November 17, 2009
Filed under Games, Xbox 360, featured
Dragon Age: Origins
Written by Mark | Contact this author
With it’s familiar and overused tolkienesque setting, my initial impression about the up and coming title Dragon Age: Origins was a bit skeptical, I wasn’t sure if even Bioware had the ability to make this world feel “fresh” to me or not. However, after my fantastic experience with Bioware’s last title “Mass Effect” I was more then willing to put my faith in this company and hope for the best out of this purchase. I’m Glad I did. Dragon age is an experience to be had, and one of the few Role Playing Games to Truly live up to its name.
The most notable thing about Dragon Age is its cast of characters. Each are so unique with their own habits, thoughts, and feelings. A character in Dragon Age will do more then just disagree if they do not like your decision, they will go as far as to fight you over it, or even leave the party for good (My goody-two-shoes character finally chased off Morrigan near the end). Unlike previous titles your character does not have a “good” or “evil” reputation, but more a reputation with the cast of characters you happen to be traveling with, the decisions you make will influence how much they love… or hate you. It really is a remarkable system that leaves you making decisions based on how you think the people around you will react to them. Yes, Dragon Age makes you succumb to peer pressure.
Don't worry, there's still plenty of bow-chica-waka despite the nagging.
You’ll Also note while playing this game that a lot of decisions your character makes are quite difficult, there is no obvious “right” or “wrong” but rather a grey area of decision making that allows you to shape your world accordingly to what you (and the people you choose to travel with) think is the right thing to do. I frequently found myself sitting there for several minutes weighing my options at many of the pinnacle moments in the story. These decisions and the characters around them really brought the story to life.
The Battle system is actually incredibly intricate and quite overwhelming at first. You’ll have full control of stats and skills over your class (warrior, rogue, mage) and that of your teammates. The skill trees are almost MMORPG-like in depth, allowing several different paths for each class, there are also hidden skill trees that you can unlock as you progress. You can switch between characters and almost flawlessly micromanage every aspect of the fight. As one might think, doing so would make the fights incredibly long. Thankfully the AI for your teammates is surprisingly smart, and you can program their tactics to your liking to cater to your needs. Once you get past the initial shock of seeing the menu for the first time, you’ll eventually get the hang of things and find the system quite enjoyable.
Don't forget the blood.. so much blood...
Graphics may be one of the games only major flaws. This game was designed for the PC and did not port as well for the 360, things do not appear very crisp and the textures at times don’t seem to render correctly, looking blurred and downright ugly. The basic design of many of the levels also seemed un-inspired and not unlike every other fantasy game I’ve seen. But on presentation, graphics were the only area that suffered. The music and voice acting were truly superb. It did not surprise to me to see hundreds of names fly by under the “voice actors” part of the credits, the amount of people and sheer quality of the voice acting was just incredible. I think Bioware always gets it right here, since we are all aware that bad voice acting can pretty much ruin a character (FFX anybody?). The music for the tale just fits perfectly into each little moment, never brash, just right.
Everything you saw in the commercial was a LIE!
The graphical reality was a bit more lackluster..
There were a few apparent bugs in Dragon Age that bothered me. I managed to get stuck in the floor once, unable to do anything, even open a menu. Through sheer luck one of my characters just so happened to gain a level right before getting stuck, and it was only initiating that level up process that got me unstuck. There were also issues with timing, sometimes after talking to a character in a specific scene you just needed to wait 2-5 minutes for things to move on, if you talked to the character immediately afterwards, you might end up repeating the whole sequence again. The looting issue was also a bit of a pain as you’d end up waiting several minutes for your kills to “sparkle” so you could pick up anything they might have dropped, the corpses never expired however, so I usually remedied this by coming back later and looting the bodies. I don’t remember seeing this many bugs in Mass Effect, so I have to wonder if Electronic Arts trademark “release bullying” is to blame for these bugs. Luckily nothing was game-breaking, so it was all forgivable in light of what a fantastic game this was.
Dragon Age is so very close to a 10 for me, but it was just found lacking in a few areas, and perhaps it was the washed and tired fantasy world that just fails to wow me anymore. However, this may be the freshest take on the traditional medieval fantasy tale I’ve ever played. Biowares truly excellent grasp of character design and development is to thank for that. I am already getting ready to start my second playthrough to experience different characters and difference choices, and it feels like it will be a very different game for me the second time around, Dragon Age may very well have more replay value then any other of Bioware’s games to date. I think its safe to say that this game is easily the best RPG of 2009.
