Dragon Age

[tmp]

I wrote the first draft of the Human Noble Origin in September of 2004. It was prototyped in the NWN engine.

DA went through three engines that I know of; NWN for prototyping, a "next gen" engine that - to my knowledge - was never completed, and the current one, which may be an offshoot of the second one. I only worked on it for three months, so I can't say.

Just curious, but was there some specific reason to go this route rather than use UE3 for it instead? I mean, given UE was available for pretty long time and also used for ME...

[Nonentity]

I just want to bump this thread to say that I saw the little 30 second character creation video or whatever - http://social.bioware.com/wiki/dragonage/index.php/Creation_Creation - and they have the most adorable dwarf girls ever.



That is all.

[Velorath]

They're actually supposed put the character creator up for download tomorrow.

[Nonentity]

Neat! 9AM Pacific!

I will have a dwarf girl for every profession under the sun.

[Slyfeind]

OH dang, looks fun. I like cute female dwarves. I hate it when people make their dwarves ugly. Really, it's ok if dwarves have cute girls! They don't have to have warts and beards and shit.

[Severian]

I like cute female dwarves. I hate it when people make their dwarves ugly. Really, it's ok if dwarves have cute girls!

[Fordel]

 

[schild]

A cute dwarf is just a fat halfing. A fatling.

[Nonentity]

Lineage 2 dwarf females don't count. Those are fucking anime midgets.



THIS is a dwarf female. (Don't mind the shoulder armor bug, that was in the game for 1-2 months during the Blackwing Lair era)

[schild]

Looks like a fat halfing to me.

[Goreschach]

I like cute female dwarves. I hate it when people make their dwarves ugly. Really, it's ok if dwarves have cute girls!

Was Norman Bates the art director?

[Tebonas]

Most halflings are fat as well. So the "dwarven females have beardsl" route is the only real way to know them apart.

[tmp]

They're actually supposed put the character creator up for download tomorrow.

Yup, it's up:

http://blog.bioware.com/2009/10/13/character-creator-and-the-bioware-social-network/

[Soln]

any multiplayer with this?

[Nonentity]

love love love love
 

[Rasix]

Bile.  I taste it.

[Mrbloodworth]

Lineage 2 dwarf females don't count. Those are fucking anime midgets.



THIS is a dwarf female. (Don't mind the shoulder armor bug, that was in the game for 1-2 months during the Blackwing Lair era)

No, this is a female dwarf.

[Bunk]

No, this is a female dwarf.

You can tell by her dainty hands.

[tmp]

Initial impressions from the character creator... (based mostly on the human/elf female)

* these hands claws were made for /facepalm. And no, there's no size slider.
* DA lands must be in state of perpetual famine. Or widespread drug abuse -- anything but the maxed out setting on the cheek slider gives deep insight into the underlying skull structure.
* Cheek Width in its current state is a ... unless kept close to minimum it creates cheeks significantly wider than the cheek bones. Srsly, the faces just don't work like that
* same shitty eye colour options Mass Effect had. This is not the area where you let a programmer pick the colours, for some reason they tend to think having saturation maxed out is a good idea.
* voice selection... let's just say it's unlikely to be to everyone's tastes, and there's little connection between labels and actual voice work
* lip syns is odd. It seems prone to stretch the width of mouth a lot and very often, way more than people actually do it when they speak. It's jarring, unless your secret desire is to play a result of romantic union between Teri Hatcher and a frog.

given this is tech which also affects appearance of the NPCs, think there's few things here that's going to have negative impact on the game overall. Or at least make it unnecessarily harder for the devs to create something that make good impression...

[Riggswolfe]

If it's anything like Mass Effect you will find that the character's look in the designer is significantly different from the final look in the game anyway. I'd make a Mass Effect character that looked awesome then start the game and his face would look pinched or in the worst cases look like they have down's syndrome.

[Tarami]

Just tried it. Jesus H Christ. And people bitch about the Sims 3 CAS?

- Despite the number of available sliders, there's pretty much just one combination with very slight variations that doesn't make your character look like it's freshly arrived from Alpha Centauri.
- Make-up shades, like blush, eye shadow (liberally applied using a spatula it seems) and lipstick cover the entire colour wheel (green blush, really?) rather than just the reds/browns/greys that make sense. In short, they are absolutely useless.
- Actually, there are very few redeeming qualities about the creator. I think it does pretty much everything worse than every other game I've played with similar levels of customization.

