Dragon Age: Origins

Ok  those of you that have followed us for a while and have been listening to the weekly podcast, you may know that when it comes to RPGs I truly have a love/hate relationship. I can literally count the number of RPGs I’ve actually completed on one hand, yet I continue to buy pretty much any major RPG that comes out. I have a tendency to play them for about 15 hours and then lose interest only to never go back to them again.

Enter Dragon Age: Origins (DA:O) The next game from Edmonton’s premier developer BioWare. The game is in a way a “spiritual successor” (man how much do we love that term?) to the popular Baldur’s Gate series that was a smash hit on the PC many years ago.

BioWare is trying to go back to their roots– something that many did not feel would be successful since the craving for an oldschool dark fantasy RPG is all but gone, well; when it comes to the big market anyways.

Will Dragon Age: Origin be one of the games that simply sits on my shelf for years? Or will I be able to finally add another digit to my RPG conquest? Let’s find out.

Presentation

For those familiar with BioWare games you’re well aware that they definitely don’t hold back when it comes to presentation and every new game they release seems to be a step further to audio/visual brilliance. DA:O however does seem to be a step backward.Now that’s not saying the game is ugly at all. It’s just when you compare DA:O to BioWares last major console release Mass Effect it doesn’t really hold up. The facial animations aren’t as detailed nor are the character models or backgrounds for that matter. Actually the whole art style in general is pretty generic and familiar feeling.

That being said, there is a lot happening on screen at one time and the world itself is much larger than any other BioWare game yet released on consoles. The towns, characters, and overall atmosphere– although familiar feeling also make you feel like you’re in the world of Feraldin and that alone is an accomplishment.

Audio is kind of in the same boat but rowing at a slightly faster speed. The sounds of DA:O will  make you feel right at home like any traditional dark fantasy game before it. For the 30-80 hours you’ll put into the game you’ll hear many different kinds of metal on metal make out sessions, the crackling of fire and lightening being summoned by mages, and of course the sound of nature itself which all by the way sounds fantastic.

The voice acting is also worth noting as the majority of the conversations you will have with both your party and NPCs sound believable and don’t make you feel cheesy for enjoying what is being said. Quite a feat considering Nolan North is nowhere to be found.

Overall the presentation in DA:O won’t likely blow you away but it won’t make you cringe either. It’s really good at what it’s trying to do– make you feel like a part of an epic fantasy like setting without ever going over the top… Well except for maybe when you kill something as small as a rat and your entire party gets covered in blood like they’ve just came back from a live God of War play and were sitting in the front row.

Story

The story begins by selecting your race and class. This will then start you off in your character’s “Origin Story”. These stories are different depending on your race and the class you choose. All are roughly 2-3 hours of gameplay before it starts the main storyline. I chose a Dalish Elf as my race and a Rogue as my primary class (different classes can be opened up for each character throughout the game) After completing my origin story, I immediately became curious as to how the tale begins with other characters. If anything it’s worth multiple playthroughs of the beginning of the game just to see the different origin stories.

The story in DA:O mainly revolves around a terrible phenomenon known as the “Blight” which happens every thousand or so years where the “Darkspawn” rise from the depths of Feraldin and try to wipe out the joint.

You play as an unlikely hero who happens to become a member of a very selective group of badasses known as The Grey Wardens. These Grey Wardens are the only people who can fend off the blight and make the world a better place again.

Throughout your adventure you’ll go from town to town recruiting factions and party members to help you fend off your foes in preparation for a “shit hitting the fan” climax.

But in the end there is only one ring to rule them all…ok that last part was a joke and a bad one at that but if you’ve seen or read The Lord of the Rings trilogy you’ll have a pretty good idea on the basics. Oh, yeah, and there is another storyline regarding the political figures of the world but going into detail about that would be difficult without spoiling anything.

At first glance again it feels like the story throughout DA:O is generic and a bit cliché. However, the way the story is told is unrivaled in my opinion.

Every character you meet and every party member that decides whether or not to join you is filled with believable and clever dialogue. Party members will banter with each other while questing and quickly develop relationships with one another. In fact, the banter between characters Morrigan and Alistar was so entertaining I never took them out of my party. They take jabs at each other and sarcastically comment on events that play out.

The only downside to this is, this tends to happen a lot right when you’re about to leave an area, which left me standing there waiting until their conversation was over before I wanted to proceed. This isn’t a bad thing since it was so entertaining but it would have been nice if these dialogue queues happened earlier and I was able to listen more while I was exploring an area rather than about to leave it.

