Dragon Age: Origins

By Jay Williams

Dragon Age: Origins is being dubbed as the spiritual successor to BioWare's "Baldur's Gate", one of the most successful role-playing games in its segment.

BioWare's return to its roots, delivering a fusion of the best elements of existing fantasy works with stunning visuals, emotionally-driven narrative, heart-pounding combat, powerful magic abilities and credible digital actors. 

Set in the land of Ferelden, its people under attack by the Darkspawn invasion from the south, your short-term mission is to join the ranks of The Grey Wardens and defend the regions of the land from this ancient threat.

Your adventure has one of six different openings (Human Noble, Human/Elf Mage, Dalish Elf, City Elf, Dwarf Commoner and Dwarf Noble) and can play out in a surprising number of ways.

Don't worrie you won't have to battle the Darkspawn forces by yourself. I started my game as a Human Noble, joined by my trusty War Dog - Mabari War Dogs are a prized and essential part of the Fereldan military. Along the way other poeple will join you on your quest, forming a team of up to four. Your teammates can are essential throughout the game. 

The game incorporates "origins" for each race and some classes. For example, a Dwarf Noble begins the game as part of the royal family in one of the dwarven cities, whereas the Dwarf Commoner origin story begins on the streets of the city. Origin stories determine the background of the player's character prior to the main events of the game's story, forming an introduction to the world while also comprising hours of play.

The games core relies heavily on your dialogue decisions. Dialogue options are definitely divided into two - Good and Evil, so you have to be careful in your dialogue choice as some of your party members may not approve.

Your actions also have as much impact on how your party members view you. This makes you think carefully about which quests to take and how this might affect the out come of your game.

Players will simply fight their way through the hordes of creatures aligned against them by executing attacks through power-mapped buttons and radial menus.

The in game combat gives the player real-time control over one party member at any time, whilst allowing you to pause the game at any time and issue orders to the party members you’re not currently controlling.

Dragon Age has a ‘combat tactics’ section, it allows you to set up the AI behaviour for each party member yourself. It essentially lets you set a whole bunch of actions that engage automatically – for example, if an allies health falls below 50%, they will engage a defence move or heal them self. It's kind of tricky at first but after a bit of practice it becomes a must in order to survive. You’ll even begin to plot your characters skill development around the feature – spotting groups of skills that work well together, then ‘programming’ your team to perform them in the right order of their own accord.

Dragon Age isn’t a walk in the park (especially on hard difficulty setting), but with the right tactics you'll be one step ahead of the enemy.

This game is visually brilliant and has such an engaging story line, but the irritating combat controls prevent this from being a true classic.

Dragon Age’s story, and the decisions you make certainly keep you engaged throughout the entire experience, but can tend to drag on a bit. Instead of all the word play, let there be more combat, but with better controls.

In all, I think RPG and fantasy fans alike will love this game and with over 100 hours of playable content, what's not to love?

Game: Dragon Age: Origins
System: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC
Players: 1
Online: No
Developer: BioWare
Distributor: Electronic Arts

Rating: 80%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)