The world of Dragon Age: Origins is the kingdom of Ferelden, and this is where all the action of the game takes place. At the beginning you will have to make an important choice about who you will play as for the rest of the game. You can choose from six origin stories: Human Noble, City Elf, Dalish Elf, Magi, Dwarf Commoner and Dwarf Noble. Each of these characters can be customized quite extensively. Depending on which origin you choose, you will start off in a different environment, surrounded by different characters and a different starting story. Throughout the rest of the whole game, most NPCs will show awareness of your race and some will even point out your background.
There is also another important choice to make at the start of the game - what class of character you will play as. You can choose from Rogue, Mage or Warrior. Your character's combat abilities (and capabilities) will depend on this choice. Warrior is the sort of character that goes into the battle and charges right at the strongest enemy, equipped with heavy armour and deadly weapons. Rogue might be a stealthy type of warrior, or an archer who takes out hostiles from range. While Mage is for people who might do all sorts of roles (such as the healer or the damage dealer of the party) using magic of course. As you progress further through the game, once you reach level 7 with your character, you can choose one of four specializations for your class. Each class has different specializations to others, which allow the player to customize his or her play style even more extensively and unlock other abilities. When you hit level 14, you may choose another specialization. Unfortunately, even with these varied specializations, this class system is very unbalanced. Mages are overpowered and easy to play as; Warriors strike the middle ground; whilst Rogues seem to be very underpowered.
The early story of DA:O depends entirely upon your choice of origin for your character. But at some point, a 'Grey Warden' called Duncan appears in the story looking for a new recruit. You, or to be more precise: your character, ends up being chosen. Who are Grey Wardens? In the world of Thedas (the continent on which Ferelden is located), there exists an unholy race of monsters dubbed Darkspawn. These monstrosities usually never leave the Deep Roads (which is the equivalent of Moria from Lord of the Rings, but in Thedas), but sometimes they find one of the Old Dragon Gods underground, wake it from its sleep and taint it. The Old God is then transformed into a beast called an Archdemon and leads an army of Darkspawn from the Deep Roads and onto the surface of Thedas. Their goal: destroy, corrupt and taint everything. This terrifying event is called a Blight.
Grey Wardens are great warriors, worthy of legend, who are the only beings that know how to defeat an Archdemon and end a Blight, sometimes before it even occurs. Once the protagonist's origin story ends, he or she is recruited by Duncan, completes The Joining ritual and becomes one of the Grey Wardens. Then he/she must join the King of Ferelden's army in the first battle against the Darkspawn in the fifth Blight to happen in Thedas. But soon after that, an unexpected plot twist occurs and the story becomes very complicated and even deeper than it already was, as the whole world's fate will depend on you and your companions' success or failure against the Archdemon and its hordes of bloodthirsty Darkspawn. Speaking of which, companions play a very large part in Dragon Age: Origins.
There is a total of eight companions which can be recruited by the player (plus one downloadable companion). Each of them has a unique appearance, background, character and personality. Every one of the companions may react differently to the player's decisions concerning almost everything. For example, a good character like Alistair may think badly of an "evil" act that the player chooses to do and will lose trust with you. But Morrigan, a more chaotic character - she may approve of such an act and earn more trust and respect for the player. When specific companions are selected to join the player's party, leave camp and set out on a journey to someplace, they might start talking to each other which is pretty cool. But what makes these characters truly unique, is just in how many way the player can interact with them. You may engage in a conversation about the past, about the mission or ask about the current city you're in. You may even choose to start a relationship. These are standard features of a good RPG, but are executed in a great way.
What really makes theses companions come to life is the terrific voice-acting and good facial animations, backed up with many great lines of dialogue. This isn't made just for the companions though, but all NPCs in Dragon Age. Yes, that's right; there is a lot of good dialogue in this game. Added to that is another fantastic feature - freedom of choice. Through the story of Dragon Age: Origins, you will be faced with many difficult-to-make decisions. Some might seem quite obvious at first, and you may think it will be easy to decide, but in the end, it might turn out to be the wrong choice and you will regret it. Most of these choices are done in dialogue with NPCs, as the player is always given more than a few options of how to carry on with a conversation and there's usually more than two ways to end a side quest, which I think is awesome. All of this allows the player to make a truly unique hero/villain, and not just in appearance, but personality too. The feature of companions who approve or disapprove of the player's actions that was mentioned before is also a great addition to this.
Sadly, the game's story – although sometimes enthralling and always well-written – is quite standard fare for fantasy RPGs. Actions are divided into an unrealistic spectrum of "good" and "evil". The choices presented to the player in the game, although also more impactful than in most games, don't seem to have much consequences in the long run. If you're seeking something a bit different – a more mature storyline with real consequences and no silly division of the world into good and evil – then you should probably check out The Witcher instead.
