REVIEWED – Dragon Age: Origins

Title:  Dragon Age: Origins
Platform:  PC
Developer:  BioWare
Publisher:  EA
Reviewed By:  Alucard188
SCORE:  B+

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Let’s get this right out in the open – I love BioWare. They are pretty much my favourite developer. As far as I’m concerned, they can do no wrong. Now, of course this is entirely subjective. You may have not had the same kind of relationship with Bioware as I have. Be that as it may, you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t interested in this game and what others have to say about it. Is this game right for you? Should you run out and pick it up with all possible haste? Hopefully this review will help you to that end.

Soon after creating your character you are thrust into the world of DA: O in the country of Ferelden to engage in your character’s Origin story – 6 in total. You cannot choose just any story, either. Each Origin is exclusive to the race and class you choose; Humans have Human Noble; Elves choose from City and Daelish; while Dwarves get Dwarf Noble and Commoner. The sixth one, Magi, is reserved for the mage class and is inherent to the overstory of the world. During your Origin story you are met by a Grey Warden; one who is charged with fighting the fell Darkspawn. Due to some circumstances during your story, this Grey Warden, Duncan by name, recruits you for candidacy into the Grey Wardens. Soon after this you learn of the Blight that threatens the world and your significance in all of this. You must then overcome dark magics, demons, Darkspawn, and people with cruel hearts to bring people and societies together to combat this horde that threatens to devour all.

I find the story of this game to be traditional in the vein of BioWare’s RPGs. They usually revolve around a prime focus that you must rally against. though I am still too early in the game to tell if the story is going to be as straightforward as “see evil and defeat it”. Whether this is a story told before in another world or not, it is still engrossing. The voice acting makes it believable and not just someone reading a script on a sound stage. A lot of work went into the game to make sure the mannerisms and voice characterizations matched the scene that is being played, down to the minute facial expressions that characters display. Basically, what I’m saying is if you’ve played other BioWare RPGs you’ll find a lot of the same story elements in DA: O. However, it is done with an ability that makes you forget that you may have seen this story before. It’s almost impossible to be original with RPG stories now, right?

The graphics in the game are very clean and well done. The characters are animated smoothly, the towns show life and vibrancy (an ironic thing to say given the game’s story), and the enemies are detailed nicely. You do run into that ever-present texture repeat that is pretty much a standard in all RPGs. You’ll swear that some NPCs look alike, though they may have subtle differences due to the character generator. One thing you’ll notice a lot of is blood. It splatters everywhere. Someone likened it to you hacking your way through a field of blood bags, and I agree. Somewhere along the road BioWare took ‘dark’ to mean ’splatter blood everywhere’, which I feel detracts from the dark mood they’re trying to convey in the story. It’s still only a minor thing, though.

Battle and spell animations are all done very cleanly and actually make sense in a battle. You wouldn’t see real people use the same sword swing every time they swung the sword, would you? Abilities and spells actually look like they have an impact on what you’re casting on. A fireball exploding behind someone will propel them in the direction you would expect them to go. Smacking someone with your shield not only sounds satisfying but can send your foe sprawling to the ground. I am disappointed that there aren’t any breakable surfaces in the game. Try as I might, I can’t get my fireball to sunder a simple wooden door, nor can I get my great sword wielding friend to break open a chest with a powerful swing or two. I would have welcomed more armor and weapon models as well, but BioWare released a fairly robust creation kit for those who wish to add more to this game.

The gameplay is very intuitive and well executed. You can play it traditionally like Baldur’s Gate (point and click to move, overhead view) or like Mass Effect and KotOR (use WSAD to move, behind the back view). The camera control makes it easy to switch between the two, and it is to your benefit to use both as it can be rather hard to judge whether an area effect spell will affect your allies or not in the behind-the-back camera mode. You have your traditional hotkey bar, numbered 0-9 in respect to the number keys, with more within easy access by simply dragging the right lip of the hotkey bar over to create more hotkeys as you need.

The much touted Choice and Consequence system is a nice change from the standard good and evil set. The terms ‘good and evil’ are largely arbitrary in this game. Instead, you find yourself asking if the ends justify the means with morality acting as the lynchpin on which this is seated. Your companions have their own personalities, complete with prejudices and morals, so how you go about solving problems will have an impact on your relationship with them. If you do too much to the contrary of their beliefs they’ll either leave you or betray you, adding another weight to the balancing act you must do. This can be rendered frivolous by the gift system, though. Apparently, any misgivings that the character has with you is forgotten in the presence of shiny things they like. I ran into this problem with Fallout 3 as well.

Bioware dropped the D&D license for DA: O and chose not to inundate us with a wide variety of classes, thankfully. You have 3 classes to choose from; Warrior, Rogue, and Mage, with specializations accessible by unlocking them through companions, tomes, and quests. You get one specialization point at level 7 and another at 14, allowing for what I assume is 2 specializations. You have skill groups that you can invest your points in, creating a further specialized character. The higher tiers are restricted by your level, stats, and general skills, which makes it a necessity to know what you want to specialize in before you needlessly spend points.

This game is difficult. You are going to have characters die in battle. Without proper use of tactics and micro-managing your characters will fall more often. Fortunately, they revive after the battle but are inflicted with a penalty from their wounding. Each time they fall in battle they gain a wound, which are cumulative. If left unchecked you will find the battles more difficult to overcome. You can heal the wounds with the appropriate kits but supplies are limited, making tactics all the more important.

DA: O employs a tactics system like the gambit system from Final Fantasy XII. You have a set amount of lines for each character to put your conditions and responses in with the precedence given to those rules at the top of the tactics page. You can gain more tactics lines for your characters, allowing for more specific sets of rules. Even with the standard character AI you shouldn’t have a problem with stupid characters. The character pathing is also well executed. Instances of characters getting stuck on table corners and chairs are practically nonexistent.

The music doesn’t stand out in this game – rather it adds to the ambiance. It is never featured except in difficult battles, where it sets the mood perfectly. The sound effects are crisp and full bodied with the ambient noises adding a lot of life to the areas you traverse. You will encounter NPCs chatting about current events, teachers trying to teach a class, people arguing, et cetera. Even your own companions get into the spirit of things, firing back and forth with friendly banter and bickering. It’s simple things like this that really stand out to me and create a more captivating world.

This is a game I can see myself putting a lot of hours into. Unlike more recent BioWare games, the story should take about 80 hours to delve through from start to finish, not including repeat playthroughs if you hope to see all the content in the game. I consider this game a worthwhile investment and I strongly encourage you to pick it up.