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BioWare released the Character Creator to their upcoming RPG Dragon Age a few days ago, and I have spent some time with it. Overall expression: meh.
Releasing parts of the content before the actual product is not new for EA, who produce the game. In Spore the creator was available for purchase earlier, and EA then used all the uploaded creatures to populate their universe. Basically people paid to do the dirty work for them. It’s not a stupid idea, letting player create characters to an RPG – for me it’s one of the favorite parts of the game – but not play them. It’s like letting you unwrap a candy bar but not eat it. You are holding it, smelling it, feeling it, but you can’t eat it. Or, at least that’s the idea with the Character Creator.
Dragon Age’s Character Creator is not a complete letdown, but almost. See, what I like about making a character in RPG is not to spend two hours creating a face of a famous movie star (sorry Arnold the Warrior, your time will come), but to assign skills, abilities and talents. I would spend days with pen and paper D&D to create my characters, making sure I get all the feats and skills I want to use. I would plan my character, so I knew I would be able to get the Prestige Class Dwarven Defender at level 5 and not at level 7. This is the kind of small micromanagement I love. This is how I roll.
Dragon Age doesn’t have any of that!
This quote from the Dragon Age site speaks for itself (bolded important part):
Players will be able to customize the appearance of their character using the most detailed facial customization tool BioWare has created to date. Players can also choose their character’s race, gender, and class. They will also choose their character’s point of origin and backstory. Continued customization choices open up as the character gains levels.
Since it’s BioWare who made the first Neverwinter Nights game there will be plenty of comparisons between Dragon Age and NWN (and NWN2 for that sake, although it wasn’t BioWare who made it). In NWN2 (with all the expansions) you got 10 races, 18 sub-races, about 40 classes and prestige classes, hundreds of feats, skill points to place, ability score, spells to choose, familiars, background traits… and then you got appearance as a by-the-way at the end. I could sit literary hours creating my character.
So, what does Dragon Age have to top all that?
In Dragon Age you got 3 races: Human, Elf and Dwarf.
Really? Can you get any more default than that?
You got 3 classes: Warrior, Mage and Rogue.
Wow, 3 whole classes. Granted, these are like hybrids in that they can do a lot of things that in the D&D universe only selected classes can, but 3 is still very weak.
Mages for example can do both damage and heal, but from what I saw there only was like 2 healing spells anyway. It’s a lot of specialization involved, so Warriors can become tanks with sword ‘n’ board, or dual-wield Rogue-wannabies, or two-handed barbarians, or archers. Rogues are stuck to duel-wield or archery, while still having stealth of course.
Background options seems to be nothing more than a pre-generated background story for your character. If you pick Elf as race and ‘City Elf’ as background your human overlord raped your bride on your wedding day. Ooookay. There you go then. Now you got a reason for going around be a dick to humans. Ain’t role-playing wonderful? That there only is one or two background options per race make this all the worse. So you want to be a ‘Human Farmer’? Sorry, only ‘Human Noble’ available.
The appearance options on the other hand are vast, and very impressive. Instead of just pre-generated faces you got sliders for everything from eye color to nose size. Impressive, but nothing new really – this is becoming standard in most games these days. Hair styles and beards felt sorely lacking of variety, and I can’t wait for someone to actually create a system where you can customize your hair with sliders as you can with your face.
Something very annoying with the appearance page was that the character was standing in so much shadow you couldn’t see half the hair styles and colors unless you moved him around. I know it’s supposed to be a ‘dark’ RPG, but is it too much to ask for some sunlight when I create my character? I like to see what I’m doing and not finding out that the ‘brown’ hair color I assigned in fact was purple when I start the game.
Attributes is the same as D&D, except Intelligence is split into ‘Magic’ and ‘Cunning’, and Charisma is gone.
Skills are pretty much a simplified version of the D&D skill system. You got things like Survival (Survival), Craft Trap (Craft Trap), Stealing (Sleight of Hand), etc.
Talents work similar to Talent Trees like in many MMOs, but at the basic is just like feats – except every talent seems to be a spell or ability that you can use. In a way it is nice not having to get passive feats that improve skills, and just get abilities that you can use on enemies, but it also take away some more of that micro-management.
Skills and Talents might be alright, but you know what frustrate me in a Character Creator? That I can’t change any of it! How about you let me assign some points on my own and not just having me click ‘next’?
One this is clear: Dragon Age is focusing on being more action-oriented than micro-management tactical that I loved about D&D and the NWN games. And very much catering towards a bigger crowd than the standard fantasy RPG nerds. Simplified (bordering on stupid) character customization system, more action, more blood, more sex, more violence. With the assumption that everyone is male and enjoy Steven Segal movies you can’t go wrong with that.
