Dragon Age 3

[Falconeer]

I would LOVE to see a video recording of the idiotic conversation they had at Bioware the day they agreed on the shiny hair.

[Trippy]

It's like they took all the digs about their plastic/Play-Doh hair over the years and decided "Let's really make it plastic for DA3!".

[HaemishM]

It had to go through multiple art directors until finally some creative directory muckety-muck at Bioware signed off on it. Which means multiple people looked at it and thought, "Yeah, that's looks good!"

[Ingmar]

The hair seems to be a bug - it didn't look like that in any of the trade show previews - and is also kind of a non-issue, since there's a setting you can change to fix it right now (at least on the PC version.)

[Falconeer]

"I got a fever, and the only prescription is more shiny!" Yeah, it's so stupid it would only make sense in a gag.

[lamaros]

The hair seems to be a bug - it didn't look like that in any of the trade show previews - and is also kind of a non-issue, since there's a setting you can change to fix it right now (at least on the PC version.)

Might be coming across a little to strong on the fan side here.

[Ingmar]

 

[Khaldun]

Yes, please, let's not slow down on shitting on something about the look of hair and lip gloss before we've played it.

[rk47]

Yeah this is GOTY material right here. 10 years ago maybe.
You're Zhangief's son who has a green hand that can close Oblivion portals.
:effort:

[lamaros]

Yes, please, let's not slow down on shitting on something about the look of hair and lip gloss before we've played it.

What else will we talk about?

[Trippy]

Lasagne assembled and baking, work tasks finished, chores completed, showered -- I'm ready to be disappointed in 1 hour 17 minutes*

* In the game, not the lasagne

[Merusk]

Were DA's animations always that stilted and I didn't notice because it was good at the time or has the animation quality really dropped since the last game?  Shiny hair aside (which is just a shader error from the looks) they looked jankier than a second year CG student's animations in RK's video. WTF.

[Trippy]

Yes they always sucked.

[Quinton]

Shiny hair is reported to be fixed by cranking mesh quality to the highest setting.

Just finished dinner, starting some laundry, no meetings until 3pm tomorrow... I am prepared for some DA:I launch night RPG'ing.

Guess I'll apply any windows updates and gpu driver updates now.

[Trippy]

Lasagne assembled and baking, work tasks finished, chores completed, showered -- I'm ready to be disappointed in 1 hour 17 minutes*

* In the game, not the lasagne

Stuffed on lasagne, 3 more minutes to go, hopefully I don't FAAK.

[Trippy]

LOL there's a line to use dragonagekeep.com (to setup a previous state to import).

[Bunk]

Shiny hair was fixed by bumping settings from medium to high for me (thank god, I was really worried about the game had that been intentional).

About three hours in. The controls and camera are a bit wonky, but its starting to feel more natural. Figured out a few minor things - walk near objects and hit F rather than trying to highlight and right click for example. Don't care much for the tactical view so far, find myself just hitting pause in combat, planning out what I'm going to do and then unpausing. We'll see how it gets when I reach the point of needing to control more than just my lead character. Combat feels somewhere between one and two so far. Less "turn basey" than one, but not the over the top action game combat of two. Animations are definitely stilted, but overall the game is gorgeous to look at.

Time for bed.

[Ceryse]

I've only put about 90 minutes into the game so far, my quick impressions;

- Controls just feel wrong to me, at least as a sword and board warrior. Everything is just clunky, especially given the...
- Camera is just, ugh. Can't zoom out far enough before triggering the tactical cam.. wherein you can't zoom out far enough for easy use. Also didn't seem able to easily use the mouse to give certain orders, had to use wasdqe for things like movement.
- Animations felt stilted, as others have said, and continually threw me off, especially in combat.
- Instead of the tried and true 'hold key to highlight loot/clickables' they went to a pulse system on key press (but not hold). Irritated the shit out of me, especially paired with the issues I have with the camera.
- Combat isn't, as Bunk put it, "turn basey" enough for me; I actually really liked the combat system in DA:O (never gave a shit enough about DA2 to buy the game) and this game lost a bit of that. Sword and board feels.. wonky in this combat system. About to try a mage and see how that compares.
- Had no graphical issues whatsoever, but I have everything on High.. tempted to run a few to Ultra and see if it makes my 680s melt. Nor any bugs or crashes (yet?).

Hoping I adjust to the controls and camera, because as is.. it is fairly annoying. I am enjoying the game, however, in spite of it.

[Velorath]

Unlocked this early using a VPN and spent way too much time playing. Only a couple hours of single player, but maybe 5-6 hours of multiplayer. Tried it with and without using a controller but I can't say that I have a preference so far. I do have a couple of nitpicks with the multiplayer. The first is that unlike in ME3 where you could get chests with a guaranteed rare, you'll often get chests here that have a bunch of underwhelming items. They aren't entirely useless because you can salvage them for crafting materials which you'll need to do if you want to unlock other classes. This leads to my other nitpick, which is that crafting feels incredibly clunky. I'm sure it's partly so that people can unlock the classes that they want as opposed to ME3 which was completely random, but it just doesn't feel particularly well done.

All that aside, after getting over the learning curve I'm really liking the multiplayer a lot. Especially since I unlocked the Kitari class, which feels like the Qunari version of a Krogan Vanguard. After getting him up a few levels it's so much more fun to play than any of the starting classes and I don't even have a particularly great weapon for him yet. Managed to beat the last two rounds I did without and was topping the group in medals. Trying to unlock Assassin next because I have two rare daggers just sitting around right now. Also found a unique staff which isn't bad although it's not particularly high level.

