So I've fiddled around with three of the however many possible origin stories there are (I think some are practically the same, whilst others differ wildly)I've got a good grasp of what Dragon Age: Origins is like. A little dissapointing.
It might of been all the hype, good reviews and I expected a little more from the 'Spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate' but the game is filled with lots of little things that seriously bug me.
1) Camera: You can move around using Right click on location or WASD (+ Q and E) the right click method is far too slow for exploring (perfect for tactical desicions, but running around not so good) but the WASD set up is horribly twitchy, you can't turn the camera just 10 degrees, no you have choices of around 45, 90 or 180. Also without any quest compass (there are markers, but you have to find them before they show up) it makes getting to where you need to go quite difficult.
Second gripe about the camera is how you can't move it away from your selected character. This isn't a huge problem unless you are a fan (like me) of using bows. Bows have properly long range, you can start picking off enemies from impressively far away, if your camera allows you to see them. I know my character can see them, there are little red dots on the minimap, but I can't unless I zoom right into behind his head. I like conducting battles in the top down tactical view, I don't want to go into 'behind the head action adventure view' whenever I want to shoot something more than 10 feet away. It's just aggravating and unneccessary. As terrain is under fog of war, and enemies don't show up until your character detects them, there is no reason to stop the player looking at more than the immediate area.
Final problem, it doesn't automatically move to a new character when you select them. Fine if your in a group, but if I've sent my rogue around the long way to flank and backstab someone, I don't need to be tiddling with the mousewheel in order for the game to pan over to him.
2) Cutscenes. Conversation cut scenes cut in too quickly after a quest completes. Yay I've killed the demon! Oh I don't get to see the body fall to the floor before I'm whisked away to conversational zoom in mode. Furthermore is the pauses before dialouge sections, they too are too small. What would be emotional or dramatic speech is lessened because the next part of speech comes to quickly. This is most notable when a character is obviously giving a unique response depending on what you said and then moving back to the generel speil. It breaks what is otherwise excellent storytelling.
3) Characters don't feel special. Each class has it's own set of tricks, Mages get spells, Rogues get dirty fighting and Warriors get either shield or two handed weapon special tricks. But the other skills, stealing, trapping, poison making and herbalism are open to all, making playing a rogue feel less special, or even removing the need for one in the party, as you can just have the mage fill in for them.
4) Annoying starting skills. Most notable in the warrior skill set. The game automatically assigns one point to the shield bash skill. What if I don't want to be a shield weilder? What if I want to run around with a big ass greatsword, or daggers? Well you can still spend your other points among those, but then you feel like you've wasted that other skill. You either forsake the choice of the other two fighting styles, or effectively lose a skill point.
5) Tactics. This is what I was looking forward to most, being able to customize AI tactics. It's great, works really well, but they don't give you enough tactics slot. You start off with enough to stop them doing stupid things (like using potions when only 10% damaged) but not enough to let you set up incredibly smart things. There is a skill that you can invest points in to grant more 'Tactics slots' but it's only for that character which hardly seems worth it. If this skill granted more tactics slot for the party I would invest in it, as then I could designate one character as the leader, who is less capable at combat than others but allows them to work more cohesively.
Okay thats the bad. My hands hurt so I'm not going to say the good because if you've read another review then they say it all already. These are just the things that I feel haven't (for some reason) haven't been bitched about in reviews, and rightly should be. Maybe ZP will pick up on them. Don't get me wrong, it's still fantastically fun game, with great storytelling and non linear quests, but these just tarnish what would otherwise be a perfect romp through rpg land.