An Age To Be Reckoned With

Developer: BioWare Edmonton, Edge of Reality (console)
Publisher EA
Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows
Released: November 2009-January 2011
Genre: RPG
Modes: Single-Player
Rating: ESRB: M, PEGI: 18, CERO: Z
Content Warning: Blood, Intense Violence, Adult Language, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content

“And so is the Golden City blackened
With each step you take in my Hall.
Marvel at perfection, for it is fleeting.
You have brought Sin to Heaven
And doom upon all the world.”

~ Canticle of Threnodies 8:13

The Chantry teaches us that it is the hubris of men which brought the darkspawn into our world. The Mages had sought to usurp Heaven; but instead, they destroyed it. They were cast out, twisted and cursed by their own corruption. They returned as monsters; the first of the “dark spawn.”

They became a blight upon the lands, unstoppable and relentless.

The Dwarven kingdoms were the first to fall, and from the deep roads the darkspawn drove as us again and again until finally we neared annihilation…

…until the Grey Wardens came…

Men and women from every race, warriors and mages, barbarians and kings, the Grey Wardens sacrificed everything to stem the tide of darkness… and prevailed.

It has been four centuries since that victory. And we have kept our vigil. We have watched and waited for the darkspawn to return. But those who once called us heroes have forgotten. We are few now. And our warnings have been ignored for far too long… it may even be too late.

For I have seen with my own eyes what lies on the horizon.

…Maker, help us all.

See, this is one of the reasons why I love playing RPGs: the story. Right from the start, you know that Origins is not this simplistic, shallow-thinking “save the world from evil Russia” spiel that seems to have permeated every last damn military shooter since 2005. You know, the ones that have a 3 hour-long single-player with the end message of, “Thanks, now sink hundreds of dollars on our multi-player microtransactioned DLCs.”

Yeah. Those.

RPGs, well, GOOD RPGs anyway, give their money back to you tenfold. Don’t believe that? Look at your current playtime on your last Skyrim file, your Tales of Vesperia, your Fallout New Vegas saves. Eighty, ninety hours. And you can take RPGs at your own pace. You don’t have to restart entire chapters if you decide to quit. True, some RPGs have their faults, but a good majority of them are worth their time and personal investment.

Dragon Age: Origins is exactly the kind of RPG experience worth your time. Origins starts out strong by allowing you multiple races and specific backgrounds to suit your personal preferences. You can start out in a place of prominence; the Human Noble, the Dwarven noble, or in backgrounds with less notable beginnings like the Dalish Elf or City Elf origins. There’s even that in-between with the Mage background; you’re free, but also shackled by the will of the Chantry and its militaristic arm of Templar soldiers.

All of these origins eventually tie into the overall plot of Dragon Age: Origins. At the battle of Ostagar, what should have been a route of the encroaching darkspawn threat instead turns into a slaughter. Loghain Mac Tir, the champion of Ferelden, betrays the king and his allies in a vaunted bid for personal power. By luck, or chance, you and your fellow Grey Warden compatriot Alistair are the only survivors of the assault, and must travel across the shattered kingdom helping once-promised allies and forming them into a formidable fighting force capable of pushing back the darkspawn menace.

And how you do that is all up to you. Every decision in how you form that army, be it Mages, Templars, Dalish elves, Dwarven Golems, hell even werewolves; all of these decisions are left for YOU to decide. And I love it. I’m not pushed too much into what I do first, into what I do in the in-between, into what I do near the end. True, the decisions I make will have lasting positive or even negative impacts on my allies, but sticking with the decisions I make have weight. They feel important and have lasting consequences.

Graphically, Origins… OK well it’s not a bad-looking game but… meh… it’s not that good either. I won’t say it’s an ugly game, far from it. I suppose in a way, with it dealing with somewhat mature themes of political intrigue, death, and that grey moral path some players might wish to tread, this gritty, dirty, kind of grimy-looking aesthetic fits the story. But visually, especially with some environments and character models, it could have used some work.

I do like some of the background riffs, to the light peaceful back tones of the various cities and party camp, to the more bombastic heavy drums and trumpets in grander areas like the Deep Roads and the Dwarven kingdom of Orzammar. Battle music is all high fantasy greatness; you really can’t mess that epic feel up… well maybe you can, but thankfully BioWare didn’t.

The voice-acting is stellar. Listening to the deep rumble of Sten as he recalls memories of the Beresaad peoples, to the almost comical intonations of a drunken Oghren was fantastic. BioWare made memorable characters with almost  perfect voice acting; it’s something they seem to have an almost innate knack for. I also like the smaller stuff; the clink-clink of armor as you move, the thud of a weapon against flesh, the high-pitched whistle of a passing arrow as it sails dangerously close to your head, the difference in the ways your footfalls sound against stone, wood and soil. Good, heady stuff.

