Dragon Age Forum News (Oct. 22, 04)

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

A idea
Regarding immortal NPC's: I'm not sure if we're going to make certain NPC's "immortal:. I think what we plan to do is just tag the NPC so the player cannot attack it (pick it's pocket, or otherwise piss it off).

Story based RPG's have obvious fail situations. The most obvious is when the player or the party is killed off. They cannot continue the quest, so the game ends.

Killing critical NPC's is similer. Killing Aribeth in NWN is a fail situation, and the story ends.

What would happen if Frodo killed Gandalf right away? It wouldn't be the same story at all.

So kill a critical NPC in Dragon age, and you're option to continue is reduced to nothing.

Regarding two weapons:
I guess the penalty for using two weapons is to balance out the doubling the number of attacks the player could have?

The resoning is that using two weapons well requires more training then just using one, and until you become good at it, you're getting one weapon in the way of the other.

Still, I'd think that a big, thick shield would be a much better way to block an attack then a long thin piece of metal.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

One-handed and two-handed weapon tip
Just some quick comments...

* Generally someone with two weapons is more dangerous than someone with one, even if they're fighting poorly. (More things to stick and cut you with)

* If you're close enough to grab someone's wrist in a fight you probably could have killed them already... and if you're in range to use your weapon (empty hand), they're in range to use whatever they're holding too...

* In-fighting usually boils down to luck and pure aggression/strength as opposed to skill.

* Defensively, a dagger is probably better than an open hand (as you can actually block things without the need for some kind of protection on the hand, or worrying about it being sliced to ribbons).

* Realism isn't always fun.

We could probably do a one handed fighting style and make it interesting enough - there are all sorts of reasons why you might want a hand free in combat, though most probably wouldn't translate to a direct bonus in combat (ie: throwing something, grappling (as mentioned), making obscure insulting gestures at your foes... ).

NOTE: None of the above is indicative of what may or may not be in Dragon Age. It's all just examples, so please don't infer the inclusion of any particular feature from the above.