Knights of the Chalice and/or Uncharted 2), but it's definitely fun and has its old school heart in the right place.
 

I'm a bit past what I'd consider the intro (origin story + the first big battle). The story's good so far with interesting twists and characters with layered motivations, as far as I can tell. The voice acting's great. The graphics are very nice cranked up. The combat is pretty tough and I'm finding it reminiscent of Mass Effect in that half the battle is bringing the right 3 companions to it.

As far the marketing, it's a different group of employees than the guys making the game. I tend to tune out hype. Whether there's too much marketing or too little, it has no effect on the quality of the game itself. They're definitely working it hard, but they've probably got a shitload of money tied up in this thing.
 

Dragon Age is a good game. It's comparable to all of Bioware's recent offerings (Mass Effect, KoToR, etc). However, having played BG 1 & 2 with a full party with the pause every round option, this game doesn't recreate that feel for me. The tactics system is pulled straight from Final Fantasy 12, and actually I think that game did a better job of it.
Not that it matters... I'm pausing all the time and overriding the silly AI usually anyway.

The story and setting seem typical Bioware, if a bit generic. The Skill and Talent system is incredibly simplistic, but there is enough there to keep things interesting I guess. None of my other complaints (besides combat) really prevent me from enjoying it for what it is. But for me, the style of game I like is pretty much dead now that I've seen this release. I guess that means I'm officially old. :(

--Darkbridger
 

I generally figure the party AI is there to do some basic shepherding for you, while still making you do everything interesting yourself. It's certainly a step up from BG2's combat scripts (No, keep stealthed! Stop detecting traps and backstab! Oh gods, everyone just charged into the fireball radius!)
 

Eh tbh, no more marketing then the next big console FPS.

They need to attract any and everyone to foot the bill for development. With marketing prob be really cheap now its just a basic thing to do.

So ya, I'm not buying it... I'm too busy thinking about making my own mmorpg or another game.
 

Seems to me that, once you look past the shiny, Dragon Age does make for a decent console RPG, but as a PC RPG, it's rather mediocre. (Much like Mass Effect.)
 

@xenovore: You're almost there - the way I see it, Dragon Age (DAO) is a single-player MMO with a better storyline and quests.

I just beat Baldur's Gate 2 (BG2) this week, about a day after I got DAO, so my experience with both games is actually very fresh. Going from BG2 directly into DAO, let me say that the differences to me are more striking than the similarities.

Combat, for one thing, does feel very different. While DAO gives you the option to go BG2 with an overhead tactical view, I have not felt the need to utilize it so far (in BG2 I played a Half-Elf Fighter on Normal; in DAO playing Human Noble Warrior on Normal) since the combat is honestly not that challenging. I felt like the combat in BG2 on normal was much more difficult, and required more thought and options than DAO has thus far (I'm past Lothering - going through the Redcliffe portion of the game). Essentially, like in Mass Effect, I don't feel like I need to issue any sort of commands to my NPCs in order to achieve victory...and thus far I haven't had to except for one fight in the swamps. Other than that, I'm feeling like combat is a much more entertaining version of World of Warcraft, from the quickbar skill options to the "left+right mouse button" movement.

Actually, it’s more than that…it completely reminds me of WoW gameplay. Right click on the enemy you want to attack, use your skills pressing the appropriate numbers in sequence, then just sit back, wait for your “mana” (oops, I meant “stamina”) to recharge, and then repeat until enemy is dead. Quaff healing potions as necessary. Repeat.

Hopefully at some point I’ll actually need to pay attention to what my party members’ strengths and weaknesses are.

The story itself is very reminiscent of the Mass Effect style – some interesting dialogue options and a cinematic conversation style. Now, I didn’t like this approach in Mass Effect because I didn’t really enjoy any of the characters or conversations (was too “plastic” for me), but I’ve enjoyed making the decisions and taking in the conversations in DAO. I’m glad they’ve moved away from the Good v. Evil choices in dialogue, and instead gone with this “party approval” system, where if you say good things your evil characters get mad, and vice versa (Morrigan and Sten hate my guts already, while I think Alistair’s got a burgeoning crush on me – even after I threatened to crush that priestess’s skull if she didn’t let Sten out of the cage). I care more about what I’m going to say, rather than in BG2 or ME where sometimes the “good” and “evil” choices were just too stark in their contrast, with no real consequence associated.

I finished playing the Witcher a couple of weeks ago, and I was very impressed by the consequences that my actions had on the story. So far, I’m not quite as impressed by DAO, but I am glad that it’s working in the same general direction as the Witcher. Since I’m only about 10% through the game (9%, according to my “heroic accomplishments”), I’m probably not in the best position to make that statement about the game’s direction, but that’s just my feeling thus far.

TBH, I’m probably going to enjoy this game through and through, but it won’t hold the special place in my heart that the first Baldur’s Gate (and the second, now that I’ve finished it) do. BG1 and BG2 are just superior games to DAO (both in story and in the combat system, which, as I mentioned before, is basically derived from the MMO genre), although DAO is good fun. Now I just hope that Planewalker Games can deliver the game that I’m really waiting for…an isometric sprite-based game that gives me a BG-quality story.
 

I've only played through three of the six origins stories (about 6 hours of gameplay in total), so my opinions are only of the "first impressions" kind.

So far, I'm enjoying the game, but not jumping up and down in excitement over it. It is a bit too MMO-like for my taste. For example, the very quickly recovering Health (HP) after a fight, ability/spell timers (which, I fear, will lead to a quickbar dance of press 1,2,3 and 1,2,3, and so on), simple enemy AI with aggro radiuses and no team work (frex, if you stay out of an enemy's aggro radius, you can pepper him with arrows and he stands in place stupidly waiting to get killed; if by some miracle he charges you, the two near-by mates of his will not help him unless you aggro them too), the quite simplistic character creation with skill trees, and so on. I guess, some might call this an improvement over the BG series (millions of WoW fans can't be wrong, eh?), but I surely don't.

What's good is, that it performs really well on my aging PC (3+ yrs. old) with graphics set on High. The environment graphics are really good, albeit the areas are quite small and tunnel-like (reminds me of Mass Effect). Character models don't impress me, though. To my eyes, they are plastic and doll-like, not giving the impression of living beings. OTOH, character animations are good. The fights look very dynamic.

Speaking of fights, the combat system is a mixed bag. If you compare it to, e.g. Knights of the Chalice, it is shallow, but compared to other RTwP systems, I guess it's OK (with the caveat of the MMO-ness of it). Party AI can be really dumb at times, which irks me (it's 2009 devs, is this the best you came up with?!), but can be fixed by micro-managing your party.

To end on a good note, I've found the three Origins stories I've gone through quite interesting and the Codex is also an interesting read (it gives you a lot of background info). There's hope for this game yet, but it ain't the RPG messiah some have touted it to be. Just another Bioware RPG, nothing more, nothing less.

P.S. Caution to PC players. The last patch (1.01a) glitched the game for me, had to reinstall to get it working again.
 

I'm with you on Mass Effect, I got bored and quit 25% of the way in. But I'm quite enjoying Dragon Age. Playing on Hard difficulty and the challenge level is just right, normal combats aren't particularly tough though not a complete cakewalk. And the bigger/boss fights will wipe you out if you don't play intelligently.