Review: Dragon Age: Origins

by Michael Camacho [ Sunday, 15th of November 2009 - 04:00 PM ]

Dragon Age: Origins is a dark fantasy game set in a land, known as Ferelden, where the Blight is at hand, and Darkspawn are quickly taking over. You begin the game as your choice of race and class, and set on your own origin quest. Each quest is very different, yet will all yield the same results afterwards. The only differences will be how characters interact with you later in game. You come to join the Grey Wardens, a group created to eliminate the Darkspawn, and begin your quest to kill the Archdemon and save the lands from evil. You work to unite the lands to help end the Blight, even as some of its own try to drive it apart for their own quest for power.

Dragon Age has taken what Bioware is best known for and significantly improved on it. The decision making in Dragon Age is second to none and will greatly affect your story and sometimes your outcome of the game. Decisions can affect whether someone lives or dies, including yourself. They also affect who is there to help you at the end of the game during the final battle. You can choose to be as nice or as cruel as you want to be, and yet there are times it forces you to make that critical decision where there is no right or wrong.

Another thing Dragon Age does well is engaging you into the characters themselves. You actually will come to like, love, hate or even downright despise some of the people in game. This is even more apparent when dealing with your party members, in which you can pursue romances with or order them to flat out leave your party. Decisions you make in game will also cause party members to approve or disapprove. Be careful though, as some decisions will cause them to turn against you and fight. You can also give gifts to help increase their approval of you.

The voice acting in Dragon Age is outstanding, and rarely does any character's voice sound out of place. And sometimes the dialogue between characters while travelling are some of the best moments in the game. You are guaranteed to laugh at some of their numerous interactions. I especially enjoyed Morrigan's and Alistair's many conversations. Unfortunately your character has no real dialogue and only speaks at random times during battles or interacting with objects.

The soundtrack composing Dragon Age is also another great addition to the game and helps to amplify many of the scenes and moods of the story. It helps you feel the intensity or drama of situations almost to perfection.

The graphics of the game do seem dated often, and while it can show at times, it is never a hindrance to the game. Some areas are noticeably more bland, especially in the early stages of the game. But the characters and animations all look very good for the most part.

The character creation is well made, and I found it easy to forge a character to my liking. It allows you quite an array of options to help create the character to your liking, so you could easily spend a good amount of time creating one. I do wish it had a few more options, but this was more out of myself being picky and not a fault of Dragon Age.

Gameplay within Dragon Age is very old school in design. You select an enemy and your character will begin to attack them. You can choose other spells or types of attacks to use, but for the most part your character will just hack away until the enemy is dead if you so choose to. The rest of your party works on a tactics system that you can leave as default or set up to how you want them to react in battle. The tactics system is pretty deep with the many options you can choose for each member to do in certain situations.

For the most part this all works well, but some may wish for a more action oriented hack and slash model of gameplay.

I did find one major problem with the lack of being able to revive a fallen party member in battle unless you used a spell for it. I found myself extremely frustrated that once my healer(s) go down, I am on my own at this point struggling to micro-manage my party's health. Constantly switching between characters to make sure they heal becomes more of a chore, than strategy.

Overall, Dragon Age is another excellent role-playing game from Bioware, and fans of the developer or dark fantasy will find much to enjoy. With a deep, rich story that pulls you in by forcing you to make those tough and many times, critical decisions, the player will find themselves consumed in the world. Due to the effort put forth on story-telling, voice acting and character development, it is easy to forgive the graphical shortcomings. Be prepared to spend hours upon hours with this game if you want to squeeze every drop out of the lore. There are multiple endings, romances and plenty of side quests to keep you coming back for more and will hold you over until the inevitable sequel.

This review was based on the Xbox 360 version and was purchased as the Collector's Edition. The game was beaten in roughly 40 hours and my play through was as a Female Dalish Elf Rogue.