The Dao of DA:O - playing blind

[JustKneller]

Did you catch that Morrigan is Claudia Black, of Farscape and Stargate sci-fi fame?

I caught that one right off the bat. But, I've also watched all of Farscape a number of times (I'll watch anything the Henson Creature Shop touches). It kinda gives me another reason to keep Morgana because I liked CB's character in Farscape so much.

 

[Cahir]

I caught that one right off the bat. But, I've also watched all of Farscape a number of times (I'll watch anything the Henson Creature Shop touches). It kinda gives me another reason to keep Morgana because I liked CB's character in Farscape so much.

Farscape is one of my favorite sci-fi series, together with Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse. Farscape also have one of the most awesome antagonists I've seen.

 

[JustKneller]

I never thought I liked space operas (never really got into Star Trek and I've never liked Star Wars), but shows like Farscape and Battlestar Galactica (and Firefly) proved me wrong. I haven't seen The Expanse, but I've heard good things.

 

[JustKneller]

I have to admit. I'm hitting a bit of a wall here with the gameplay. Since tactics are a grab bag for me, I have to micro everything. And, the toons are frequently quitting their auto attacks for no reason and just sitting around doing nothing. Or, the party bar will say they are attacking, but they are actually just standing around. So, even with micro, the controls are janky. Even when it works, aside from some cool animations (that I have to see in multiple parts due to all the pausing to micro), combat is a little meh for me.

My play sessions are rather short because of it. I'm currently only up to the second area past Wynne's barrier. I do a few fights, play something else for a while, repeat.

I don't have much to report from an RP standpoint except I sent Shadow back to camp to pick up Wynne. That situation with the mabari at Ostegar gave Faris a cause for pause. It's one thing to keep a faithful hound by your side while living in a safe castle. It's another thing to put your hound at risk in actual war. She would rather Shadow be safe.

 

[BelgarathMTH]

Hmm, well, I'm sorry that you're hitting that frustration.

I remember getting the tactics to work well for me, after I started to think like a computer programmer. Each character's tactics screen is a series of if-then commands, and the order matters a lot, because the program is executing from top to bottom, with top commands taking priority over later, and if the top command or two sets up a loop, the bottom commands will never execute. If the npc's stop using their programs, it could mean you've programmed a loop of some kind where there's nowhere to go in the program. For example, a command like "drink health potion at 50 percent health" needs to be above "attack target of selected" or whatever, since the drink command can only activate after the attack command has been executed, which might be too late. So, the drink command needs to be above the attack command.

I wish I could remember the other programming commands better. There are commands to defend, guard, heal self or other, cast aoe if more than x targets, and a lot of other parameters iirc.

If I saw characters not doing what I had programmed, I started trying to de-bug the program, rather than blame the game, and I always had the option to take direct control of the "malfunctioning" character.

I think the story of this game is worth seeing once. If struggling with the tactics system and the combat is going to stop you from playing out the story, I see no shame in setting the difficulty to the lowest setting.

Come to think of it, I never asked you what difficulty you were trying.

 

[JustKneller]

I remember getting the tactics to work well for me, after I started to think like a computer programmer.

I thought the same way. The tactics system is virtually identical to the gambit system from FFXII, just with slightly different commands. I started with a really simple program. The top line was to heal self with a poultice if a character's HP drops below 25%. The second line was to attack whoever Alistair (who is my point man) is attacking. Very simple. I would control Alistair instead of Faris (though I would micro her anyway for backstabbing positioning). Everyone should only be doing two things. Heal themselves if they need it or backing up Alistair on offense with auto-attacks. But, it did not play out that way. They wouldn't just heal themselves, but also each other, and often if they had more than 25% health remaining. When I was using tactics, I went into Ostegar with over a dozen healing poultices and was cleaned out well before the top. The party wasn't even getting that hurt. As for attacking, I had to constantly put them back on target for auto-attacks manually, and even then they would drop their action randomly, even though Alistair was attacking someone and the others were in range to attack as well.

I'm just playing on Normal difficulty, btw. I'm up to the first fight with three blood mages in the circle tower. I tried it once before taking another break. I had everyone as focused as I could (what with having to wake them up regularly) on a single mage and using their strongest abilities. However, all three blood mages had heal, which seems to have a short cooldown. I'd get the mage down to about 25%, all three would heal the mage we were attacking, and it would be back to full health. Then while the heals recharged and the party went back to whittling down the mage again, they throw some kind of fire spell that takes a chunk out of Faris and Alistair. I ended up in almost a stalemate with Wynne and Morrigan casting heal (and then Wynne using other healing spells while the heal was on cooldown), but the mages had a bit of a dps edge and eventually took down Alistair and Faris.

