Life is full of choices. Any time we flip on the television or cook

dinner, we’re making a decision. What are we going to watch?

Will it be steak for dinner? Or pizza? Should I buy the PS3 or the Xbox

360?

We answer most of these questions in spontaneous choices that often

occur without much conscious thought, and yet many of our

life’s choices can alter our lives. Even something as simple

as watching TV might influence your future: Perhaps you’re so

intrigued by the latest iteration of Shark Week on the Discovery

Channel that you opt to go back to school to become a marine

biologist. These consequences occur on a near daily basis,

and everyone around you is tempered by your reputation earned through

your previous encounters and decisions.

But what if you could see what it could have been like? What if you

could replay your life, making different decisions along the way?

Perhaps if you’d been friends with different people in high

school, you could’ve been a straight "A" student? Or maybe

your

decision to get married early in life led to a very profitable

lifestyle, yet kept you from your dream of sailing around the world?

These are the sort of dilemmas that BioWare is hoping to give gamers in

their upcoming roleplaying game, Dragon

Age: Origins. While at GamesCom

2009, the Edmonton-based studio transported audiences of journalists to

the world of Ferelden – a dark, gritty world seeping with

cankerous outbreaks of a pestilence called “The

Blight.” It’s here that the gamer is placed, and

the character that you control exists as one of the lone saviors left

in a world almost without hope. Dispecable agents from all over

Ferelden are

trying to take advantage of the coming storm, and betrayals are

happening faster than you can blink. The demo began with a video

covering the basics of the world of Dragon Age, and two of Dragon

Age’s top developers lead the GamesCom 2009 adventures,

specifically

Lead Designer Mark Laidlaw and Global Product Manager David Silverman.

Both of these men are avid gamers – just like you and me

– and they wanted to ensure that players understand the sort

of

gravity that the gameplay within Dragon Age holds for potential fans.



“There’s hundreds of choices to make in Dragon

Age,” Silverman stated. “The cool thing about this

game is that every decision you make in the game has a rippling

consequence that will come back to haunt or help you.”

Now most people have seen choices in video games before, and they're

all over in

BioWare games. For roleplaying gamers especially, the notion of choice

isn’t anything new by any stretch of the imagination.

Even MMOs like Age

of Conan and Tabula

Rasa have used choice

and storytelling as one of their selling points. But the Dragon Age

developers are looking to do something more with their iteration on the

mechanics of decision making.

“What you’re going to see if the 2.0 version of

choice,” Silverman continued. “It’s

[asking the gamer] what they would do if their morality was brought

into

question. What do you do when there isn’t a clear good or bad

choice? When it’s not just a question of kicking kittens or

saving babies?”

“Even in the origin stories,” Laidlaw explained,

“you’ll find these sort of decisions to make. There

may be a lean to them one way or the other, but you can certainly

justify the things that you do.”

For the demonstration, Laidlaw and

Silverman dropped the audience into

one of those moral choices that will affect the rest of the game for

the player. And, as Laidlaw explained, the choice was far from clear

cut.

“That’s one of the great things about Dragon

Age,” Laidlaw continued. “There’s a gray

morality to it. There’s no good or evil slider.

There’s no nemesis twirling his moustache [to declare that

he’s evil].”

The scenario that the developers dropped us into is about 10-15 hours

into the game according to Laidlaw and Silverman, depending upon how

the gamers push through the content. The audience found itself facing

the hero’s party, which included Morrigan, Wynne, and

Leliana. The hero was obviously a warrior of some sort, draped as he

was with a thick suit of plate mail and wielding a massive sword.

Again, the developers explained that the group was inside of an

important religious temple and was about to discover an incredibly

important religious artifact known as the Urn of Sacred Ashes, an item

thought to have been lost by the religious order known as the Chantry

of Andraste. The party had been sent to this location in order to heal

an important ally, Arl Eamon, and thus use his armies in the fight

against the Blight.

After making it through a rabid cult and a series of tests known as The

Gauntlet, the character stands in front of the Urn of Sacred Ashes and

that’s where the player’s choice suddenly jumps to

the forefront in a bold and stunning way. As the character stands over

the urn, both Wynne and Leliana proclaim their awe at being in the

presence of such a mighty item. On the other hand, Morrigan issues a

snide comment, clearly not impressed with such religious idols.

