Review - Dragon Age: Origins

Platform: Xbox 360

Spoiler Danger Low 

The Good:
  + Deep characters and storyline
  + A world deeply impacted by the choices you make
  + So much to do

The Bad:
  - Graphics
  - Technical glitches that impede progress

It feels good to be back in the reviewer's chair after such a long absence. It's been a while since I've been able to sit down and write a review of any video game, mostly due to a lack of spare funds to spend on my favorite hobby. Low and behold, Christmas came and with it, I got a whole slew of new games. So, the reviews are going to be coming fast and furious in anticipation of my annual end of year best of blog. Yippee!

So, I figured I'd start with Dragon Age. It was done by the creative masterminds over at Bioware - you know, the same folks who did the Sci-Fi opus that was Mass Effect. A different team worked on this game, though you can see the influence Mass Effect had on this game throughout.

And that's not really a bad thing.

Dragon Age starts by allowing you to build a character. I love character creators; they allow me to build a guy, either myself or some heroic, epic badass that I picture myself as in some fantasy-driven previous life. Considering that I am building myself, or my dreamed-of persona, there is an instant connection with the character. You choose a race, a class, facial details, a name, a voice (which is sadly not used in conversations - only in battle "hiya," "die, scum," and such), and a back story. There are 6 back stories, 1 or 2 of which are available to each combination of race/class. Upon finishing your character you are dropped into the world of Ferelden, and thus you begin playing through your back story.

This is the first of many, many times throughout the game where your choices affect how the game works. Each of the back stories is wildly different and allows you to really get into your character. At the end of each, you are conscripted into the Grey Wardens - a group of warriors from every race that are charged with defeating The Blight. From there you begin the full game, laid out in typical Bioware fashion. You have a string of quests that can be completed (in any order) with a vast array of side quests to carry your attention for hours. Of interesting note, most of the quests are completely optional. You must complete the opening quest, the first quests as a Grey Warden, the mission in Redcliffe, and the Landsmeet, and the final quest. All other quests are completely optional; though completing them provides a heaping dose of much-needed assistance during the final mission.

Dragon Age is, of course, an RPG, my absolute favorite type of game. RPGs are where the great story arcs and character development can be found. Dragon Age does not disappoint in this area. The story, from my description above, may seem like a simple "We must stop the bad things before they destroy the world!" type of story, but it most certainly is not. The story is a complex, layered beast filled with a great many twists. At times it felt like I was partaking in one of the ginormous fantasy novels I tend to read from time to time; at other times, I was just lucky that my jaw didn't fall off.

Tied in with the wonderful story is the cast of characters. I love them, simply put. They have personalities and quirks, wants and desires. It is this group of characters that really breathes life into the story, and it is from them that the most surprising twists come. As the story unfolds and I got to know the characters better, I was surprised and delighted to realize that I was invested in what became of them. There are some very tough decisions that you must make throughout the game, particularly as you draw near the end, and I always found myself weighing those decisions against what might become of the people around me.

As an added bonus, the characters (with the exception of your main character) will often banter back and forth as you wander around a town or through a field. This banter alone makes me want to play the game over and over again just to hear what they are talking about. You see, not all of your other party members always get along. My favorite party setup involves having both Alistair and Morrigan on my team. These two, the first two actual party members you will acquire, generally dislike each other - they are polar opposites after all. Allowed to stay in your active party, they will rip each other new ones in amusing, laugh-out-loud ways throughout the game. Like I said, I would gladly play this game time and time again just to hear all the chatter between the characters.

Dragon Age does something else that I've never seen with an RPG party before. In most RPGs, once a character is part of your party, he or she has no measurable opinion of you - other than the fact that you are the leader of the team. Not true with Dragon Age. Each character has an approval rating. This moves up and down depending on the actions you take throughout the game. For example, again using Alistair and Morrigan, if you take time away from the quest to help a struggling town, Alistair's approval rating will go up, while Morrigan's will go down. Should the approval rating go up enough, you will unlock additional conversational options with that character, including new side quests or even romantic possibilities. If the rating goes down enough, the party member may leave - some might even try to kill you in the process. This balancing of the party members' opinions is a great addition to the standard "good or evil" decision tree.

In addition to the effects your decisions have on the members of your party, many of the decisions you make affect the world around you as well. I don't just mean that rescuing a character early in the game will land you some sick armor later in the game either. You literally hold the fate of Ferelden in the palms of your hands. Will the civilization crumble around you, or will you be the pillar of strength on which a new kingdom is born?

In terms of game play, the game plays like standard Bioware fare. Regular attacking is handled automatically by the system, and you can use abilities by using the radial menu, with up to 6 abilities being available as short keys mapped to the face buttons. The game is meticulously balanced, with the easier difficulties being exceptionally easy, but the higher difficulties definitely add a ton of challenge. In fact, on the nightmare difficulty, the game ceases almost completely to be a hack and slash game and turns instead into a game requiring strategy and a large dose of planning ahead. One of the big challenges with the game is to go solo, which means you tackle the game without a party, just your main character, on the Nightmare difficulty. This is a monumentally difficult task, but it sure is a heck of a lot of fun.

Dragon Age isn't a perfect game, though. There are numerous, sometimes glaring, flaws that pop up throughout the game, some of which hamper enjoyment more than others. The graphics, for starters, are none too good. They are on par with the graphics we saw towards the tail end of the original Xbox's life cycle. There are plenty of areas where textures don't line up correctly, sometimes leaving gaps through which you can see the "grey space" that exists beyond the level boundaries. Graphics aside, there are some areas where glitches prevent the game from working correctly. For example, there are enemies in the game whose deaths trigger an event, such as a cut scene or the opening of a door. If your main character levels up after killing one of these enemies, the triggered even simply won't occur. Thankfully, this doesn't happen very often.

Overall, the game is a tremendous amount of fun. Glitches aside, I was enthralled from beginning to end - absorbed with the deep and entertaining characters as well as the layered storyline. A must for any fan of RPGs or well-told fantasy stories.

Score: 9.2/10.0