Dragon Age: Origins

Describing Dragon Age: Origins as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate is somewhat dubious. Many games could be called that if DA:O is what makes one. But BioWare did that anyway.

I was a bit uncertain what the interface would be, the game being both a PC and a console title. Fortunately, I was positively surprised -- the gameplay felt 100 percent PC game. I have to wonder how controlling your party in combat exactly works on the console version. I guess not quite as smoothly.

Clunky console design does raise its head the moment you open the inventory screen or the like, however. List inventory is there (though it's definitely better than in Mass Effect) and switching the viewed character happens via its own GUI element or a dropdown menu (seriously?) instead of... let's see... simply clicking on the party frame?

Also, what happened to having equipment visible, e.g. being able to equip stuff while at stores. Neverwinter Nights got it right, and it made things much simpler. But you get used to these kind of interface flaws after playing awhile. Doesn't mean it's alright, though.

I created a dual daggers wielding elf rogue as my character (yay, dual-wielding) and found the class to be quite enjoyable (no small thanks to the correctly done stealth mechanic). Positioning your character behind the target to get backstabs off reminded me of World of Warcraft (where attacks made from behind won't get parried/blocked). In fact, DA:O feels very much like a single player MMORPG (though there are no spammable abilities), which is nice.

Like with Mass Effect, BioWare came up with a new and "unique" world again instead of using an existing licensed franchise. The rule system is familiar enough for an RPG veteran, even though it's somewhat overlapping in the attributes and especially many of the melee abilities seem too similar to each other. Overall the ability system game me an unpolished feeling.

Often when playing an unfamiliar game, my lack of knowledge of the system rubs me off the wrong way. With DA:O it got pretty bad when after few hours of playing, fights started to feel too challenging (I was playing on Normal difficulty). And so I eventually ended up finding a guide to an optimal rogue build; evidently I had been building my rogue all but optimally.

Thus I started a new character. My non-optimal build wasn't the only reason for that, though. The appearance of my elf character was also starting to annoy me, as well as party member interaction; I was seeing Morrigan disapproves -x. every time I talked to an NPC. I remember some other BioWare RPG had a similar system but it never irritated me this much, if I recall correctly that is. Awhile I wondered do I want to even play this game. But then I steeled myself and started a human rogue. And things went much better -- I managed to avoid majority of party member disapproval.

Afterwards I realized my new rogue had some resemblance to an anime character. I think the tanned skin and white hair with black eyebrows make that but the contrast was just so cool to pass. Maybe I should try to recreate a celebrity sometime with these pretty flexible character creators; or even myself, hah. Alistair's hairstyle is actually pretty similar to mine.

DA:O has again BioWare's typical party gathering in it. A thing I'm frankly starting to get tired of. This time I started telling NPCs to go away instead of hoarding them to stand around in the party camp and never get taken along. The game even does the mistake of forcing one npc, a dwarf, into your party setup for one particular part. Alistair is also forced in your party but he's sort of an important character and I was using him anyway, so I didn't mind that as much. Not being able to take some party member with you is also bad. Why can't BioWare do things like in Baldur's Gate. Why try to fix something that isn't broken.

The way the different origin stories of DA:O and your character are weaved into the main story is impressing. The main story itself is not impressing, though. And it is even told to you early on; find these allies and unite them against the Blight. And kill the Archdemon (that is a generic dragon). And all that is left is to play it through. And that definitely takes some time; I finished the game after 53 hours of playing.

Nothing in DA:O's universe is very original with dwarves and elves and the rest of the standard stuff in it. The atmosphere is grim, though, much alike to A Song of Ice and Fire or Battlestar Galactica -- i.e. life sucks. Magic has a big shadow over it with the evil blood magic and all the demon summoning. I feel they could've done the game without the Maker -- a god that maybe exists but sure ain't doing anything. I guess there's always room for religious fanatics.

I tried to make the world a better place through my playthrough, though, and I think I succeeded quite well; Alistair and Anora married and ruled the land happily ever after (not sure how happily really, regardless of how funny Alistair is). The Arl of Redcliffe and his family were saved, like were the mages and elves. I destroyed the Anvil of the Void but evidently the greedy dwarves just couldn't leave it alone. And of course I agreed to Morrigan's plan and survived killing the Archdemon, and then rebuilt the Grey Wardens afterwards.

At some point I noticed how Morrigan's way of talking seemed familiar (though I couldn't quite recognize the voice). Then I watched another episode of Farscape's first season and realized it was actually Claudia Black (Aeryn Sun) voice-acting her.

Two actors from Star Trek: Voyager also gave their voices albeit to minor characters; Tim Russ (Tuvak) is Zathrian and Kate Mulgrew (Janeway) is Flemeth. I thought the latter would bother me after seeing Flemeth's appearance Dragon Age 2's demo; Mulgrew's voice in that sounded way too much like Janeway, creating quite an immersion breaker. DA:O's Flemeth, however, was quite different from Janeway and didn't bother me at all.

The soundtrack of the game is standard fare. It doesn't strike me as great at any point (nor it is really bad), besides the main theme being delightfully moody. Inon Zur sometimes gets it right (Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal) and sometimes not quite so (Icewind Dale 2).

Dragon Age: Origins runs on the Eclipse Engine (later improved to Lycium for DA2). It seems like a combination of the Aurora and Unreal 3 engines, though not as good-looking as the latter, I might say. Usually things looked good but some things just appeared terribly out-dated, namely forest sceneries in distance and the nightsky over Lake Calenhad had horrible color-banding.

Heavy armors and biggers weapons look good but I feel the design team felt lazy with the rest; all the leather armors were pretty similar and daggers (which are more like short swords) just bland. And all leather and cloth headgear just looked awful. At least the game had enough decency to take helmets off during dialogue.

Runes add glows to weapons (rather flashy in fact) but they completely refused to work after going through a loading screen. (Reminded me of this in WoW back in the day: NO GLO NO GO) I wonder if that was intended or the engine just failing. At least poisons and coatings temporarily added glows to my daggers.

There were also issues with corpses sometimes taking a good while before becoming lootable. And on occasion the AI refused to kick in and was not sending the s'posedly attacking hordes towards the position I was defending. Or my party was just following me and ignoring the huge dragon I was trying to slay.

Speaking of dragons; I found a whole three of them, which I guess is an alright number. I was maybe expecting few more, given the name of the game. The dragon fights were the best dragon fights I've played in any game, though. All the jumping into air to get somewhere else made them very dynamic, even though I didn't really appreciate being knocked back all the time. Alistair also failed completely in tanking them, and either Morrigan or my character was constantly pulling aggro (why all the MMO stuff but no proper taunt).

One small and cool thing in the game are the sync-kills, or death blows in this context. If your melee character does the killing blow, you get to see a special animation; the bigger the monster the cooler the animation. Death blows on ogres and dragons also slow down the game so that you can appreciate the moment longer.

Dragon Age: Origins doesn't bring much new to the genre but it is great entertainment once you get into it. There are many funny dialogues and some of the party banters made me laugh out loud. Gameplay is smooth and tactical, and pleasantly challenging at times. There are some rough edges in the game and I wouldn't really go calling it a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. But on its own; definitely a good game.

Also, I was expecting an end credits song in-style of Mass Effect and one did eventually play, though This Is War by 30 Seconds to Mars, a radio hit, was totally not what I had anticipated. And it's nowhere near as good as M4 (part II) by Faunts in ME was.