Dragon Age: Origins – Crush! Frag! Review!

I have something important to tell you: Dragon Age: Origins is not Mass Effect.

I know it sounds silly, but let it sink in for a moment… Okay, that’s probably long enough. The reason I’m telling you this is because, like me, I imagine there will be a lot of people booting up Dragon Age for the first time who will be expecting an experience similar to BioWare’s other recent RPG. And, like me, those people will probably begin their game with a rather unfavorable attitude due to all of the major differences. This is why I want to make sure you all understand that they aren’t similar games. AT ALL. This way you hopefully won’t judge one of them based on the merits of the other, and end up cheating yourself out of what is possibly the best RPG experience in the past several years.

You see, when I first started playing Dragon Age, I was very excited to dive into the next big thing from BioWare. I made my character (lots of options, and your character actually looks natural during the cutscenes), chose my race and class (human warrior) and was given my own race/class specific “prologue” to play through (noble). Once the loading screen had faded away, I found myself a little perplexed. Seeing my “father” walking around the throne room of our family’s castle, talking about wars and Grey Wardens and such, just didn’t look quite as nice as I had expected. It wasn’t that it was ugly, it just wasn’t as good looking as Mass Effect.

Undaunted by the somewhat lackluster visual presentation, I kept watching. This was a BioWare RPG I was playing after all, and I knew that graphics were not something I should be overly concerned about. In the cutscene I was watching, my “father” asked me a question. I was immediately presented with a list of dialogue choices that ranged from Proper to Sarcastic, from Silly to just plain Mean. I made my choice, then immediately had to pick my jaw up off of the floor. My character didn’t speak! The other characters continued their conversation as though I had said something, but my character never actually said anything! I felt cheated and betrayed. Commander Shepard’s dialogue was one of the most memorable aspects of Mass Effect, and here it was totally missing. After that powerful one-two punch it took a lot of effort to force myself on to my feet again, but I managed somehow and staggered onward.

I began to explore the castle. Again, I wasn’t exactly taken aback by the oh-so-familiar looking wooden doors and stone walls with random decorative shields adorning them. As I rounded a corner, I came face-to-face with my first quest. Apparently my character has a dog (a Mabari War Hound, to be exact), and he’s making a mess in the kitchen and pissing off the cook something fierce. So off I go to retrieve my troublesome canine. After a brief exchange with said cook, I enter the larder and find him barking and scratching around as though he’s looking for something. I “say” something to the effect of it seeming as though he’s trying to tell me something before we cue the fight with the giant rats.

At this point I would normally start talking about the game’s combat system, but this fight was over way too quickly for that, to me honest. Once the rats were slain, I got my first look at Dragon Age’s much-touted “Oh Look! You Have Blood on Your Armor!” feature. I wasn’t impressed. Sure, these were some big rats, but they were smaller than my newly-acquired dog and still every single character in my group (myself, the dog and another NPC) were covered – absolutely COVERED – with blood. Not only did it look ridiculous (I don’t think all of those rats combined held that much blood), but it made the feature feel cheap in a <if ‘user’=fighting, then ‘blood’=yes> sort of way.

Once I had finished my prologue, I decided I should try some of the others. The noble story seemed a little to generic and I was curious to see how the other origins were handled. Well, as it turns out I just chose a lame story to start with. Each of the other prologues (six, total) is much less cliched and place in you some very interesting locations. From exploring forgotten ruins as a nomadic elf trying to discover clues to the lost history of your people, to working as a hired thug in the dwarven underworld in an attempt to earn the right a better life, each one is unique, detailed, and can take a few hours to complete. It was around this time that I began to look at Dragon Age for what is was, instead of what I wanted it to be.

