What makes this game..well for a start I really like the textures used on creatures. And the armours available to players. The designers have still struggled with dwarf armour particularly around the legs… which contributes to undermining the martial prowess of the dwarf. In my opinion all rpg games continue to give dwarves to long a torso and legs that are too short.

The architecture is a complete let down, poor understanding of how building elements go together erodes the believability at a subconcious level. But this is not just Dragon Age, its the low standard set by most game engines, and the Developers who employ them. I struggle with similar issues working in the digital film industry where the directors and bean counters undervalue the perfection in the environment that would truly elevate the average world.

Even so as a one of rainy weekend intense and bloody adventure the game is amazing a deserves all the awards it got.

At an interface gameplay flavour level Dragon Age appears to me as an attempt to bridge between a more serious game like Neverwinter Nights and a World of Warcraft audience. Purists I suspect will prefer the former whilst gamers sick of the cartoony nature of the later might be enticed by Dragon Age, but alas apart from the ontime adventure as you go through the story there is no massively multiplayer online game component to this.

As a last not: if you love dragons, you MUST play this game… check this out:

Fight Free Dragons in Game

Neverwinter Nights was published by Bioware but the current version Neverwinter Nights II is an Obsidian product. The game now has had two expansion packs released, ‘Mask of the Betrayer’ during 2007 and in November 2008 ‘Storm of Zehir’. Overall this is a very engaging and addictive game with a fascinating storyline.

The rule set is based on Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 so that players create a character race from the following list; Dwarf, Elf, Human, Halfling, Planetouched, Gnome, Half-Elf, Half-Orc and within each of these there a sub-races such as Drow a kind of dark elf. After choosing a race players then elect what class or classes their character will be such as Bard, Barbarian, Wizard, Sorcerer, Rogue and so on. As the play the game and gain higher levels ‘Prestige’ classes become available such as Eldritch Knight, Pale Master or Weapon Master. The classes determine what skills and abilities you character can develop but also what strengths and weaknesses physically. A wizard for example will not be able to suffer much physical injury or ‘hit points’ before death, whereas a fighter is much more resilient. On the other hand a fighter will not resist spells cast on him as easily as a mage. Skills available include learning spells, how to craft and make magic items, picking locks or pockets, survival and tracking in the wilderness.

Having made your character you start the game and set off exploring the game world, killing monsters, completing quests and gathering items and treasure – all the time gaining experience and getting new and more powerful skills and spells. The adventure story that comes with the game is a pick a path type adventure where you meet characters that can be interacted with but depending on your characters morals an attitudes you may have a different outcome to another player. This adventure game can be played multi-player on a network, in which case you and your friends form a party and travel together to complete the story as a team.

The game can also be used to join free MMORPG worlds. There is a large community of creators who make persistent worlds using the tool-set which are online 24 hours a day. Some of these emphasize play style which is action based and others require a commitment to role playing and staying in character. One of the longest standing, popular and largest of these is Forgotten Realms, but other beautifully constructed worlds are Shores of Haldun and Return of Middle Earth II. There are many others too which make great choices as role playing PC games.