Saturday 7 November 2009

Dragon Age: Beginning

Yes, it has been a while. I have had something of a break from games recently, although I did go over to Cambridge to meet the nice folks at Jagex, Team Runescape. In the last months I have had a play with Batman: Arkham Asylum (excellent), Fallout 3 (painful), Braid (odd but cool) and Tales of Monkey Island (pretty good). I'll no doubt write about some, all or none of these soon but for the moment I have a Dragon Age tip for Steam users.

If, like me, you have been very excited awaiting this game and decided to pre-order the Deluxe edition you'll have some bonus content awaiting you. Be aware, however, that this content is not automatically installed - you need to jump through some hoops to get it.

So, to get the content:

1. Load Dragon Age from Steam
2. Go to Downloadable Content and follow the instructions for creating yourself an account on the Bioware site
3. Exit the game
4. Go to the Bioware site and find the redeem code page making sure you're logged in as you
5. Enter the "Pre Order" key code
6. Start the game
7. Go to the DLC page and note there are some things downloading
8. Exit the game
9. Go back to the redeem code page
10. Enter the "Deluxe Edition" code
11. Start the game
12. Go back to the DLC page and note the new things downloading

This is incredibly round-the-houses but it worked for me. Things which I think tripped me up:

1. The Bioware site will not accept your product key if your game is running
2. The Pre Order key could be entered WITH the dashes in it
3. The Deluxe Edition code was NOT accepted until the dashes were REMOVED

I haven't extensively tested these three, but they might help you out if you are having issues.

Also, if you ramp up your resolution in-game and get an "out of range" error from your monitor, you need to come back to windows and drop your monitor refresh rate. This will probably only bother you if you have an ancient CRT monitor. Like me.

Hope something here helps.