So now I've just started taking another look at the 5th in the set of what I consider "middle-period" BioWare - just at the tail end of it, with DAO, before the console/lowest common denominator rot finally set in with ME2 and DA2.
On the minus side, this had even more of the asinine "women warriors" thing that BioWare started really getting into properly with KOTOR. It's bad enough with Sith fashy female soldiers there, but there is nothing more incongruous in a gritty mediaeval fantasy than seeing
female guards. Just stop it, please. I remember even I, who might have been considered to have been fairly political correct at the time, felt a bit uncomfortable with the incongruity of female guards (though interestingly, at that point, one wasn't yet slaughtering them wholesale as one does today - they were still more decorative and point-making than seriously there as combatants).
But female mages - well alright. And it has to be said that Morrigan's entrance in the Korcari swamp is as magnificent now as it was then. The voice acting and the character model, and the character herself, are just perfect; if one has been getting into the atmosphere up to that point, stumbling along through the gloomy, dangerous swamp with one's merry band of noobs, it's quite a moment of "presence" - I'd put it on a par with Geralt's conversation with the witches in TW3, with its ability to transport one to another time and place, to have a vague sense in the hindbrain that a fantastical thing is real, there in front of you.
Le sigh. I always reflect at moments like this, and ask myself, is it really too much to want it all? To want a fully cinematic, immersive experience
as well as great gameplay? That seemed to be what RPGs were trending towards, were promising in those days, but as we've figured out on many an occasion here, the cinematic experience is easier to deliver to the masses and get a financial result with, so games have forgotten about the richer kind of gameplay and appealed to the LCD and dressup fans. But there are moments in all these BioWare games where the possibility is dangled in front of one, of that perfect combination of total cinematic immersion and absorbing gameplay.
Not that the gameplay in this is that great, but to compensate, it does have the "Tactics" - the AI conditional stuff, which I love in games that have it (Pillows 2 has a great system for it too). I've been using the mod
Even More Advanced Tactics, which has an absolute shed-load of stuff, even Boolean shit, and it's been quite absorbing minutely nudging and adjusting the party's behaviour as I go, learning what works and what doesn't (even more, what suits the personality I'm building up for these people in my head
but also works). So at the moment I've got it on Hard, and I just let combat run a lot of the time, only taking manual control when things get hairy, as they do about 20% of the time, I'd say. The rest of the time it's watching a cinematic combat experience (while inwardly cheering one's party on) that one might say I'm orchestrating at the AI level. Which is gameplay of a sort, certainly (after all, my guys do have to win the encounter
), and compensates for the combat being okayish manually, but a bit dull. I'm looking forward to doing spell combinations with the AI - I never did get into those back in the day, so this is my opportunity to try them properly.
Music in this is amazing of course (especially that mysterious, elegaic campfire theme, which occasionally crops up in other emotionally moving contexts as well), and I always thought the UI was beautiful and refined, in terms of feeling like a "solid" thing.
Following is the Autohotkey I've cobbled together for this. It enables autorun (key g), toggled mouselook (with MB5 also cancellable by RMB) and and toggled highlighting (TAB) as well as cancelling convos and windows with Middle mouse button. As with the one I gave for KOTOR/2, this no doubt has lots of horrendous scurf in it, as it's put together from bits all over the web, so if any Autohotkey mavens happen to see this, I'd appreciate advice on tidying it down to the lean, elegant essentials. But it works very well:-
;======= from
https://www.darmazat.be/2020/06/06/dao/ ============
SetTitleMatchMode 2
GroupAdd,DragonAgeGames,ahk_class DragonAge
GroupAdd,DragonAgeGames,ahk_class DragonAge2
#ifWinActive ahk_group DragonAgeGames
#NoEnv
#SingleInstance force
#InstallKeybdHook
#InstallMouseHook
#UseHook, On
#MaxHotKeysPerInterval 1000
#MaxThreadsBuffer on
#KeyHistory 0
#MaxThreads, 100
#MaxThreadsPerHotkey, 2
#Persistent
SetBatchLines, -1
DetectHiddenWindows, On
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen
CoordMode, Pixel, Screen
CoordMode, Tooltip, Screen
SetKeyDelay, 30,50
SetMouseDelay 10
SendMode Input
;============== highlight loot toggle (TAB) ===============
$Tab::
HLvar := !HLVar
Send % "{Tab " . ((HLVar) ? ("down") : ("up")) . "}"
return
;============= autorun (g key) =========================
g::Gosub, MoveToggle
$w::
Send {w down}
While GetKeyState("w","p")
{
}
MoveVar = ; Off
Send {w up}
Return
$s::
MoveVar = ; Off
Send {w up}
Send {s down}
While GetKeyState("s","p")
{
}
Send {s up}
Return
MoveToggle:
MoveVar := !MoveVar
Send % "{w " . ((MoveVar) ? ("down") : ("up")) . "}"
return
;==================================== mouse look toggle mb5 plus rbutton off
$XButton2::
If (Toggle := !Toggle)
Send {RButton Down}
Else
Send {RButton up}
Return
$!XButton2::
if (Toggle)
{
Toggle := !Toggle
}
Send {RButton down}
Return
~RButton::
if (Toggle)
{
Toggle := !Toggle
Send {RButton up}
}
Return
;============================= Mapping Middle Button to Esc for convenience========
MButton::esc
;================= Register c key to "take all" with ft ui mod at 1080p big menus=========
c::
MouseClick, left, 638, 854
return
