One thing missing from DA compared to Oblivion/Fallout 3

[SpellAndShield]

Both Oblivion and Fallout 3 have very powerful themes of horror, suspense and just plain scariness and whilst I think that Dragon Age is the best RPG ever, it was never scary or frightening...but I wish it were. It would make the game all the better.

 

In Oblivion, when exploring some haunted ruin or mist shrouded cave with vampires, it definitely was...creepy at times and post-nuke fallout, when you see the ghouls leap out of the darkness...well, you get the picture.

 

Sadly, Dragon Age has nothing like this. Perhaps in future expansions, etc. they can add something like this...

 

Anyone agree?

[RustyBlade]

On my first few play-throughs the shreks and ash wraiths could startle me and get me to jump but now that I know where everything is, there are no surprises. What it needs is more randomness to the encounters and not the same critters in the same spot at the same time in every game.

[SpellAndShield]

On my first few play-throughs the shreks and ash wraiths could startle me and get me to jump but now that I know where everything is, there are no surprises. What it needs is more randomness to the encounters and not the same critters in the same spot at the same time in every game.

 

The ghouls in Fallout 3 kind of always freaked me out...to be honest. Nothing did that to me in Dragon Age; love everything else about it though.

[sarx8172]

I think the camera perspective had a lot to do with Fallout and Oblivion's success in that matter...whether you played in 1st person or 3rd person (1st 24/7 for me), you were always within close proximity to your character, and hence saw things in a relatively close distance to the actual character's vision (wow horrible sentence structure...hopefully still understandable). In other words, if something pops out of no where, it's much scarier than in Dragon Age's isometric camera angles.

 

Oh, and the other two games didn't have Tactics, so everything you did in them, you did on your own. The AI never took over or helped out to a large extent. So the knowledge that if you didn't do something, you're screwed probably helped also.

[SaturnC]

I think the camera perspective had a lot to do with Fallout and Oblivion's success in that matter...whether you played in 1st person or 3rd person (1st 24/7 for me), you were always within close proximity to your character

You took the words right out of my mouth! I totally agree. When I first started playing DAO, I hated the game because I had played strictly Morrowind then Oblivion then Fallout and the 3rd person view really took me a long time to get used to. I also feel when I play DAO that the proportions are off, the characters are way too small in comparison to their surroundings much of the time, especially when they're dead, they look almost like a spec on the ground. With the 1sp person view, you are truly in your opponents face and with Oblivion the zombies scared the pants off me, in Fallout it's the ghouls and even in Morrowind, I remember seeing an ascended sleeper or ash zombie for the first time and had nightmares! But I just don't get that scared with DAO; again, the camera perspective has everything to do with it for me, also.

[Mlai]

I'm glad that DAO isn't 1st person. I absolutely detest 1st person games where the only thing you see of your chara is a sword or a gun. Half of the game's personality is drained off right there.

 

I always play DAO in zoom-in view (the PC). So I get plenty of surprise/startle moments.

[ChaironDeCeleste]

Well the choice is yours, at least with a scroll wheel mouse you'll be able to

constantly play closeup to your pc (dunno the keyboard zoom in keys).

- and not only see much more detail instead of hostile and friendly D2

style colored inkspots but also lots of skincrawlers due to the better

optical and audio effects in closeup - bonus is you'll be more drawn

into the environments than by the defaullt guinea pig maze perspective.:)

[SpellAndShield]

Well the choice is yours, at least with a scroll wheel mouse you'll be able to

constantly play closeup to your pc (dunno the keyboard zoom in keys).

- and not only see much more detail instead of hostile and friendly D2

style colored inkspots but also lots of skincrawlers due to the better

optical and audio effects in closeup - bonus is you'll be more drawn

into the environments than by the defaullt guinea pig maze perspective.:)

 

I still think the spooky/scary element is what is missing in DA. But that is just me....

[TerraEx]

I still think the spooky/scary element is what is missing in DA. But that is just me....

 

I don't think DA would really benefit from scares. The game just isn't set up to give you the kind of scares that say... DeadSpace can. You've always got your team members backing you up which immediately offsets any measure of fear that you may be experiencing, and since you can play with the camera zoomed out it simply isn't workable.

[SpellAndShield]

I still think the spooky/scary element is what is missing in DA. But that is just me....

 

I don't think DA would really benefit from scares. The game just isn't set up to give you the kind of scares that say... DeadSpace can. You've always got your team members backing you up which immediately offsets any measure of fear that you may be experiencing, and since you can play with the camera zoomed out it simply isn't workable.

 

A good point. Being a single PC makes it a lot scarier...those ghouls and their sounds always freaked me out in Fallout 3.