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Do the announced changes at Halo Studios (prev. 343 Industries) have you optimistic for the future of the franchise?

Yes 16 50.00%
 
No 12 37.50%
 
Still need convincing (sp... 4 12.50%
 
Total:32
shikamaru317 on 28 June 2024

Finished my replay of Dragon Age Origins today, or more specifically, my playthrough of it's DLC and expansion pack for the first time. Took about 80 hours. My thoughts:

Graphics

Even with the graphics mods I downloaded, it's definitely looking pretty dated now. Art style was pretty good though.

Story

A proper, deep RPG story, with plenty of players decisions, some of which carry through into future games, including some fairly significant choices that carry forward. 

Companions

Strong companions overall, all but a few are likeable and have good companion quests and/or romances, though a select few companions like Sten in the main game and Anders in Awakening are kind of meh. Even most of the companions in the 15 or so hour long Awakening expansion are pretty well done, and even the companions in the short 2 hours DLC's like Leliana's Song and Witch Hunt got pretty good banter with one another and a decent amount of backstory considering the short length of those DLC's. My favorite companion remains Leliana, just as in my first playthrough, but DLC companion Shale follows up close behind, she kind of gives me HK47 from KOTOR vibes. The banter between Alistair and Morrigan is also pretty great. I definitely prefer Origins companions to what I remember of Inquisition's companions, though I will soon be playing Dragon Age 2 and replaying Inquisition, so I will be able to better compare companions then.

Gameplay

Decent, kind of feels like a hybrid of Bioware's prior KOTOR and Baldur's Gate systems. It definitely has some issues, many enemies feel like sponges with too large of health bars, attack animations are lackluster compared to later games in the series. 

Quality of the PC port

Honestly, the PC port seems like a bit of a mess. I had to rely on mods to fix many bugs that Bioware left unfixed, and even then still ran into some bugs and got some crashes. Could be due to compatibility issues with the game being designed for Windows XP, Vista, and 7, and me trying to play it on Windows 11, but I was running the game in Windows 7 compatibility mode, and was still getting issues. 

Mods

Dragon Age Origins, much like Bethesda games, was designed with easy modding capability, and as such, it has alot of available mods, 3.6k, which ranks it at 20th place for most mods on Nexus. Mods are easy to install, most can be simply dropped into the overrides folder after unzipping the files downloaded from Nexus, while a select few instead go into the add-ins folder, both are very easy to install. I ended up with around 35 mods in the end I believe, covering everything from texture overhauls to character remodels and reskins to new weapons and armor to quality of life improvements. 

Score: 8.8/10

Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 28 June 2024

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Cabronakis on 28 June 2024

This looks amazing!



G2ThaUNiT on 28 June 2024


DroidKnight on 28 June 2024
G2ThaUNiT said:



...to avoid getting banned for inactivity, I may have to resort to comments that are of a lower overall quality and or beneath my moral standards.

DroidKnight on 28 June 2024
G2ThaUNiT said:



...to avoid getting banned for inactivity, I may have to resort to comments that are of a lower overall quality and or beneath my moral standards.

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Machiavellian on 28 June 2024
JRPGfan said:
Machiavellian said:

Let me ask this question because from what I have read about the creation club and the modders there, they are paid like employees but they are not employees.  Meaning that BGS pay them to make mods and I believe they also get a royalty percentage as well of sales.  These guys are not actually BGS employees they are just modders who signed up for the creator club.  I believe the difference is that their stuff is QA unlike your average modder content and it goes through some form of review.

I do not believe this is microtransaction but instead a way to get modders who really want to make a career doing mods actually have a means to make money from their work which can support them.  Gamers seem to forget that it takes a lot of time, resources and effort to make mods and when you have a job, bills, life, family all asking for your time, getting paid is one way to help support the effort.  The only difference is that if its paid that means there will be a higher standard held for that content an thus it cannot be half baked efforts.  I personally have no issues paying for content no matter who makes it as long as its up to a quality level I deem worth my money.

^ Machiavellian that was my understanding too, a place to sell mods made by the community.

The quest in question however, is I believe made by bethesda themselves.
If you google "who made the vulture quest" + "starfield", you get a responce that reads:

"The Vulture quest and most other Tracker Alliance content are all made by Bethesda, and this mission costs 1,000 credits. After paying for and downloading the Creations content, you can start on this new mission in Starfield"

I think the issue, and why its gotten any attention at all.... is because this is not a community mod.
This was bethesda themselves makeing a 20min quest, and decideing to sell, storyline content behinde a dlc, in their own shop.... for 7$.

I know its a minor thing, but like others have mentioned before, where does this lead too? or end?

Reviewers seem to think, that if you had a powerfull character, you could complete this quest in 10mins or so (it took one 20mins to do).
And it costs 7$.

I think if game devs can sell skins for outragious prices..... theres no reason quests or story cant be locked behinde dlc as well, or atleast thats bethesdas thinking there.  Which was why I asked people in the xbox thread what they though about it.

Bethesda took the feedback from this quest, and said they would look at the priceing of quest-line dlc.
Thats bascially hinting that this is not the last time, we'll be seeing quests or story locked behinde dlc in-game shop from them.
They might just make it slightly cheaper.



Ok thank for the update.  I still do not have a problem with even Bethesda selling content from their creative club as I mentioned, if they sell it than the expectations is that the quality needs to be at a certain level.  If it turns out to be like horse armor than they should be called out for it and told to do way better.  Consumers will decide what is acceptable and Bethesda and their developers definitely need to understand the expectation from the community for paid content no matter what the price.  I do have to say that I rarely if ever pay for extra content as I am really picky about it but I do not mind any content has a cost because if I do not believe its worth my money I never feel like I need it.



VersusEvil on 28 June 2024

Gamers: Starfield mods will save it
YouTuber: “Modder can’t save starfield”
Starfield Modders: Skyrim



Ride The Chariot || Games Complete ‘24 Edition

G2ThaUNiT on 28 June 2024

Bruh, imagine if Xbox just partners with Nvidia for cloud streaming lol



Ryuu96 on 28 June 2024

They should, xCloud sucks compared to GeForce Now.

Game Pass + GeForce Now.

Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 28 June 2024

Ryuu96 on 28 June 2024

And if I'm being honest, I don't think there's any beating GeForce Now, Nvidia is a gigachad, they have the AI, they have the CPUs, they're a fucking juggernaut right now in both aspects, they control the supply, they'll always be better quality than xCloud then the regulators came along and just cemented Geforce's position by making Microsoft give them their entire library, ironically the regulators just confirmed Geforce Now as THE Cloud Streaming Service, Lol.

It's over, Nvidia already won.