“This is really like finding the Holy Grail of Dragon

Age,” Silverman states. “[To Wynne and Leliana]

this is the discovery of a lifetime. They thought it was lost

forever.”

In this particular version of events, Silverman had our character take

a pinch of the ashes to hopefully heal Arl Eamon, but this leads him to

the moral dilemma surrounding what then to do with the Urn of Sacred

Ashes. Silverman presented one particular argument –

don’t worry you’ll hear about another version from

Laidlaw – but it’s important to note that

everything from party composition to character’s relationship

with the main character will influence how these sort of events play

out.

“So what do we do with the ashes?” Silverman asked.

“This is an incredibly powerful artifact. Not only does it

have significant religious benefits and effects, but it also has

practical magical purposes as well. These ashes can cure anything and

essentially grant you everlasting life. The Urn can make you

immortal.”

Silverman went on to explain that the Blight is on the move and

they’re amassing to destroy every living thing on Ferelden.

What happens if they got ahold of the sacred urn and the ashes within

it? You’d never be able to defeat the Blight, even with an

army of a half dozen nations. “That’s a high price

to pay to keep an object sitting around in a nice temple,”

Silverman said. “And what if man gets corrupted? You all saw

what happened in Lord of the Rings. Here’s a whole urn full

of sacred ashes where one flake of this stuff can cure a king where

none of the most powerful mages from across the land can do

it.”

With Silverman’s point of view

in mind, the character opted

to destroy the rest of the Urn of Sacred Ashes by dumping

dragon’s blood into the container. It may be a despicable

act, but surely the ends justify the means, right?

Almost as soon as the character begins to pour the blood into the urn,

both Wynne and Leliana nearly jump out of their skins. They

can’t believe what you’ve just done – two

of your very own party members – and it’s up to the

player to try to convince them that what you’ve done is the

right way to do things.

Unfortunately, things don't go so well for the character in the game.

Both

Wynne and Leliana are unable to come to grips with the situation, and

the temple’s immortal Guardian declares that

“Andraste must be avenged!” and lights into the

fight as well. You still have one ally on your side, the ever lovable

Morrigan, and the two remaining party members must fight off the three

religious zealots. By the end of the battle, you’ve massacred

two of your former party members, leaving them to rot on the stone

floor of the temple while you go on your merry way with only Morrigan

in tow.

“That didn’t turn out quite the way you

would’ve hoped,” Silverman states with a laugh.

“But it’s clear that your party members in Dragon

Age have a soul. They have their own emotions, their own motives, and

their own moral compasses. I had to make the moral choice that

– for the greater good – it was better to destroy

these ashes. Both Leliana and Wynne were willing to sacrifice their

own lives for what they believed in, which was saving this

urn.”

After that encounter, there was one more

person Morrigan and our

character had to talk to, the man who spent half his life trying to

find the Urn of Sacred Ashes. With the blood of our allies still

covering our bodies, Morrigan and the main character begin conversing

with him, hopefully to explain what happened and keep it secret.

But nothing can go according to plan. The religious scholar finds out

that we’ve found the urn and begins to make plans to tell

other pilgrims about the tale. Our character, on the other hand, wants

to keep it a secret and not turn the temple into Disneyland. Aside from

the ashes being destroyed, there’s a whole cult outside of

the temple that tries to kill anything that enters the area, so

it’s not exactly the safest place for pilgrims to be

meandering about. While the character tries to explain that it must be

kept from the public, the scholar again states that he’ll

spread the word “or die trying.”



Which is exactly what happens.

I’m not going to give away the awesome death scene, but it

was one of the more surprising ways to

kill a man that has his back turned. Let’s just say the

audience laughed and then gave out a shocked groan.

“That’s probably the coolest death in the

game” Silverman finished.

With the blood of three innocent victims on our character’s

hands, this version of the demo finishes. Of course, Silverman explains

that the developers don’t have time to show us everything

that might have happened if we didn’t destroy the ashes in

the urn. Perhaps the darkspawn get ahold of the ashes? What if their

armies were then unstoppable thanks to our choice?

