I'm still on the fence about it. I play this game more for RP/immersion stuff than just objective-oriented questing, so the lack of relationships is not something I'm happy about.
However, much to my dismay, after I changed his face I ended up becoming an Alistair fangirl almost against my will. I didn't WANT to like him, darnit, but I just couldn't help myself. So I needed to at least see his 3-minute cameo.
I got it (PC) & found that with my mods on it was completely broken (mobs wouldn't attack. You could attack them but since they weren't "engaged" you didn't autoattack & they stood still while regaining health).
I uninstalled all my mods & it worked. Now to figure out which mod caused the issue, by trial an error.
Instead of doing so I played FFXIII.
No opinion as of yet.
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"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin
I got it (PC) & found that with my mods on it was completely broken (mobs wouldn't attack. You could attack them but since they weren't "engaged" you didn't autoattack & they stood still while regaining health).
I uninstalled all my mods & it worked. Now to figure out which mod caused the issue, by trial an error.
Instead of doing so I played FFXIII.
No opinion as of yet.
General consensus seems to be that most aesthetic mods won't break it (my Alistair still has his modded face, so I can continue to be all fangirl-ey about him for the <2 minutes he's around, instead of staring at some guy I don't recognize thinking, "who the hell are you?") but anything that fudges with the mechanics of the game could create a problem.
I'm pleased to report, however, that Advanced Tactics appears to work just fine. Which is good, since life pretty much isn't worth living without that one.
Ya, I have the Archery/Dex mod, autoloot, the character re-spec-er, the extra dog slot, severe gore, open lock spells, polygamy, increased $ from vendors, advanced shapeshifting (which I still don't use), & the Arcane Warrior fix that lets you cast spells without putting your sword & shield away.
Imma be pissed if I lose autoloot.
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"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin
I finished my first play-through of Awakening last night. Here's how I would rate it on a scale of 1-10:
Monsters to fight: 9 Lots of hack-and-slash fun
Goal-oriented quests: 7 I would rate this higher, because some of the quests were really good, except that I found some other quests to be too obscure and a waste of time, such as collecting crap for Wade to make armor out of rare things (honestly, I'm ruler of the keep and trying to build an army and stop the darkspawn from massacring my people. That's the sort of thing where you say, "Seneschal, here's my shopping list, take care of it." More than that, I know I HAD some of the things on the list Wade gave me for those quests, yet when I went to look for them, neither the object was neither in my inventory nor on any of the merchants I had access to.
Also, there were at least 2-3 puzzle games I never even bothered with. I hate puzzle games, and several times they pop up without any indication as to their purpose, objective or what you're supposed to be doing with them. You just randomly stumble across a puzzle in the middle of nowhere. Weird.
Relationships: 4 I didn't care about the companions much at all, found triggering their dialogue using objects to be obscure and cumbersome, and I think Oghren was glitched. I gave him every gift I could and got as much approval with him as I possibly could and still he never confided in me so I could finish his quest. Every gift I gave him wound up with a +6 approval, instead of +10, +9, +8 etc. And it blows that his approval of you resets to neutral to begin with. What happened to all those nights we stayed up drinking together by the campfire, or that time I hooked you up with your wife, Oghren?
Romances: 1 Thank God I was romancing Alistair; at least I got 2 minutes and a platonic buss on the cheek from my sweetie. Otherwise I would have been S.O.L. I invested a lot of time and effort into that relationship in "Origins" and it became the major appeal of the game for me; to ignore it was highly unfulfilling and really diminished my psychological immersion into the game.
Politics: 10 The one part where they got the immersion factor spot-on was in the politics. There were several decision points where I had to look at things in my role as both Warden-Commander and Queen-Consort of Ferelden. In Origins, my character was very idealistic and egalitarian and wanting to help everyone. In Awakening, often the decision I came to didn't necessarily gel with my primary idealistic "rescue kittens from trees" (to quote Morrigan) inclination.
In some ways, that transformation actually started toward the end of Origins with the Dark Ritual decision (it HURT to send my main squeeze into Morrigan's arms!) but in Awakening, it really came home that doing the humanitarian thing wouldn't necessarily be the best thing for the Wardens or for the reign of the king.
