Dragon Age: Origins Diaries

After receiving the Xbox 360 version of Dragon Age: Origins this week, Tom Chick over at Fidgit has been busy writing up diaries that chronicle his progress. There are three available so far (here, here, and here), so I’ll go ahead and quote from his latest battle entry, “Pwning Ogres”.

In battles up to now, I’ve had Morrigan shapeshifting into a spider just because it’s cool. But not in this battle. I need her using magic, specifically a frost attack that freezes an enemy and all her entropy debuffs. She and I hang back, her attacking with her staff and spells, me with my arrows. As the first ogre comes lumbering down the pass, I toggle the “Hold Position” command. Alistair and Sten move up to fight the ogre. Alistair has a “Threaten” attribute activated that draws an enemy’s aggro, in classic tank fashion. Because his default combat tactics have him drawing aggro with “Threaten” and an ability called “Taunt”, he’s been my most common casualty. I’m constantly burning injury kits to remove the negative effects of reviving him after a battle.

But not this time. I watch his health closely and have him use potions when he takes a big hit. Meanwhile, Sten takes up a position behind the ogre, using his two-handed sword and special attacks to do the proverbial massive damage, made more massive for the flanking bonus he gets for standing behind the ogre, and even more massive still with abilities that reduce his attack speed and improve his damage. It’s quite a nice bit of animation to watch him heft that sword overhead and slash it into some monster.

Everything is going swimmingly for several seconds. The lead ogre’s health is handily chopped down to about a third of his total. But now here comes his buddy, charging past the point where Sten and Alistair are whaling on the first ogre. Ogre number two makes a beeline directly for me, the last person to have injured him. I switch to my melee weapons (I dual weild!) and get Morrigan out of the way, switching her target to this newest ogre now pounding on my lightly armored body. But before we can start in on him, he does some sort of area effect stun that knocks me and Morrigan back.

Fortunately, at this point the first ogre has died. Sten and Alistair move to the second ogre, whaling away on him, although he’s still focused on me. The “Threaten” skill requires a few melee blows to build up aggro. But before the ogre is distracted from me, he picks me up! I’m actually grabbed and lifted into the air. I’ve never seen this before, but the codex entry on ogres warns of it. However, whatever he’s going to do to me is interrupted by Morrigan’s frost spell, which covers the ogre in an ice effect and causes him to drop me.