Dragon Age: Origins Preview
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Once the actual fight broke out properly, combat proved to be equally reminiscent of KOTOR. You can flit between each of your four fighters as you wish, moving them manually with the WASD keys (this was on PC, obviously) or by ordering them to a certain spot with a simple mouse click. While you're assuming control of one fighter you can leave the rest to be handled by the AI, or you can pause the game and jump back and forth assigning commands to each member of the party; given the chaos and complexity of the battle, I found this second method to be pretty much essential.
Unlike KOTOR, each character has 20 action slots at the bottom of the screen that can be filled with attacks or items. When you times that by four, that gives you up to 80 tools to use in battle - quite a lot to keep track of. My first attempt at taking on Aldred was fairly disastrous: after transforming himself into some kind of walking monstrosity, he and his mutant companions made short work of my party - largely because I panicked and didn't have a clue what I was doing. My demo party consisted of two melee fighters (the player character and a chap named Alistair), a rogue (Leliana) and a mage (Wynne). Clearly the best strategy was to use the latter two characters as support while using the warriors for the main attack, but unfortunately things didn't quite go to plan: my sword-wavers rushed in and promptly got crushed under a large area-effect spell. Not good.