I pretty much have to agree with everything here. At first, I was a bit disappointed in the lack of character creation beyond looks, but after getting into the game and seeing all the customization there, I got over it. The graphics didn’t look as pretty as I thought they would, but again, that’s a forgivable issue. Especially after hearing some of the amazing voice acting (it seems the entire cast of Star Trek Voyager is in the game somewhere). I have found a few of the combats to be retardedly difficult, requiring multiple attempts from different angles and strategies, but perhaps that’s what the devs wanted (and I’m playing as a rogue, which seems a bit underpowered). I won’t switch the difficulty to casual, though. I still have my pride.
i have no pride when it comes to RPG’s, as soon as i saw the words “friendly fire” i went straight to casual. I cannot imagine what hell any mages playing on normal or higher might be going through right now..
Oh believe me… playing normal with a mage is a bitch. That friendly fire makes you hate the AI even more because they don’t have the common sense that when I am controlling a large group of enemies… not to run into the large hail storm and die… yeah so it is a pain but I have to say that I am enjoying the PC version incredibly and I did notice the significant difference in graphics in the PC version vs. the 360. This game really was made for the computer.
I found playing the a mage to be the easiest, even with friendly fire. With a little forethought and timing virtually every engagement can be completed with just your mage dealing damage and the rest of your party on hold in the rear–this applies once you pick up enough AOE spells. My only real complaint about the game is that the melee classes are horribly underpowered (or perhaps the mage is horribly overpowered), leading to only one real party choice: tank, healer, rogue, mage. Any other party combination just doesn’t make sense as it only makes the game more difficult, and not in a good way. My only other complaint is the lack of enough content–basically I enjoyed the game so much I was really crestfallen when it ended.
You know, I kinda liked the idea of treating the combat magic and the healing magic the same, rather than getting the ol’ DnD treatment and having them as completely different types of magic with characters only being able to use one of each (cross-classing aside). This way you end up not having your mages fall into the archetypes of healer and combat mage. They can both be healers, or combat mages, or both.
Bioware certainly did open up all the doors for mages with this game–building an arcane warrior/blood mage with heavy investment in the spirit tree is just too much fun. It’s just sad that the traditional melee classes didn’t receive the same attention and love that the mage obviously did.
Agreed. There are too many levels with the melee characters where I just go “meh” when leveling up the talents.
Yes… that is for sure. It definitely got a lot easier once I got my big blasty spells from hell. But right now I am arcane warrior/blood and there really isn’t anything like a blood mage wearing full plate… nothing at all.
on my second playthrough, this time as a mage.. curious if i should go arcane warrior/blood mage or arcane warrior/spirit healer.
I can see the sprit healer as being impossible to kill.. but the blood mage would probably be more fun.
yeah, there is SOOO much more to mages in this game then any other class, wtf!
It all depends if you want the circle’s help or the Templar’s. If you want the mages at the end game then don’t bother going spirit healer and pick up Wynne, if not kill her and all the other mages when you do the tower quest and build your mage as a healer–this will add the Templar’s as one of your armies. The downside to killing Wynne is that neither Alistair or Leliana will approve of ganking an old woman–Morrigan loves it, but she is no substitute for a tank and a rogue. Similar problems arise if you want to steal a pinch of Andraste’s ashes and then destroy the rest; both Leliana and Wynne will attack you in that event but you do get to learn the Reaver warrior sub-class. The major downside to the limited number of NPC party characters in the game is that you pretty much have to keep Alistair/Wynne/Leliana happy to complete the game. It seems like you’re out of luck if you want to commit foul deeds instead of being the traditional “good guy”.
i was thinking more of traveling with sten/morrigan/zevran when trying to commit the evilest of deeds.. I cant remember if any any time they force characters onto your party. Ok, i think they force allistair a few times..
And Wynne if you try to save the tower.
I always try to avoid too much sausage in my party so Sten and Zevran have never really appealed–plus Sten is a two-hand warrior and they piss me off in this game with how random their hits are.
i hear you there, i just want to travel with bastards who will approve of my evil ways. that and sten can be re-programmed, he’ll still have a few wasted talents but you can always drive him back towards tank.
It would be nice if you could choose the build of the NPC’s when they join your party, and maybe even have your relationship level influence their alignment–corrupting Leliana and making her totally evil would provide hours of entertainment.
my current lineup consists of Shale, Zevran, and Morrigan.