Something that is also painfully obvious is that BioWare is not so great at making their own IP. Look, the lore might be incredible deep (I don’t know), the story might be awesome (I don’t know) and the dialogue might be a masterpiece (I don’t know), but if you can’t create a basic character system that is nothing more than a worse copy of the IP you have been using for years, then you are shooting yourself in the foot! You stop doing your old stuff because you want to make something better, not just to make something new!
3 races, 3 classes, and very limited amount of character customization… your gameplay and story better be damn good, BioWare.
Damn good.
Well, think of the limited choice as being characters in a story. In BG, you had just one story — your half-demon mysterious past. KotOR had just one story — your evil but mysterious past. In NWN2 (I know Bioware didn’t do it), you had just one story — the mysterious past that left you an orphan. Here there are a half dozen stories, and your character is one of the characters. The others will presumably be NPCs.
And as near as I can tell, none of the stories give you a mysterious past.
While I don’t agree with every little thing you said, I’m in accordance with the overall feeling. The character creator was “meh” to me. I’d just as soon wait for the game to come out and play with it than use a half-assed system to create something that won’t even let you create everything you’re going to be able to play with.
Great Post. I was mulling over this game, now I’m not so sure about it.
Yes, I looked forward to it aswell, but I have my doubts now.
As Tipa mentioned, I think the imposed limitations are due to the fact that in this ‘Origins’ arc of the larger story they are telling a unique story based on each of these beginnings. NWN2 didn’t have a unique story if you rolled a Drow Favored Soul starting out in the Underdark versus a Shield Dwarf Barbarian. Because Bioware wanted a unique story for each of these origins they had to limit the available choices or else this game would be in development into perpetuity with a dozen races and classes and ‘origin’ concepts. (A beginning for your Human Farmer, and why not a Dwarven Miner, or an Elven Bard, or a Human Beggar, or etc, etc.)
I’ve kept myself in the dark about Dragon Age, I don’t know if the story’s that great or anything else but I do appreciate the effort to tell a unique story for different origins rather than come with a generic excuse for my Moon Elf Cleric of Shevarash to be arbitrarily inserted into some random village to help them with their Orc problem. Does this approach take away some of the freedom availed in NWN2 and Baldur’s Gate? Absolutely? But if restricting freedom yields the potentia lfor a better, tighter, focused story on a particular race combination or concept then I’m all for it.
Now what shakes my confidence is the Dragon Age media blitz with the tons of gore, the pounding heavy metal, and scantily clad women taking treks in some frozen region complaining about the cold and then throwing off their cloak to start fighting. We’ll see what the future holds but I wouldn’t damn the game on this alone. :)
Now I know you can make really good games even with the complete lack of customization – Planescape Torment being one of them. In Planescape you didn’t get to pick a class, or race, or even gender if I remember correctly, because you played the protagonist in a fixed story.
From the little that I have heard about the main character’s story in Dragon Age, you are a Grey Warden recruit, and that’s about it. They let you decide on gender, race, class and background… so obviously it doesn’t really care who you are in the story arc. Then why stop there? Why stop with just three races, when it doesn’t matter if you are a human, elf or dwarf for the purpose of the story?
Baldur’s Gate told an amazing story of you being a god-spawn, and it didn’t care if you where a male human fight, female gnome rogue, or male dwarf cleric. In my opinion you either do it full customization and a story that adapts like in Baldur’s Gate, or you do it with zero customization and a fixed story like in Planescape. Dragon Age is either trying to be both or just doing a half-arsed work of the first option.
You’re absolutely right – Planescape and Baldur’s Gate are on two opposing ends of the spectrum. One tightly controlled to reveal bits of the Nameless One’s unique story over the course of the game whereas Baldur’s Gate is more ‘free’ in that you could be a male human fighter or female gnome rogue because you’re essentially an orphaned, adopted character so racial/class background are endless an inconsequential to the larger story.
I’m hoping that by tightly controlling these factors Bioware is trying to reclaim the Planescape avenue by upping the ante and creating six of these unique origins and felt that crafting a unique story based on these backgrounds would enrich the overarching story/campaign as a whole. Will it feel half-arsed spreading the story thin between these options and they should have just restricted it to one or two? Maybe. My confidence isn’t too shaken that I won’t be plopping down the coin to get the game on release.
My issues with Dragon Age is the comparison to the works of GRRM and the Song of Ice and Fire. If you make allusions like that then it better be a damn good story, six origins, one origin, or whatever. If anything, for those who have read these books, this may be the most damning comparison for this “dark” fantasy.