To be honest, Dragon Age does indeed build upon the foundations used by previous BioWare titles, just not Mass Effect. In fact, it shares the most similarities with Knights of the Old Republic. Combat occurs in real-time, but has more of an MMO vibe. You can cycle through your party members and issue individual commands, pause the action while you consider your options, then sit back and watch your characters fight. Much like Knights, you can see your characters exchange blows, dodge, parry and move with their assailants in a way that feels much more “alive” than merely watching two computer generated characters go “WHACK!” and “OOF!” The occasional (and bloody) finishers are a nice visual touch, too. Special abilities, which can be devastating on their own, can also be combined. Being able to flash-freeze an enemy for a few seconds, then smash them to pieces not only looks cool, but proves just how important a good strategy and teamwork can be.

Of course, we all know it wouldn’t be BioWare without some Grade A character interaction, and Dragon Age: Origins has effectively re-written the book on it. You’re limited to a group of four, counting your main character, but much like Knights, Mass Effect, and every other BioWare RPG you’ll soon find you have many more party members than empty spaces in your group. Not only is each character unique in their combat specializations (one Rogue has a Bard specialization while another is an Assassin, for example), but in their personalities as well. One is a silly and sarcastic bastard with a soft side, and another is a no-nonsense emotionless mountain of muscle. Another character is so detached from humanity that she seems completely uncaring and inhuman, and still another is a bundle of discontentment that hates soft creatures and is afraid of pigeons. They’ll all have something to say at different points in the game (provided they’re in your active group). Sometimes they’ll chat with each other as you wander around the map, and other times they’ll have an effect (sometimes a profound one) on cutscenes and sidequests.

And oh, the sidequests. Of course there are plenty of obvious ones; taking jobs from the various job postings in the various towns, helping the occasional panicky NPC as they run up to you shouting “Help! They’ve taken her!” or something similar, but there are also some that are quite a bit more involved. Some sidequests are actually on-par with the game’s main story quests in terms of length and scope. And then there are what I like to call the “micro-quests.” You see, sometimes you’ll be on a quest (side or otherwise) and you might find some small object or a hidden area that doesn’t seem to have any real purpose. Say, for example, you find a phylactery (a small vial filled with blood, used as a sort of magical tracking device) in a pile of rubble in a long forgotten ruin. Maybe that tiny vial contains a spirit, and maybe that spirit wants out after spending thousands of years on the floor of a dank ruin with nothing to do but watch the walls rot. Do you let it out and risk fighting a very powerful demon? Or do you leave it, possibly condemning an innocent spirit to untold eons of further torment? And this is just a tiny little mini-quest that you could have easily ignored or even flat-out missed as you ran down the hall towards your goal. It’s details like these that really flesh out the world of Dragon Age, and make it feel more complete that any other RPG I’ve played in recent memory.

In the end Dragon Age: Origins, like most RPGs, isn’t about the particle effects or the bump-mapping. It’s about the story, the characters in it and the world they inhabit. In this game’s case the story is suitably epic, the characters are all unique, quirky and memorable, and the world is one of the most robust and fully realized I’ve ever experienced. Nitpicks about a lack of main character dialogue and less-than-stellar graphics aside, it’s an incredible experience and one that should not be missed for any reason.

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Things We Liked: Characters you honestly like (and dislike. I’m looking at you, Morrigan). A deep, fully fleshed-out world with its own unique and extensive histories, politics, prejudices, etc. Characters appear much more lively in cutscenes as opposed to some other games.

Things We Disliked: Not as graphically impressive as expected. No spoken dialogue for the main character (seriously, WTF?!). The “blood” effect seems less like an impressive feature and more like a cheap gimmick. Dragons are cheap (then again, they are dragons).

Target Audience: BioWare fans (duh). RPG fans (also duh). Anyone who grew up playing Baldur’s Gate or has fond memories of Knights of the Old Republic. People who want more blood and beheadings in their RPGs.

(Dragon Age: Origins – Developer: BioWare. Publisher: Electronic Arts. Available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 – PlayStation 3 version reviewed. Buy it Now at Amazon.com. New to CFD!’s reviews? Read our explanation here.)

Tags: Bioware Dragon Age Dragon Age: Origins EA Electronic Arts review RPG