Dragon Age Preview - High-Level Combat Skills and Character Development
Find out the best way to slash, burn, stab, and pelt your enemies with arrows in this upcoming role-playing successor to Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate.
Dragon Age: Origins has its roots in the rich, nerdy history of BioWare's classic fantasy role-playing games Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate (and that game's sequel, Baldur's Gate II). Not only will the new game attempt to expand on those games by letting you participate in an epic story of a kingdom at war with an unearthly menace, but it will also let you create a character capable of killing your enemies in a variety of nasty ways. We've had a chance to take the game's open-ended skill and talent trees through their paces and have some details on some of the high-level havoc you can wreak with a specialized combat character.
This time around, we'll focus on the kind of mayhem warriors and rogues can unleash when properly specialized for combat skills. The game's basic skill tree contains universal skills for characters of all classes, such as herbalism (which lets you create potions with plant components) and coercion (which lets you manipulate other characters in conversations with intimidation or fast-talking), but the most important skill tree for our discussion here will be the combat skill tree, which goes up to a level of four and unlocks additional combat talents for each line of combat abilities.
There are a good variety of combat talents in Dragon Age, including talent trees that are exclusive to your character's initial choice of character class (warrior or rogue, in this case), your character's advanced character class (including high-level advanced classes such as the templar warrior and assassin rogue), and a suite of talents specific to combat styles. Interestingly, while talents can be increased over time as you gain experience levels and talent points to invest, combat styles refer only generally to different ways to equip your character--specifically, with a one-handed weapon and shield, or with a bow or crossbow, or with dual weapons, or (exclusively for warriors) with a mighty two-handed weapon.
There's no need to invest in individual weapon proficiency points like in NWN or BG, only to later come to the frustrating realization that your characters spent all their points learning to use battle axes when there was actually an amazing two-handed sword you'd prefer to use for them instead. Now, you can make a much broader choice earlier on, choosing to simply use "a one-handed weapon" with a shield (rather than a longsword or a mace or a warhammer), and so on.
Warriors and rogues each have unique talent trees that are basic to their classes (that is, the warrior talents remain active and can be increased even after a warrior character graduates to an advanced class such as a templar or berserker; the same applies to rogues). BioWare senior producer Ferret Boudoin says, "As far as skills go, any warrior or rogue worth their salt maxes out combat training as quickly as possible. The tier-three and tier-four abilities are just too yummy to pass up." The warrior has two talent trees. The first is a defensive set of talents that increase the warrior's resistances to damage or helps manage the amount of stamina (a meter that powers the use of special abilities) the character uses; the second is an offensive set that includes modes that let the warrior deal critical damage on slower attacks or manage the amount of "aggro" (how focused your enemies are on the warrior) your character generates in combat. Rogues, on the other hand, have four talent trees: two include miscellaneous extra attacks that stun or weaken foes, one is for picking locks and disarming traps, and a fourth tree is for stealth skills.
Rogues and warriors share a few combat-style-related talent trees, including dual weapons and archery (both of which include four talent trees with four unique lines of skills), though only warriors may also use the weapon-and-shield and two-handed-weapon talents. Dual-weapon talents include three individual trees pertaining to more-skillful wielding of two weapons, additional attacks, and sweeping attacks that strike all enemies in range. Archery includes three talent trees that focus on increasing the usefulness of archery in battle (especially at close range, where archery is normally at a disadvantage), precise single shots, and rapidly firing multiple arrows.
Weapon-and-shield style includes three different talent trees that focus on skills that provide shield-bashing melee attacks that stun enemies; a defensive stance that defends against missile attacks; and a melee defense stance that eventually affords the warrior additional protection from flanking and rear attacks. The two-handed talent tree includes three lines of talents for a line of stunning attacks; a debilitating set of attacks that reduces enemies' armor and attack skills; and a set of skills that focuses on huge, powerful swings that deal enormous damage.
Without even getting into the advanced skills that accompany the game's advanced classes, the open-ended talent trees of warriors and rogues already seem to afford a lot of options with respect to how you specialize your character. We tried out a few different midlevel characters with filled-out skill trees to see them in action.
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- Release: Nov 3, 2009 »
- ESRB: Mature
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