First Thought: Dragon Age Origins

Since I’m very sensitive to character design and have a weak spot for Japanese Role Playing Games (JRPG) I didn’t really pay much attention to Dragon Age: Origins. I thought the characters were a bit ‘too rough’ looking. But, slowly I got a little interested in it after seeing a few blogposts about it and hearing my friend got his hands on it. Last week I visited my friend and was able to play the game for a bit.

Plot

The story of Dragon Age: Origins (2009) is described as a ‘dark heroic fantasy’ tale told on an epic scale with mature themes. As protagonist it is your destiny to become a Grey Warden and fight against the Darkspawn. These demonic creatures led by the Archdemon seem to have returned after they were beaten in a war 400 years ago. You can play as a human, elf or dwarf. Interestingly, you can change some outcomes of the story by the decisions you make. If you’re interested in romantic ingame relationships, that’s possible too!

First Thought

I must stress I played this game on the PC of my friend at his home with a tracker ball instead of a ‘normal’ mouse. I was also sitting behind a 17″ inch screen instead of my 26″ inch screen. I can’t deny that this had some influence on me getting used to the game. I played untill the point I was accepted into the Grey Warden.

Character creation went pretty smooth. I love how you could change your ‘portrait’ which would later be used as part of the character selection user interface. I was a little disappointed there weren’t lovely long hair options for females, but oh well. I decided to start out as a ‘human noble’ specializing as a ‘rogue’. Playing as a female noble would give you a chance to become queen at the end of the game. Next to that you’ll also get a ‘Mabari war hound’ (below).

The other role playing games for PC I played are Sacred (2004) and Guild Wars (2005). The game I’m still investing time in is Guild Wars which I continue to play on a regular basis. While playing ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ I was confronted with the fact that I’m not a hardcore RPG player. I really had to spend more attention to the different settings & skills of my character. It was probably also a good idea to read through all the logs and find more info about all the various items I picked up. I would have done so if I had bought the game, but since I wanted to get a general feel of the game I decided to skip most of the stuff and just focus on getting through the story.

One thing that is definitely different from the games I usually play is the blood. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a person that’s against the display of blood in a videogame that’s rated mature, but sometimes I had to laugh when seeing it in ‘Dragon Age: Origins’. At some point you and your warhound killed off some rats in the kitchen and you’re covered with blood. Outside you run into some other noble acquintances with your mother and they’re talking about finding a suitable husband while you and you’re dog are still covered with blood. That’s weird! After killing something I would definitely wipe off my blade AND face … and at least try to clean up my dog a bit. The blood splatters also had me going into CSI mode asking if a blade would give that kind of splatter pattern on a face.

One thing that I didn’t really like was that you can choose the answer of the protagonist, but (s)he will never say it. You can choose your voice in the character selection menu, but it seems you only use your voice when opening a door or give another order when you’re walking around. You never hear your character talk during cut scene or get a camera viewpoint where you can see your face. It made me feel a bit being outside of the story instead of being fully engaged in it.

Even though I did have to get used to various elements of the game I would definitely like to play it again and finish the story. Since the ‘Awakenings’ expansion pack is on it’s way, I hope to pick up a bundled set so I can play it on my own computer.

Dragon Age is published by Electronic Arts