An epic tale has ended. The vile Archdemon has been defeated. The Blight is over. Ferelden has been saved. One would think now would be the time to kick back with a wench, a frosty mug of ale and just relax, right? Oh, silly Grey Warden – a hero’s job is never done! But is Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening worth strapping on the chainmail and taking up the longsword again? That all depends; what’s your tolerance for floating teeth and phantom models?

Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening (which we’re just going to call Awakening from here on out, since it doesn’t even work well as an acronym - DA:O-A? No thanks) is the first major standalone expansion to BioWare’s rather excellent 2009 RPG, Dragon Age: Origins. The original game is required to play Awakening, so let’s hope you didn’t trade in your copy to help fund the purchase of some of those releases from the first half of 2010.

Picking up not long after the end of Origins, Awakening lets you either import your existing character or create a new Grey Warden from Orlais at level 18 to start things with. Despite the Blight having ended with the defeat of the Archdemon, it seems that the armies of Darkspawn aren’t all going back underground quietly. In fact, in the arling of Amaranthine their activity has been on the rise, with disturbing reports of intelligent Darkspawn capable of speech trickling in. The newly-reformed order of Grey Wardens has been all but wiped out and it’s up to you to find some new recruits up to the daunting task (and potential death) of undertaking The Joining.

If there was one thing Dragon Age: Origins had, it was memorable personalities. Awakening‘s characters all fit very appropriately into the milieu of Ferelden, but sadly don’t have the same sort of memorable zest as those from the original game. The perpetually drunken Oghren is the sole returning party member from Origins, though he went mostly unused in my game, much as he did in his prior adventures with my Grey Warden (a city elf rogue). Indeed, apostate mage-on-the-run Anders was probably the most memorable new character apart from Justice, a spirit personifying his namesake concept inhabiting the body of a dead Warden. Anders’ sarcastic humor and flirting reminded me at times of a less self-deprecating Alistair, one of my favorite original characters (whose absence was sorely felt in the expansion, outside of a token appearance as King). Meanwhile, I thought Justice’s single (sometimes simple) minded moral worldview and quest to understand being human, neither of which being particularly original in and of themselves, were pulled off fairly well. The other characters just kind of faded into the background too much for me, including the dwarven Legionnaire, Sigrun, which is a shame as she was one of the new characters I was most looking forward to.

Along with the raised level cap, there are new skills and equipment to be had and each class gets a smattering of new ability tracks and specializations, some of which are just too fun (and broken) not to use (I’m looking at you, Unending Flurry!). The narrower focus of the story, along with a lack of vendors and shops to patronize, takes a bit away from the more expansive feeling of the world, however. Everything felt much more confined, directed, and linear to me. But then, I also suppose that I should have expected as much from a 20 hour expansion (15 or so if you skip most of the side quests), compared to the 60+ hours I put into the original.

Speaking of the original, it’s no secret that Dragon Age: Origins was kind of a rough looking game. I accepted that and came to terms with the blurry, flat textures, constant clipping and occasionally glitchy models. I could handle the fact that every character had brown teeth. I’m no stranger to games that look bad, but are still enjoyable. That being said, at least in the original Dragon Age, characters didn’t periodically turn into phantasmal, translucent horrorshows with floating eyeballs and teeth, nor do I remember random NPCs appearing without limbs (or entire bodies in some cases). I didn’t encounter any gamebreaking issues, but the visual problems went FAR beyond the usual complaints of texture pop-in or poor models. It feels like they either completely skipped QA in their rush to get this to market or the testers were in the throes of a cough syrup binge; one or the other. I should note that I played the expansion on Xbox 360 and was not able to check if these problems existed on the other platforms, but even on one of them, it’s still totally inexcusable.

Similarly, it feels like nobody put any work into balancing the difficulty in Awakenings. My characters in Origins were far from optimized and I knew it — tough fights abounded and sometimes we would only scrape through by the skin of our teeth, an increasing series of skulls staring back at us from the line of character portraits. Those fights felt epic and nail-biting, requiring a lot of micro-management to keep us going. Save for a couple of fluke deaths in the early hours of gameplay, fights in Awakening were a cakewalk. Only one character died during the final encounter and even with him (our tank) down, the remaining three polished the final boss off without breaking a sweat. Potions went almost entirely unused during Awakening, in stark contrast to the drinking binge we engaged in during the original.

Indeed, releasing only four months after Dragon Age: Origins as it did, Awakening could have obviously benefited from an extra month or two of tweaking and polishing. The story throws some interesting twists into the mythology of the world (we finally learn why the cycle of Blights occurs) and some interesting potential plot hooks are hung (including Gears of War 2-ish internecine strife amongst the enemies), but for a studio with the reputation of quality that BioWare has, this expansion sports far too many sloppy, avoidable problems. For those dying for another trip to Ferelden, Awakening can definitely scratch your itch until the inevitable Dragon Age 2 comes, but just be aware of what you’re getting yourself into.

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Things We Liked: Anders keeps things light-hearted: “All that I need is a pretty girl, a nice meal and the power to shoot lightning at fools!” New talents. Another trip into Dragon Age’s world is always welcome. The ability to import your character from Origins. Just about perfect in length — not too short, nor too long.

Things We Disliked: Horribly broken visuals all over the place. Most of your new recruits are pretty bland. Just a bit too easy for my taste. Unbalanced.

Target Audience: Dragon Age fans (natch). People looking to become Dragon Age fans? I mean, you need the original game to play, so that does limit the market a bit, right?

(Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening – Developer: BioWare. Publisher: Electronic Arts. Available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 – Xbox 360 version reviewed. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. Unfamiliar with CFD!’s review system? Read our newly revised explanation here.)