Dragon Age: Origins

[Bane]

Are you reading this place while at work?

Anyways, one last advice, hehe.. go for cone of cold on the mage(s). It's the best CC skill and is pretty much crucial for the toughest guys you will meet, like bosses. Having mobs frozen, stunned or asleep are of course the easiest way to avoid getting your tank swamped and killed.

Oh, one more thing, haha.. if you want to really experience all the companions plot quests, and of course you want that, use a guide to gifts, meaning which companion gets most +approval from which gift. It's rather annoying to give a gift to a companion just to know afterwards that it was plot related to another companion.

Haha, now I shall stop talking and actually let you experience the game yourself!

[Darius]

Are you reading this place while at work?

Yep. Once in a while, when I'm in my room, I simply have to make a short break, like now. Internet is the obvious choice then

Haha, now I shall stop talking and actually let you experience the game yourself!

No problem, first I need to finally get the game (stupid EA PL) Then, I'll simply install and check out the beginning. The complete playthrough will have to wait for my wife - we beat most RPGs together with Monika (e.g. Witcher, Drakensang, Mass Effect) unless of course she doesn't really give a crap about the game (Fallout 3 comes to my mind ). She's currently at the hospital with Maja, after her lymphangioma surgery. She should be back home in about a week. But then, we're gonna move so the chances are I'll really experience the game late December if not in January


BTW, my video card is dying, too. Randomly crashing in some games. I would upgrade it now but I have nothing to upgrade it to. Gonna wait for nVidia Fermi, I guess. Or, if it sucks (which I doubt), 5870/5970 availability.

[Bane]

Wow, gotta be great to have a GF who actually gives a damn about games, haha.. During my last few months with my ex we actualyl played a little empire:total war together, and in the past we have played alot of HOMM3, but never anything else.

Seems rather sucky to have to wait for so long when you have pre-ordered it. If I were you, and if I had the time, I would have DL'ed the game and played through an origin story just to get the feel of it, and then once the real game arrives, I'd uninstall the pirate version and install the new one (possibly even saving the character and save games and copyingäem to the new game, if they are compatible).

I think they have already patched the game once, so maybe that's why the pre-ordered version is late, 'cause they want to include the patch in that version before the ship it. I think the game is v. 1.1 now, but I'm playing 1.00 though. Don't even know what they changed really, 'cause I haven't seen any glitches or bugs, just imbalances, but I doubt that is what they have changed.

Dunno if you wanna talk about it, but I just want to say I hope the operation went well and that your daughter is doing great and is recovering as she should. Still keeping those fingers crossed.

What's your current vid-card then? I guess you could go for like a nvidia 9800 gtx or so, they are dirt cheap nowadays and still offer good performance, at least until you will buy something more high-end. I bought mine a year ago and it still runs everything pretty smoothly (but I think modern warfare 2 will be a stretch, it looks pretty demanding.. )

[Darius]

Finally got it. A nice box but I have to say the map looks kinda cheap, and it stinks too OTOH, I'm impressed how many language versions are in the box, beside English: French, German and Polish fully translated (text and audio), Italian, Spanish, Czech and Hungarian with translated text. Nice.

Bane, do you happen to know whether you can install all the additional items (from pre-order and Collector's Edition) even if the game is reinstalled after PC upgrade? Since my video card really needs replacement (I've just succesfully made it run for 2 straight NBA 2k10 games despite crashing earlier thanks to EVGA Precision and manually setting the fan to 90%), I'm a bit concerned that the game won't let me redownload these items. If it is like that indeed, I'll wait for my new PC before I install DA - along with video card, I'm gonna upgrade my CPU to Core i7 860 as well, which requires a mobo/RAM upgrade, and thus OS upgrade.

Heh, I want Win7 and another antivirus anyway. KIS 2010 sucks balls, beware of this crap! The 2009 version was great but 2010 makes my PC look old. Despite a "gamer mode" activated (no scans or updates when playing fullscreen games), it constantly fiddles with my HDD and makes games unplayable for considerable time periods. It supposedly has an automatic quick rootkit scanner which is all but quick, and can't be disabled. Kaspersky had a brain fart this year, obviously. I regret extending my license and upgrading KIS to 2010.

Oh, and yes - having a woman who likes games is great The last game I bought for her is Majesty 2. She loved the first one, and is also enjoying M2, although it gets hard as hell after a few missions.

[Bane]

Just wanted to let you know that a friend of mine who plays a dwarf rogue says that char is very much viable. Apperently the rogue is a good MC, much better than the companion rogues you can have.

[Darius]

Good to know.

BTW, I was forced to upgrade my card now. I actually went all-out and bought the GTX 295, along with a Q9650 CPU. When Fermi comes out, I may upgrade again, depending on its performance, price and thermoacoustics. I'm sending the current card RMA as soon as the new one runs, in order to sell the GTX 280. The quad CPU and dual GPU card should give me a nice boost in games, e.g. Dragon Age runs WAY faster on quad cores than on duals. The Fermi/i7/Win7 upgrade will have to wait, maybe I'll do it in a year from now. Oh well, I think I made a reasonable move - comparable performance but lower cost and no hassle with reinstalling Windows/apps/games.

[Bane]

Sounds like a good move indeed. Don't know much about that card you bought know, I'm always kinda lost when it comes to newer cards when I still have a card that works for me. It's onlöy when I am thinking about buying a new one I actualyl starts to read about different vid cards, heh..

And yes, my quad core runs DA at pretty much max settings, and it's well over a year old by now. As said not long ago, I have a nvidia 9800 gtx+ card which wasn't so good when I bought it, but the newer the drivers, the better the performance actually.

[Darius]

The upgrade was a breeze. Unplug/open PC, take out old CPU/GPU, clean the HSF & old CPU, insert new CPU, apply thermal paste to it, reinstall HSF, insert and plug in the new GPU(s).

The only thing that happened was a reset of resolution but I changed it back to native and installed newest nV drivers just to profit from SLI in games like DA. So far, I've tried LotRO, NBA 2k10 and Fallout 3 GOTY. All of them run great. I actually even upped the AA to 8x, since the card doesn't seem to care whether it runs 4xAA or 8xAA It's remarkably quiet as well, under load it actually seems way quieter than the 280. I'm not hearing any capacitor/coil whine, either. I know I shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch but the first impression is superb. The CPU also runs flawlessly. I just need to play a bit with OC during the weekend.

BTW, have you seen Radeon 5970 reviews? It's a freaking monster. Performance is awesome but so is power consumption (especially OCed) and noisy it is, too Plus, it's over 30 cm long, it actually wouldn't fit in my case without removing the HDD cage

[shiram]

got this on ps3 during xmas
i started a game yesterday, and while i enjoy the gameplay a couple of hours in, i must say this game looks horrible
textures are way off mostly

im playing elvish mage