For those who don’t have the DLC, i highly recommend getting it just for Shale, it doesn’t get much better then a heartless golum who just wants nothing more then the highest body count possible. That and he is without a doubt the hardest hitting character in the game.
I haven’t given Shale a try yet. It’s interesting that he can fill any roll–healer/tank/melee or ranged dps.
i don’t remember any healing abilities for shale, mainly tank and dps. Sure hits like a truck though, and his attitude is an asset to your “evil deeds” party.
the funny part is I found Morrigan to be the most powerful. Shale was still pretty good though. The cool part is he totally does have ranged dps by throwing big rocks. That makes me a little happy.
Wow I am addicted to this game. I have already put in 26 hours in the three days I have played the game, not in a row unfortunately.
With this game I decided to try to not play as the goody too shoes for the first time. Playing as a racist elf from the ghetto without morels has been quite a challenge for me. I keep wanting to choose the path of least death and mitigation and sometimes I give in, but I am still having a great time. I can’t believe I was able to sleep with another dudes dream girl and tell him I just was breaking her in for him.
Sometimes I don’t choose the darkest shade of gray so I can get extra gold or a chance to improve my party’s opinion of me. I’m loving it.
One problem I have with the game is that I am lazy and didn’t set up the tactical slots for my party and I rely on the AI with the presets. There has only been one part of the game during a side quest I had to set up my party to use ranged attacks, because my party was otherwise not powerful enough at that time. Hint: It has to do with Morrigan and she is currently the only mage I have.
Did you guys spend a lot of time setting up tactics? Any recommendations if you did?
nuts to tactics, me big tank, just beat shit down until it dies.. who cares about my party?
seriously, my party died in the first few seconds of the final battle, and i spent the next 15 minutes slowly eating away at its hp..
the automatic setup actually worked for most fights, the ones that didn’t.. i just picked up the slack..
i think joe might have spent some time playing around with tactics though..
i’m too excited for mass effect 2 to even pick up another RPG right now.. i know i’m just going to outright abandon it in 21 days if i do..
Mark. Did you hear that DA is going to have an expansion in March.
Check out: http://dragonage.bioware.com/awakening
I think between this game and Mass Effect 2 Bioware is going to take most of our gaming money in 2010.
Yeah, my first play through was with a rogue, so I didn’t get the luxury of tanking; I was completely dependent on my party. Using the tactics slots to assist your AI does help a bit, but on the really hard fights, I found myself micromanaging nearly every attack.
Dave, yeah i read about the expansion recently, i fact i’ll be including that in this months RPG, coming soon! perhaps even today..
Oh God. I about cried last night. I made a choice that turned on of my party members from in love with me to against me. I ended up killing the party member, but decided I couldn’t continue. I reloaded the game from an older save and changed my party before making the decision again. Wow I can’t believe how powerful this game is. If the game wasn’t full of bugs I might wish that it didn’t allow multiple saves to force you to stick with your decisions.
This game is crack, I ended up going to sleep at 3am, on a work night!
ahh Bioware, the one company that manages to get male players to make male characters.. because no guy wants to play a chick seducing a dude..
well.. maybe a chick seducing a chick..
hmm.. guess i need to retract my statement..
^^ I think a lot of people did that in Mass Effect. But Bioware lets a dude seduce a dude in Dragon Age….. Or so I’ve heard… Er… Um… Yeah.
word is the assassin swings both ways,
i have no desire to test that theory..
So, if I remember correctly in the first Fable you could have a husband. Although he wouldn’t have the little love making giggles and cutesy phrases that a wife had when going to bed together. I was really disappointed now that I remember
I never tried in Fable 2, but I remember a lot of the guys flirting with my character.
Just finished the game. I’m wondering if I should restart and play as a different race. Hum, not much time till Mass Effect 2 comes out.
no shit! its really hard to pick up anything at this point while anticipating Mass Effect 2
i restarted as a different race, but stopped playing about halfway though. i’m sure i’ll pick it up and finish eventually, but i found myself rushing through it and this i really a game you want to take your time with and savor “the little things”
No “Sands of Destruction?”
it appears sands of destruction may be a long game, so i am wanting to tackle something short instead and try and fit that puppy inbetween mass effect and final fantasy XIII
although.. i may just give in and start playing it anyways.. we’ll see..