{"id":79,"date":"2009-11-07T23:23:27","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T05:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/?p=79"},"modified":"2011-12-04T22:14:48","modified_gmt":"2011-12-05T05:14:48","slug":"dragon-age-is-a-huge-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/?p=79","title":{"rendered":"Dragon Age is a Huge Success!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dragon Age<\/a> was finally released this week! I’ve received and installed my copy — and after playing it for a while, I have to say that so far the game exceeds my expectations. Since my expectations were pretty high, that’s saying something.<\/p>\n

First, for those who may have missed my earlier posts: I was honored to have been asked to participate in both the Dragon Age Toolset Beta test and “Builder Event” this summer. I was one of about a dozen experienced “modders” from the Neverwinter Nights game-building community who were invited to come to Bioware Edmonton this summer to test out the adventure building toolset that they’ve developed for the game. That amazing experience was covered in the Bioware Blog a few months ago (Dragon Age Toolset: Builder Event II<\/a>, Part 1<\/a>, and Part 2<\/a>), and in a pair of articles in Gamespy Magazine (Build Your Own Adventure: An Exclusive Look at the Dragon Age Toolset<\/a>, and Voices of Creation: The Dragon Age Builder Interviews<\/a>). Our team did the mod with the cat described in the last article. And I just noticed that the “Toolset Video” on the Collector’s Edition Bonus disk includes some footage from the Builder’s Event, including some showing me sitting in the front row. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Dragon Age has already been receiving some amazing critical reviews. For example, Gamespot<\/a> gave it a 95, saying that “Incredible storytelling, great characters, and exciting battles are just a few of the things that make this fantasy role-playing game so extraordinary.” The latest Bioware Blog post (Dragon Age to the World!<\/a>) lists a number of other rave reviews as well.<\/p>\n

The game system is simplified and very easy to understand and to play, compared to the awkward and cumbersome D&D ruleset of the Neverwinter Nights series. That’s something that I was hoping would be the case, and that I have to say that I very much appreciate. It’s also incredibly fast and efficient, smoothly delivering quality graphics and extraordinarily detailed animation with short load times. But what’s impressed me so far is the quality of the cinematic storytelling that the engine makes possible, and that the game builders at Bioware have demonstrated with the Dragon Age: Origins campaign.<\/p>\n

I’ll have more to say about the game once I’ve had time to play some more of it, and to take a look at the final version of the game-building toolset. Suffice it to say, though, that I’m positively salivating at the idea of starting to build adventure modules using this incredible new engine. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dragon Age was finally released this week! I’ve received and installed my copy — and after playing it for a while, I have to say that so far the game exceeds my expectations. Since my expectations were pretty high, that’s saying something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dragon-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":578,"href":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andarian.net\/TheSanctum\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}