Dragon Age

[stray]

Yeah, that does suck. Although we don't know exactly what it may or may not reference. At the very least, you'd think they will mention that the archedemon kicked the bucket and the world lost a lot of grey wardens. Maybe it won't go into personal details of your character, but I hope they reference some kind of change in the universe.

I don't want to resurrect my character though. He may have resembled Jesus somewhat, but he's definitely dead.

[Ingmar]

You'll still be able to take the Origins character you used to start an Awakening campaign into more Origins DLC, you just can't use an Awakening save from TEH FUTURE to play Origins. You have to fork your timeline exactly the same way you do whenever you go back to an old save.

There is nothing EA can do to stop this unless Awakenings searches your file system to hard delete every DA save you have, then implants a personalised virus on your PC to eliminate any saves imported from external storage in future.

All that quote indicates is that the author at 1up lacks basic critical thinking skills.

You can't migrate Mass Effect 2 saves into Mass Effect 1 either. Oh noes.

But this isn't Dragon Age 2.  This is a campaign that you launch from the same damn game.  As a big (and possibly from a box) piece of DLC, it should play nicely with all the others and at least offer a Post-Campaign save (like the base game) where you can play any of the other DLC.

You couldn't go back and forth between BG2 and the BG2 expansion either (and yes I know Watcher's Keep was doable from either side but that didn't let you cross your storylines still). This is an expansion, it acts like... an expansion.

[Raguel]

RE: DLCs

I didn't mention this earlier, but you can transfer items from RTO to Awakening, and apparently at least one person was able to transfer  WK stuff to Awakenings via a mod. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/127/index/1746986

[caladein]

As i understand it the "main game" is really but a regular 'adventure module' which sits atop of base set of rules, content etc. The main DA executable is pretty much just universal launcher for these modules. Any add-on you install can either expand such adventure module or create entirely separate module itself. (which in turn can be also expanded)

The pieces of DLC they've released so far are such extensions to the adventure module that's the main DA campaign. Awakenings on the other hand is separate adventure module and the new content it includes (new levels, skills, item tiers etc) are someting the main campaign has no clue about, so it cannot import character/save from the Awakening like it's possible the other way.

I understand it from a technical point of view, but even then, some things do carry over like the abilities from Warden's Keep and items from Return to Ostagar.

Honestly, my genuine annoyance is dependent on some future content between now and whatever the hell they want to release early next year.  Right now it's just griping about how annoying Dragon Age can be from a mod/technical side (like how they broke almost all my mods with the pre-expansion patch ).

[Raguel]

So I have a PS3, I just bought Awakenings. As I stated earlier I should have the RTO gear, but I only had one weapon from that DLC, and no armor. So I tried to go back to Origins to find out what I did wrong and... there's no saved games for Origins there, only the new saves (auto + one save)


Excuse me while I break something.

[eldaec]

There is nothing EA can do to stop this unless Awakenings searches your file system to hard delete every DA save you have, then implants a personalised virus on your PC to eliminate any saves imported from external storage in future.

So I have a PS3, I just bought Awakenings. As I stated earlier I should have the RTO gear, but I only had one weapon from that DLC, and no armor. So I tried to go back to Origins to find out what I did wrong and... there's no saved games for Origins there, only the new saves (auto + one save)

[Aez]

The circle is complete:  console now bug as much as PC.

[Raguel]

Ok I found out what I did wrong re: items. I loaded up an old save and forgot about it, so Awakenings just loaded up the newest one (which happened to be an autosave). I'm kinda ticked at myself, because the gear is only tier 5, and I forgot to save my game after I got them to tier 7, so they are next to useless atm. At least my other chars should be fine.  

edit: Just in case I wasn't clear: Awakenings only seemed to "delete" the saves for the character I imported. The others look fine so far. The only saves visible for that characgter were the new Awakenings saves. The weird thing is, I was able to go back to Awakenings and import the same character, using a different save file.

[Aez]

Did you edit an .ini file to retrive your lost character? 

[Raguel]

Did you edit an .ini file to retrive your lost character? 

I wish I could transfer my saves to the PC, so I can get some mod lovin, or at least something that resembles tech support. 

As it is, I finished all the Origins quests I was going to do anyway, and Awakening has a personal chest you gain access to within ~30 min or so (I didn't time it so don't hold me to that), so I was able to level up that gear. I kinda wish I had done it sooner, since it's better than what I had (since Starfang doesn't port over).

