What are you playing?

[Grayswandir]

Damn. You're exactly my level, so I was hoping we could dive in and kill some stuff.
I enjoy smashing faces in as Brick. My friends think his ability is broken.

BLOOOOOOOOODMWAHAHAAHHAHAARRAAAAAAAAAAAAUGHBLOODAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAARGH!!!
What kind of Brick setup are you using? Are you geared more towards rockets, tanking, or just smashing face?

A friend of mine is playing as Brick and he's using a Fire Artifact, so you hear screaming and the controllers vibrate as this giant fireball goes flying across the screen and begins smashing people's faces in.

I find it rather strange that we can't play across consoles/systems for the same game.

If you have Lost Planet: Colonies, we could play that between systems.

[Renegade_Turner]

Ren, the reason DA:O is so engrossing is that it's one of the few games Bioware's made so far that features an original IP.

You mean IP as in intellectual property? If so, then that's technically untrue considering one of the 3 critical races to the games story, the Elves, are a borrowed intellectual property since the idea was conceived by Tolkien. Also, the setting is pretty common for RPG games. In fact, the general storyline is quite similar to Lord Of The Rings. Did you mean IP as something else?

[Fournine]

I think he meant in the sense that the could just make whatever shit up they wanted.

---

I'm building Brick as a Brawler/Tank, mainly so he can just trash stuff up with his fists. I've got this nifty corrosive machine pistol (55 damage, 90 accuracy, 11 shots/second, 32 clip, x1 corrosive) that just tears through enemies while I wait for my ability to cool down - got it down to 30 second cooldown now.

I'm proud to say that I've killed all the major enemies, save the Mothrakk, by using my fists. I plan to keep this up as a tradition.

[Blorx]

Ren, the reason DA:O is so engrossing is that it's one of the few games Bioware's made so far that features an original IP.

You mean IP as in intellectual property? If so, then that's technically untrue considering one of the 3 critical races to the games story, the Elves, are a borrowed intellectual property since the idea was conceived by Tolkien. Also, the setting is pretty common for RPG games. In fact, the general storyline is quite similar to Lord Of The Rings. Did you mean IP as something else?

I more mean the story, but yeah that IP.

[Grayswandir]

I'm building Brick as a Brawler/Tank, mainly so he can just trash stuff up with his fists. I've got this nifty corrosive machine pistol (55 damage, 90 accuracy, 11 shots/second, 32 clip, x1 corrosive) that just tears through enemies while I wait for my ability to cool down - got it down to 30 second cooldown now.

Awesome. I have my Siren set up with a gun/health regen build. Pretty much all her abilities are set to add gun damage and fire faster. So currently I have a permanent 25% faster fire rate with all guns and a class mod that adds +40% SMG damage. I also found this awesome SMG that does 23x6 damage, fires insanely fast and has 54 rounds. Its hilarious because when you fire the gun, the screen just fills with numbers.

[Endoperez]

Ren, the reason DA:O is so engrossing is that it's one of the few games Bioware's made so far that features an original IP.

You mean IP as in intellectual property? If so, then that's technically untrue considering one of the 3 critical races to the games story, the Elves

"Elf" is a generic name for a stereotype. Including that stereotype in your game doesn't mean you are taking the concept as-is from something else. Bioware also did Jade Empire (I think that's another IP they came up with, btw), and even though it uses Chinese myths and myths about Chinese, their version of those things is definitely their own.

Tolkien didn't come up with elves, just the stereotype we most commonly associate with them. There were stereotypes his elves are based on, but most people aren't familiar with the cultures and stories, and thus don't recognize them.

[Renegade_Turner]

Ren, the reason DA:O is so engrossing is that it's one of the few games Bioware's made so far that features an original IP.

You mean IP as in intellectual property? If so, then that's technically untrue considering one of the 3 critical races to the games story, the Elves

"Elf" is a generic name for a stereotype. Including that stereotype in your game doesn't mean you are taking the concept as-is from something else. Bioware also did Jade Empire (I think that's another IP they came up with, btw), and even though it uses Chinese myths and myths about Chinese, their version of those things is definitely their own.

Tolkien didn't come up with elves, just the stereotype we most commonly associate with them. There were stereotypes his elves are based on, but most people aren't familiar with the cultures and stories, and thus don't recognize them.

Well the Elves in this context follow Tolkien's depiction of them, i.e. the Elves in Dragon Age: Origins are pretty much indistinguishable from the Elves of the LOTR universe.

