I have to be in a certain mood to enjoy high fantasy. For some very odd reason, that time seems to be the dead of winter. Something about the snow, suiting up to go outside, and the need for large steins of mead to make it until spring churns up the urge to watch all of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and look for pen-and-paper D&D friends to get things going. Lucky for me, BioWare’s long-awaited high fantasy RPG has been released in what feels like the coldest month in NYC I’ve ever experienced.

The gameplay in Dragon Age: Origins has a solid anchor in the classic PC RPG’s of yester-year. Baldur’s Gate and Diablo both come to mind, as well as Betrayal at Krondor. DA:O nicely blends the dungeon crawl with the strategic party combat that makes all of those games fun in their own ways. At first, I thought the overworld map system felt like a cop-out, having already given 200+ hours of my life to Oblivion and Fallout, but in retrospect, I find it kept the focus at a consistent scale, always at the level of the hero and the party. This actually helps make the game’s climax feel that much more impressive. The missions are you standard “unite all the races to save this world” kind of thing, pushing you to the mages, elves, dwarves, and humans asking to support the Grey Warden’s cause. The fiction is well written and deep, and instantly reminds me of parallels from Tolkien and Martin (high praise!).

Graphically, DA:O disappoints a bit on the 360. From what I’ve read, this really should be enjoyed on a PC. The models & textures seem a bit behind what I came to expect from BioWare on 360, given what we saw with Mass Effect, and especially given what I’ve seen so far from Mass Effect 2. The removal of the PC’s “zoom out with scroll-wheel” feature also left me a bit deflated. Since I think that one feature enables the game to really feel like its moving from Diablo to a closer up feel like Mass Effect. That would have added another layer of dynamic scale that could have made the game a bit easier to control in the larger battles.

Let’s chat a bit about what makes Dragon Age fun. After I started my game, I felt almost the daily need to boot it up and continue along. Now, let’s be clear, this wasn’t a deep need to stop the blight, or save Ferelden, but mainly to dig for new loot and try to explore my party deeper. I found Morrigan to be especially pleasing to exchange with, as she’s such a different style of character, and reacts entertainingly to most exchanges. The loot system is very fun, albeit a bit slow to grind. Maybe Dragon Age and Borderlands combined will stop me from ever needing to take a dive in World of Warcraft (god knows that would be trouble). The second layer of fun here is the comparison with others who are playing it. It’s enjoyable to have water-cooler talk about the choices you made, versus the choices your friends made, and see how it all played out. Usually I found these changes to be subtle, but a few were very surprising indeed (*slight-spoiler* My wife ended up with an entirely different end game, with a different ruler, different final party, and different result of the Morrigan/Flemeth scenario that was a bit shocking to me!)

I’m a bit worried about the state of DLC these days, and DA:O brings that concern to a head. We all know EA is going to be the company to push the envelope of how & why DLC is included in a game. The prominent placement of the DLC markers in the overworld map, as well as the ability to add an entire extra character via download is a pretty major step. My biggest fear is that DLC will no longer be used to “sweeten the deal” on the long-game, but more to validate that people use download codes, and don’t buy pre-owned copies. My real hope is that interest in DLC and download-only games continues to grow on consoles, so I can stop buying physical media entirely.

Dragon Age: Origins continues to help BioWare carve out the special flavor of RPG. It’s a method of storytelling that’s equal part dialog-tree cinematics, choices of good vs evil, and a solid inventory, level, and skill management system. The one presented here is a bit dated compared to Mass Effect 2 (review coming shortly) but feels fairly equal to the first Mass Effect, and that’s a pretty good thing. I found many of the characters here decent, but only a few really shined. This is a shame because further exploring the relationship options between characters is the main highlight of the potential replay of the game, but one that I feel I don’t need to boot back up to explore.

One Liner: A solid BioWare tale with a handful of things that keep it from being really amazing.

Final Grade:[B-]

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