[Adonthell-devel] Dragon Age

[Kai Sterker]

Haven't played much of that yet, but I think it's safe to say that it
won't eat up all of my spare time :-). Remains to see whether there is
something we can learn from it to improve our own design. Maybe it's
too early for that, but here are a few things I've noticed so far.
Feel free to discuss:

* NPCs:
There are a lot of them that do not even have a name, and they have
nothing to say when adressed. I can see how this helps populate places
with what seems to be the proper number of people, but somehow they
don't appear to be "real" people. I'd rather have only a smaller
number of named NPCs with a bit of actual dialogue, which could be
used to make the player familiar with the surroundings, important NPCs
and such.

* Health regeneration:
Noticed that in Drakensang already. As soon as combat is over, health
and mana are restored to their max value in a matter of seconds. The
only thing that remains are "injuries" that will give a penalty to
some attribute(s) unless healed. I'm a bit torn about that, but I
think I'd rather have fewer battles and no auto-regeneration instead.
That should allow to spend more time in properly fighting when it's
really necessary instead of rushing through hordes of enemies in order
to make a bit of progress in the plot.

* Spells/Talents:
For each of those, there are four "levels". E.g. for a fire based
spells you get something like "Flame", "Burning Weapons", "Fireball"
and "Inferno" and you'll have to learn them in that order. This makes
sense in that you get the more powerful stuff later in the game, but
it also means that I have to spend valuable points on things I know
I'll never use because somewhere in that succession is a essential
talent. IMO, things like spells should be purely based on attributes,
but not on other spells.


There isn't much else yet about which I have formed a strong opinion.
The gameplay itself feels a lot like Baldurs Gate (so for my taste a
little too much focus on combat), writing and setting are good and the
cinematography is brilliant. There's enough depth to make it
interesting, although it starts a bit slowly. All in all, definitely
worth playing. Still waiting for a new Ultima 7, though :-(.

Kai


P.S. Trying to get some coding done as well, but also want to reduce
time spent in front of the PC a bit (bought a couple of new books,
too). So bear with me if I'm absent from IRC on some days. If there's
something urgent, best send mail to adonthell-devel.