Consumed by the Dragon Age
To even begin my review of the new PS3, Xbox 360, and PC phenomenon, Dragon Age: Origins, I must first discuss the company responsible for the masterpiece as well as many other claims to fame: BioWare.
BIOWARE
BioWare is a Canadian electronic entertainment company that started up in 1995 and is responsible for some of the more cutting-edge and popular games of our day, like the Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights series, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and the Mass Effect series.
These guys know their role-playing video games. They are known best for allowing for substantial customization in both player character appearance and in the options given throughout the games in choosing various paths, ie Light Side vs Dark Side.
Dragon Age: Origins is a culmination of years of successful gaming, and at this point I can only imagine that BioWare will continue to do better and better.
BioWare is currently a part of Electronic Arts (EA) but has retained its autonomy. It is safe to say that EA appreciates and understands the cash-cow they have in BioWare, and they are even restructuring their gaming development into a new RPG/MMO team headed by one of the BioWare founders, Ray Muzyka.
THE BASIC STORY
In a somewhat typically Tolkien world this knights and maidens tale is called by BioWare a ‘dark heroic fantasy’ with mature themes and impressive, gorgeous gameplay.
The part of the Dragon Age world we are concerned with throughout the game is the country of Ferelden, which is only one small map to a much larger continent that may prove to have more story and gameplay for us later on as BioWare adds downloadable content.
They claim they can keep shelling out such content for a good two years.
Ferelden has elves that travel through the forests, dwarves that live in their stone kingdom within the mountains, and human villages and cities. We enter the story, depending on the character you create, which I will get to later, with the Grey Warden, Duncan, recruiting.
The Grey Warden’s are an elite force created to fight off the darkspawn and coming Blight.
I admit to the further Tolkien themes here, the darkspawn are very much like the orcs and uruk-hai, their leader, the Arch Demon, while appearing as a dragon, does have the feel and dread associated with it as Sauron’s eye, and with the same Fellowship sense of danger and urgency as our heroes blunder along.
In the story, after the player character is recruited by Duncan, they head to Ostagar where the few Grey Warden’s in Ferelden are to help the king’s armies beat back the Blight. Instead, the battle is a disaster, leaving the player character as one of the last surviving Wardens now in charge of building a new army to end the Blight before it is too late.
CHARACTER CREATION
This is one of the best character creation programs I have had the pleasure of playing around with, and I am always in search of the next good game with outstanding customizable options. The hair could be a little better, but overall it is a job well done.
First, you choose whether you are going to play as a male or female, then human, elf, or dwarf, then Warrior, Mage, or Rogue. Depending on those choices you are then left to decide which opening you would prefer to begin your adventure.
For example, I made a Female Elf Warrior which left me with one of two options, to either be a Dalish elf that lives in the forest truer to the old elf ways, or a city elf who is about to get married, living as a servant class to the humans of Ferelden.
I also made a Male Human Rogue, and if you make a human character that is not a Mage, since mages have their own specific opening, you are left with only one option, to be a human Noble. It all varies depending on the details you choose, of course, but there are a total of 6 possible openings that lead into the main plot of the game.
Once you have chosen those details you can begin the customization of what your character looks like. Throughout the game you also determine your character’s personality by the choices you make, and believe me you make choices at every turn along the way. These choices can also affect how other characters react to you.
Depending on if you are a Warrior, a Mage, or a Rogue, you can choose 2 specializations out of the 4 available for each class. As a warrior I was a Templar and a Reaver, meaning I had abilities that disrupted magic, and also abilities that allowed me to use my own blood and pain against my opponents, even sucking up the lifeforce of fallen enemies.
You can choose your first specialization at level 7, the second at level 14. The other members of your party will already have one specialization assigned to them automatically, being set characters, and many of the specializations need to be unlocked first to be used by you, either by choosing a certain path in the game, buying a certain book, or getting a party member to teach you.
All of this, as well as the major choices you make in each larger section of the storyline, will determine what your army is like in the final battle and what your role is in that fight. During the Dalish elf section, you can choose to help and recruit the elves, or you can turn on them and choose the werewolves that are plaguing the elves’ forests as your allies instead.
