Dragon Age: Origins (PC) review

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Dragon Age: Origins is the best fantasy RPG to come out of BioWare yet -- and the most difficult.

Dragon Age: Origins is an epic fantasy RPG built on the same basic game mechanics as Bioware's best games, and backed by some of the best writing and story telling ever to appear in the genre.

The story

Dragon Age: Origins puts you in a dark, gritty fantasy world mired in shades of gray. Mages are tolerated buy mistrusted. Elves are largely enslaved and live in poverty. Dwarves are rigid, conniving, and very political. Humans are in a civil war, and all struggling for power.

And the Blight -- a plague of demonic, nasty creatures that look a bit like a hybrid of undead and orcs -- have once again emerged to plague the world.  As one of the few surviving Grey Wardens, it is your job to fight the Blight -- and win by any means necessary.

A return to tactical combat

If you've ever played any game by BioWare, then the basic mechanics of Dragon Age will be almost immediately familiar to you. The general user interface and the game play (inventory management, combat, etc.) are much the same as other Bioware titles.

What may take some time getting used to is Dragon Ages' return to more tactical -- and less forgiving -- combat mechanics. Even slogging through a handful of 'minions' -- which usually outnumber your party of four -- can be difficult.

My intrepid party of adventurers got killed by a mere pack of wolves enroute to a new town at one point. Friendly fire is possible too, so you have to take much greater care in moving and directing your party around the battlefield -- lest your mage's mighty fireblast or other area affect spells hose allies and enemies alike.

This is a stark contrast to many of Bioware's more recent offerings, which at least give you the option of turning off friendly-fire -- but even devolve (tactically speaking) to little more than selecting your highly-optimized party, clicking an enemy, then awaiting victory while the AI largely takes care of business.

Dragon Age: Origins, however, is not so forgiving, and you'll probably die more than a few times while you come to grips with its old-school tactical RPG combat roots. Even on the normal difficulty setting Dragon Age can be difficult -- so much so that a patch was recently released to cut you a little more slack on easy/normal settings. Pivotal battles with 'boss' creatures can be especially tough.

Fortunately, Dragon Age provides an impressive AI system to make it easier to manage your team. Using essentially an in-game 'tactics editor' you can modify each of your fellow party members' behaviors to a very granular level. For example, you can create a 'rule' to tell your mage to cast a healing a spell on a character if their hitpoints fall below 50%. You can create 4 pre-set rules per 'profile' -- so each character can have different 'modes' that you control as much or as little as you like. You can use a highly refined 'programmed' party, good-old mouse micro-management, or a combination of both to help win the day.

Regardless, despite the ramp up in difficulty (really? I got wiped by a pack of wolves?) the fun rarely leaves the building -- and some old school tactics still work well, such as baiting a monster with a single character and then running around while it chases you and your party members fill it fill of arrows. Although repeated losses can be frustrating, it makes victory and the happy-dance that follows all the sweeter.

Lots of character

Dragon Age has fairly typical fantasy races (Elves, Dwarves, and humans) and classes (Rogue, Warrior, Mage) but does atypical things with them.

Skills and abilities are divided into a 4-tier system. When you gain a level, you gain statistic points and you can learn a new ability or spell. Warriors, for example, can choose from an array of abilities, such as two-handed weapons, dual-wield weapons, archery, shield abilities, and others. You can dip a little into each 'pool' or heavily specialize in one. Mages act as both artillery and healers -- there are no 'clerics' or buff/healing/pet-summoning-oriented classes.

Unfortunately, the unfamiliar game system (i.e. it's not D&D-based) can make it difficult to determine the best level progression for characters--and possibly leave you with a collection of party members unable to beat the challenges before them. (Some kind of 'respec' option might have been nice here.)

Your NPC party members are colorful and even interesting to converse with -- and voice acting in the game is exceptional from start to finish. There's a lot of inter- party banter to keep you entertained and interested in your companions. (The banter between Morrigan and Allistair -- two characters you'll meet early in the game -- is often quite funny.) It's actually a bit disappointing that you're only allowed a party of four characters, although you can access a larger roster and swap others in and out in between major missions.

Like other BioWare titles (Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, etc.) each party member has a certain amount of 'favor' you must maintain to keep them loyal and fighting along side you. Favor is gained through conversation and affected by your actions in the game. You can even give party members gifts (basically small trinkets that can be purchased or found as treasure) to earn favor with them -- yes, loyalty can be improved through bribes. But at least your trusted Mabari War hound always loves you.

Turning fantasy archetypes on their pointy ears

Character creation, combat, and loot are important building blocks for any serious single-player RPG -- but even more important is the story that drives the game -- and Dragon Age doesn't disappoint.

Much of the marketing message around Dragon Age: Origins focused on the blood, lust, and betrayal(s) fueling the game's story -- which seemed to indicate that Dragon Age would be more concerned with shocking the player than creating a believable world filled with similarly believable characters and dialog. I briefly envisioned a bad Gothic, bloody, fantasy soap opera acted by angry Luchadors.

Fortunately, this isn't the case. There is no certainly no shortage of blood, which you'll see plenty of in combat. And the world of Dragon Age is rife with racism, politics, lust, greed, and ambition. The problems you face and the decisions you make are seldom easy. Virtually nothing is black and white. Dragon Age takes most traditional fantasy archetypes and turns them on their ears -- pointy or otherwise. 

Regardless, Dragon Age is a game that will keep you playing for many, many, many hours. Every character features a different story as well, so Dragon Age offers a lot of re-playability if you want to see its massive story from every possible angle. You can also expect plenty of future 'premium' DLC -- not to mention mods and new adventures built with Dragon Age's included toolset.

Here there be monsters

Dragon Age isn't without a few blemishes, although none of them major. The first potential one is the difficulty level -- if you really just want to enjoy the story with minimal challenge, then set the game to easy mode. Otherwise, suck it up and get ready for a tough game.

Graphically, the game looks generally quite good, although for some reason the character's faces often look like dirty, battered, bruised mannequins. The Kocerai forest also sports oddly angular trees -- a common method of rendering trees about five years ago. This is probably just the result of a long development cycle. The visuals improve as the game goes on.

Other slightly annoying issues include the inability to jump -- which wouldn't be a big deal, except for those times when you get hung up on some small branch, log, or other minor obstruction that really shouldn't be an obstruction. 

Dragon Age is also pretty linear with little room for free-roam exploration, and the 'mission boards' (such as the one in Lothering) seem like an MMO- derived, lazy-man's side-quest generator. (At least they point the way to some extra loot and experience points.)It would also be nice if the auto-save system saved a little more often, because more than a couple times I got caught up in the game, got my ass handed to me in a major battle, and had to replay the last 10-15 minutes of the game AND sit through the lengthy cut scene dialogs again to take another stab at it. (Save often, folks.)  

Overall

Dragon Age: Origins isn't just one of the best RPGs of 2009, but possibly BioWare's best, most fully-realized epic fantasy game ever released. If you're a fan of the genre and haven't already picked it up, Dragon Age should be at the top of your list for the holidays. It's bloody, brutal, and complex -- in short, it's everything a true fantasy RPG gamer could ask for in a PC game. 

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