Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

It is with much sadness I note that Dragon Age Inquisition has opted to move away from the user programmed AI "Tactics" of its predecessors.  The original Dragon age introduced an extremely innovative system called "Tactics" which allowed players to programme the AI of their party members. I do actually mean programme. This wildly ambitious system had full blown decision and flow control structures.   You could programme in a wide array of behaviours such as "Attack Alastairs target and if that target has heavy armour  use Shatter Armour" or "If any character has less than 10% health then cast a healing spell" or "Freeze a target with spell 1 and then cast a rock to shatter them with spell 2".  It was a deep and sophisticated system that encouraged players to experiment.  Dragon Age II refined the system further but the latest episode "Inquisition" has abandoned it  and instead offers a few very limited options for tw...

Dragon Age II got a fairly luke warm reception from critics so I was content to wait over a year after release before playing it. Now after completing the main campaign I can understand where some of those criticisms come from. The original Dragon Age Origins also had flaws but those flaws could generally be put down to an exuberance of ambition while the flaws in Dragon Age II feel seem to come from a deliberately constrained budget. This is perhaps most obvious in the tiresome re-use of a few limited pieces of scenery over and over again. Despite these misgivings, I still thing Dragon Age II is a very enjoyable game and it kept me enthralled for many hours. I think it would have garnered higher review scores over all if it had not been subject to the inevitable comparisons with its superb predecessor. Anyway here are some random thoughts: Combat: Over all I liked the combat sequences in the game a lot but it took me a while to get the hang of it. Enemies come in greater numbers th...

After many attempts my party finally overcame a tough tough boss in Dragon Age II (the Ancient Rock Wraith). Before I could take a breather and save the game however I was plunged straight into a cut scene. A demon stranding in front of the dead Boss's treasure hoard spoke to me and presented the choice of running away or fighting him for the treasure. Now lets us be clear here. One of the golden rules of game design is that there must always always be a save point immediately after every boss fight. Having to redo a tricky boss fight because you got killed by a trash mob on the way out of the lair is the suckiest piece of game design ever and any designer who does that should be fired on the spot. However this choice was cleverer than that and made for a tantalising dilemma.  Slink away safely and save my progress or risk being killed and having to replay the boss in the hope of getting the treasure. After some thought I decided to risk it and happily survived the ensuing fight...

Perhaps you didn't realise it but a lot of the "fantasy" character names in Dragon age are actually common Irish names of Celtic Origin. Quite fitting I think given the Celtic links to the Arthurian legends. Unfortunately (if you are Irish like me) the game developers chose to go with an Anglicised pronunciation of the names that sounds completely wrong to an Irish ear. Of course it is just a game and they are entitled to pronouce the words any way they like but if you are interested in the "correct" Irish pronunciations here are some of the ones I spotted: Eamon: should be  "Ayemon" not "Eee-mon"  (I have a brother called Eamon so I should know :) ) Riordan:  should be "Reardun" not "Reeoredan" Niall: should be "Nile" or perhaps "Neel" but not "N-eye-al" Fergus: should be "Fur-gus" (don't remember how it is pronounced in game) Connor: Well its just "Connor", I th...

With my main character just getting to level 21 I finally sunk my sword into the head of the Arch Demon and freed Ferelden from the curse of the Blight. My last savegame has a time played of 114 hours and 58 minutes. Xfire records my having played the game for 171 Hours. Is there an achievement for being the slowest Dragon Age player ever?

[Spoilers Abound] One of the cardinal rules of game design is that there should always be a rest, recuperate, save opportunity immediately before every boss fight and another one immediately after. I was somewhat pissed off when I finally reached the Landsmeet in Dragon Age to find this principle did not apply. It took me several tries to overcome Loghain and each time I had to endure a tedious re-run of the lead in. The biggest surprise happened when I finally did overcome him and was immediately propelled into a series of cut-scenes and dialog options. I am still reeling from the fact that my hastily chosen choices resulted in my favourite companion deserting me forever! That ingrate. I had been cultivating his friendship all game and his approval rating was so high I thought I could surely talk him around but no chance - he was gone. It was only after he had left that I realised he had walked off with a complete set of rare armour, and equipment. Irreplaceable stuff all of it....