From a gameplay standpoint, solid mechanics that can suit your play style and adjust with a simple button command is fantastic. Feel like bashing in a few skulls with your fire rune-infused mace? Want to get the drop on a few unsuspecting foes in the distance by switching over to your longbow? You can do that. You can even flank enemies in the cloak of shadow, backstabbing unsuspecting targets or even laying a few well placed traps (or even disarming your enemy’s) before the battle proper starts.

Height and clear line-of-sight is important (and sometimes vital) for tactical-thinking players, and it’s wonderfully implemented here. The game suits itself to however you want to play it. Be it as the Berserking, greatsword-weilding madman that jumps right into the middle of the fray, or the more forward-thinking “plan ahead or lose your head” commander, the game does a fantastic job of adjusting to your style.

I’ll admit, though, that the fights sometimes are (and ultimately feel) a little slow at times, more auto-attack-feeling similar to Knights of the Old Republic in a way. This kind of drags on some of the battles, especially when you’re fighting some rather beefier enemies, a little longer than they should. But I will say that it’s not too slow as to not be enjoyable.

I loved the story told in Dragon Age: Origins. Loghain is both the antagonist and someone with whom you can emphasize with in a way. Yes, what he did was an atrocity, but at its heart you get the idea that he did it for Ferelden’s interest, to maintain its almost stubborn independence and stand on its own legs, than have it simply align with his own personal power play. It’s that evil-but-not-mustache-twirling-evil in their characters that just make them memorable. You might not like some of them, but you rarely forget them.

Almost every area on the map has its own story to tell, both great and small. Helping lost persons on the Chantry board, quietly helping (or hindering) the Mage’s Collective, the Blackstone Irregulars, citizens with personal problems of their own, all of these little stories are optional, but add to the overall tapestry of your own personal tale.

Allies are malleable to your desire to what you want to have composed in your army against the darkspawn. Some are only accessed by doing less than noble deeds; deciding to persuade the werewolves to exact a measure of revenge against the Dalish, instead of taking the more “noble” path of helping them both, or allowing the Templars to enact the Right of Annulment instead of helping the mages and so on. Whatever you decide to do, the story continues on. So in a way, there’s no real “right” or “wrong” choice to make. They’re simply personal preferences. As I’ve said though, some decisions can come with a price. Some allies might not stay with you if you decide to do one or the other, some may even attack you in response. But its your decision to make. And I loved it.

The title’s DLC offerings have been beefy, if a bit mixed. These include The Stone Prisoner DLC (with new character companion Shale), Warden’s Keep DLC, Blood Dragon Armor DLC (which is used, oddly enough in both Mass Effect 2 and 3), Return to Ostagar DLC, Feastday Gifts and Pranks DLC, The Darkspawn Chronicles DLC (which is an alternate history DLC where you play as the darkspawn), Leliana’s Song DLC, The Golems of Amgarrak DLC, and finally the Witch Hunt DLC.

There’s also the expansion pack Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, where you can carry over your main game’s character, or start out as a fresh recruit of the Grey Wardens (mostly due to certain decisions you made in the main game) that introduces new characters as well as returning ones, in a standalone (if a bit brief) storyline set chronologically after the final battle in Origins.

While most of the earlier DLCs were welcomed, some of the latter were not. Most are glitchy, buggy affairs, and sometimes not even playable. Game freezing and game crashing is common, although on the whole not even the game itself was free of these problems. I’ve noticed myself a few times when background noises and sometimes entire voice tracks simply cut out for no explanation, and character pre-scribed tactics seem to snag; for example, I had Leliana programmed to switch from ranged to mêlée tactics depending on how far or close the enemy was. Imagine my confusion when I watch her simply sit there for minutes on end doing nothing but switching from one weapon set to the other even though her target is literally standing in front of her. I can’t fathom what the hang-up is, but it does it a lot with the computer controlled allies so frequently I have to physically take control of them to make them stop doing it.

Final Thoughts: Despite looking less than pretty, and despite some small snags with the DLC and other in-game mechanics, Dragon Age: Origins‘ story is a solid, well told epic. One that gives you so much command of the story itself; from how it begins, what you do in the in-between, and what you do to craft the multiple endings that come, I sank well over 60 hours into its tale. A tale that pays you back tenfold. For your time, for your choices, and for your personal investments in how you tread upon the kingdom of Ferelden and ultimately shape its future.

Too bad the sequel did not live up to its beginnings.

But that is a tale for another time…