So when the hungry peasants tried to raid my granary, instead of just feeding them--which was my first inclination--I had to consider that 1) if my troops don't have food, they're not going to be very effective at fighting off the darkspawn (an army marches on its stomach, and all that) and 2) letting a group of rioting peasants steamroll their arlessa into getting their way is not the best way to establish leadership. So instead, I ended up threatening to kill them and let their families suffer, at which point they disbanded peacefully enough.
As a result, I'd give the total immersion factor a rating of 4. I really wish they had taken more time with it and included more of the relationships from the original game, instead of making it all, "oh, yeah, what happened to those people I used to know?"
I pretty much agree (I'm not done with Awakenings yet). I really miss auto-loot & some of my cool stuff that didn't transfer over. I also miss my old companions, but I do like the new mage guy: he's funny.
Some of the boss fights are harder than anything in Origins & I welcome the challenge. The new equipment is great, especially with the ability to equip runes on armor. Rune crafting is cool too. I miss the respec-ing that is available in my modded game, too.
I'll give it a 7/10 so far. If you like Dragon Age, you'll like awakening. However, it seems a lot more like a shoddy sequel than an expansion. It's glitchy in parts, many of the characters you grew to love are either missing completely or make brief cameos, & very little that you did in Origins seems to affect Awakenings at all.
Also, the new job roles are crap.
Edited, Mar 22nd 2010 1:45am by Omegavegeta
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"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin
I miss the respec-ing that is available in my modded game
There's a vendor in Amaranthine, if I'm not mistaken, that sells some books you can use to re-spec.
Quote:
However, it seems a lot more like a shoddy sequel than an expansion
Pretty much what I thought of it. It doesn't really expand origins since it's like origins and everything that happened in it never existed in awakening. Except for who's king or queen, everything else you did is irrelevant. And no old companions except Oghren!? That one I'll never understand.
Also I played the PS3 version and it was one of the worst port I've ever seen. The frame rate was horrible and the game would slow down every time there's a fight. Sometimes my character would take 3-4 seconds to pull out his weapon. It really look like they rushed it just to cash-in on the popularity of the original game.
Overall I would give the Ps3 version a 6 maybe a 6.5 out of 10 if I'm generous.
Just finished the original game tonight. Just wanted to echo the sentiments on here; one of the best single-player games I've ever played. I loved the decisions, and the relationship aspect was cool (although I kinda regretted choosing Leilana, as Morrigan was such a more interesting character). The ending was neat, and I think I got almost all "good" things out of it except choosing to spare Branka and let her create a golem army, as well as supporting the old dwarf instead of the king's son, seemed to lead to a war with humanity. Oops?
I really want to try playing through again. Playing as a mage was relatively simple for most of it; the Storm spells on easy made groups fall in seconds, and once I got blood magic, dude, game over. I'm debating the expansion first though; I love politics, so if that's the focus, great!
want to have fun? crank up the difficulty to nightmare and play a dagger rogue. it is soooooo awesome. I wish I had done that the first time around because i cant bring myself to finishing the game again.
If you manage your threat well enough (i just make it so I kill an add or 2 before laying into the main target) the damage you can achieve is insane.
Also try a sword&board warrior, 2H warrior, you(rogue), morrigan/wynne party. make use of the elemental weapon buffs.
Probably should note that i have the mod to respec characters, not sure if you have that.
I wanted to try one of those out too... never got around to it. Mainly because i wasnt exactly sure how to gear it.
Gear them up like you would a traditional warrior tank (sword/shield and heavy armor) using Magic to meet the STR requirements while implementing as many self-buffs and AoE debuffs as you can.
You can tank anything on the hardest difficulty with relative ease.
FYI, you can get Awakenings for $5 on the EA site.
Use the promo code: PAXEAST842 for $20 off a $40 order.
Also if you use an easily obtained reward from recyclebank.com you can get $15 off of every PS3/360 game on the EA site as well, however you will need to buy some other games to get back up to $40.
I literally just got 7 PS3 games for $35 doing this. Just a heads up for anyone else looking for good deals.
This is the first I've heard about what they were talking about there, and I must say, I'm kinda pissed as well if it's true
Unfortunately, it is.
It's not QUITE as bad as the video makes it out to be. I'd say the reality is about 95% similar to the way it's described in the video. I will describe the interactions you get behind a spoiler cut.
