Here be Dragons
Format: PS3, Xbox 360 (version played), PC Dev: BioWare Pub: EA Out: 06/11/09 Players: 1
Cited as a “spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate,” Dragon Age: Origins is the newest BioWare RPG instalment. If you’re not sure, BioWare were the guys behind Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights and more. They know how to make solid RPGs, which bodes well for Dragon Age and its potential to please.
Origins is well rooted within the paradigm of a relatively traditional RPG: large scale battles, teems of fantastical creatures and a handful of politics. Set in the fictional empire of Ferelden, you progress through the game travelling across the region completing two major quests, with the option of a huge amount of side quests.
To start with, you are given the choice of either a Human or an Elf (both of which naturally have their own bonuses and drawbacks), and will get to customise your character to a fairly high level of detail – which admittedly does allow for some great moustache potential. Depending on what class you chose, your character will have varying weapon requirements, skills and talents. For example, rogues are swift and sneaky; you can build up your ability to pick locks, disarm traps or steal from people. A rogue will also have combat tactics, such as dual weapon attacks, or kicking your enemy in a rather unsportsmanlike place.
The story begins with your character almost immediately thrown into some very heated action; with a number of disturbing scenes and a tragic early narrative turn. The threat of a vicious species known as ‘Darkspawn’ soon becomes apparent – they’re pretty horrible. Erupting from underground, they are causing Ferelden-wide chaos. Naturally, something needs to be done. As mentioned, the game loosely follows two major plotlines, the Darkspawn situation being the main one (your character has to recruit the support of other species around the world in order to build a varied and resourceful army to fight these nasty things), and the secondary being ‘dealing with’ a corrupt, power hungry strategist for a recently deceased king.
If you are a regular RPG-er, I can’t imagine you’ll be hugely blown away with the battle system. It’s essentially a cross between turn-based and real-time action, a little like Final Fantasy XII. You have no active control over the weapon’s swing, but you have control over when you swing it and roughly whereabouts on the opponent’s body to swing it.
With the players you don’t control in your party, the combat system relies mostly on the use of ‘tactics’ (which is very similar to the ‘gambit’ system of the aforementioned FFXII). Tactics are a list of actions to undertake in a battle situation set in order of priority. For example, you could set a character to cast a healing spell if that character’s health falls below 50%, or a more specific example, you can set a character to use a technique that pierces armour on enemies with high armour ratings.
With at least forty hours worth of gameplay (assuming you also tackle a small amount of side quests), this game is no casual feat. One thing that games like these are particularly good at doing is going off on tangents, in many cases several hour-long ones – quite a notable trait of BioWare it seems. Having said that, Origins does well to keep your attention. You’re never in one place too long, and the game world is diverse enough to keep you going for a while. Although, some of the detail on the terrain is a bit rough around the edges, the character models are very polished and the voice acting is great. Of course, to truly tackle almost every nook and cranny of this game could take 80 hours plus, depending on how much of a completist you are.
Dragon Age: Origins is a solid RPG, with an interesting and well developed narrative, and developers who know their gameworld down to a tee. The attention to detail is impressive and the game makes you truly feel like a hero. Something more games should do, more often. But in a video game market saturated with far too much of the same, I expected a little more originality. In most cases, Origins is a very run of the mill RPG. But on the flipside, BioWare do RPG’s exceptionally well, making this game more than worth playing.
Lewis Townsend
Tags: dragon age, ea, rpg
