~~Spoiler Free~~
PS3 Version
Dragon Age: Origins is not a game for the weak gamer or the impatient. I have finished the game clocking in just a hair under 40 hours and I ignored all side quests on my first play through. So if you’re a slower gamer expect to spend a substantial portion of your holiday season sitting in front of the television. That being said, the game isn’t for everyone and will tend to only appeal to fans of RPGs and gamers who play games for the storylines. The game play is true to that of a RPG and you will not have the experience of a FPS in a RPG, like Fallout or even Mass Effect. There have been several reviews outlining PC vs console versions that tend to make it sound like the console versions have ‘lost’ their roots, but this is not the case. Dragon Age: Origins is a masterpiece of writing and lore, with a universe spanning much, much more than what this game covers.
From when you first put in the disc, Dragon Age has you making choices that will affect your story. You have the option to choose from Human, Elf, and Dwarf, and each of those has different backgrounds to choose, including nobility or commoner. From there you chose your class: Mage, Warrior, or Rouge. Depending on your combination of those three choices, a player can experience drastic different beginnings to Dragon Age. And I talk about the length of 3 – 4 hours, so the bulk of the ‘tutorial’ of the game will be different with different choices. After that, certain options open up during the game depending on gender, race, and class but as a whole, the game play will stay continuous after the opening. Different conversations will mention your race, which is a nice touch. The ‘opening’ ends when your character is called upon by the Grey Wardens, an order of men, dwarves, elves of all status that is dedicated to fighting off the Darkspawn, (obviously, the main antagonists of the game) think the orcs of Lord of the Rings and you’re on the right track. You will then spend about another 2 hours playing through that part of the game before you hit the main quest. The main quest consists of roughly 4 quests that you must embark on; these can be done in any order as the player chooses, but they must be done for the story line to continue and eventually reach the conclusion. Each of these ‘quests’ takes a long time that involve doing multiple smaller quests however I must stress that none of these are ‘cookie cutter’ and in fact are very intriguing and gripping. Without giving away anything, your choices in each of those four quests drastically can affect how the conclusion of the game will play out. And of course when your main quest is going on, there are many, many side quests that you can take that reward you with XP and loot. However some quests may only be finished before you embark on the conclusion of the game, as is normal.
That was a nice lead in into game play. As far as XP goes, the player can expect a very slow RPG progress bar; I finished the game as a level 17. However if you do side quests, of course your level will be higher. Each level you receive points to spend on specializations, attributes, skills, and talents (or spells). The leveling system is absolutely massive with so many choices to choose from. Sometimes a specializations will affect an attribute which in turn affects a talent; my point is that is a true RPG leveling system with some many options, that no matter how you play, you will be able to make a character that plays how you like to; if you want a warrior mage, you can finagle that, but the game doesn’t make it easy for you, and in fact it might take special dialogue with one character in the game to get a specialization to open up that allows you to equip with warrior armor. My point is that the possibilities are truly endless with this game with leveling. This brings to the loot system. I have mixed feelings about loot in this game – on one hand, there was a lot loot to be found, but on the other, most of it was ‘garbage’ compared to what you collect even early on in the game. I understand that the most powerful items are gifts at the end of quests and side quests, but it did bother me, for instance, if I just beat a powerful mage, why can’t I loot his staff, because surely it’s better than mine? Regardless, the game did have a lot of options; I just wish they had varied through their power.