Unleashing this may be one of the worst PR moves ever. But the level of the PR campaign has already been covered in here.

Also, meet Aedan. His father is also his brother.


/disappointment

Edit:
I take that back. Obviously it isn't one of the worst PR moves ever, merely a bad one. It doesn't exactly instill confidence for the game.

[Big Gulp]

But the level of the PR campaign has already been covered in here.

I can't figure out if it's a cynically brilliant move to pull in the mouth breathers, or if it's By Retards, For Retards.

[Kageh]

I don't find it that bad, really. Yes, you can pull some weird or fugly combinations off, but at least it's better than Morrowind or Oblivion, where all you could do were weird mutants. And people were very fond of those. It's probably moddable, so people will come up with some alternate skins. Or not?

[schild]

The character creator has an unskippable video with spoilers.

How unbelievably stupid.

Edit: These guys are obviously tailoring the whole thing for DLC. Who do we blame? EA? Bioware? Bioware Austin? Invert mine.

[Yoru]

This character creator is enough of a letdown that I'll be doing a wait-and-see for a few key folks' reactions before I buy it; previously this was on the short-list of stuff to preorder.

It really does just feel amateurish; there's clearly some kind of technical skill involved, but the art, code and design disciplines don't seem to have meshed at all. Questionable color choices, ugliness on most positions on most sliders, unskippable cutscenes, and two noninteractive bits that seem like they should be presenting choices, but aren't. (Why am I looking at what appears to be skill/spell selection screens when I can't select shit?)

Is it me or are there like 2/3 the options for most women's parts compared to the men?

Also, it lacks an afro option. My dude needs to sport a giant 'fro, a cowboy mustache and muttonchops while he slays dragons. No such luck, although they do have a decent cowboy mustache.

[AutomaticZen]

They show me a trailer with a black guy, but I can't create one in game?  Fail.

[tmp]

You can; may be limited to cornrows or a buzzcut when it comes to haircuts, though.

Oh and the video bits can be skipped with Esc on the second run by the looks of it.

[Big Gulp]

It really does just feel amateurish; there's clearly some kind of technical skill involved, but the art, code and design disciplines don't seem to have meshed at all.

Everything about this game has screamed "amateur" to me.  I don't like the weird out of synch speech in the cutscenes, the really overdone look of the plate armor, or the blood for blood's sake and bonin' for bonin's sake.  This game has just pushed every "stay away" button I have.

[AutomaticZen]

You can; may be limited to cornrows or a buzzcut when it comes to haircuts, though.

Oh and the video bits can be skipped with Esc on the second run by the looks of it.

The farthest mine went was a deep red tone, closer to Native American.  Not near enough to my skin tone.

Which is odd, because Mass Effect was great in that regard. 

[OcellotJenkins]

I'm torn on whether to get this for 360 or PC.  I never got around to playing Mass Effect, how were the controls for that on 360?

[Big Gulp]

I'm torn on whether to get this for 360 or PC.  I never got around to playing Mass Effect, how were the controls for that on 360?

Quite good, actually.  I can't compare it to the PC version, though.

[Rasix]

Yah, I don't remember the controls being a problem at all.  I'd imagine you'd have even less of a problem here since I don't think they're making you aim swords with a cone of fire  

edit: inventory management was ass, however.

[Goreschach]

Yah, I don't remember the controls being a problem at all.  I'd imagine you'd have even less of a problem here since I don't think they're making you aim swords with a cone of fire  

edit: inventory management was ass, however.

That, however, wasn't specific to the xbox version.

[FatuousTwat]

So, has anyone been able to create a male human who doesn't look like someone just kicked his puppy?

[tmp]

The farthest mine went was a deep red tone, closer to Native American.  Not near enough to my skin tone.

Which is odd, because Mass Effect was great in that regard.  

Hmm i chalked the red tint up to weird lighting setup in the character creator (the small portraits are much closer to neutral in comparison) but after taking another look you're right, there's definitely room here for darker tones than what's offered. Maybe the range is limited to reflect what's typical for the country/area the game takes place and the black guy from the trailer is a foreigner from lands to the south or smth..?