The famous blood dragon logo of Dragon Age: Origins

A few weeks ago, I opened my mail slot (I don’t have a box) to find this month’s issue of

The new logo for Dragon Age 2

Game Informer.  That’s the magazine of my favorite local video game store, Game Stop.  Bioware, my favorite game company, has officially announced the sequel for its award winning, best selling game, and my current favorite, Dragon Age: Origins.  It will be out next March in 2011.  Since this momentous announcement came out, and since I’m working through a second complete playthrough of the game, I figured this week I’d give my thoughts about the original  game, plus a review of all the DLC (downloadable content) that’s available.

The game came out last year, and is, like most Bioware games, an RPG (Role Playing Game). It’s become big, with not only a game with lots of downloadable extras, but two novels, a pencil and paper game, and comic books as well.  A Dragon Age anime has just been announced as well, to be coming out next year.  The best place to check all this out is at the Dragon Age Wiki.

The game design is very simple.  It’s got very clear objectives, easy to read maps (a plus for me) and fighting is simple.  You press the x button, at least on Playstation 3, and set different commands for all the other buttons, whichever commands you use most.  you can also press the R1 button to bring up the action wheel to choose and execute the more obscure abilities you’ve learned.

The evil Archdemon

The player’s main character varies depending on the player’s wishes.  You can choose to be an elf, human, or dwarf, male or female, design their looks, and then choose their class, rogue, warrior, or mage.  It should be mentioned that dwarves have no aptitude for magic, and so are the only race that can’t be mages.  The interesting thing about elves, in particular, is that in the mythology of Dragon Age, they’ve been enslaved for a century by humans and have lost most of their culture and their immortality.  I’ve never seen elves depicted that way anywhere else.  Dwarven culture was also interesting in that they have a form of ancestor worship, as humans have their own form of worship.  They have churches called chantries, which any race can go to, but is mainly human.  They call their god the Maker, and it seems the Chantry, what they call the main body of the church,  is something like the Catholic church.  I’m not a Catholic, but I still don’t like how their church gets bashed all the time.  That was actually the only thing I really disliked.

The ever handsome and gallant knight, Alestair

The plot is classic and epic, a group is off to save the kingdom of Ferelden from evil after the

The witch Morrigan, played by Claudia Black

king is betrayed on the battlefield and killed.  The evil is called darkspawn.  Being evil, they’re not at all pretty, and they’re led by an archdemon, a dragon, which you must of course kill to beat the game.  Your group is very diverse. There’s Alestair the gallant knight (my personal favorite),  Wynne the healing mage, Leliana the minstrel and chantry sister from the neighboring kingdom of Orlais (think France), Zevran the elven assassin from the kingdom of Antiva, Oghren the hard drinking dwarf from the underground kingdom of Orzammar, Sten the stoic warrior from the far off land of Qunar, Shale the rock  golem, and Morrigan the wild witch woman.  You can even have a Mabari warhound in your group.  Think of a large mastiff crossed with a pit bull for brutality with near human intelligence and you’ve got an idea of what this dog is like.

Oghren, the uncouth dwarven warrior, played by Steve Blum

To start your journey, there are 6 origin stories you can play through, depending on your

The elven assasin, Zevran

race.  I liked the mage opening story and the dalish elf opening story, personally.  when the opening story ends you find your character at Ostagar, a fortress where a mighty battle against the darkspawn is to take place, and the real story begins.  Along the way to your final battle, there’s literally TONS to do.  you could easily spend 100 hours or more in the world of Ferelden.  There are a lot of people to meet, things to do, and sidequests to finish, not to mention lots of plot twists.  The plot is put together well, and I couldn’t find many holes in it.  It was fun to play and the characters were well drawn and engrossing.  I really got hooked on Alestair and Leliana, in particular.

The music is at once beautiful, and wild and fitting, and the soundtrack is not to be missed.  My favorite piece from it, besides the main theme, was “In Uthanera,”  a song Leliana sings during the course of the story. Here’s a link to listen to Leliana sing.  It will open in a new window, so you can still read this as you listen.  The soundtrack is completely worth getting, I think.  It’s got other beautiful pieces in it as well as this one.

