Dragon Age: Thread View

We are happy to announce that BioWare will be releasing the Character Creator from Dragon Age: Origins on the 13th of October. This will give you 3 weeks to play around and get your Player Character just right before launch of the game on November 3rd – 6th.

What we have managed to do is get the awesome BioWare dev dudes/dudettes to break off the Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator from the main game so you can download it as a separate application to your PC. Once you have downloaded and installed the Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator you will be able to “pre-create” characters for use in the PC version at launch.

The Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator will allow you to create numerous different characters before launch and experiment with the different classes, races, and create multiple faces for the 6 Origin stories and save them to your hard drive for safe keeping until the game is released.

As you may be aware we are extending the BioWare community with a new social community site for Dragon Age: Origins. The great news is when we launch the Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator we will also be launching an open beta of the new social community site. You will be able to log into the new Social community site with your existing BioWare forums account name and password, and update it to the new social site account. Characters created with the Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator can also be uploaded to your account from within the Character creator. Once logged in to the social site, one of the first things you will be able to do is use one of your uploaded characters as your social website avatar for your profile on the new social website forums (yes we got that in!!), exciting stuff! Stay tuned for more information on the social website from now through launch.

UPDATE

We are planning on making the Character Creator and opening the doors to the new Social site at 10am Mountain Standard Time on Tuesday October 13. Check your local time zone to see what time it will be available in your area.

Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator Details
Download location – BioWare/Dragon Age: Origins website (A link will be made public when ready)

File size - Maximum file size 320meg.

Languages – Available in English, German, French, Polish, Russian. Also available in Czech, Hungarian, Italian and Spanish with English Voice Over.

System specifications to run the Dragon Age: origins Character Creator – The Character creator runs on the same system specs as Dragon Age: Origins. Please check the FAQ here for more information: http://dragonage.bioware.com/game/faq

The character creator is currently only available for PC users.

Quote: Posted 10/02/09 15:41 (GMT) by n2nw

SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!

Will we have to provide a preorder # in order to download? Or will you let anyone get the creator without first purchasing a game or providing proof of purchase?

Free to download for anyone with an internet connection, hard drive space and minimum system requirements.

Since it is using the game engine, you could consider this a hardware test for your computer and Dragon Age: Origins PC. If there Character Creator works on your system, then the game should start up just fine.

Quote: Posted 10/02/09 16:27 (GMT) by Lord Thing

This is pure speculation, but there's a slight possibility that you will be able to transfer the character to the Xbox or PS3.

No, this is for the PC, not the console versions. The sliders in the PC do not match up with the console versions. Sorry.

Even though you cannot transfer your character, you can still download the Character Creator and play with it to get an idea for what your character could look like.

Quote: Posted 10/02/09 16:27 (GMT) by Lord Thing
They've said that you can upload your character to your account on the social site, which needs to be accessible by the console as it's what holds information on stuff such as DLC you've purchased so that you can re-download it without paying again, so it may be possible to then download your character to the console.

The social site uses a separate file format from the character creator for character data - while you can upload the character, you cannot re-download the character from there (not even for PC).

Edited By Jesse van Herk on 10/02/09 16:40

Exciting stuff!
I have been playing with it for a couple of weeks it's very cool. The team have done an amzing job with the character creator and the new BioWare social network will be fun too.
Not as cool as the game ofcourse but hey think of it as an early Halloween present while you are waiting.

Sorry to the console folks.

Stay tuned more info to come!

You can see the information about the skills, but you do not select the skills in the Character Creator. The Creator will focus on the different races, origins and visual look of the character.

Quote: Posted 10/02/09 17:02 (GMT) by GustavtheGreat

Does this mean that the console char creation isn't as in depth?

Not at all. It just means it works slightly different from a back end perspective.

Quote: Posted 10/02/09 16:54 (GMT) by Hawth

Awesome, thanks guys. Any confirmation on whether or not the console version will be tied into the social media site? I'm still debating which version to get.

The social site will show data from Dragon Age Origins (the game) on all platforms, yes.

Edited By Jesse van Herk on 10/02/09 17:14

Quote: Posted 10/02/09 20:20 (GMT) by Anastasis

Quote: Posted 10/02/09 20:17 (GMT) by LdyShayna

Indeed. Derek already said this can be used as a good system test to see if you can run the game.

Really? But it's just a creator...i don't think it requires fancy graffic cards

The Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator is a subset of the main game using the same graphics and audio engine. You will only be looking at your character on a "stage" so it will tell you if your computer can start the game up.

The Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator will not tell you how your computer will run the game during a large combat encounter.

UPDATE

We are planning on making the Character Creator and opening the doors to the new Social site at 10am Mountain Standard Time on Tuesday October 13. Check your local time zone to see what time it will be available in your area.

Basically, this means I don't want to see a lot of people saying "It is a minute after midnight in my local timezone. That means it is Tuesday Oct 13. So where is my Character Creator? Priestly, you suck!"

We are working hard to have things ready for 10 am on Tuesday MST. I will post an update Tuesday morning with a status update once I awaken from my Thanksgiving turkey coma. Stay tuned.

Quote: Posted 10/09/09 23:15 (GMT) by imported_beer


You know they are *still* going to do it, despite this warning

Yeah, but now people won't be surprised when I lay into them with the flaming rusty chainsaw that is my anger.

Because you think naughty thoughts about Martha Stewart.

Someone asked - when you get the full version of the game, will the character creator still live as a separate app or be overwritten?

. It remains as a separate app and should continue to behave itself nicely alongside the main game.


As for the server load question - please abuse this. No really. This will actually be a great way for us to test things out for the actual game launch. And if there are any hiccups to be had, I'd rather it be now than at launch

Big call out to Fernando's team and the Web dudes, they have burnt the midnight oil to get this thing ready to go and we are all set for Tuesday the 13th of October at 10am Edmonton time. So excluding gremlins or natural disasters we are on track for launch of the CC and the BioWare Social Network.

I lost 4 hours mucking around on the Social Engine Site last night and I think you guys will have some fun in there too.

In the words of so many forumites I am trying to hold back the Squeeee!

Quote: Posted 10/10/09 20:16 (GMT) by Damsel of Distress

So how do you actually import the faces between the two programs?

When you enter the character creation process in the main game there is an option to import characters from the character creator.