I don't know what, if any, interactions you get with Alistair if you didn't make him king. As I understand it, due to bugs, he may sometimes show up anyway if he's not king, acting as though he were. If you made Anora queen, she should be the one to show up for the cameo in that case, in which case I suppose you don't see Alistair at all.
If you DID make him king, he shows up for about 3 minutes at the very beginning of the game. If you didn't romance him, I imagine the interaction is fairly impersonal. I've seen some people who played male characters complaining about the fact that Alistair was acting as though they were never best buds.
If you DID romance him, and wound up as either his queen or his mistress, the interaction is pretty much the same, except that he doesn't refer to you as his wife in the latter case. You get a few flirty lines, such as:
Alistair: And how are you, dear wife? You weren't badly hurt, I see.
PC: Planning on joining me [referring to the darkspawn threat], dear husband? Alistair: Don't even tempt me like that, you minx!
or as an alternative to that exchange: PC: Nothing can take me down. You know that. Alistair: {laughs) I've married an indestructible goddess!
Later he also says something about you being a bigger badass than he is, or some such.
There's also one part where he says "It would be so much more interesting to keep you at court" and manages to make the word "interesting" sound absolutely filthy.
When he says good-bye, however, you get a platonic buss on the cheek (he may be whispering in your ear, there's some debate about that.) And then you never see him again, except a mention in the epilogue slides.
Here's a couple YouTube videos of his appearance when you're the queen: Part 1 Part 2
That's not too bad. It's understandable, it acknowledges your past from the previous adventure, but he can't go with you because he has to do other things. I'm okay with that.
That's not too bad. It's understandable, it acknowledges your past from the previous adventure, but he can't go with you because he has to do other things. I'm okay with that
That's only if you made him king. If not then you don't see him at all
FYI, you can get Awakenings for $5 on the EA site.
Use the promo code: PAXEAST842 for $20 off a $40 order.
Also if you use an easily obtained reward from recyclebank.com you can get $15 off of every PS3/360 game on the EA site as well, however you will need to buy some other games to get back up to $40.
I literally just got 7 PS3 games for $35 doing this. Just a heads up for anyone else looking for good deals.
http://social.bioware.com/brc/666102
Thanks for the info, too bad EA prices their games so if you buy less than 3 games the price would be just under $40 which would prevent the code from kicking in.
Could you go into a bit more detail about the recyclebank.com offer? I looked on their site and couldn't find anything about EA games.
"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." — James D. Nicoll
Omg lmfao at the Hitler vid. I have seen other versions of that of course but that is a good one. I have Awakenings. Almost to the end of my first play though on my Male Human Noble. If you played that story line this expansion has some pretty interesting continuation of that story and ties in well.
No romances is lame. That level of character interaction is a big part of what makes Bioware games compelling. There is still some good dialogue though with your new characters but meh it's just not as deep. I don't really care about any of them like I did the first time around.
I don't feel driven to play it like crazy and am just slowly going through the story. It does feel allot like a slightly larger DLC. New powers are cool but my toons are so already overpowered with what they have I feel like I just use the new abilities for novelty and don't really need any of them. Many of the new abilities are redundant and just become flavor. Do you want to have arcane armor from the fade or do you want to have spirit armor FROM THE FADE! And if you try and sustain the 15 new aura's you have forget about actually using any other abilities. You got no Go juice left son.
I wish they would just slow down on the next one and do whatever it takes to make it complete immersive and epic like the first was. A reboot of your skills might not be a bad idea for 3, like I said its gettign pretty cluttered at this point and my toolbars are just a mess.
Oh and runecrafting? PITA I'm already so strong even with my crappy +1 runes that I have not bothered to do it.
Anyway yeah it's some new content. It's not a complete new game though imo.
I have not finished yet but I think maybe these are Morrigan's kids come back to haunt us. Dunno if they reveal that later but that might make sense for our talking Darkspawnies. Oh and one more thing the boob ridges on Mother make me think of the SouthPark cat huffing episode. XD
New powers are cool but my toons are so already overpowered with what they have I feel like I just use the new abilities for novelty and don't really need any of them.
No kidding. Even on normal mode, all I had to do was give the mobs a harsh glare and they'd fall down dead.