[Count Roland]

except that they're like little pansies in DA:O who have apparently been dominated by humans.

[MONKEYZ RULE]

Mac: Halo 1, Flatout 2, Phun, Lugaru, WoW, Cortex Command b23
Xbox 360: Halo 3, Flatout UC, Star Wars: Force Unleashed
(BTW, anyone else on Xbox live? If so, add "Sirjohnmac")

[Grayswandir]

360:
Borderlands
Dragon Age: Origins

...strange mix, I know.

[Endoperez]

Well the Elves in this context follow Tolkien's depiction of them, i.e. the Elves in Dragon Age: Origins are pretty much indistinguishable from the Elves of the LOTR universe.

Sorry, but no. The second Google link with the keywords: "dragon age: origins" elves gave me this quote:

According to Bioware co-founder Ray Muzyka though, Dragon Age: Origins is definitely not following that particular dynamic.

"Elves in Lord of the Rings are very angelic," he told Gamasutra. "Dragon Age flipped that convention on its head. Elves are not special - well, not to everybody. To themselves, maybe; but to humans, they were a slave race for a while. They were enslaved, captured, and defeated."

[Endoperez]

Sorry about the off-topic double-post, but I just wanted to point out something0.

Dúnedain of Middle-Earth are the equivalent of standard fantasy elves, complete with "dark elves", the black numenoreans. Tall, long-lived arrogant people who live in the wild but have a long history and who have ruled great kingdoms, usually have just one or few children, often use bows and swords, magical or almost-magical abilities...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dúnedain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Númenóreans

The actual elves are angels. Not the winged, divine punishment angels, but the angels that look like more beautiful, perfect, wise and eternally young humans. I think there was a TV series in the 90s about angels like these. IIRC, Frodo sees a an elf-angel as a being formed of bright light when he first comes to Rivendell.

Wizards and fallen maiar, including Gandalf, Saruman and Sauron, are more Old Testament angels. The Balrog of Moria even comes with the traditional wings and flaming sword. Also, the power over humans and lesser beings, power over a specific domain (Fire for Gandalf and Balrog, Forge for Saruman and Sauron), etc etc.

[Blorx]

So, I ended up subscribing to A Tale In the Desert. That's a rare happening for me. I definitely recommend the game.

No violence. The ultimate crafter's game. Real politics with laws that get voted on and hard-coded into the game by the dev himself. Good support from the dev from what I've seen. He seems to get around to every thing at least once a day. There are tons of tests for each discipline of learning as well. As put by the dev, only one person has ever completed them all. That pretty much means for the casual/semi-hardcore player, there's always something to do. Plus, it runs on all 3 major OSes. =D

Oh yeah, forgot to mention it's indie. =]

[Renegade_Turner]

Well the Elves in this context follow Tolkien's depiction of them, i.e. the Elves in Dragon Age: Origins are pretty much indistinguishable from the Elves of the LOTR universe.

Sorry, but no. The second Google link with the keywords: "dragon age: origins" elves gave me this quote:

According to Bioware co-founder Ray Muzyka though, Dragon Age: Origins is definitely not following that particular dynamic.

"Elves in Lord of the Rings are very angelic," he told Gamasutra. "Dragon Age flipped that convention on its head. Elves are not special - well, not to everybody. To themselves, maybe; but to humans, they were a slave race for a while. They were enslaved, captured, and defeated."

Except for the fundamentally different history of the race, they have the exact same attributes.

360:
Borderlands
Dragon Age: Origins

...strange mix, I know.

Odd. These are the exact same two games I'm playing, although I'm playing them both for the PC. I'm told DA:Origins is far better for the PC than either of the consoles.

[Grayswandir]

The console version of Dragon Age feels more actiony than the PC version (having tried both) mostly because of the way the GUI is set up and the control layout. Only having 6 quick action slots is also a pain, but I've found only putting my attack skills in them streamlines things a bit. On another note, I like how varied the gameplay can be. When I played through the first tower as my human warrior the enemies were fairly easy but the end Ogre was a pain because it kept resisting all the spells I threw its way. When I played through the area as an elf rogue I had more trouble with the main enemies because they used more traps and spells and the Ogre was easier because I had access to both Paralyze AND Weaken and he seemed to have no resistance at all. The rogue also had a tendency to lop off people's heads on criticals, there was that too.