Many PC gamers who custom created their Dragon Age: Origins’ characters through the Character Creator software last week discovered problems that led to the discussion of the cumulative problem on the BioWare forums. The problems included situations such as pre-created character’s portrait appearances being F’d up, as well as many people noticing numerous pre-set face issues upon installing the release version of the game. Luckily, BioWare has jumped in and released a patch to fix these issues, as well as adding tweaks to make the game’s Easy setting even easier.

No one here at MMOMFG was playing on Easy mode during our journies, so we can’t comment on how much this has affected the game, but we can only imagine that it can’t hurt the experience much. I’ve been playing on Normal difficulty and noticed in the patch notes that party members Attack, Defense, and Damage scores have been increased, so that is a welcome addition.

In regards to whether Dragon Age was rushed out the door before final QA testing was accomplished, BioWare’s Mike Laidlaw sets the record straight on BioWare’s forums making sure gamers realize the processes required to ensure finalized game quality and meeting the release date while feeling the final version is deemed complete.

Find the patch notes and Laidlaw’s comments below:

• Fixed potential corruption of character statistics
• Fixed portrait appearance sliders when importing a character from the downloadable Character Creator
• Fixed import for preset face settings from the downloadable Character Creator
• Made Easy difficulty easier
• Slightly increased attack, defense, and damage scores for all party members at Normal difficulty
• Fixed video issues when running on a very wide screen display, including ATI Eyefinity displays

Laidlaw says, “Game development seems like it’s extremely up to the moment, but at the end of every game there is a period where you have to enter a lockdown so that final QA runs and certifications can be completed. This process is exhaustive and is the kind of thing that you have to completely re-do if you make any changes.

That said, it’s hard not to be proud of your game, and to want it to be perfect, so we try to identify things that might be patch candidates. In Dragon Age’s case, we had a unique opportunity to compare balance numbers between console and PC, and in the end we decided to make some tweaks and put them in the pipe for around launch day, while keeping an eye for any extremely bad bugs to include.

There’s good odds that there will be another patch, as there seem to be a few issues still creeping up (dagger damage, etc) and I would like to see those addressed. Of course, we have to do due diligence and test and QA these things properly, so it’s not an instant fix. Just be aware that we are watching these forums and working to try and nail down any issues that are creeping up.”

*Courtesy of BioWare Forums: Dragon Age: Origins Patch v1.01

Related posts:

1. Dragon Age: Origins goes gold, PS3 version no longer delayed
2. Bioware gives Dragon Age a little TLC
3. Dragon Age DLC delayed, return to Ostagar not so imminent
4. Rumor: Dragon Age expansion disc to drop in March
5. Dragon Age Return to Ostagar out for Xbox, coming to PC and PS3 soon?