 

[BelgarathMTH]

Oh well, sounds like you've got the mechanics down well enough. That is one of the hardest fights in the game you're describing, at the end of the Mage Circle scenario. The Mage Circle also has that tedious Sloth Demon sequence where you have to keep shape-shifting and solve puzzles by matching your form to the room, and you don't have access to your normal skills. I thought that would never end, and I modded it out for all my other runs. (Yes, one of the most popular mods is "Skip the Fade".)

I do remember that I enjoyed the combat at first, but I started to find it tedious as the game went on. I also remember mostly micromanaging the combat with very little reliance on the AI tactics, but I was used to that from Baldur's Gate. As you probably know, if you play BG or any of the Infinity Engine games as minimal or no reload, using the AI is going to get you killed.

I think any AI, no matter how well-programmed, is never going to work as well as a human brain for tactics, because a person can deal with unique emergent situations spontaneously, and an AI can't, or at least it couldn't when BG and DA:O were developed.

There's no need to force yourself to play a game you're not enjoying, despite peer pressure to the contrary. I'm sad you don't seem to like it as much as I did, but you've given the game a fair chance to bring you pleasure in your leisure time, and if it's not doing that, you're right to play something else, because games are for pleasure, and they shouldn't feel like doing chores.

As I said, I was tempted to start a run of my own so we could compare notes, but I've been trying to finish a Jedi Consular class story in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and it's content I've never seen. I know from my history that if I let myself get distracted from this game to another game, I'm highly unlikely to ever come back to the same character and finish the game I was on, so for now I'm planning to stick to it, because I am having fun with it.

You've still inspired me to give DA:O another go once I'm done with my Star Wars game, but I guess the timing isn't right for us to be playing DA:O at the same time.

 

[Antimatter]

I agree with Belgarath. You've given it a fair chance, but it is not working; it's ok.

I wouldn't be able to imagine what it's like to play DA:O in 2025 blind. For me, it has always come in some context. The context being 2009 and DA:O being the game closest to the games I liked the most, the BG trilogy. It was from (at that point) my favorite gaming studio, with all the usual names attached to it, and it offered new things in the genre, from party conversations, to romance, to cut-scenes, etc. It all was the product of that moment of time, and I was fortunate to experience it exactly when I needed it most.

(Re)playing old titles can be problematic, especially if you don't approach it just from the "visiting a museum" point of view. If you actually want to not just see the game out and complete it, but to actually interact and enjoy, it might lead to problems, as there is no guarantee everything will stick together for you.

 

[JustKneller]

I agree with Belgarath. You've given it a fair chance, but it is not working; it's ok.

That's what bothers me the most. I'm fine with games that have more elaborate control schemes (System Shock 2, Thief), and I'm fine with games where the control/interface is janky (Fallout New Vegas, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines). In fact, all of the examples listed are 5/5 games for me. However, if a game has both issues combined, it's just unpleasant to play. I would actually say that all the Baldur's Gate titles are far superior in regards to controls. I mean, I've never used BG AI, but it was easy enough to micro and when I selected actions, those actions happened without stalling out. PS:T was probably the worst (controls-wise) out of all the IE games, but it was still far better than DAO.

DAO feels like I'm controlling four MMO characters with oppositional defiant disorder. And to what end? What are my actual choices that I am making here? I can fight, use a special ability or spell, use an item, or run away...

The physical space matters somewhat for AoE and facing, but it's a relatively small piece of the puzzle. I think the essential difference between an RTWP rpg and something like a classic JRPG is just how many buttons and levers you need to manipulate to get the same effect. Might as well streamline for efficiency and efficacy and then use the time and resources saved to glow up other areas.

I also think the genre has something working against it when it comes to the gameplay loop. That is, RPGs tend to be significantly longer than games in other genres. I can do a run of Bioshock in a (small) fraction of the time as just the first BG game. If I had to play a Bioshock run for as long as a Baldur's Gate run, it would get stale long before I finished it. I think my high ranking RPGs all find clever ways to work around this. JRPGs streamline the loop which lets them put more resources into things like minigames and story editing. New Vegas did it with exploration (and special abilities supporting that as much as combat) and exceptional writing. Icewind Dale did it with content balancing and by staying more true than any other game (that I've played) to the spirit of the tabletop game.

