Review: Dragon Age: Origins

BioWare is known for its sci-fi role playing games, but the developer has its humble roots in the medieval RPG. And that’s the direction the company has gone for its newest game, Dragon Age: Origins… back to its roots.

The game has been billed a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate. The character you play is a Grey Warden, charged with protecting Ferelden from the fearsome Darkspawn. The main quest involves traveling around the nation of Ferelden to cobble enough allies from the Dwarves, Elves, and Humans to form an army to fight a Darkspawn Blight–a threat that hasn’t been seen in generations. Along the way you’ll also discover the delightful idiosyncrasies of Ferelden, and maybe, just maybe, fall in love. Or just get lucky for one night.

For many RPG fans, just seeing the words BioWare and RPG is enough to start planning excuses for a sick day. Should you start familiarizing yourself with H1N1 symptoms to fake out your boss? Read on.

The Story
Dragon Age shares a lot of narrative similarities with Lord of the Rings. But the feel of the world is more aligned with George R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire. No white-bearded wizard will arrive to save the world – it’s going to be a long and messy slog to fix this realm.

Those charged with kicking Darkspawn ass are the Grey Wardens. These guardians had their heyday a few hundred years ago when they defeated the last Darkspawn blight. But as time passed, people stopped caring about the Grey Wardens or Darkspawn anymore. Now that the Darkspawn are popping up again, everyone wants the Grey Wardens to make it better… just with fewer people and less resources.

A cool part of the game is that rather than picking your character’s back story, you get to play it. The origin story is based on race (Human, Dwarf, or Elf) and then class (mage, warrior, or rogue). Note that Dwarves cannot be mages. The origin story also influences how party members and NPCs react to you and which dialogue choices appear.

The character creation process isn’t anything new. You go through the bigger-eyes-smaller-nose dance in an attempt to create something not too ugly since you’ll be looking at it for hours. I decided to play as a female Dwarven noble.

The character customization is fairly basic

The story begins (your story will be different depending on the character class you choose) the night before your first command to fight the Darkspawn on the Deep Roads. To celebrate, your father is holding a feast and also a Proving, where other dwarves can fight for honour. You also meet your two brothers, Trian and Bhalen. Trian is obviously ambitious and wants to commit some sibilicide because the dwarf citizens appreciate your character more and may select you to ascend to the throne. So you conspire with Bhalen to ambush Trian in the Deep Roads. But things go wrong and you’re booted out the door. Luckily, the Grey Wardens don’t mind screwups, and you join their thin ranks.

It’s a nifty way to familiarize yourself with your background and is obviously more fun than selecting a pre-crafted back story from a menu.

The Gameplay

For gamers expecting Mass Effect style gamplay, hold it right there. Dragon Age plays quite different, at least when it comes to battle. The fighting mechanics are somewhat automated. Once you chose the enemy you want to attack by highlighting them on the screen, your character goes to town and continues to attack until that enemy is either dead, or you chose to attack a different enemy. You can sit back and watch the action, without having to press another button. The only exception is when you want to perform special maneuvers or spells. These can be pulled off by pressing pre-assigned buttons during combat. It’s a different fighting style that can take some getting used to, and some will be disappointed.

Personally I don’t have a background of PC RPGs, so I wasn’t sure if I could get the hang of combat. But I appreciate that everyone’s tactics can be so customizable. If you’re like me and just want to get in there and hack away, you can easily customize your party members’ behavior with pre-defined actions like aggressive, passive, or ranged, and get back to the killing. However, if you like to micromanage, Dragon Age kindly obliges you. There are several slots available (a number which can increase if you assign a point to that characteristic) where you can define a behavior based on an event or a status. For example, you can define a tactic where a character will use a healing poultice if his health is below 25%. Customizing and building up your characters can be confusing for the first little while. I wish there had been more of a tutorial on that aspect in the game.

Once you select which enemy you wish to attack, you can sit back and watch the action take place

Unlike previous BioWare games, your choices in the world of Ferelden are not seen as good or evil. Sometimes your actions can influence those in your party. Choosing to look for a lost child may increase one party member’s agreeability toward you but decrease your standing in the eyes of another. You can also change party members’ opinions of you by asking about their life story. What’s different this time is that your reaction to their story also changes their disposition towards you. At this point, it looks like I’ll get to do the dragon hokeypokey with Alistair but not with Morrigan because just I can’t seem to please her (I know… we’re just so hard to please). But there’s always gifts to curry favour with those you’ve pissed off.