The story itself won’t likely blow your mind but the way it is told through the brilliant character interactions and drive to see what will happen next will for sure keep your attention. A generic story is not a bad thing when told extremely well, which DA:O succeeds in doing.

Gameplay

Ok here is the meat of the sandwich. All of the above could be perfect but without decent gameplay what would be the point?

DA:O is set up like the typical BioWare RPG. You’ll gather your party and traverse the world making decisions that will likely have people view you as a hero or a medieval douche.

The game seems to be running on an advanced version of the KOTOR engine which was made specifically for consoles. You’ll only have the 3^rd person view on the consoles while on the PC version it allows you to pull the camera back to a more Baldur’s Gate type perspective. I’ll let everyone know now that I played the game on 360 so I can’t go into too much detail about the differences.

Throughout the game you’ll level up your party and build them however you see fit. Of course if you’re not really into that kind of thing there is an option to auto level which will distribute your skill points accordingly.

There are tons of loot to find and armor sets to collect as well as spells to learn and remedies to concoct.

The menu system can be a bit overwhelming at times but I found once I knew how it all worked I could quickly navigate them and get what I wanted done quickly. Combat menus on the other hand is a bit of a different story.

The combat is across between real time and turn based. The action all happens in real time, however attacks and spells aren’t tied to your button presses on a one to one ratio. There will be a cool down period for most attacks and spells and no class will attack with ninja like speed. So technically you are running around the battlefield in real time but the actual combat has a set rhythm to it. Anyone who has played KOTOR will feel right at home. At any point during combat you can bring up a radial dial with commands you can give both yourself and your party members. I found myself not really using this option much as DA:O has a system to that similar to FFXIIs gambit system in where you can pre-program commands and have your AI allies run on autopilot. So besides a few big battles and some unexpected brain farts on the part of my AI brethren I pretty much took primary control over my main character.

Outside of combat, the other thing you will be doing in DA:O a lot will be talking….I mean this is BioWare right?

You will have to make important choices throughout using dialogue trees that usually have pretty obvious good/evil outcomes. Some of these decisions can be as minor as whether or not to give someone some spare change or as major as who you think would be fit for a king.

The system works really well, however I would have liked it if your primary character was voice acted. I know they wanted to make it more like a choose your own adventure rather than a streamlined experience but the fact my character had no voice kind of made him have no personality and he was heavily overshadowed by the cleverly written and spoken dialogue the rest of the world has to offer.

To date I’d have to say this is BioWare’s best attempt at making you really think about what you’re doing and making you feel like you’re making big decisions, but at certain times I couldn’t help but think that some of it was totally unrealistic. For example, if you put enough points into the right stats new dialogue options can come up. So you could be in the middle of a heated discussion with a character that would normally never give in (kind of like a modern day discussion on a game forum) and then just choose this new option and all of a sudden the character agrees with you. I liken it back to elementary school when you’d want some of a classmates chips, they’d refuse to share and put up a huge fight and cry and cry and then you’d bust out the “c’mon, I’ll be your best friend” line and next thing you know you’re eating their chips.

The gameplay overall is solid albeit a bit repetitive. The numerous ways you can build your characters and approach both battle and conversation will definitely keep any RPG fan interested. I would have liked more of a pure good and evil or even more evil or lesser evil choices as the game seems to always throw a guaranteed good choice in almost every situation but either way it keeps things interesting and optional for multiple playthroughs.

Overall

Overall DA:O had its hooks in me early. I was drawn to it from start to finish. Sure it has its moments of imperfection in regards to graphics and even in some of the control areas (mainly on consoles). In fact, during the last battle I realized that this game was made for PC first and console second as I got extremely frustrated with the management of my party at that time.

But the story is so well told and the world is so fun to play around in I didn’t care about these things. DA:O made me realize that a story you might have already heard can be told in a way that makes it seem new. I became attached to the characters even though my own felt shallow and lifeless, I felt proud when I could help out another race that used to hate on my elf…and dammit, I let out a victorious roar when I took down my first dragon.

In the end DA:O is a game no RPG fan should miss. It’s definitely BioWare’s best work yet and has me salivating for Mass Effect 2. Thank you BioWare for not only giving me back my faith that a game like this can still be done right, but also getting me ever so close to being able to carry my notches over to my other hand!