Dragons Are Endangered, A DA: Origins Review
Luke Earhart
January 15, 2010
Filed under A & E
How long has it been since you’ve played a fantasy RPG with epic proportions? For me it’s been since World of Warcraft, which was over five years ago, and that is much too long. Thankfully, during their hiatus with Mass Effect, Bioware has made a quality game that is easily one of the most fun adventures I’ve played in a while.
The reason Origins is tacked on the end of Dragon Age is quite simple really. When you make you’re character you have to pick the origin that you come from, whether it’s a Dwarf Noble who is the third son of a king, or a City Elf that has been in a human Alienage for all of its life. These six or seven Origins determine how most characters in the main game react to you, and can open or close certain dialogue options later on.
The story after that is a classic RPG experience. Not spoiling the story, but the King dies very soon into the main quest, and you must use the Grey Warden Conscripts to recruit the Dalish Elves (Wood Elves), the Dwarves, Mages from the Circle Tower, etc., to fight the army of Darkspawn that are now the biggest danger of the land of Ferelden. These allies you must recruit have troubles of their own though, and you have to help them with theirs so that they will join you.
The gameplay takes some time to get used to. It is part real time combat and part “pausing the game to develop better strategies.” Basically, the controls feel a little awkward until you realize that you need to take your time in the paused mode and think about the situations and how you should approach them. The game doesn’t explain everything about gameplay right away, so it kind of has you experiment on how to do things. Fortunately, once you realize how to do things, it gets really fun and is always a challenge. Seemingly impossible challenges can be defeated with good use of your three other choose-able teammates and great coordination.
The graphics of the game are pretty well done. The game looks like it flows at a smooth sixty frames per second, and the animations look very realistic. While I was playing it on the 360 as a mage, I did find that too many area of effect spells as once, like a blizzard and a fire storm, can make the game jerk for one or two seconds. The design aspect of dialogue options are classic Bioware, which let me reminisce of the days when I used to play KotOR (Knights of the Old Republic, an older Star Wars game developed by Bioware).
Some of the options are quite obvious on how they will turn out, such as the option of just killing a person. While these choices don’t affect your characters karma, your teammates do have opinions on what you do. For example, in one quest, you can pour your blood in an Urn that holds some Sacred Ashes for the warrior specialization of Reaver. If you do this while the teammates of Leliana and Wynne are in your group, they will attack you because they feel that it was an act of evil against a long-gone prophet that many people in Ferelden still praise.
Already there are two Add-ons for Dragon Age: Origins, one giving a quest where you can receive a new secret teammate, and the other making an old Grey Warden fortress available for your convenience. Another add-on is being released very soon, and Bioware’s options are endless. Who knows, there might even be multiplayer in the game eventually. The length of the game alone is worth the buy, taking people tons of hours to just complete the main quest. While I was playing this game, I felt completely immersed in the lore of the game, and the voice actors are spot on with the emotions they are portraying. One of the most fun games I’ve played in a long time, Dragon Age: Origins just gets two big thumbs up, it’s a definite buy.