Each major ally group offers you a similar choice to make. Choose wisely.
GAMEPLAY
It had been a long time since I had become quite so immersed in a game, and Dragon Age (for the PS3 for me) took some getting used to. I am a lover of the old school turn-base RPGs, where you can pause and decide what each character does. This is similar but a little more real-time.
For the most part you control your main character, but while fighting with any given four-person party, you can switch to other party members to give them specific instructions, or just make sure you have their battle tactics set up well enough that the AI does a good job on its own. If your healer doesn’t know to heal the almost dying character in time then you have a problem.
There are many places when and where you can switch up your party and certain party members need to be present for certain plot events to unfold.
In some cases you are stuck with the party you choose, however, so prepare well. If you don’t always have a rogue in your party, whether that is you or one of the other two rogue characters you can get, then you won’t be opening any locked chests or doors.
My husband has been complaining that he wishes we had the PC version of the game as it is set up very similar to World of Warcraft, but I love the PS3 version and the familiarity of those controls. I cannot speak for the X-Box 360, but then I often do not speak of it at all.
ROMANCE
Along with the many other choices throughout the game and how that can affect how your party members view you, certain characters as they grow to like you more and more by talking with you, agreeing with the decisions you make, and being given gifts, are open for romantic possibilities.
After the rather scandalous sex scene option in Mass Effect with a female blue alien character, whether your player character was male or female, BioWare stepped up their romance options for Dragon Age.
As a female character you can pursue the stalwart and virginal knight Alistair, the flirtatious male elf with a voice like Antonio Banderas, Zevran, or the lovely Leliana with a rather racy past despite her sweet and pious disposition.
As a male character you can pursue Leliana and Zevran still, or the mysterious and beautiful witch Morrigan.
While I wish I could have had my Human Male Rogue go after Alistair, as he is so adorable, humorous, and awkward in that wonderfully sweet way, Alistair just doesn’t register any kind of advancement from a male character. He’s straight, apparently. And the same is true for Morrigan on the female side. Zevran and Leliana, however, are happy to go either way if you pursue them well.
Actually, Zevran will pursue you regardless of anything. Unless, of course, you choose to kill him and not let him into your main party, like a friend of mine did without realizing he could be a party member.
What I find interesting is how aside from the evenly split sexualities here, we also have two characters, Alistair and Leliana, who need to be in love with the player before they will ‘go back to the tent’ with them.
The other two, Morrigan and Zevran, wish to pursue a sexual relationship early on and if they DO fall in love with the player they then stop sleeping with you until they can sort out their feelings.
Even sexualities and even approaches to relationships, and yet I will never be quite satisfied enough as I still would rather have my male character with Alistair, but I know I’m just getting nit-picky, so I’ll concede.
You can pursue more than one character, of course, if you like, but the hopeless romantic ones will insist that you break things off with any others and make a choice. Also, depending on the ending and how you have handled certain events you might manage to stay with your love, or there might be a sad or even tragic end to it all.
I have never played a game before that got you so invested in how the other characters see you, and being such an active part in everything. While I think the relationships could have affected the overall game even more than they did, I thought it was a wonderful addition to an already fantastic game.
Oh, and hot. Did I mention the sex scene was hot? Do try and forgive the cheesy music.
ENDINGS
I am not going to give detailed spoilers here, but if you want to remain completely in the dark, you may want to skip to the end.
I have to at least mention the endings for Dragon Age, because there are a variety of possibilities, something I have always loved about certain games. I wouldn’t say there are ‘bad’ endings versus ‘good’ endings, it just depends on what you want from your character.
You can either sacrifice yourself for the greater good, find a solution for everyone to survive that might have dire consequences later, or you may find that someone else does the sacrificing for you, whether you want them to or not.
As for getting a particular ending, I’ll just say again…choose wisely.