The voice acting was perfection, with people like Tim Curry, Kate Mulgrew and Claudia Black being of particular note, along with one of my favorite anime voice actors, Steven Blum, playing a few parts, including Oghren, who’s a hoot of a character and just hilarious.  The voice acting makes it fun to interact with the people in the game, which is its highlight.  Characters react to you depending on what you’ve done, good or bad, and on what race you are.  Elves, for example, are looked down upon and treated with disdain, especially by humans.  You also have to watch what your character does because party members will like or dislike you based upon that, and if one is not careful party members will get so disgusted with the player’s character that they will leave the party.

Now, of course, this game is rated M, the video game equivalent of R, and it’s rated so for very good reasons.  First, this is a violent game.  There’s decapitations, though not graphic, and the Darkspawn, as mentioned previously, are hideous and very scary for young children.  There’s also blood everywhere.  Even through some of the cutscenes they show the characters splattered all over with blood.  There’s also various types of sex, although none of the characters are shown naked.  They have bras and panties and such on, which makes the sex scenes interesting to say the least.  And just so you know, dear reader, I did my homework and knew about that before I triggered the sex scenes.  I romanced Alestair, and guy players can romance Morrigan but Leliana and Zevran can also be romanced, and the two of them… shall we say… swing both ways, for those who want to do that kind of thing.  I’ve heard you can even do threesomes or foursomes if you want.  I’d never try to do any of that.  None of this is required to finish the story, however.  It’s completely optional.  You can finish the game, most fortunately, without your character having sex with anyone, which is nice.  I would not recommend this for anyone younger than maybe 17.  But it’s compelling and fun for adults.  The story sucks you in like a vaccum.  You really get attatched to characters, too.  In one replay I decided I would romance Zevran, and  even though I know it’s a game, I actually felt bad that I wasn’t flirting with Alestair.  That’s a sign of great writing.

The graphics leave a little to be desired, but not much.  They’re largely good, and probably look better on the PC.  There’s a lot of good detail, and despite a few glitches looks smooth when characters move.

Velanna, the dalish elf sorceress

The downloadable content has been fascinating.  “Awakenings” told an interesting story of newly regrouping darkspawn, who now talk, which is just terrifying that they are now so intelligent.  Fighting the Queen of Blackmarsh was especially fun to do.  It was a fast paced, intense fight and you had to come up with interesting strategies to win.  It was nice to see some familiar characters, including Oghren, who again is entertaining, and Wynne, along with some new characters, such as Sigrun the dwarven warrior, and Velanna the dalish elven  mage.  Make sure you use Sigrun and Oghren in your party if you want a hilarious combination.  They kept me laughing for hours.  You could easily get your character above level 30 by the end of it, and it took about 20 hours or so to play, which, for me, made it worth the $40 it costs, although some people thought it cost too much for the smaller playtime.

The party pranks and gifts pack was not only amusing, especially the pranks, but they made it very easy to get various party members to like you, as the gifts are good and give a lot of approval points.  That makes it well worth the $5 you spend to acquire it.

The “Return to Ostagar” pack not only lets you get vengeance for the death of the king and let you put his body to a proper final rest, but it gives you some sweet armor, and so if you have $5 I highly recommend it.

“Darkspawn Chronicles” is also a modest $5, but I haven’t played it, as I read that it lets you play as the archdemon and command the darkspawn, and I’m just not interested in that, at least for now.

Leliana, the Orlesian minstrel and chantry sister

“Leliana’s Song” was terrific.  You get to play as Leliana, and see some of her past and the events that led her to being who she is when she joins your party in the main game.  It’s short and sweet, only a good 2-3 hours or so of play, but the story was fascinating, as Leliana is a great character.  She tells some great stories in the  main game  that introduces you to just some of Ferelden and the Chantry’s rich history.  At the end of “Leliana’s Song”  you get an awesome piece of armor for rogues that you can use in replays of the base game.  Definitely a must play for Leliana lovers out there.

All this makes Dragon Age: Origins fun, at least for adults playing, very replayable, and well worth the money you spend to get it.  It’s also available on PS3, Xbox360 or for your PC.  The background info is really deep, and the game’s a great introduction to the world of Thedas.

5/5