"Dragon Age: Origins is a role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. It is the first game in the Dragon Age franchise, and was released in November 2009. Set in the fictional kingdom of Ferelden during a period of civil strife, the game puts the player in the role of a warrior, mage, or rogue coming from an elven, human, or dwarven background. The player character is recruited into the Grey Wardens, an ancient order that stands against demonic forces known as "Darkspawn"."
- Wikipedia on Dragon Age: Origins
What do I expect from the game?
The Dragon Age Origins is a fairly well known game that seems to have been very well received by critics and consumers, and the franchise has since spawned two sequels, several spin-off games, novels, comics and even action figures. This gives me confidence that Origins will be a high quality game. I am a fan of RPG games, having sunk countless hours into The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (one of my favourite games), Skyrim, Fallout and Fable. I also played Two Worlds for one of the first Spontaneous Sundays. So I am quite familiar with the genre.
I expect Dragon Age: Origins to be a story-driven RPG in a classic high-fantasy setting, with many of the tropes seen in this genre such as: good-vs-evil themes, dragons and mythical enemies, quests, grandiose settings, magic and hack-and-slash combat. From what I have seen of the game, it looks like quite a stereotypical fantasy RPG, so I am slightly worried that it won't do much to set itself apart from other games of this genre.
I expect that the game will have a story that hinges on a good faction defeating a bad faction, aswell as side quests and sub-stories. I expect that it will have an experience-points based system of levelling, and maybe different skills that increase as the player levels and perks or abilities that unlock as the game progresses. The game was published by EA, so I imagine that it will have had a big budget, so I think that it will be high quality and polished in general. I expect good graphics and environments. The soundtrack was composed by the famous game composer, Inon Zur, so I expect the music to be of a very high quality too.
First Impressions - What do I think of the game in its first few minutes?
I launched the game and was met with a short animation of the red dragon silhouette seen on the game's cover. The dragon shape then turned into the EA ident - this was a nice touch. The game's front end shows two swords stuck in the ground, with a dark mountain range in the background, all under a cloudy orange sky and accompanied with a gentle but tense choral, string and horn soundtrack. It is suitably dramatic, but does feel a little RPG-cliche.
On starting a new game, an opening cinematic plays. A male narrator starts by telling the origins of the "Darkspawn" - a demonic force and the main antagonistic faction of the game. Then we see some dramatic and violent battle scenes between the Darkspawn and the Grey Wardens, the game's good faction. The narrator then says that it has been 400 years since the destruction of the Darkspawn - but they are soon to return again. This opening cinematic is quite effective and impactful - it successfully introduces and explains the two main factions in the game, provides a decent bit of back story and communicates the impending danger that the world faces, while also showing some exciting combat scenes that catch the player's attention.
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| Shots from the opening cinematic. |
After the opening the cinematic, the player reaches the character generation stage. Here, the player can choose their gender, their race (Human, Elf or Drawf), their class (Warrior, Rogue or Mage), and their "background", which is a short description of your characters origin story that depends on what you choose for the other options. I chose to play as a female Elf Warrior, as I liked the elven backgrounds and I generally prefer to play RPGs as a Warrior character. Character generation is an absolutely pivotal part of an RPG game, because it influences the extent to which you can connect with your character and immerse yourself in their role. Dragon Age: Origins' offers a very deep and varied character generation system that allows you to alter most of the character's facial features using sliders and alter their hair and tattoos. The player can even choose from a number of different voices for their characters. This is a good level of cosmetic customisation and allowed me to make a character that felt personal and that I could apply my own story to. I made a battle hardened and capable Elf warrior with high strength, cunning and health - kind of like an Elven Lara Croft! The player also gets to pick some basic starting skills and abilities which allows for even greater role-playing and facilitates varied and specialised approaches to gameplay.
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| The default starting character. |
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| My character. |
After character generation, another cinematic plays that is specific to your character's backstory. The game began with my character and another elf named Tamlen finding some humans trespassing in the tribe's woods. The game allowed me to choose different dialogue options to guide the conversation, and I quizzed the humans on why they were there and decided to spare their lives. Having this dialogue and offering the choice to kill or spare some characters right at the start of the game gives the player the chance to put their ideas about their character's morality into practice early on.
Having discovered that the humans were exploring a cave nearby containing some ruins where they apparently encountered a "demon", it was naturally my job to get and check it out, so off I went. On the way, I ran into the quintessential basic RPG enemy, a wolf. This acted as a short combat tutorial. Combat works in a rather interesting way - attacking an enemy puts the player into combat, where they will then attack repeatedly without the player having to press anything. The player can use their abilities in combat to execute special moves. The combat is kind of similar to turn-based combat in that regard.
Throughout this first dungeon, I began to realise that Dragon Age: Origins takes some very clear cues from the classic style of pen-and-paper RPG games like Dungeons & Dragons, and translates them into real-time gameplay in a 3D space - such as the combat system, traps, inventory and stats system. The first dungeon begins is pretty small and contains enemies such as giant spiders and skeletons. Eventually, I reached a room containing an ominous mirror. In a cutscene, Tamlen approaches and touches the mirror, which causes some kind of magical explosion, knocking out both the characters. My character awoke back at the camp, apparently having been rescued by one of the Grey Wardens. Having recovered from the events in the cave, I was tasked by the leader of the tribe to go back into the cave and try and find Tamlen, who was missing, with the help of a tribe mage. Eventually, I ran into the Grey Warden who saved me, and accompanied him to their base to join their ranks.
