News: Age of Conan - A pair of Previews

If we're kicking this feature off by talking about the setting, then we're definitely starting with the game's strongest feature. The Conan setting is low-fantasy at its best. It's a gritty, brutal, dog-eat-dog world and you're wearing Milk-Bone underwear. I'll echo Allen's sentiments about the dialogue and quest design: characters speak stylized dialogue that really helps the setting to stand out. And there's no question from your first few missions onward that you're living in a violent world where might is always right and it's a struggle just to get by. It's a refreshing change of pace from the polished high fantasy you see in so many other games.

Before I cut this beta preview... preview short, I wanted to talk about an element of Age of Conan that I have absolutely loved up until this point. Voice-overed dialogue.



I know that there are going to be some folks out there who will think I'm crazy. I know it isn't something that everyone enjoys, but for my part, I think it's something we don't see often enough in MMOs. Then again, I'm a story fiend and voiceovers really do help with an engaging interactive story.



NPCs in AoC (at least those that I have come across up to this point) have fully developed voiceovers. It's not even just a small portion of the text. It's complete NPC dialogue. Now, while I do say that I like voiceovers, the thought of them often makes me cringe. It isn't enough, in my opinion, to just have voiceovers. I've heard too many really poorly acted voiceovers (the XBox 360 Conan game is a great example) to get too excited about them. Often, it's like the actors were just handed a script and told to read without knowing anything about the game, the characters or the situation. With Age of Conan, I felt like the actors and by extension whomever was directing the actors, took the time to know and understand the context of the dialogue that they were delivering.