Dragon Age: Origins Thirst Mod Demo Released

I haven’t spent a whole lot of time with modifications for Dragon Age: Origins, but if there’s one creation that will convince me to give it a whirl, it’s the newly released Thirst campaign demo by our own Eric Schwarz. With the demo promising 2-6 hours of gameplay and lots of choice & consequence, I think this should make a great start to anyone’s Origins modding experience:

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 INTRODUCTION:
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Thirst is an upcoming Dragon Age module focused on choice and consequence. It is a stand-alone campaign designed around non-canon story elements, but integrated into the existing Dragon Age lore. Set in the trade city of Arceris, ruled by the mysterious Council of Six and tyrannized by the criminal mastermind Bloodblade, you play a recent arrival to the city who soon finds him or herself trapped there as an embargo comes into effect. Using your unique skills and abilities, you will uncover a conspiracy at the heart of the city and decide its fate!

Though I enjoyed Dragon Age, I felt that the game had a lot of missed opportunities regarding its character system, with the statistics of the game largely contributing to combat and little else. Thirst is my attempt to take the Dragon Age rule set to a new level, by making the build of your character important not just to fighting, but in solving quests and navigating through a storyline. If you’re a fan of Fallout, Planescape: Torment or any other choice and consequence-heavy RPG, Thirst will appeal to you.

Thirst is currently in development and will hopefully be finished… sometime in the future.

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 FEATURES:
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– A whole city to explore! Over 30 new areas await you within the city of Arceris, from the bustling Market District, to the fetid Arceris Slums.

– Thirst’s story moves forward as you help characters in the world solve their problems, your connections growing as you move up the ranks of its society. Optional and main quests interact to open up new opportunities… or close them off.

– New character backgrounds! If you ever felt that Dragon Age’s choices in backgrounds were limiting, Thirst gives you the option to pick up the sword again as a Retired Soldier, explore civilization for the first time as a Survivalist, or use deception and subterfuge as a Swindler, each with their own dialogue options and starting stats.

– Between 5-10 hours of gameplay! Thirst is both large and highly replayable, with multiple solutions to every problem and decisions that affect how the story plays out.

Thirst is in active development as of June 2012.

Technically, this is a demo, but it features a sizeable 2/3 of the total content expected on final release, so it should give us a good idea of where it’s headed.