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PC Gamer UK review...
94%
'Verdict
A truly astonishing game. Vast, vivid and microscopically detailed. Dragon Age is the RPG of the decade

PC gamer UK can be tough on scores, so a 94 is REAL high for them. I think the highest score they have ever given was 96..

So after watching the videos, is the combat kind of Diablo-ish?

I was thinking that too. Reminded me strongly of Marvel Ultimate Alliance.

From what I've read and seen, the battle system is similar to kotor. I still loved that games story/presentation, but hated the battle system. It's just boring watching your character do most of the fighting while you sit back and watch.

Not really. Diablo is purely real-time. Dragon Age is pseudo real-time in that you can pause the action at any time and queue up actions for each party member who will then execute them each turn. Have you ever played Baldur's Gate (the PC games, not the console games)? This is basically identical to them, except in 3D instead of 2D. Knights of the Old Republic was also very similar.

Yep, played both Baldur's Gates and both KotOR games. If this is just a 3-D iteration of that then i will be happy. I didn't like Mass Effect at all so it appears this style combat might be more my speed.

I also didn't like Mass Effect, but I'm psyched for this game.

The console version does not allow you to use the isometric view, e.g., the camera view in the Baldur's Gate series for the PC. It is only available in the PC version. I am mentioning this because in one of those videos the isometric view is shown.

http://kotaku.com/5385022/you-can-pl...ur-other-games

Gamers can play BioWare's next epic as if it was an action-role-playing game, an MMO, like Kingdom Hearts or like Final Fantasy XII, a company rep recently explained to Kotaku.

EA/BioWare senior product manager David Silverman explained the four Dragon Age playing styles during a live demo of the PlayStation 3 version of the game in New York last week.

He provided the explanation as a BioWare employee battled through what Silverman said was the second-toughest battle of the game — a fight with a dragon, naturally — and then as I took the controls and brought a party of four adventurers into the dwarven city of Orzammar.

The most basic way to play the game is as if it's an action-RPG, Silverman said. Control one sword-swinging hero. Let the computer control the rest of the characters.

A slightly more involved way to play would be to treat it like a massively-multiplayer online game for which you have multiple characters. As you adventure with your party, a player can switch control of characters on the fly. On the PS3, this is done with a tap of a shoulder button, swinging the camera from one member of your party to another, as the whole group of them keeps walking around or, more likely, battling.

The third way to play, according to Silverman, is the Kingdom Hearts style. This would involve the player sticking with a lead character, but swapping ally characters in and out to take advantage of their various specialties. In addition, players could, assign general combat tendencies to their allies, asking them to go all out, hang back — that sort of thing.

The fourth and deepest way to play is to emulate the most hardcore way of controlling Final Fantasy XII. The Square-Enix RPG had a "Gambit System" that allowed players to collect and apply preferences to the artificial intelligence routines of partner characters. An example of a collectible gambit would be a script that would tell an ally to cast a healing potion on herself any time her health points drop below 30% of the total.

Silverman explained that Dragon Age offers an even deeper version of that Final Fantasy system, minus any need to collect the scripting preferences. Opening a menu in the game, he showed rows of options that represented the configurable artificial intelligence scripting options. The roster of choices, which made the screen dense with text, was stunning. Every line was configurable,via drop-down menus that apply, nouns, verbs and even numerical values to the partner character behaviors. For example, any character could be assigned to respond to a ranged attack with a certain move; or behave a certain way against one enemy type and a different way against another.

That fourth method, Silverman said, is the one least likely to be used by the average player. But even a glimpse of it showed great promise and demonstrated the generous range of involvement BioWare is allowing among its Dragon Age players.

You could ignore so many of the control options in Dragon Age, or, if you want, you can dig very deep.

The game will be released on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 next month.

I wonder how much of that stuff is going to be hidden or "dumbed down" for the consoles?

The article is based off a PS3 live demo.

Very nice.

Amazon has the memory ring now as well.

I'm trying to decide whether I want the PC or the 360 version of this. I'm leaning towards PC.

If the 360 version is even 90% close to PC its always my choice now. Sitting on the couch for the win.

I'm getting it for the PC. Mouse ftw!

So a mouse is now a must and a vast improvement for rpgs as well as fps? Ooookay. No carpal tunnel ftw.

Why so snarky?

The PS3 release date has been moved up to 11/03, same as the PC and 360.
Sweet!

I was downloading the game videos for this on xboxLive and noticed that the game graphics were a LOT less refined than Oblivion. The textures were flat, bricks and grass were flat, characters were cartoony. These are just preliminary videos right? I would think the graphics would be more evolved than Oblivion

Bioware has always put less of a priority on graphics than Bethesda, so that's not surprising at all.

www.dragonagejourneys.com

Flash game that allows you to unlock three exclusive items to use in Dragon Age Origins when you get the game.

I am kind of on the fence with this one. I typically don't get into RPG type games, but this looks exceptional. The last extensive RPG I did was Dragon Warrior for the original NES in the late 80s. I like games where I can run around and do quick action, so I might not be the best for this, but dang it looks cool, and I do like fantasy movies and books.