CONCLUSION
Dragon Age is the kind of game I love most, like playing through a movie that you are writing yourself as you go, and it still has great gameplay instead of just constant cut-scenes to tell the tale.
My advice, regardless of what type of character you might wish to create (I have played through twice and am on my third run through) go out right now and buy Dragon Age: Origins for whichever platform you prefer and try out every possibility you can.
On my third time through I still love this game every minute I am playing it.
And for all you slash fans out there, I have to admit a certain thrill at have a male homosexual relationship option, especially since Mass Effect only had the straight or lesbian route. Yeah, I would prefer Alistair as my male lover, but Zevran’s pretty darn sexy too.
I invite you to read about Zevran’s controversy at AfterElton.com.
~G³
Next blog will be January 5th as I am taking some well-deserved Christmas time off. I will return with a review of the new Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr.
Thanks for tuning in.
Images taken from:
http://cache.g4tv.com/ImageDb3/179493_S/Dragon-Age-Origins-Character-Creator-Now-Available.jpg
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=zjea38&s=5
http://www.dignews.com/legacy/screenshots/dragon_age_origin_20.jpg
http://chungking.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/morrigansex.jpg
http://mimg.ugo.com/200911/11876/dragon-age1.jpg
http://www.wallpaperez.net/wallpaper/movie/Sherlock-Holmes-1852.jpg
Ah Dragon Age – how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
1) Alistair
2) Alistiar
3) Customization
4) Great RPG
5) Alistiar
6) Hilarious, Touching, Exciting, and any other seniment that makes it a well-rounded and eaily loved story.
Need I go on?
I still have yet to start up my second round through but I’m excited. I may have to make Dan open up one of his Christmas presents early so we can bring the game up to DL…
@Megali: Oooo, yes you should make him open that present early.
The more Dragon Age the better! Though I realize after reading Sean’s comment that I did not do justice to my review of this, because I did not mention enough the things I did not like, overwhelmed as I am by the things I love. There are issues I have with the game too. I’m going to go over them in my comment with Sean.
Still, Dragon Age gives me hope for even better games in the future.
Oh, Dragon age. I caved just a few weeks ago because everyone said nothing but good things, and being bored, and not having played anything new for a while… well, it just happened. I’m sure the same thing will happen with mass effect 2.
While it’s the best game I’ve played in a while, I have to agree with Yahtzee: it isn’t dark fantasy. Oh, there’s some elements of dark fantasy, but for every good thing towards that they do, they sprinkle it with some mitigating factor which made it.. safe. And light and Tolkinesqe and cliche. And one of my few beefs with Bioware is that they put too much stock in Big and Flashy. You don’t make a game into a dark fantasy by including kinky sex, or by putting blood spatters that don’t come off until the next scene loads, nor by pakaging the game with the worst Marilyn Manson song ever (seriously, any song by Dimmu Borgir or something would have been better suited) You make a game a dark fantasy by including *fear.* Not just fear that the world will be destroyed if you fail; every epic fantasy under the sun has that. And not just fear of death or corruption; Tolkien had that too. No, personal fear, I’m talking about, fear that you are alone in this, no one is going to save you, and that everything you do is wrong and is just ggoing to bring you more pain and horror until you die, turn evil, or go mad. Now you have that feeling in some places in the game; the sequence in the game involving the dwarves is excellent, and if the game had more stuff like that, it’d be awesome. But in the other places, it seemed that there was an obvious thing to do, an obvious way it can work out for the benifit of all concerned. (Yeah, I know, some of the ending montages told you this or not, but that’s at the ending; playing through, it shouldn’t have been as obvious) There were some things you could do to make members of your party turn against you, but that can be avoided by getting to know your party members, who then are completely trustworthy. (Not to mention there weren’t enough obviously evil/sociopathic party members, and if I were writing a dark fantasy I’d provide some of those that the main character *needed* to trust to get by). And there’s this bizzare political correctness that seems to permeate everywhere that seems deliberatly at odds with all the edgy things added. And why wasn’t there a homosexual man in the party? I mean, if your going to but bisexuals in things, you might as well put in straight up gays. And you can have the best dialogue in the world, say the most badass and/or evil things, and it’;s still going to look funny coming out of that dazed, placid expression your character is saddled with. I thought after Jade empire (a game where the main character has very clear expressions for each emotional response) and Mass Effect (a game where the character not only has expressions but a voice)I thought bioware understood that.