I guess now is a good to time to actually talk about battles; at any one time the most people in your ‘party’ can be four including yourself. You can switch direct control to any of the four, but only one at a time. An extensive ‘tactics system that allows you pre-define how a character will react to ANY given situation is simply magnificent, and I hope that more games will start using a system similar. As you progress thru the game you unlock more ‘tactics slots’ and basically it just means you can make another ‘if, then’ statement, for instance, I can specify: If (NPC character’s) > health > drops below > 25% > use item > health poultice. The system is extensive and may take a while to set up fully, but it’s worth it. Of course you can ignore it the whole game and it fills out statements by default. It’s really the beauty of the system is that it can go on autopilot if you want it, however you’ll find that you can fine tune your team’s tactics to make the best attack strategies you can imagine. The commands vary from my example of healing to attack stance, range, what talents NPCs should automatically use, etc… there has not been enough praise for the extent that Bioware has improved the outdated tactics system. And of course in any time during combat, if you want a character to do something else you can go ahead and take control of them and do what you want. Once an enemy is in range your party will go into ‘attack mode’ by drawing weapons and some might even initiate talents or spells (as some are sustained, activated, or passive) and depending on the overall stance you have for the party will either wait to attack the target until you do, or just start attacking. Once in combat it becomes clear that you are playing a RPG. We might not have all the assignable keys that a PC has, but Bioware did a nice job with there tactical pull up menu that pauses temporarily while holding L2 which gives you immediate access to all of your talents/spells, potions, items, and advanced features will come into play every now and then. I’ve heard reviews complain that the console versions are much more ‘get in the trenches!’ but I don’t see that, as a mage, almost every spell I cast the game paused to have me select an AoE and then confirm. I suppose Rouges and Warriors were in the fray fighting, but you still need to choose talents for them to perform on the enemy. In addition there’s no ‘button masher’ option where can you just press X over and over again to beat an enemy. By default, without selecting spells or talents your character will just hack at the enemy, but you don’t directly control that and that’s a good way to get dead quick. I’ve also heard that console versions are easier… if that’s so than I don’t want to play the PC version - I play games on the hardest difficulty the fist time through; I’ve been playing long enough that I just get games, but this game I found myself playing on normal (and for a couple minutes on casual). The easiest difficulty (casual) is too easy, with almost no death, but even the step up to normal gives you a huge disadvantage, and with two more difficulty settings, this game gets plenty hard… maybe on a third play thru I’ll understand the perfect combinations to do that, but for now, I was challenged in parts on Normal. Additionally Bioware thru in the added benefit of while playing in Normal, your Area spells do not damage party members; in higher difficulty it does which greatly alters how you chose your spells. Even with the RPG elements, the game play is fast and enjoyable – I don’t think anyone will be disappointed in the quality of the RPG of this title.
Let’s talk about the story elements now. In the CE bonus disc, it is said that excess of 80,000 lines of dialogue are in this game. I believe it and so will anyone who plays this game. You can literally do whatever you want and get unique dialogue situations for whatever you do. The enormity of the dialogue system is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. You will almost never run out of things to talk about with party members. One of the possible party members will tell you stories, at your whim. It’s fantastic. I only collected 5 out of the possible 10 companions, but I happen to know that each one will react to situations differently and it’s quite possible that you might slip and say one wrong thing and they’ll leave… forever. The expendability of ‘main characters’ is a driving force in this game, with no characters fate certain. Some relationships you think are trivial will change the entire ending of the game, while others may help unravel ancient mysteries and put a stop to evil. Some relationships are much more important than others, however every character is interesting and intriguing. I promised I’d keep this spoiler free, so I will, but trust me when I say that entire stories and quests of the game, may come and go by what you say to NPCs. And without the comfort of seeing if an action is ‘good’ or ‘evil’ you really have no way of telling how others will react to it, but more than not, they will. High moral choices are rampant (such as help the man or leave him to die), but equally are the low moral choices throughout the game; should a criminal die for one mistake, or perhaps they may change there ways? Is Euthanasia acceptable? Who do you chose to take responsibility? Questions like that are what make the game interesting and there’s no moral compass in the game so you’re left to make your own decisions and see where they take you. This is by far the deepest storyline I’ve come across in a game. What’s even more interesting is that the game takes place in the country of Ferelden, which on a map looks fairly large. However if you’re lucky enough to see the actual map of the world Bioware came up with, Thedas, you can see that Ferelden is no more than a small costal country – almost insignificant in the world that has been created. The voice acting is top notch with contributions from the likes of Kate Mulgrew, Tim Curry, Tim Russ, Claudia Black and many more. Sound effects and the original score by Inon Zur was phenomal. My sound complaints are little, however I feel that the cinematic experience that Mass Effect offered with having the main character talk as well, has come to spoil me and I think that would have added to the game.
I do want to mention the graphics; the environments were gorgeous and top notch. From sprawling forests to run down slums in the city – it engaged the player. What was not top notch were the character models and clothing in dialouges. The character models would have been acceptable maybe two years ago, but the clothing and side items would have even been considered ‘not good’ on the last gen consoles. The entire game I never got used to the ‘zoomed-in’ look of clothing and items in dialogues; in fact I thought for a while it might be a rendering issue with the game… like it was only half rendered or something, but with its persistency I was forced to accept it was just that horrible. It was not that noticeable in combat, and in fact the Darkspawn looked awesome, but they should have spent more time with the dialogues. The only other issue I had was in the event that 3 or 4 area spells were cast at the same time and many characters were on the screen at once, every now and then I would say a frame rate lag, however I’ve seen much worse and it rarely effected game play. This is why I did not give the game a 10
Dragon Age: Origins is a massive engulfing game that is worthy of any gamers’ time. It offers a highly polished RPG experience that will enthrall even the pickiest RPG players. The franchise has started strong and has so much to tell in future iterations that it would be shame not to pick this up because of flashier games released this holiday season.
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