Another great Bioware RPG.
It's story is set in a medieval age and creatures known as 'darkspawn' begin showing up and swarm the world and want to kill everything in their path.The times throughout history when the darkspawn show up is refered to as a 'blight' and obviously another blight is occuring.Special warriors are choosen to fight against the dark spawn and they're refer to as Grey Warden and as you probably guessed,your character will become a grey warden.
The main reason I was the slightest bit interested in Dragon Age Origin's story is because some of the story elements for the the human royal and city elf character are quite emotional(I don't want to spoil them for you,but you will see why)and there's a few other substories that relate to the party members,NPCs or different races/factions in the world that I found interesting or emotional but they're either short lived or are too few and far between compared to the rest of the substories and the cliche main story.
As you've probably heard,you can choose to play as a character from different races/factions and each race/faction has it's own unique story elements.You can play as a human royal,city elf,forest elf,dwarf noble,dwarf commoner or magi.They all have different cultural aspects or very diverse lifestyles.However,even though each race/faction has their own story unique story elements,the unique elements of their story path will be shown at the start of the game,as a way to introduce that character and their culture to you but for the most part the stories for the human royal,city elf,forest elf,dwarf noble,dwarf commoner or magi are the same.
Like with other popular Bioware RPGs,Dragon Age Origins allows you to choose what you want to say to certain characters at different times,which affects your relationship with certain characters.You can create romance or have sex with a certain character or ruin your chances of romance/having sex with a certain character by saying something another character likes/dislikes or it could just result in receiving either a happy or angry response from another character or depending on what you say can result in a peaceful ending to a dispute or it can create or cause even more violence.I must admit I found it fun when some of my enemies wanted to surrender after they realized they were no match for my party but I refused their surrender and butchered them.Or when I insulted certain people just to annoy them and to get a displeased/angry response from them.
You can also make decisions and decisions you make can result in your party members dying and some decisions are not black and white and you will need to choose to aid one faction even though both factions make compelling arguements of why you should help them.
SPOILER
There's a story segment when you'll need to decide whether to save a child who's possessed by a demon which will mean your party will need to go on a time-consuming quest or to kill the child to stop the demon so it can save your party time and give them more time to save the world.
END OF SPOILER
How much a character likes/dislikes you is shown on a certain bar.I like how making a decision might make certain party members like you more but certain party members will dislike you more for making that decision.Also,creating romance isn't as easy as it sounds because saying the wrong thing can make a character dislike you more and you don't get a second chance at saying certain things and you have a limited amount of conversation opportunites to create romance with a character,but you can choose to go on sidequests that relates to that character and if you complete it it will give a big jump in how much they like you or you can buy them gifts but you can buy them the same gift twice and there's a limited amount of gifts you can give them.
The battle system is like a mixture of turn-based and real-time.It's similar to the battle system used for the Star Wars KoToR games.The battle system for the SW KoToR games was good for it's time,but it felt dated when I used it for Dragon Age Origins because it felt slow and repetitive.Other modern turn-based RPGs have used combo systems in their battle systems to make their battle systems feel fresh and there's modern action-RPGs with fun battle systems but unfortunately,Dragon Age Origin's battle system isn't anything special,but I'm not saying it's bad either because it's battle system works and is not broken but it feels dated to me and would be like reusing FFVII's battle system for a new FF game.
The micromanagement for the battle system is broken and useless because if I tell my party memebers to move to a certain place,they won't do it.For example,if I want my certain party members to move to a certain place so they can be a safe distance from enemy attacks and so they can use a bow to fire arrows at the enemies,they won't listen to my commands and it means I'll need to use healing potions to keep them alive.The only way I can successfully instruct my party members to stand a distance away from the enemies and to use ranged attacks on the enemies is if I insturct them to do so before they carelessly run away and start attacking enemies upclose.
But,at least the gameplay will allow you to battle giant dragons and you can play dress up with different types of clothing and armor and you actually see the clothing/armor you choose for the characters to wear and you can have the female characters strip down to their underwear if you want.The game allows you to hire a prostitute from a brothel and you can ask the prostitutes who work there to strip down to their underwear so you can get a glimpse of their body before you choose which prostitute to hire.During sex scenes you'll see the 2 people involved wearing only underwear and certain amorous activities.If you make two people fall in love with you or if you have sex with one person and another person is in love with you and you show feelings to them too it will cause you trouble.
The towns can offer quite a bit of exploration for you to do but the environments outside of towns are a bit narrow.You can find new characters to recruit to your party and they will have stories about their lives to tell you.
The characters have good skin tone and facial detail and I like how after a battle you'll see blood splatter on their face.The textures for objects look smooth and the forests look daunting.The cinematics have realistic battle scenes.
However,sometimes the lip syncing for the characters is off when they're talking.
The music at the title screen is beautiful and the music for the emotional scenes suited the saddness of the situation and the game has beautiful music at other times too.I like how the voice acting can show good emotion at times.The voices of the characters suit their personalties well,for example a dwarf will have a scruffy voice and Alistair sounds like a very posh knight with his British accent and he has charming and funny dialogue and Morrigan's dialogue and voice acting matches her free spirit well and Leliana's voice acting matches her more reserved and warmer personality quite well.
Overall,Dragon Age Origins is a great game with a few shortcomings but some strong points and it was addictive at times but boring at other times but a great RPG nonetheless.