The voice actors are just really good, the dialog is well written, but the actors make it so believable. There’s a lot of talent there. But yeah, you gotta be in the mood to hear a story, not play an action game to enjoy a good story.

Just like at the movies… you know you are going to be sitting down watching for a while, but it might just be a good watch.

So you don’t have to, but you really have to, and since she’s not forthcoming if you wanna have any idea of what’s going on you have to go down each lane.

The Redcliff example though kinda proves my point. You really DON’T have to ask her all those questions, but the game makes it interesting enough for you to do so. Maybe I’m not understanding you, but why is that bad? I think one of the things DA does really well is to NOT allow you to ask every question every time, so when choices do come up, it actually is a choice rather than a list. We are so conditioned to believe that if there is a list of questions, we can ask all of them and explore every branch. It’s great to have a game that limits you to just one, or cuts you off at an unexpected time.

I personally wish they could have fleshed out your options a little more in many places. I don’t think they realized how much work having multiple origin stories would be.

I found Shale rather endearing after I learned a little bit more of her back story.

I started on hard, and played that way until level 12 or so, but it got to the point where I was having to reload 4 or more times for EVERY fight. Mage its the class I went with and I died every single time. So I bumped it down to normal…now I just destroy everything. I need something in between the two. I want the boss fights to be challenging, but not every fight to be a boss fight.

And I have to disagree about the “not good enough for made for tv special” Hell its better than The Seeker (I think thats what its called). The only VA that gets on my nerves is Shale I simply hate the guy they used for him.

That works in some cases, but not always. Case in point, the interaction about the child in the Redcliff castle where you don’t get all the choices available until you start exploring conversation paths. Which means going into the details necessarily.

In other cases, you’re pretty much “forced to” (not really, but you know) explore conversation paths just out of fear you might be missing an opening avenue or crucial information by not doing so. Ex., the Lady that mysteriously comes out of the same Redcliff castle before you even go in. The whole situation stinks and given what had transpired in the village so far there’s a ton of questions to ask, so you pretty much have to go down each path until you get to it.

In other cases, you’re right. You don’t have to do this.

re: the leading up to the Joining it’s not that I think there’s no need to establish these characters and they should be throwaways, but I thought the way the Joining itself was handled since you arrive at Ostegar is pretty heavy-handed. Yes, it’s mysterious and secret. I get it. I got it the first time when Duncan said so after meeting the King. Show me the other two recruits reacting to it, fine. It’s good. But show me once. They talk about the Joining when you meet them, then again before setting out to the wilds, then again after returning from the wilds, then -again- before starting the ceremony. Jiminy Cricket… It’s secret, mysterious and they’re hesitant. I get it. I got it the first time. Going back to their issues with the Joining more than that only felt annoying to me, and it didn’t add anything important to the story (or their own stories, even).

It’s not the subject itself, it’s how it was presented during Ostegar. Thankfully things get better after that point, from what I could play after that.

The whole point of those soon-to-be-dead characters acting like ‘real’ characters is that the game sets you up for people dying. If it was obvious that the people who just joined you are throw-aways, watching them die would be a ‘gee, no one saw that coming’ moment. I at least was surprised, especially when Duncan put his dagger through the second guy. Remove that interaction and it becomes another generic people dying in an RPG moment.

Also, info about the joining is an on-going story as the story progresses. Right after the joining, you don’t know all the details of what just happened to you, and you slowly learn those as you progress (going to the deep roads, the ability to sense darkspawn and they sensing you, the expected death).

Leaving aside the obvious irritation of the shopkeepers all doing their set piece every single time you try to buy something, Dragon Age in general has a tendency to come across like a movie on occasions. And while the voice acting may be great *for a game* it wouldn’t really cut it as a made-for-tv special, let alone a cinema-release movie.

Same with the storyline. Yes, it’s strong *for a game* but it doesn’t really stand much comparison with even a run of the mill fantasy novel, let alone Tennessee Williams.

The strongest parts of Dragon Age by far are the combat sequences. That’s the part that a game does which you can’t find done better in other media. Particularly in the early stages DA seems to be all garnish and not much meat.

That said why the hell do I not speak…that IRRITATES me immensely (It’s one of the reasons I am not a huge fan of Half Life games). It’s the one area where I think Mass Effect did better than DA:O.