[Sheepherder]

Bioware seems to be copying Blizzard.  Have a small stable of hit games and keep making sequels to them.  Unlike Blizzard, Bioware can put out a good game in a reasonable amount of time though!

They can both agree on one thing though:

so it cannot import character/save from the Awakening like it's possible the other way.

Lolwut?  Seriously dude, fucking Morrowind does this, and as I recall it won Bethesda the award for "biggest, buggiest, most fucked up shitpile of code ever strung together" award.

Also, "lore" is (EDIT: Almost, but not quite) the most utterly fucking stupid reason ever to force a player to maintain separate files for expansion and non-expansion versions of their character.

You couldn't go back and forth between BG2 and the BG2 expansion either (and yes I know Watcher's Keep was doable from either side but that didn't let you cross your storylines still). This is an expansion, it acts like... an expansion.

You could Import BG1 saves into BG2 and vice-versa with a little legwork (See: Badicalthon).

[Tebonas]

Hey, thats right! I totally forgot about the Cranium Rats, the Lower Planes little Geth.

Whats that "Wah, I can't import a character from the expansion to the base game" nonsense? That was seldom the case. Awakening is a new game with the same engine. You couldn't import characters from Curse of the Azure Bonds to Pool of Radiance either. Or from Chaos Strikes Back to Dungeon Master.

[Sheepherder]

Except most infinity engine games you can port shit to and fro as you like, though it tends to rape inventories unless you throw new entries into the override folder or something like that.  The only reason you cannot in this case appears to be because they don't want you to, because it would screw up the timeline, which is kind of a fucking stupid point when you are playing as a dead guy.

[Raguel]

Oghren must have been eating his Wheaties or something, because now his max hits are in the 300s   

I don't think I've ever seen him max higher than ~100 in Origins.

[stray]

Maybe I should play a new character and continue from there. Instead of starting from scratch. I never did finish a mage anyways.

Back to Origins, I feel like pointing out that there's no satisfactory ending if you're a good guy hero who hooked up with Leliana. I mean, this doesn't just apply to Leliana, but many other "good" type of choices. They all pretty much lead to you're dude dying.

[Tebonas]

I was a good guy hooking up with Leliana, I had a (for me) satisfactory ending. Alistair throws a hissy fit, Loghain sacrifices himself for the greater good and I go back to Ogrimmar.

[Ingmar]

Except most infinity engine games you can port shit to and fro as you like, though it tends to rape inventories unless you throw new entries into the override folder or something like that.  The only reason you cannot in this case appears to be because they don't want you to, because it would screw up the timeline, which is kind of a fucking stupid point when you are playing as a dead guy.

Um, apart from the BG1->BG2 import, which is exactly the same as this, mind you, the only way to do that is to actually go in and muck about and edit things. I'm sure the same thing is possible here. In other words, not directly comparable to this situation.

Re: "lore" being a stupid reason to do it this way, you're just wrong. It is a separate story, set afterwards. God forbid writers want some semblance of continuity in their product apparently?

[stray]

I was a good guy hooking up with Leliana, I had a (for me) satisfactory ending. Alistair throws a hissy fit, Loghain sacrifices himself for the greater good and I go back to Ogrimmar.

But see, you compromised yourself then..   By "good", I mean everything. Like not choosing Loghaine over Alistair... shit, doesn't Alistair get imprisoned if you do that? That's not cool, no matter how much you dislike him. He's still a Grey Warden party member and Loghaine is cleary a douche.. and responsible for the death of Wardens.

The only satisfactory ending, Id' say... is impregnating Morrigan. Even that doesn't seem "good", but I guess no one gets hurt, right? The only bad thing about it is if you were hooked up with Leliana, but maybe she's understanding or some shit. Probably better than getting your ass killed and breaking her heart.  

[edit] "Ogrimmar",eh?

[Tebonas]

Damn you, World of Warcraft. damn you!

Orzammar, of course 

Alistair goes and roams the world. The Queen wants to imprison him, but you can get around that with dialog.

[caladein]

"Uh, fail."

Sigrun =

Naturally there's a lot of banter between her and Oghren, pretty much all of it funny.  Actually, I'd say the party banter on the whole in Awakening is good enough that it nearly makes up for the lack of in-camp (well, at-Keep) dialogue.

[tmp]

Also, "lore" is (EDIT: Almost, but not quite) the most utterly fucking stupid reason ever to force a player to maintain separate files for expansion and non-expansion versions of their character.