Whew! but enough of why I didn’t like the game, I said it was the best game in a while and I meant it. Things I liked about this game:
1. Consequences- After the well deserved sucess of games like Fallout and the Witcher, Bioware has finally got rid of it’s light side/dark side system, implementing a consequence system instead, wherin the character affects the story by what he does, sometimes significantly. This allows characters to be who they want to be and not suffer in power, and any consequences the player suffers is likewise on the characters head. Even better, sometimes these consequences cannot be seen until much later.
2. A good storyline- While the essential frame of the story does not depart from the bioware formula (beginning, something bad happens, character has to go to four places, another bad thing may happen on the way, last place, big battle scene, ending), this story really is more mature and better written than most RPGs you care to name, having less to do with people being good or people being bad, and more to do with people being people (to quote someoner great)
3. Characters- Bioware has finally stopped using the same characters over and over, and have done something original (or more original, at any rate) and it’s just phenomenal. And this is good for me, especially; I’m one of the guys who cheerfully spends an hour sitting around the campfire listening to my guys talk.
4. Difficulty- One of the things that G3 really didn’t talk about: this game is hard. Really, really hard. When you fight bad guys, you have to contend with things like territory, traps, and amount of bad guys. Not to mention most magic spells have a chance of friendly fire, and the bad guys have class levels. That’s right folks: everything you can do, they can do, and sometimes better. So combat requires using your brain, and setting the AI’s tactics to something that can be useful to you, otherwise, you’ll get stuck. You’ll die and die again.
5. Religion- This is the best religion I’ve ever seen. In fantasy stories the gods are not only real but present, and have a direct hand in everything. But here, there is nothing to indicate that God is there: he does not speak, he doesn’t do anything on earth, and every single miracle has a mundane explanation. There’s absolutely nothing preventing you from slandering the religion or professing atheism at any turn, so when your character does believe in God, there’s the ring of (gasp) FAITH behind it.
6. The doggie! When I first started playing, I wen’t with the human noble, because I thought that was the only way to get the puppy, because he’s just so cute!
And yes, alistair is adorable and sweet if you sex him up, and even if you don’t. So this game is very good.
@Sean R.: You make me realize how blinded I was while writing this, only extolling the good merits, and forgetting that I have issue with alot of the same things as you.
There was reason I worded it as BioWare SAYING the game is a dark heroic fantasy, but I should have elaborated because I would have loved some actual darkness, as I agree that it really isn’t. I got much more of an impression of darkness in the trailers than what the reality is for the game, assuming at the time that Leliana for example would be more bloodthirsty crazy instead of so pious. I would have loved the game to take on some of those hopeless elements that I am filled with during a Silent Hill game (though that is a very different ‘fantasy’).
OMG, the expressionless of the player character drove me crazy the entire time. When you are creating your character and playing with the voices, it shows emotion while they talk, and I had expected that throughout, but no. Even during the sex seen it is all so morose. Expressions could have been better, or existed at all.
I didn’t even register how awesome the religion in the game is in that regards, being so much more like out own world instead of say how in DnD you can potentially MEET deities. That definitely is unique.
Considering how upset I was, and still am now that I am finally playing it, with the sex scene in Mass Effect only giving a female option like that, I feel like BioWare is gradually working their way towards having all options possible, so I forgave them this time in Dragon Age. I also appreciate the bisexual presence more because I feel like it is the least portrayed in mainstream media. In the future I would like more character options, and it would be wonderful for them to include straight up gay men and lesbians. Though to tell you the truth what I would really like is to be able to pursue any of the characters regardless of gender, successful depending on how you play.
Thank you for another marvelous response, Sean.
I adored this game, but I see so much room for improvement that just makes me excited for the future.