“The ends justify the means,” Silverman echoes.

“And now we’re one step closer to defeating the

Blight. This was clearly the right choice”

Of course, Laidlaw wasn’t so

convinced.

“Or was it [the right choice]?” he asks.

“That’s the question. Taken from a completely

different point of view, going through the same sequence of events

could be completed very differently. The nice thing about

David’s argument is that it’s very compelling and

emotional… but it’s also a bit hyperbolic and full

of crap.”

And so the demonstration restarts just before the Urn of Sacred Ashes.

In Laidlaw’s version of the demonstration, his character

believe that he is not just a Grey Warden that has to stop the Blight

at all costs, but he’s there to protect the world from the

spread of evil.

Thus we’re thrust back into the Gauntlet at the end of the

third trial, and the test asks our party to undertake a true

“leap of faith.” It’s very much an ode to

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in that the characters are asked to

walk through fire without their armor or weapons strapped to their

backs.

Of course, Laidlaw’s character immediately strips down to his

skivvies and so does his party (which is quite compelling in a group of

females). In this act, Laidlaw truly shows his characters devotion and

comes away unscathed. He then has the character ascend the steps and

stare down at the alter.

“Contrary to what David felt at this point,”

Laidlaw states, “my character is feeling that he’s

staring down at what the Wardens represent in the world.

They’re not just ridiculous butt kickers that can kill

thousands of darkspawn. Yes they can do that, but is that the important

part to the people?”

“No!” Laidlaw continues. “The important

part of the Wardens is that they represent hope. The chance that they

[might get through the Blight]. We’re not thinking,

let’s destroy it. On the contrary, people need hope as badly

as anything, and that’s what this represents.”

And so, Laidlaw’s character merely takes a pinch of the ashes

and then proceeds to tell the scholar outside that he also wishes to

open the temple up to pilgrims. He’s not concerned about

their lives coming to the temple, because his character will take the

time to clear a path for those individuals.

All rhetoric aside, there truly is a tone that players can adopt for

their characters in Dragon Age. While Silverman’s character

was playing a darker path than Laidlaw’s, both men were able

to evoke the emotions of their characters into the game itself. Unlike

many of the games that have come in the past, the advancements in

graphics over the last few years truly make it easy to see the results

of your choices on the people around you.

When you first walk up to the Urn of Sacred Ashes, the facial

expressions and voice work with Wynne and Leliana make it

explicitly clear that they have an almost fanatical reverence for this

object. Even if you’re playing a darker character,

it’s easy to feel a slight twinge of guilt when you pour the

dragon’s blood into the urn. And when you do – or

don’t – you immediately know how your actions have

affected your standing with your two religious compatriots. I believe

Leliana even calls your character – owing to her bardic

background – a "fiend."

Unlike the storytelling in previous BioWare games, Dragon Age: Origins

uses every tool that it can to push the story toward the player. From

the cinematic angles to the variety of choices in front of the player,

there’s a scale to the game that seems incredibly compelling.

And it gets even better. After the demonstration was over, Laidlaw and

Silverman took a few minutes to discuss the “what

ifs” to this scenario. Although the demonstration showed a

group composed of three women, Laidlaw stated that even if Leliana and

Wynne aren’t in the party with the character when he makes

his choice, they’ll still react to that decision when the

character chooses to put them back into the party. The repercussions of

the event are felt throughout Ferelden, and it’d be

inappropriate for the two most religious members of the adventuring

troupe to ignore the blasphemous act.

That said, Laidlaw also suggested that the outcome with Wynne and

Leliana can end differently depending on their approval rating with

the main character. Laidlaw wouldn’t go into specifics, but

if you’ve earned their trust, perhaps they can be convinced

that destroying the Urn of Sacred Ashes was the way to go.

The possibilities – if BioWare took the time to put them into

the game – are endless. The developers at BioWare have never

let me down before, and I don’t imagine they’ll

start a new trend with their latest addition to the fantasy RPG market.

And that's not all folks! At the end of the demo, the group encountered

a....*gasp*......dragon. But space here is limited, so make sure you

tune back in tomorrow for the rest of the story!