Dragon Age: Origins
Bioware has done it again! They have pumped out yet another RPG set in its own story, or universe. This time, the story is placed in the land of Ferelden, at the onset of the 5th Blight. The game gives you a few controls over appearance, class, and race. Once these are selected, you need to get ready for the innovative battle system. Also you, the player, will be given several choices throughout the game, affecting the end and the way other characters perceive you. This leads to 27 different endings, and several charactor-specific stories. However, even after the game is over, there’s always more to explore in Dragon Age: Origins.
One important part of any game is character creation, and customization. The latter, character customization, gives the gamer a feeling of more control, and flexibility of how their character looks. Some will opt to try to reflect themselves in their characters, while others may try to go for a macho look. Images of a tiny boy controlling a massive knight go through my head. Dragon Age does give you the ability to customize your character looks. However, they are disappointing for what they could have been. When I loaded up the game on the PS3, I was ready to get underway and dive into the story. When the character screen came up, I played around with it for a little bit, but found it somewhat a disappointment. It felt laggy as I would try changing color skin, and it took a second or two before I realized it had changed. Overall, even looking past the strange lag, character customization actually felt like a dumbed down charactor creator of NeverWinter Nights. For the rest of the character creation, you get the option of race and class. The twist here, which was enjoyed, was that depending on your race and class, you would have one to two hooks, or ‘origins.’ These origins work like starting zones. They give you ample time to get use to the control, while giving you story about your own character, which leads to a better relation to the character.
The controls were quite interesting. As a mage, the controls felt fluid, and fun. Several others have stated that it is not so with the warrior or rogue. On a PS3 controller, Square, Triangle, and Circle have abilities hotkeyed to them. By holding down R2, it will switch to three different hotkeys. This gives you the ability to quickly call upon 6 abilities, which is up to you to assign. There are definitely more than six abilities though, and you will constantly be bringing up the spellbook to call upon other abilites. Once familiar with the spellbook, it takes about two seconds to use an ability not hotkeyed. This speed helps when the enemy swarms you, and you need to quickly get off a spell that could help against the enemy. The combat system reminds me of Knights of the Old Republic. If a character falls during battle, they stay unconscious until all enemies are disposed of. They then get back up with a little bit of health. In the event that you fall, you will automatically be switched to one of three other characters in your party. You don’t have to wait until fallen to switch characters though. You can quickly switch between characters by using the R1 or L1 buttons.
Unlike Mass Effect, or KoToR, there is no good-bad system. This can easily be explained by several of DA’s commercials saying, “Not all heroes are pure.” Instead, there is an approval rating system that each character totes underneath their character on the character page. Certain actions you do throughout the game will cause this scale to shift for the characters in your party. However, personal communication with the different characters can help them forgive you if you did something naughty to them, or someone else. If you don’t feel like talking, then figure out what type of gifts they like. Gifts can be picked up, and purchased throughout the game. They can either be sold, or given to other characters which will raise their approval rating automatically. However, some gifts do create special dialogue, as that specific gift pertains to that character in someway.
After all of these decisions that you make throughout the game, they all come back to you in the end. The game can be said to have either four, or 27 different endings. This revolves around the trophies/achievements you get for choosing a certain choice towards the end of the game involving the character, Morrigan. After the game there is a slideshow, yes, a slideshow, of what our heroes are doing now. Depending on your choices, it will say different things. This is the part where the 27 endings to comes into play. There are so many different things that can happen from your choices that affects the slideshow ending.
Once the game is beaten, it loads your character up right before the point of no return in the main storyline. Bioware gives a short thank you note for playing, and encourages you to do side quests to continue enjoying the game. However, what they really do is set you up in a position to play Downloadable Content(DLC). One example of DLC is Warden’s Keep. The Grey Wardens had a keep that they used as a base, but lost control of it. By purchasing, and downloading this content, you can explore the Keep, as well as receive new items, and armor to continue to upgrade your account. Developers are able to create their own DLC, and distribute it to players. As far as I know, this is only available on the PC as of now. I haven’t seen any hint of it happening on the PS.net yet. If it does open the 3rd party DLC for DA, I will let you know.
In the end, the game was great. Story, character development, and play were great. With all the endings created for you, there is plenty of room for replay value. I hope you enjoy the game if you decide to get it, and please share your ending with us on our Forum.
I’d love to check it out. Unfortunately it would take me years to beat it with the available gaming time I have now. I will live vicariously through others I guess. I have a few months to figure out how to make enough time for Mass Effect 2 though.
Nice review. My feelings about the game are similar. I did play it on the PC however and so my experience was slightly different. I didn’t really ever have to use my spell book in combat because I had enough hot-keys on my keyboard to suffice. I can definitely tell that this engine used to make the game is past it’s prime. I can also agree that I was a bit disappointed in the character creation overall.
Solid 4.5 out of 5 from me.