Let’s get something straight before we begin: Dragon Age: Origins is an excellent game. It’s solidly put together, the character progression system is just different enough to be interesting, and the storyline and voice acting is absolutely brilliant.
That said, however, there’s one point where the game can fall down, and that’s in its AI. Your computerized teammates are, by default, on average slightly less intelligent than the surrounding scenery, with what seems to be a budding suicide urge, as the archers put their bow away, pull out their daggers, and charge into melee, while the casters break out of their very effective and expensive shapeshifted form to cast Feeble Poke of Mild Annoyance at the giant boss monster.
Fortunately, there’s a way to avoid this scenario, and all its attendant frustrations: Tactics.
The game makes a big point of tutorializing your first brush with the tactics screen, and it is constantly clamoring for your attention with the loading-screen tips, but for all that I found it fairly dry reading. Then I started my second run through the game- with a mage instead of a melee rogue- and it suddenly became much more important to coordinate my party members (particularly the tank, as I could no longer afford to draw attention to myself and rely on stuns to escape).
So, let me draw your attention to Fig. 1a: The Tank’s Tactics Screen.
First: Shale (my party’s tank) has Self: Any; Activate: Stoneheart. Then, Self: Any; Activate: Threaten.
Next, he has Enemy: Attacking Main Character; Attack.
Self: Surrounded by at least three enemies; Bellow.
Finally, he has Ally: Being attacked by a melee attack; Taunt.
His behaviour (top righthand corner) is set to Default.
So what does this mean? In combat, what will Shale do? Well, tactics process from top to bottom. So, first, always, if Threaten or Stoneheart (his ‘tanking’ abilities) are down, he activates them. After that, he fights as normal, picking his targets based on (as a rule) either who is attacking him or who is closest. This all stops if some vile thug dares to attack my main character- that person then becomes the priority for all Shale’s attacks.
If there are at least three enemies near Shale (this tends to happen fairly often, as he charges in ahead of the others), he will Bellow. Finally, if someone is attacking one of my other characters in melee (not ranged- this is important), he taunts the attacker.
So that’s Shale. What about my other characters?
On this save file, I had my main character as my healer (which is why Shale is so fanatically dedicated to stomping flat anything that dared touch him in any way). Although healer tactics are settable, my RPG experiences leave me twitchy at the idea of leaving all the healing up to someone else, be it another player or AI, so that was always my controlled character. This was important in the tactics for the others, as seen below:
This is Alistair’s tactics screen (my third character, Leliana, had an identical screen, with the addition of Self: Any; Song of Courage).
Alistair’s tactics are incredibly simple: Whenever there’s an enemy, switch to your ranged weapon; always have Aim activated; and select, as his target, whoever the main character has targetted. Between the offensive magic of my main character and the two archers, the focus-fire was intense (and deadly).
Notice that Alistair’s behaviour is set to Ranged; in combat, he will always prefer to remain away from enemies where possible. This is devoutly to be wished of archers and most mages.
I have little doubt I’m going to get poked and told to give examples of tactics for melee fighters but, for the moment, I have none; my playstyle involves keeping people away from the enemies.
Be sure to tune in on Thursday for “Not Really Retro: Steam-Powered Gaming”!