What do I like about the game?
Dragon Age: Origins has a few strong features that make it stand up well in the RPG genre and set itself apart from other games. Its strongest features include the character generation and background stories, the stats and abilities system, the dialogue system, and the way that the developers have skilfully translated the classic RPG elements into a gameplay in a digital format. The ambient audio and voice acting are also positive features.
The game's character generation and backstory stood out to me as a very good feature of the game, as these features are really important in any RPG. The success of an RPG can often be greatly influenced by the quality of the character creation and capacity for connecting with the character that you create, so its a good job that Dragon Age: Origins pulled this off well. Not only can the player customise their character's facial features quite heavily, but they can also create a character build with different skillsets and abilities that ensure that each player will almost certainly experience the game in a different way. The backstories are also a very good addition, because this provides the player with 6 possible beginnings to the game, and although the aim of the game is the same regardless of backstory, the backstories still seem to influence the journey to this goal throughout. This also adds a greater sense of identity to each character and can add replay value and incentive to try different playthroughs with different character types. The story in general is also a positive point. Though it is a bit familiar to other RPG games, it is delivered well through cutscenes and in-game lore. There's also an in-game codex featuring information about lore, items, gameplay and so on.
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| The codex. |
The stats and levelling system is another positive feature. Again, RPGs are all about providing the player with the choice to play how they want, developing their character and honing a play style that suits them and the character who they are playing as. Having different abilities and stats is directly linked to this in a grounded gameplay context. The levelling system allows the player to increase stats such as strength, dexterity, cunning etc which all feed into different abilities and allow the player to unlock different gear as the game plays out. This adds rewards for extended play, keeps the game interesting and allows the player to create long term goals, such as reaching a high enough level to wield a certain weapon or use a certain skill. Though I didn't get very deep into the game in the 3-4 hours that I spent playing it, I had already begun to create a character build with specific skills. There appears to be a lot of different skills and abilities on offer which would probably mean that the skill system would remain interesting even into the long-game.
The player is able to converse with many characters in the game, from story characters to random NPCs to merchants. The dialogue system is a very good feature for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is a to-the-point way of delivering story content and advancing through the game while still giving the player a degree of control. Secondly, the dialogue options are pretty broad and offer a lot of different things to say. I was surprised to see that many of the questions that I had as a player were able to be answered for me in game by NPCs. Third, the dialogue system allows the player to channel the identity of their character into the game in a meaningful way in the form of conversations with characters. The dialogue systems offers options for a wide variety of player-character personalities, so the player is almost always able to get the idea of their characters personality across. It is one of the most well-done dialogue systems that I've seen and the outcomes of using different options seems meaningful.
The gameplay is interesting because the game seems to have channeled classic RPG elements in a way that I've not really seen before. The inclusion of party companions, traps, items, stats and skills feels very familiar of pen-and-paper RPGs, and its clear to see that the developers really know and care about RPGs as a genre. This makes for a video-game RPG experience thats unlike any other I have seen. That said, the actual moment-to-moment gameplay isn't overly exciting, and I did find the dialogue and story more interesting than the combat, for example.
Finally, the ambient audio and voice acting are also good features. The ambient audio helps to make the game's environments (which are also pretty good) more believable and atmospheric. The ambient audio included things like dripping water in the caves, bird songs in the forest and children and people chattering in the background in the tribe's camp.
What do I not like about the game?
There are a few things that failed to impress me in Dragon Age: Origins. As is often the case for me when playing RPGs, I was put off by the UI and the complicated nature of the inventory and skill menus.
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| I have never been a fan of this UI style! |
For some reason, it seems like the RPG genre is prone to gaudy UI aesthetics, usually featuring brown boxes with ornate gold borders and archaic fonts that are difficulty to read. I'm sure this is very much a matter of personal taste, but I am not a fan of this UI style. Dragon Age features this style and it put me off the UI. The game's graphics also fell short slightly, with some low-res textures and awkward animations in cutscenes. As previously discussed, the game features a wide variety of skills and items, so its only natural that it would require a skill and inventory menu, which leads to a rather cluttered menu system, a lot of which looks the same. Other than the UI and cluttered menu, I didn't find anything else that was too bad about the game.
Final Thoughts
Dragon Age: Origins can definitely stand its ground amongst other successful RPGs. The game offers a deep and varied character creations and skill system that allows the player to create a unique character who they can connect with and develop over the course of the game. The inclusion of different back stories seems like a really interesting feature to me. The dialogue system is one of the best that I have seen in an RPG, with really interesting options that seem meaningful and feed into the story well. The gameplay is pretty unique in the way that it borrows from classic RPGs, and I am interested to play again and see where I can take my character build to.
All these positive features come together to make a pretty solid and unique RPG that is only slightly imperfect due to an unpleasant UI style and some ropey graphics. As an RPG, I do feel like I will need to put some more hours into Dragon Age to fully get the measure of it, so I plan to play it again in the future!
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