Single player seems ok, especially once you fix the hair thing. After the first part of the game it feels like it opens up a bit, with the first area you go being a decent size and having a good number of quests. Of course one of them is "kill Rams and bring back 10 Ram Meat" which is the kind of filler we really should be able to move past at this point especially since it sounds like the game would still be plenty long without it. The camera is a bit wonky as Ceryse said. Can't speak too much to the controls since I've mostly been doing multiplayer which doesn't require managing a party, and the single player stuff I've done so far is easy enough still that I haven't had to manage my party there too much either.

Overall, I'm having a pretty good time with it so far.

[Falconeer]

Yes, please, let's not slow down on shitting on something about the look of hair and lip gloss before we've played it.

Hey, I am totally gonna get the game and I am almost certainly gonna enjoy it. That doesn't change that the lip gloss and hair stuff is ridiculous and deserves to be bashed and made fun of. It's not ripping the game (yet).

[murdoc]

I didn't play much since I have a bulk of time later this week, but I struggled with the character creator to make something that looked half decent. Just did the first tutorial combat and the biggest thing I noticed, coming straight from DA2, was that I couldn't just click on a target and have my Rogue move to them and attack. Spent too much time just standing there swinging my daggers at nothing.

I imagine that will just be something I get used to, or I'll find what there 'move to this target and stab' button is.

Glad I got all my Keep stuff done a week or so ago - it imported fairly easily.

[tmp]

The hair seems to be a bug - it didn't look like that in any of the trade show previews - and is also kind of a non-issue, since there's a setting you can change to fix it right now (at least on the PC version.)

Not a bug, more like playing the game only on high settings and never realizing how bad it looks on the lower ones. Or realizing and not caring.

But speaking of dev meetings leading to stupid decisions, I'd really like to hear that one which resulted in having the game completely ignore kb+m when you enable the controller, and vice-versa. Because it's sort of idiocy that you specifically have to code.

Works especially well when the game decides you have the controller plugged in, and you don't actually have any.

[murdoc]

Weird, I had my controller plugged into my PC the whole time I played with no issues.

[tmp]

Weird, I had my controller plugged into my PC the whole time I played with no issues.

Do you mean you've played the game with kb+m and not with the controller, even though the controller was plugged in? Yes, that's doable. The game ignores the controller in favour of the kb+m by default, and there's switch in the options for that.

The problem can occur if you either toggle the controls scheme manually to the controller (and then turns out the game doesn't know how to handle your controller) or if the game by itself decides that you desire the controller controls (and you don't have one). As that effectively leaves you stuck with the "press Start" screen., no actual way to press Start and no apparent way to make the game switch back to paying attention to kb+m.

[murdoc]

When I first fired my game up it had the 'Press Start' screen and I just hit space bar and it started up. I just used KB+M the rest of the way.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As you said though, I never touched the switch in options.

[Ingmar]

Got about 4-5 hours into it last night. It's huge. It seems likely based on what I've seen from the first full zone that there's easily 80-100+ hours of stuff to do. I have some interface nitpicks but it's pretty great so far.

[Ginaz]

I played a bit last night and I'm not really liking it so far.  The UI is not great, everything is way too shiny, using the mousewheel activates the tactical camera instead of zooming out and combat is bad, esp. melee.  The combat was so bad I restarted the game over, switching from 2h warrior to archer.  The story has been ok so far and the voice acting is good but it was just frustrating as he'll to play.

[Tmon]

I've played enough to realize that I'm not going to finish this before spring.  There's just too many distractions available.  Mostly I like the game, but to echo other folks I really want the DAO tactical view back.  The console like menus made me a little crazy at first but I am getting used to them, but the exit the war room button should really be called Exit the War Room and not Back.

[Signe]

I like it pretty much.  What's up with my posture?  I have slumpy round shoulders and I hate the way I walk. 

What I love most so far:  clipboards with candles stuck on them.  That's just too funny!

[tmp]

What I love most so far:  clipboards with candles stuck on them.  That's just too funny!

[Tmon]

It's a really small thing but it really bothers me that the two guys pounding on swords in the smithy are holding them a good six inches above the anvil.

[Trippy]

The squatting loot animation with your arms straight out flailing away always cracks me up.

[Khaldun]

Agree so far on camera and combat taking some getting used to.

Hair is not shiny in mine, nor are lips particularly extraordinary in their glossiness. Perhaps I clutched my pearls harder than other folks and so I got a special copy or something.

[Xilren's Twin]

BTW, in case you had not heard, a bunch of PC users are unable to get the game to run at all.  Launches, get the EA screen, then a save game notice, then nothing but a black screen with a cursor.
Initially, EA support tried to blame this on people only have dual core processors when the requirements clearly state quad core.  But a bunch of quad core people have it too.
Speculation that it's the new DRM scheme since DA3 uses the frostbyte engine which supported Dual core's just fine for other games....

And yeah, I'm one of the unlucky ones :)

So, buyer beware.

[tmp]

Hair is not shiny in mine, nor are lips particularly extraordinary in their glossiness. Perhaps I clutched my pearls harder than other folks and so I got a special copy or something.

Hair is semi-normal looking with the mesh quality set to high. Anything below... welp, you have the game, you can check out for yourself. Let us know the results