Dragon Age: Origins

Hey hey hey! Look who's back! The prisons of Tartarus are not deep enough to withhold me! Of course

I'm most likely talking to no one right now, due to the fact that I haven't written on this blog in about five months, and my audience (if there ever was one in the first place...) has most likely disappeared. If you have indeed remained loyal, I will now continue updating weekly again for at least the next month. I have been playing some new games that I am really excited about giving my opinion on. (yet again, on the off chance that anyone cares)

So here is the first of my new reviews. I figured I would start off with one of the latest works by the good folks at Bioware studios. I have always had a soft spot for the ye olde sword and sorcery fantasy game. This one, is truly exceptional as many of you probably know. Dragon Age: Origins was designed to be a tribute to the more primitive games that Bioware designed a good handful of years ago, namely the Baldur's Gate series. Eventually however, Dragon Age grew into a niche all it's own, and is even receiving a visual makeover to better suit it's atmosphere, along with a more in depth sequel. This is not without good reason. The story is freaking fantastic. It may be lacking in originality in the big picture, as who hasn't done the demonic horde invasion story before? Origins saves itself very nicely with the trials that the player character has to go through, an oppressively dark style, and the fact that the story is never the same twice. In fact, I'm going to start off with that. A lot of games have recently come out that allow for the player's choices to heavily effect the outcome of the story, and even elements of it that don't have to do with the ending, but Origins trumps all of these (at least by my experience) in terms of just how many choices and outcomes there are. In fact, in one quest (I shall try to remain spoiler free) there are at least five different ways that the ending can play out. That is an amount of player affect on a game that I just have never seen before. What does make me cringe about this amount of customization when it concerns the plot, is that I went through a town near the beginning of the game in my first play through, and I was impatient to see what happened next in the plot, and didn't want to get bogged down by a bunch of side quests. It was only later that I found out that you pick up not one, but two party members in that town. I tried to return to rectify my rather gratuitous mistake, but realized that the game would not allow me to reenter. It was as if the word “bollocks” had taken physical manifestation in the air between me and the television. The problem I had encountered was that the story had so much potential for customization, that it was possible to play through the entire game and skip huge portions of plot and character elaboration that people had put lots of good, hard work into. I'm all for broadening the horizon of player choice, but that's taking things a little far in my opinion. Of course, this could be a blessing in disguise. A game that makes players live with their mistakes, or allows them to make such a conscious choice is fairly revolutionary. Of course, Bioware has and is doing a good job of maintaining a reputation for these sorts of mechanics in a game. With Dragon Age 2 coming out sometime within the near future, it will be cool to see the story telling in this series taken to the next level.