Awesome!

No, I'm not blowing my own trumpet. I've been taking a rest from building while I await feedback from the Beta Testers, and in the meantime have been playing with my Christmas present... Dragon Age Origins... this is what I refer to as awesome.

It's the latest roleplaying option from Bioware. Simply put it's the best game of this genre I've played for a long time. The graphics are very good despite anything you might have heard to the contrary. Don't believe any screen caps you've seen as proof of poor quality, as many of those I've seen as supposed evidence fail to point out they include a blur effect where the camera is focusing on a different object. Animation too is very good, with individual combat moves catered for, which go as far as capturing expressions on faces during battle. While on the subject of faces, the character creation process allows for maximum customisation of how your character looks, to the point that you can even alter the angle AND expression of your character portrait.

While character classes may seem a little limited to those of you who crave the multitude of classes offered by NWN, I personally find it refreshing. There are 3 base classes, although these can be broken down further so that you specialise in a particular area, so a Mage for example may end up being a healer, or a Rogue become an Assassin.

The storyline is excellent, with an accompanying mythology refreshingly simple yet richly detailed, so you quickly find yourself becoming absorbed in the setting. Character interaction is good too, with plausible responses for the most outlandish player choices, and excellent inter party banter that is some of the best I have seen in any game.

There are a couple of minor downers, but these are easily outweighed by the positives. Item icons are very limited, while their descriptions suffer from the same lack of detail, relying instead on bland descriptions of their properties. Gone are the flowery explanations of powers you may have grown used to in NWN. Having said that, there is plenty of mythology to read up on in the codex, but I would have preferred the items themselves to offer similar descriptions.

I should also briefly mention interiors. Gone are the Tardis like buildings of NWN, now replaced with lovingly created realistic interiors that have a more mature mediaeval feel to them.

Overall the game is excellent, easily deserving a 9 out of 10 even by my standards.

Perhaps annoyingly, I feel that "The Relbonian Chronicles" would perhaps slide more easily into Dragon Age as opposed to NWN, but the toolset is a lot more complex and would no doubt benefit from a creative team as opposed to a solo venture. Maybe there's someone out there who might consider such a venture? I have no idea if any of the NWN resources such as scripts and conversations will import over to Dragon Age as I haven't experimented with the toolset yet (indeed, I'm reluctant to do so until I've finished the game at least once).

That's all the news for now. I hope to go back to polishing the Beta by February.

Happy New Year All!