Visually, when looking at it from a technical/realistic viewpoint, Dragon Age: Origins isn't another Crysis, Killzone 2 or Metal Gear Solid 4. However one must remember that these are completely different types of games. Still, for an RPG that allows you to freely roam large areas to some extent, DA:O looks very good! Light is sometimes used for effect; textures are very good - especially on the PC version. Character models have a good amount of detail on them but it's really the environments that make this game beautiful. The architecture of Denerim, the forests inhabited by the Dalish folk, the size of the castle at Ostagar, the Circle Tower, the swamps of the wilds, the snow-covered peaks of the north and last but definitely not least, my favourite place in the whole game: the dark and gloomy, but magnificent, wide corridors of the stone-built Deep Roads underground. So this game may not be as technically advanced as some shooters out there - but the art direction makes it impressive. It's just a shame that these environments, although beautiful, show very little innovation when compared to other high fantasy settings.
One thing that makes Dragon Age stand out from other games made by BioWare is just how bloody it is. In many environments with hostile creatures around, especially those which are overrun by Darkspawn, there will be a lot of corpses and of course blood. However, the amount of blood that you can see splattering all over the place during combat is sickening… but in a disturbingly good kind of way. Add to that the finishing moves that you can perform on enemies once they are defeated (like stabbing a Darkspawn in the stomach or decapitating it) are even more fun - in that worrying kind of way… Anyway, so the art direction in this game also involves quite a lot of violence and, well, hundreds of gallons of blood. So, yeah, if you're not into this kind of stuff, you may be a bit disgusted or put off. Or you may just laugh at it, like I did… but then you should probably be concerned.
This game's sound design is brilliant. Most of the soundtracks are very memorable and beautiful; they help to immerse the player in the world of Ferelden and create a varied atmosphere for many of the different environments seen in the game. As mentioned many times before, the voice-acting of all characters (especially the player's companions) is exceptionally well done, but it is disappointing that there isn't much variety in the accents, while most are very English and only a few are a bit French-like. However this is understandable because after all, most of the characters that come from Ferelden should have a similar accent and thankfully, the few characters that come from other kingdoms sound different to the people of Ferelden.
Dragon Age: Origins is a combat-based RPG which is a very suitable style of gaming for hardcore fans of this genre, but it is fairly easy to get into for newcomers alike. This is almost the traditional sort of fighting in an RPG, but with updated visuals, cool finishing moves and many types of abilities, powers and passive powers to use during combat. Controls are easy to learn and the hotkeys remind me of those of classic role-playing games. Of course attributes and skills also come into play, but once again, fans of RPGs will be familiar with all of that. If you aren't one of them, you may find this game to be not as much of a great experience or you may get hooked into the interface and understand how it all works within an hour of gameplay. If not, there are always guides and instructions in the game itself.
The Good:
+ Interesting characters, backed up with great voice acting and dialogue lines
+ The Player is free to choose who she/he wants to be and how she/he wants to play the game
+ Combat works very well and gameplay is addictive
+ Fantastic sound design with a memorable main theme
+ Beautiful environments with varied types of atmospheric music
+ Texture, character and environment detail is good
+ Companions are amazing and play a very large part in the plot and subplots
+ Origin stories are a very innovative and interesting idea that works very well
+ You can easily spend over 100 hours on the game, spanning multiple playthroughs
+ Bloody (yet somewhat interesting) art design with nice visuals
+ Reminiscent of other great titles like: "Neverwinter Nights" or "The Witcher"
+ Loads of lore and a section in the game's menu called Codex, where you can read all about it
The Bad:
- Gameplay isn't very innovative; it's just a modern version of a traditional RPG
- The setting and atmosphere sometimes borrow too much from other RPGs
- No open world environment, even though the nonlinear nature of the game asks for it
- The class system put in place is unbalanced, generally punishing rogues
- The glorification of violence sometimes doesn't fit with the setting
- Requires a lot of time and commitment to be fully completed
- The combat system works exceptionally well, but haven't we seen this before?
- Difficulty spikes (sometimes very hard, sometimes overly easy)
- No reputation system/good or bad karma to tell what people may think of you
- Mages can be very overpowered if appropriate paths are taken in abilities
- Not a lot of variety in the appearance of equipment, such as weapons and armour
- The Fade gameplay sequences may be a bit too much of a change from the usual style of the game for some people
Only few games are so amazing that you don't want them to end. Only few games have such a great story with believable characters, backed up with great dialogue. Only few games are masterpieces. Dragon Age: Origins has much of what is needed to become one of those few, but it falls short of that goal. It's not an original game; it has a nonlinear structure that begs for an open world and yet it isn't open world; the game has plenty of other flaws too, yet all of the negative things about it are generally overshadowed by all the good points.
Overall, Dragon Age: Origins is an exceptional game. I found it very exciting, bloody and fun to play, but its real strengths lie elsewhere and its best quality isn't gameplay. Sure, the graphics may not be revolutionary, but they're good and the art direction should appeal to fans of slightly darker variations of high fantasy. Its real strengths are the epic story, the deeply developed characters, the varied environments and the Origin stories that you get to choose at the beginning of the game.
Dragon Age is not perfect and it certainly isn't a game for everyone - but what other game is? None. If you're searching for an RPG to waste hours of your life on, look no further. I spent almost 56 hours on my first playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins, plus around 60 or more hours spanning other multiple playthroughs. For RPG fans, this game is not an experience to be missed.
OVERALL RATING – 8.5/10 (Great)
NEW GS RATING – 8/10