(Re)playing old titles can be problematic, especially if you don't approach it just from the "visiting a museum" point of view. If you actually want to not just see the game out and complete it, but to actually interact and enjoy, it might lead to problems, as there is no guarantee everything will stick together for you.

I'm not sure I agree with this statement. I can still play a lot of older titles and truly enjoy every aspect of it without having to grade it on the "visiting a museum" curve. Even within this very specific sub-genre (RTWP), games like Icewind Dale and Fallout: Tactics still "work". I'm not scratching a nostaglia itch. I'm playing a solidly good game.

Yeah, I'm probably going to call it for DAO. Leisure time is limited and a significant part of my day job involves navigating systems that don't work the way they should, so a game that does the same is probably not the best fit for me. I don't normally "rate" a game I don't finish, but I have experienced enough of it to comfortably give DAO a 3/5, which I think is respectable considering my criticisms. I wouldn't mind the tactics system being broken if even the micro worked the way it should, so I nicked a point for that. I wouldn't say it "lost" a point for the story, but it's all pretty generic (an ancient evil has arisen and it will take a small ragtag band of special warriors to defeat it) and many of the story beats so far are just mid or disconnected. Having to raise an army is a nice touch, and I'm sure it plays out in an interesting way. I'm guessing your companion relationships play out in some sort of b-story, based on your approval, kind of like location epilogues in Fallout. But, at the end of the day, the combat mechanics are bad enough to kill any curiosity for me.

 

[Antimatter]

Well, a 3/5 is already better than a 0/5, so there is that.

DA:O was being written when the Game of Thrones show didn't exist. Gaider was inspired by the actual books by Martin, so you can find a lot of similar approaches (the Knight Commander etc). The whole Grey Warden code of conduct. Back then, those books weren't THAT popular or even known to the general audience, so the story (or, rather, the setting) was fresh. And can't overlook the actual lore of the world, the Blights/magisters/Fade setting. It's still not bad btw, even in today's world.

But then again, my first character in DA:O was a mage, so I got acquainted with the Fade lore right away, and it still fascinates me. Unfortunately, the lore was massacred in The Veilguard. In DAII and DAIII the stories and the setting-related stuff were nicely done.

I can see where you're coming from, comparing the mechanics to an MMO, but the thing here is that I tried my first MMO only in 2021... So I had no idea back then. And it's a bit funny, as DAIII went fully MMO style.

The RtwP vs TB argument, at this point, is not an argument for me, I know TB is better. Probably, that was a controversial statement (especially among BG players) amidst the Kickstarter era of cRPG games. I didn't play jRPGs much, so my first real experience of TB in an RPG happened in D:OS 2, it was in 2017. I had played TB strategies and games like the Might & Magic series before that.

 

[JustKneller]

The RtwP vs TB argument, at this point, is not an argument for me, I know TB is better. Probably, that was a controversial statement (especially among BG players) amidst the Kickstarter era of cRPG games. I didn't play jRPGs much, so my first real experience of TB in an RPG happened in D:OS 2, it was in 2017. I had played TB strategies and games like the Might & Magic series before that.

I think timing/era was definitely a thing. My first RPG was Dragon Warrior on Nintendo. What followed from there was more JRPGs (FF and Chrono were big, naturally). After that was classic Fallout (also TB), and then Deus Ex, not TB, but that was really a FPS/RPG hybrid. I think the IE games (and BG was first) finally followed. At that point, I believe I had made it as far as Final Fantasy VIII and had around 10 years of history with RPGs both video games and tabletop.

So, BG was my first RTWP in a long line of TB games. I honestly didn't think much of it at first. I didn't hate it or like it. I was pretty lukewarm. It was different, but didn't really add anything significant to the gameplay. Frankly, TB would have probably been faster and let you see cooler animations. But, it was D&D adapted relatively decently (for the first game) into a video game. Even though I rate the full series low, BG 1 on its own is a solid 4/5 for me.

DA:O was being written when the Game of Thrones show didn't exist.

GoT probably still doesn't exist for me. I get the impression that whatever happened on GoT had a pretty substantial impact on fantasy RPGers. I only half watched it as far as the Red Wedding and then that really put me off it. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but this about sums up GoT for me.

Not that I have anything against dark fantasy. But there's artistically dark and then dark just for shock value. I digress, though.