Ehh, again it's not "lore" but technical setup. The Awakenings is Alice and the original campaign is Bob and they share the flat, the DA.exe. Alice has no problem wearing Bob's jeans and shirts except the ones who aren't her size, but Bob goes all "fuck you i'm not wearing chick clothes. And what the hell is that piece anyway." if you try to hand him some of her stuff.

Plus, what exactly would be the point of playing the expansion and acquiring these levels and abilities that go beyond the core game cap and set, if you then have it all stripped away when you put that character back in the core game? Why not just do it instead in the order that makes sense?

Morrowind may be able to do that but then it's built from ground up entirely different so apples and oranges.

[Ingmar]

And on top of that, the story structure of Morrowind is constructed such that you can easily fit the expansions to it into the base game without causing any weird issues story-wise (Although, don't I remember some bitching about Tribunal over that very sort of issue?). This one was not. Complaining about that is about as pointless as wishing Tolkien wrote murder mysteries instead of adventure stories about hobbits. He didn't, oh well, get over it.

There are plenty of actually legitimate things to complain about with the expansion, like the striking lack of detail in the quests and companions compared to the base game. Remember how everyone complained about not being able to talk to Zaeed in the hold in Mass Effect 2? Well, that's *every* companion in DA:A. Not to quite as extreme a level - they do have a few conversations that happen from certain gifts and events, but they're nothing like as filled-out as the characters from the base game so far.

[Khaldun]

I had a pretty hilariously weird bug in my ending on my second play through, a female city elf warrior. I chose to make Alora the queen. Alistair did his freak out. She was going to have him executed and I say no way, don't. She spares him and he takes off into exile. I get Loghain to join the team.

So then Morrigan approaches me with the baby offer and says she wants to lie with Loghain. I stretch it out a bit in the dialogue tree, but I finally agree. She says, "Go persuade Loghain". Ok, so I do. Then we get to the lying with part and I get a dialogue choice:

1. Change your mind and refuse
2. Let her lie with Loghain
3. Let her lie with Alistair (!)

I choose "let her lie with Alistair". Who appears and says something all gosh-wow I can't believe this is happening. But then: Cue the cut scene of the baby-making humpage and it's my female elf who is lying semi-naked on the bed and Morrigan coming over to her. Uh, not to be all heteronormative, Morrigan, but I don't think this is how you're going to get a baby unless you already visited Alistair or Loghain with a turkey baster and you want my help squeezing the bulb.

[Raguel]

. Uh, not to be all heteronormative, Morrigan, but I don't think this is how you're going to get a baby unless you already visited Alistair or Loghain with a turkey baster and you want my help squeezing the bulb.

 

god I'd love to reproduce that, but the time isn't worth the pay off.

[Sheepherder]

Um, apart from the BG1->BG2 import, which is exactly the same as this, mind you, the only way to do that is to actually go in and muck about and edit things. I'm sure the same thing is possible here. In other words, not directly comparable to this situation.

Re: "lore" being a stupid reason to do it this way, you're just wrong. It is a separate story, set afterwards. God forbid writers want some semblance of continuity in their product apparently?

1. This is not 1999, you may not have noticed but technology has improved somewhat in the intervening years.

2. Continuity is a ridiculous fucking argument in a game with DLC where you can import your dead hero into a new adventure, then go back (in time!) and get him a new sword, then when you go forward again Dragonslayer Jesus doesn't have the new sword.

Ehh, again it's not "lore" but technical setup. The Awakenings is Alice and the original campaign is Bob and they share the flat, the DA.exe. Alice has no problem wearing Bob's jeans and shirts except the ones who aren't her size, but Bob goes all "fuck you i'm not wearing chick clothes. And what the hell is that piece anyway." if you try to hand him some of her stuff.

Plus, what exactly would be the point of playing the expansion and acquiring these levels and abilities that go beyond the core game cap and set, if you then have it all stripped away when you put that character back in the core game? Why not just do it instead in the order that makes sense?

Morrowind may be able to do that but then it's built from ground up entirely different so apples and oranges.

1. See #3

2. Because if at some point you'd like to return to the main game world it would be pretty cool if you didn't have to load an old game, ignore all you gained in the expansion, and then have the expansion not recognize whatever you picked up in the main game once you returned?

3. Short answer: If it was different enough to preclude data being exported, character imports would not be possible.

Longer answer:  I would question whether it's even possible to break compatibility in a serious way with the toolkit, most developers keep the serious shit separate from their standard building tool because they don't trust their artists to not fuck with actor primitives or what have you.