Things were looking grim. My dwarven rogue was fighting for his life, my mages were out of mana, Alastair's warrior shield  was the only thing protecting the squishy casters hiding behind him but he was being hacked from all sides and would surely succumb in seconds. Finally overcoming his opponent my rogue turned  fully expecting to see Alastair dead and the mages being chopped to pieces but then an amazing thing happened. As Alastair was moments from death the witch Morrigan had scraped together enough mana to cast her one and only protective spell which put a force field around Alastair. His enraged opponents tried to cut through the field but their blows could no longer hurt him. Trapped within the force field Alastair could make no further contribution to the battle himself but while his opponents continued their futile attempts to hack through the barrier it was a simple matter for my stealthy rogue to sneak up behind each one in turn and finish them off with a knif...

The 114 hours X-fire is currently recording for my play-time in Dragon Age is misleading because I have a habit of leaving the game running while I go off and do other things but the fact remains that this is a long game. Perhaps a bit too long for my liking. I like finishing games and this is a game I started on Christmas day intending to finish over the holiday period. No chance. The holidays are long over and I still haven't convinced the dwarves to support my cause before I head off to the Landsmeet. If I were to make one change to the game it would be to eliminate most of the random encounters. Any time you journey from A to B you are more likely than not to be ambushed by a band of robbers, wolves assassins or something else out for your blood. These can be challenging fights particularly in the beginning of the game when your party is not yet optimised. On more than one occasion I returned to base to heal up and stock up on consumables only to use up everything in my first...

[Spoilers] I recruited the mages circle to help slay the demon and free the boy in Redcliffe without killing his mother. However after I have gone into the Fade and killed the Demon I got a cutscene showing the mothers funeral voyage and the code article was updated to say that the Arlessa gave her life to save her son. Yet both the Arlessa and her son are both very much alive and I can talk to them.  Hopefully this is only a minor bug that won't bite me in the ass later. It is a slightly annoying end to what was a truly epic quest chain. By the way I chose to send Joran into the Fade - It seemed only fair given his role in causing the mess. He has a good set of spells with useful buffs and good damage potential so it was an easy enough battle against the demon. [End Spoilers]

I have been pretty good at cleaning junk out of my bags in Dragon Age but even still I am struggling for inventory space. One major bugbear is gifts. These are items that can be given to your companions that will improve their disposition towards you. This in turn ensures that they will hang around even if you make some decisions they disagree with and if you get the disposition high enough they will even get a few extra skills. Unfortunately not all gifts are equal. A gift that givs a +10 rating with one character may only give +1 to another. Some gifts even start plot threads if given to the right character. Once I realised this I became very cautious about giving gifts, instead hoarding them till I got a few minutes to sit down and try and figure out which character would prefer which gift. Of course I never got around to this and my bags were filling up with these gifts. I guess if you are interested in the character background stories then you can figure out who is most likely t...

I like a bit of back story but my eyes tend to glaze over at wall of text or wall of speech  cut scenes so when I saw others lauding the depth of the story in Dragon Age I thought "Yea, yea I'll probably just skip through those bits". However I am hugely impressed by a moral dilemma the game has just posed me. The basic choice I need to make is whether or not to kill a child and while it is clear that my decision will influence the path of the game substantially the  choice turns out to be a many layered one whose exact outcomes are hard to predict.This in turn leads to substantial moral ambiguity as to what choices are good and what choices are evil. How far we have come from the simplistic "Paragon of Virtue" versus "Spawn of Satan" moral dichotomy that used to be the staple of crpgs. The background to my decision is this: [BIG WOBBLY SPOILER ALERT] After helping the villagers of Redcliffe fend off waves of  undead zombies I have traced the sourc...