Dragon Age has been a long time in the making – since 2004, in fact. Touted as Bioware’s “spiritual successor”to Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age may appear at first glance to be Mass Effect meets Lord of the Rings, but in fact, Dragon Age is an entirely different beast altogether – and a good one at that. It’s not a perfect game, but it does provide a solid and satisfying story based experience, something that Bioware prides themselves on. If you’re interested in an old school RPG, Dragon Age is most certainly worth your time, and here’s why.
Dragon Age’s development time shows in the final product – it’s (mostly) free of bugs, extremely detailed, and polished to a shine. The issues I have with the game stand as unsightly blemishes on an otherwise flawless product. The most glaring issue with the game is the load times – while Mass Effect had elevators to mask all the behind-the-scenes loading it did, Dragon Age uses an ole’ fashioned loading screen, and one that I found myself staring at for almost a minute or two at a time. Often times I’d find myself looking at multiple screens within ten minutes of each other – something that takes away from the immersion and depth Bioware worked so hard to build in this game. Secondly, the game really loses steam in the last two hours of the main story, and culminates in an extremely anti-climatic boss fight unfitting to a triple A title. Lastly, the game uses a DLC and pre-order bonus model, which would be fine, had the DLC not included a party member, been the only way to get a “stash” to keep items in the game, and included armor that trumps anything else you’ll find. It’s a horrid business model and had I am disappointed to see Bioware include it in this game, although with piracy such a factor in today’s gaming market I do understand where they are coming from, I just feel that the DLC content shouldn’t have such a significant impact on the overall game like it does.
Dragon Age is first and foremost a story based game and uses Bioware’s tried and true formula. Much like Mass Effect invoked almost every science fiction cliche, Dragon Age uses a number of different ones from fantasy and high fantasy genres including madden wizards, sacred artifacts, and an evil army of dark spawn. Ferelden, the landmass where Dragon Age takes place, feels like a totally immersive and plausible world. Bioware’s attention to detail combined with the vast amount of back history written for the game really compelled me to continue progressing the story. The voice acting is the most varied of any game I’ve heard – I never found myself annoyed at hearing the same voice actor twice, and goes a long way to making the game world more engrossing.
Combat controls and feels like a massive multiplayer RPG, and a good one at that. The camera can be positioned up close, ala World of Warcraft, or isometric, ala Baldur’s Gate, and I’d go as far as to say that anyone making a third person or MMORPG game should look to Dragon Age to copy the camera – it’s that smooth and tight. Much like Bioware’s other RPG games, combat can be paused in order to gain a more tactical advantage over enemies. This is a double edged sword of sorts – it comes in handy when characters are inches from death and you need to take a better look at the situation – but on harder difficulties, I found myself pausing combat every couple of seconds, which really breaks the flow of combat. As far as combat mechanics go, Dragon Age is solid – again, the game has more akin to a MMORPG than Mass Effect, but there is enough number crunching and min/maxing to keep busy with. Combat animations are slick and seamless and overall fighting enemies is extremely satisfying.
The most impressive aspect of Dragon Age, however, has got to be the story permutations Bioware implemented in the game. Aside from the titular Origin story that sets the mood for the rest of the game, the choices you make impact the story in a rather impressive way – more so than any other Bioware game I’ve played. There are very few “good/evil/really good/really evil” choices in the game, instead Bioware has done away with the alignment meter and opted to have choices that certain party members would agree with or disagree with (although some could still be considered good or evil.) At more than one point in the game, I realized that a choice I had made three or four hours ago impacted the story I was seeing unfold, which I found rather impressive and a refreshing change from the more obvious story forks in previous Bioware games.
If you’re a fan of Bioware games or just classic RPGs in general, you’ll want to grab Dragon Age, if you haven’t already. The game stands as a testament that Bioware can still evolve and refine their tried and true formula for story based games. While it doesn’t do much in the way of groundbreaking mechanics, everything the game does do has been polished to a shine and then some. Solid animations, impressive graphics, a sleek and near flawless interface, all backed by an epic and cinematic score make it my favorite game I’ve played this year, if my favorite RPG in recent memory.
Oh, oh yes. I will be, ahem, “acquiring” this for PC soon.
You’ll buy it and give the hard working people at Bioware the monies they deserve, dammit!
I love this website
This game is the shit. Its even better than oblivion in a lot aspects. I love the game, but the load screens are horribly long, and when im playing it at night when i have been playing fo hours i actually fell asleep waiting for it to load lmao controle in hand. But all in all its a one of the best rpgs i have played yet.
why the damn are people buying modern warfare when THIS is out? reveal them so i may smite!
Haha, I agree! It is much more manlier to take up thy sword and shield and smite thee demons, My Lord!
this or cod i think il b pickin this up friday
the game is very good, i look forward to playing it every chance i get, i am happy with everything but the graphics to say it has “impressive graphics” is exaggerating quite a bit. the graphics are certainly not top notch, average maybe.
The graphics are impressive, especially for the framerate I get on the PC version. I’m not sure what the console versions push, but I had a solid 50 FPS no matter what was happening on screen, which to me, is impressive.
I really like how all my internet buddies have gone missing only to find out they’ve been secretly playing this game since release. Freakin’ awesome.
My wife is playing this game and loves it. She is most of the way through already. She has the time being disabled and a stay at home.
One aspect really bothered us is the business model around DLC. So put out a game, fine. Drop half a C note for the game. Great. Good game.
Oh by the way we held some stuff back so we could get you to pay again for it.
Expansions fine. New games great. Paying for them not a problem. But to have content unreleased unless you pay more, kinda blows.
I hate paying twice for a game and this is just a backdoor way of doing it.
At least wait a couple months then release it as an expansion rather than doing on ready content on release day. That way I will feel better about that fake reacharound that you are giving me.
I somewhat agree. What I have a problem with is pre-order exclusive content. DLC I’ve come to realize is a way for developers to make money in today’s used game market – where they weren’t making any before.
I would say, if anything, that I have yet to play any DLC that was adequately priced for the amount of content you get, and that, I think, should change.
[...] haven’t had a chance to play Dragon Age: Origins yet, but Karl thinks it’s the bees knees. Yeah, I just wrote that. Don’t judge me. So save up $4.99 to buy this new content pack [...]
Loving it so far. I’m gonna have to pick up a cooling pad or something though, after a few hours, I pulled up an application and saw that my CPU was running at 95 degrees!
[...] Dragon Age: Origins – Review Excerpt: [...]