EDIT: Ingmar, Tribunal fit more or less okay chronologically.  Memory jogging might help, I'll Google it.

EDIT2: And yes, I know it's a relatively minor issue, I just fucking hate when developers half-ass shit or break version compatibility when there isn't a reason to.

[Rasix]

Can't you just say "I was wrong, my bad" instead of this ridiculous crap you're spewing?

[Ingmar]

Yes, there are some continuity problems with the game+DLC as is. However, you might as well be arguing "well since there are already some continuity problems, they should just add a moon base where you kill Smurfs." Just because there are some problems that way is no reason to make it worse.

Also, in case anyone was curious it doesn't actually delete your old saves, at least on the PC. The imported character will just be listed in the list of characters twice - one place for the expansion saves, and one place where the old stuff is all happily intact. Whoever it was (too lazy to scroll back and look) who had the problem with the saves being missing on the PS3 version should check their list of characters to see if that's the case there as well. Would have been nice of them to actually mark the new appearance of the character as Name (Awakenings) or something, as it is it just looks like I have two guys with the same name on there.

[Sheepherder]

Yes, there are some continuity problems with the game+DLC as is. However, you might as well be arguing "well since there are already some continuity problems, they should just add a moon base where you kill Smurfs." Just because there are some problems that way is no reason to make it worse.

...?  Okay.  Not crippled import/export = moon smurfs, got it.

[Raguel]

Ingmar's right. I now have the same character listed 3 times, lol. I might have caught it earlier if I only had one or two characters

[Ingmar]

Exaggerating to make a point, of course.

But your basic argument appears to be "well they already made some continuity mistakes, so who cares if they make more?" Me, for one. Letting me wander off to do stuff that technically happens afterwards and then come back and kill the archdemon, possibly even sacrificing myself to do so, would bother me for more or less the same reason (but obviously not to the same degree) that adding a Smurf-filled moon base would. It just makes no sense.

[Raguel]

Smurf-filled moon base

Is that an EQ (expansion) reference? I think I quit before then, heh

[Sheepherder]

Exaggerating to make a point, of course.

But your basic argument appears to be "well they already made some continuity mistakes, so who cares if they make more?" Me, for one. Letting me wander off to do stuff that technically happens afterwards and then come back and kill the archdemon, possibly even sacrificing myself to do so, would bother me for more or less the same reason (but obviously not to the same degree) that adding a Smurf-filled moon base would. It just makes no sense.

Your character inexplicably gaining a bunch of random stuff / stats / talent purchases (in your Origins save) makes less sense that him inexplicably reappearing later after he died without even a "Whelp, I got better"...?  That seems to be a very fine distinction, when you could just not back-revision your character if it bugs you that much.  And, you know, random shit appearing in your inventory for no reason would be such a departure from the norm.

[schild]

DA:O:A Spoiler Thread:
http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=18946

[Ingmar]

Exaggerating to make a point, of course.

But your basic argument appears to be "well they already made some continuity mistakes, so who cares if they make more?" Me, for one. Letting me wander off to do stuff that technically happens afterwards and then come back and kill the archdemon, possibly even sacrificing myself to do so, would bother me for more or less the same reason (but obviously not to the same degree) that adding a Smurf-filled moon base would. It just makes no sense.

Your character inexplicably gaining a bunch of random stuff / stats / talent purchases (in your Origins save) makes less sense that him inexplicably reappearing later after he died without even a "Whelp, I got better"...?  That seems to be a very fine distinction, when you could just not back-revision your character if it bugs you that much.  And, you know, random shit appearing in your inventory for no reason would be such a departure from the norm.

You're arguing against a position I'm not taking - I agree that the import-a-character-who-died thing (where is medieval Cerberus to rebuild us?) is also pretty retarded, but it is a pretty obvious business decision to let people play the character they came in with in an expansion. In any case, personally I won't be importing any characters that make the sacrifice, those guys are dead.

[Ingmar]

Here's something really worth complaining about re: importing:

The 2 special class abilities you can get from Watcher's Keep don't import into the game, but they do hang around sort of - you'll still have icons on your bar, but they'll have no descriptions and when you try to use them, you'll go through the animation but nothing will happen. 

It would have been better to just strip them off the character entirely rather than leave the weird vestigial abilities there on the skills page and the task bar.