Dragon Age: Origins Previews

If you haven’t heard enough about BioWare’s next RPG title in the past week or so, there are a few more articles for you to read. First up is GameTopius with some first impressions:

The demo used controls similar to Diablo or Baldur’s Gate. The display featured a spell/ability chart at the bottom which you could customize according to which spells you wanted to use. At any time you could pause the game, open your spell/ability tree, and swap out one spell for another depending on what you wanted to use at any given time. The game’s environments are filled with rich color and vivid lighting that really gets the mood of the area across . The environments were also very interactive, with levers to pull, which released dog type creatures to aid your party, boxes to break, treasure to find, and all sorts of things you could set on fire. The environments and spells are dynamic, so finding the right combination of spells can help immensely. If you happened to spill some oil on the ground (say from a barrel in the room) and then use a fire spell, you can ignite the oil and burn any enemies standing in the area. The character models are pretty detailed with their appearances changing depending on what items they have equipped at the time.

Then we have PCGH with a technology preview:

The characters are highly detailed and even on the character shadows one can see a lot of details. Animations are smooth and especially the face animations in the many rendered, in-game graphics cut scenes are very realistic.

And the visualization of the environment is worth seeing, too. Render techniques like HDR/Bloom, Bump Mapping, Ambient Occlusion, Material Shader and post effects are common here. The video options currently aren’t very extensive and just offer the settings “Graphics Detail), “Anti-Aliasing), “Texture Detail) and “Enable Frame Buffer Effects).

And IGN shares a little more info on the origin stories:

Newcomers to the Circle of Magi are told that the organization exists to protect the mages. In reality, though, the Circle was established so that the Chantry priests and their templar agents could keep a check on the ambition and power of mages, who have in the past brought ruin to the world. The power of the mages attracts the attention of demons from the Fade, who tempt the mages with promises of power or knowledge. Once a mage accepts such an agreement, they begin to be corrupted by the demon and work towards its own evil ends. The templars are meant to kill any mage who falls victim to this corruption.

The player begins as an apprentice. Having grown up under the eye of the Templars, the final test for any apprentice is The Harrowing, a purposeful and controlled exposure to the temptations of a demon. Those apprentices who pass the test can join the ranks of the mages. Those who can’t are killed immediately. The only other options are to refuse the test and be stripped of the emotions and magic that would make you a threat, or to flee from the test and be hunted down by the templars.