Short Summary:
Sword and sorcery real-time RPG. Both swords and sorceries kick butt: |
| The column of flame is the inferno spell. Love it. Never sets fire to the landscape, either. |
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| Prepare to die, darkspawn! |
Good 3D graphics, comes with widescreen option, wide range of possible camera angles. Lots of cutscenes. Most dialog is both voiced and animated, both of high quality (even the few cheesy lines are done with sufficient conviction and sincerity to carry the day). Approximately 85% fighting and 15% diplomacy, puzzles, or exploration. World is not very extensive or open, but what there is is well-done. Straightforward yet well-written against-all-odds fantasy adventure with a few twists that I did not anticipate. Includes a few romance options. Moderate learning curve given prior experience with Baldur's Gate or similar games. I enjoyed it very, very much.
Longer Opinions:
"In Death, Sacrifice"
"Join us, brothers and sisters. Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry out the duty that cannot be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten. And that one day, we shall join you."
-Grey Warden oath
Despite my title, Dragon Age Origins is neither a happy nor a happily-ever-after fantasy.
A lot of characters die or leave. The Grey Warden (PC) will not be able to help everyone. You will have to make choices where someone will be unhappy or hurt or dead regardless of how you choose.
The Scenery
The thing that I would most like to see improved is a wider variety of NPC faces, and more care not to repeat too closely faces that any named NPC has used. It was quite a shock to walk into the first town and--"Hey! [NPC name]! I thought you were dead!...Oh, you're someone else now..."
A small thing is genetics in the world of Thedas. The majority of characters are red-haired or blond, mixed in with a minority of black and brown-haired characters, across all racial types (elves, dwarves, humans) and geographic regions. Are the genes coding for red hair dominant instead of recessive on Thedas? If so, can we make any hypotheses about which wavelengths of light are most filtered/transmitted by the world's atmosphere, and/or the classification of its primary star(s)?
"Less Fighting, More Dying!"
Combat in Dragon Age Origins tries to combine the best of individual control (with special attacks and techniques by class and level) and believable combat (e.g., more damage when you're attacking from behind) with options for more automated group control, while still sweeping the computerized rolling for hit/miss under the rug. I feel like there's a lot to master here. On a first playthrough, I didn't even try to make use of the programmed tactical choices for party members (don't worry, done entirely through graphical interface with options to select, not writing your own if-thens in the code from scratch), instead hopping from party member to party member with the pause button to control everyone individually in combat. It works for a single player, but I'm not yet making full use of the game's combat engine.Things I liked:
- High-level mages can hold their own even in the middle of melee combat. In Dragon Age Origins, two mid-to-high level mages working together can take on a comparable group of opponents and come out with minimal or no use of healing potions, especially if you can exploit nearby chokepoints.
- The special techniques for various classes make combat much more interesting and allow rogues and other more lightly armed and armored classes to successfully take on the 2-handed hacker types.
Things that could be better:
- Argh, the cutscenes! So many dramatic cutscenes forcing your party into bad tactical situations!
- AI can be fooled into luring out a few enemies at a time in many situations. Not quite as good as the Sword Coast Strategems AI for Baldur's Gate.
- I played on normal difficulty my entire game. Battles were really, really tough at the beginning, while some sections toward the end felt like a slog. More variety of monsters and monster tactics! Failing that, I may need to reset difficulty manually during the game.
Some Points of Interest
- Be sure to stop by the chantry in Denerim for some delightful malapropisms as Sister Theohild recites the Chant of Light.
- Admire the potted plants in the corridors of Fort Drakon, Denerim's most important fortress/prison.
- Try dropping spells on top of each other. Be sure to stand at a safe distance.
- You can venture forth with only 3 companions at a time, but all companions magically level up at mostly the same rate you do, so a companion left in camp for one arc will not be behind in abilities if you switch out for a different arc.
- Gems sell for a lot less than armor, and you have space restrictions but not weight restrictions on your backpack. You cannot drop something once you pick it up, only destroy it or sell it, but opponent loot will remain available forever so you can revisit most areas (a few are transient or become unavailable) as many times as desired. Loot accordingly.
Mods, Desired
I played with only the official patch and 3 small mods for this game. The following is a list of things I feel the game needs, but I haven't tested out mods for what I want in play yet.- Dialog fixpacks in addition to the current official patch (absolutely necessary, there are some flat out mistakes to be fixed)
- More side quests and non-main-plotline areas to explore! I love side quests!
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NPCs
- expanded dialog options
- expanded backstories/quests
- expanded reactions to plot line events.
- I am happy to take text-only dialog in exchange for interesting, well-written, and more extensive options.
A way to take Warden Riordan along in Denerim or meet him in Fort Drakon before the final battle; a way to have Riordan kill the archdemon.
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Happy gaming, gentle reader!
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