One character of note is your dog: a Mabari war hound. As an aside, what is it with recent RPGs including a dog? Fable, Fallout 3, and now Dragon Age. Thankfully, your dog (naming rights included; I called him Mayor McBitey) is actually useful and won’t die on you when things get tough. He has suitable combat skills and a decent life bar. He (or she, video game genitalia is vague and pixelated) can also fetch for you and sometimes comes back with useful weapons or a gift, like a dirty pair of pantaloons. Thanks, Mayor McBitey.

Oh, and I can’t forget about the side quests. No RPG is complete without side quests. Yes, they are available and, mostly avoid the fetch-five-items syndrome. They are actually related to the main quest but they can be easily ignored if you choose.

The Dialogue
Expressive and emotional, the voice work in BioWare games have always been solid. Dragon Age is no different. While there’s a tendency for many characters to have an English accent, voices for the main party characters and NPCs are varied.

The party members that I’ve collected so far–there are nine in total–all have interesting backgrounds and different personalities. Often, when running around in the world, the other party members will banter with each other. For example: Morrigan , the witch from the Wilds, does not really get along with Alistair so the ensuing conversations are entertaining, so pay attention and enjoy.

Choose whatever response you'd like, just don't expect to hear your character say anything aloud

There are two noticeable things missing in this title: the Mass Effect dialogue wheel and your character’s voice.

The dialogue wheel in Mass Effect was a great innovation for RPGs. Instead of just reading what your character would say, you could select a short phrase that contained the sentiment of the statement. With Dragon Age, you’re back to reading major verbiage. You select your characters response from a list that appears on the screen.  It feels like a step back when BioWare had already made such a great leap forward.

Then there’s your character’s voice, or lack there of. I know BioWare isn’t beholden to a standard game template but one of the many joys of Mass Effect was hearing your character speak the dialogue you had chosen. It was disempowering not to hear my character’s voice and have my male companion reinterpret it. This is especially apparent in later dialogue scenes. The only way your character participates is by looking at who is speaking at the time. And as a dwarf it feels like the characters are talking over your head, literally and figuratively.

The Look
This is where Dragon Age falls down/through the stairs. I really enjoyed the story, the characters are interesting, and the world and its culture was different. But then I encountered the first major battle as a Grey Warden. I was assigned to be in a tower to light a fire at the right time to signal the cavalry charge. So cut from gameplay to a pre-rendered cinematic: it’s very dramatic. It’s like Helm’s Deep but, in this world, it’s probably going to go all to shit because Gandalf is not going to ride in on his white horse. Obviously, this has potential to be very heroic, but as I climb up the stairs I see the archers floating in the air because the bridge has not appeared yet. I laughed (it looks truly ridiculous) and was taken out of the mood the game was trying to create.

Watch out for disappearing objects in cinematic scenes

Disappearing objects and NPCs are very common in non-pre-rendered cinematic scenes. I saw a character reaching for a sword that never appeared and people popping in and out of the background as I listened to someone speak. As well, the textures never load fully in most areas, so I was constantly seeing bushes and trees appear and disappear as I walked around. Often, NPCs can be standing physically in a chair, bed, or rug. It’s sloppy work and disappointing BioWare couldn’t put the final polish on.

Despite the less than stellar graphics I must point out, the frame rate doesn’t stutter when lots of Darkspawn are around and magic missiles are flying through the air. Some of the major battle scenes actually play quite smoothly.

The Bottom Line

With the release of Dragon Age, BioWare is now dividing its RPG-playing demographics. For those who like a quick paced sci-fi shooter, you have Mass Effect. And for those with a hankering for old-school RPGs that focus on team tactics, you now have Dragon Age. The trick is to create a game that either genre fan could play but still retain enough depth to interest the hard core folk. Personally, I enjoyed Mass Effect more, but I liked Dragon Age’s promising story and world building. Sure the graphics may not be up to par, but that’s not enough to prevent me from continuing to play for many hours to come.

The Good
BioWare’s high standard for voice work and dialogue
Good world building
Side quests that aren’t too annoying

The Bad
Unpolished graphics
Combat tactics and character customization may be too deep for some
Lack of main character voiceover

Statistics
Played on a PS3. Selected the female Dwarven noble. Played for 10 hours and 43 minutes. Explored 19% of the world.

UPDATE: Natalie has now finished Dragon Age: Origins. To see her afterthoughts click here