A Nerd's reView - Dragon Age: Origins (PS3)

In many ways, Dragon Age: Origins is the game I have been waiting years to get a hold of. I, like many others, picked up BioWare’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic the day it came out and was thrilled by the almost seamless integration of traditional RPG aspects with the opportunity to make choices that impacted the story. The largest problem I have with Kotor and its Obsidian sequel is simply this: I have played them both too much! Not at all to the fault of the developers, it simply becomes difficult over time to enjoy a game when every line of dialogue is virtually memorized. Of course, I have gotten and continue to get tremendous replay value out of both games.

Why hello there, beautiful.

I would argue that, for those unfamiliar with the Baldur’s Gate franchise, Dragon Age features gameplay more similar to Kotor than to BioWare’s other RPG offerings, although its active combat system is reminiscent of Mass Effect. It offers a robust, compelling story that allows players to experience a variety of origin stories determined by the player character’s race and class. The origin sequences themselves are linear and their impact in game is disappointingly little more than negligible, but BioWare has designed a system that gives each player character a separate reason for being. Thankfully gone are the days of the amnesiac hero all too common in games. I can only hope that this feature is one that is present (and expanded upon) in impending sequels I am already waiting for with baited breath. Other developers: please take note.

By the various paths, players soon take on the role of a freshly minted “Grey Warden” – a Jedi/Spectre-type organization in the midst of a centuries-long conflict with rampaging hordes of corrupt creatures known as the Darkspawn. In the wake of disaster, players are charged with rallying the free-peoples of Ferelden against the approaching storm and leading them to victory against the Darkspawn. What follows is a very long (60+ hours) series of quests both large and small, many with several means to an end as you explore a very fleshed-out world (which is very telling, especially if you take the time to read the codex).

Surprisingly, you won't see many of these.

Similar to Mass Effect, you will find no moral compass to guide you in the grey areas of decision making (although party members may chime in from time to time to offer their own preference). This is not to say that you exist in a world without consequences, however. Much to the contrary, your choices will directly impact both your influence with party members (a particularly and consistently muddled job will thin your ranks) and help to shape more than a few end-game events. I found myself particularly impressed with the end of the game and – without giving anything away – I feel BioWare has given Dragon Age an ending sequence to be proud of.

Perhaps one of the greater disappointments I have with the game is that it is all too easy to miss out on back-story and some quests by unknowingly selecting the “wrong” option in a conversation. For this reason, it is important to save frequently. It is worth mentioning that the auto-save feature does know when to save before important sequences and challenging fights, but that does not mean you should think everything is taken care of for you.

Combat, as I mentioned previously, is quite active and can subsequently be rather challenging. The action can still be paused at any given moment so that specific instructions can be issued to your party members; however, much to my chagrin, you are simply unable to queue orders. Instead, players are offered the indirect opportunity to “program” party members with behaviors to follow when situations you define present themselves. This has the potential to be a very powerful tool in combat, but the drawback is that tactics can never be ignored either. The mage in your party will not know to heal your warrior if it is not programmed through the tactics screen (you can take active control of any party member to issue commands directly, but – again – these orders cannot be queued). There may even come a time when the combat stance of your party members may mean the difference between life and death. More than once, a warrior in my group who was set to “aggressive” pursued a fleeing enemy away from the party through several rooms filled with baddies. Believe me when I say his death was shortly followed by a swarming train of death.

Seriously, cover your nose the next time you sneeze...

It seems as though many people have found the graphics of Dragon Age lacking. I, for one, do not think this is the case. Visuals, overall, convey precisely what they need to and, aesthetic choices aside (I need to be covered in gore for how long?), are not typically lacking. I am much happier with a game that puts gameplay well ahead of pretty. That having been said, I do think a patch should be forth-coming. More than once, combat-oriented cinematic sequences would stutter and my character has unwittingly been occasionally transported from one end of the map to another when exiting a conversation. Also, I have noticed that it can take anywhere from 30 – 60 seconds after combat has finished for loot to appear on dead enemies. This left me feeling very impatient more than once, as the frequency of skirmishes only increases in certain areas.

I am currently on my second play-through of Dragon Age and I am well aware that this game will suffer the same fate as Kotor – I will be playing it well into the future. That is not to say that Dragon Age is not without its faults. Inventory management can be particularly grating and conversation options are sometimes limited to two extremes or result in missed opportunity, among many other things. All the same, this is a game to love. I only hope that BioWare plans a great deal more in the way of DLC support than Mass Effect received because it will give me something new to do by the time I am on my fiftieth play-through. A sequel can’t come soon enough.