Tyranny of Heaven [ToH]

Borderlands took me away from Demon's Souls, which is unfortunate, since one of my friends started playing DS. I was hoping to try some co-op there. But strangely enough, out of nowhere, Bioware's newest epic, Dragon Age: Origins forced me away from Borderlands (for a bit, perhaps).

DA:O was never on my radar. I'd occasionally see ads for it (mainly in Bioware's newsletters!) but it never interested me. I think I even watched the trailer once. It seemed to me as yet another fantasy RPG.

But a former guildmate posted a video that showed the mage in action and then I just suddenly had to have it. The day of DA:O's release, I scrounged around for collector's edition boxes but couldn't find anymore. Right when I was about to purchase it through Amazon Marketplace (with an outrageous markup as well), I decided to check Steam.

Steam was about 2-3 hours from releasing it. And there was a "Digital Collector's Edition" with all the in-game goodies from the boxed version. On top of that, Steam still offered the pre-order bonus! So I bought it from Steam.

It took roughly 1.5 days to download, but I was playing by the end of the week. And luckily, it was a very long weekend for me, with my work schedule and Veteran's Day.

I played the game obsessively. And thankfully, finished it within a week. According to my save file, I spent 70 hours playing, but according to Steam, it was closer to 80-90 hours. (Lots of reloading to take different paths and unlock classes which I normally would not have been able to unlock... since I'm such a goody-goody.)

My first character was a female human mage (guess her name) and for her I played the Mage origin. Curious about the other 5, I've been creating characters and running them through their origin stories. I must say, the dwarf noble one is probably my favorite (it was also the last one I tried). But unfortunately, if you go with the dwarf noble origin, you better disable all your DLCs/extras first because.... well. I'm not going to spoil it.

I started playing through again with a city elf rogue, but I'm pretty sure I won't finish the 2nd playthrough. In fact, I'm a bit tempted to go back and create a dwarven rogue (with noble origins) because I'm curious how the Ozrammar portion of the main story plays out with that background. The only thing really discouraging me is having to play Ostragar yet again...

Anyway, since finishing DA:O, I've been adrift again. It's hard for me to get back into Borderlands and I haven't yet tried playing Demon's Souls again. I briefly tried playing Mass Effect but still couldn't stand it. The interface is just too console-like. I'm glad Bioware made DA:O seems more like a PC game, despite it being a tri-platform release.

I picked up Torchlight last night, but I have to laugh every time I play it because it's such a Diablo clone (but I guess there's a reason for that). The only thing it adds, that I've noticed so far, is the pet. Though Dungeon Siege, or maybe Darkstone? had something similar.

Anyway, I'm not really in the mood for the clicky-click-click action RPG. I might have to go back to Demon's Souls after all...