Bioware’s Dragon Age series is the spiritual successor to the earlier Baldur’s Gate games. Those games were set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, and while Dragon Age does not associate itself with that license, it’s easy to see the massive influence that the tabletop RPG game has had on this new property. It pretty much plays the same, from the characters and stories available right down to the ability scores and levelling system. However, thematically, D&D is an ice cream cone in the garden on a Sunday afternoon in July compared to the dark and morally ambigious ‘low fantasy’ world of Dragon Age. In this world, difficult decisions need to be made, sacrifices cannot be avoided and horror and death are an unavoidable part of life. You know, it’s the kind of game that gives you moral decisions to make like “Do you cut your nose off… or your ears?”
Bioware has clearly put a lot of energy into kicking this franchise off. This is evident not only from the sheer wealth of backstory and history provided in the game, but also the seemingly never-ending stream of downloadable content which expands the experience even more. If you have the money to spare for the add-ons, Dragon Age: Origins may take you months to master.
The game is a beautiful yet melancholy third person action RPG, which puts you in charge of a team of four role-playing archetypes. You pick your four out of a line-up of morally ambigious characters, including the sarcastic but dim bastard son of a king (who is actually a nice guy, despite the description), a Joan of Arc figure with a murderous past, a pet war dog (who will gladly lick the blood of your enemies off your face, which is touching), a reformed assassin and a drunken dwarf. The leader of the party is your own character, who can be either a mage, warrior or a rogue, and can have one of six possible origins (hence the title). The origin, race, sex, personality and morality of your character will greatly influence and shape the way the story progresses, allowing for a lot of interactivity and replay value.
The wonderful thing about Dragon Age: Origins is that it can be as complicated as you want it to be. If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Ferelden, then you can read the pages and pages of lore and information your party will find, you can tweak your party’s tactics and even their individual moves to your heart’s content, you can spend hours managing their inventory, designing and improving new items, learning new skills, balancing your stats, completing dozens of tasks and side-quests, romancing your party members and engaging in hours of fully-voiced dialogue. However, if you want to simply sit back and play through the story, you can tweak the difficulty down, ask the AI to manage your party’s behaviour and tactics, and let the interface show you where to go for each quest or plot event.
Regardless of your approach to playing, Dragon Age will cost you about 40 hours to play to a satisfying extent. In this time, you will enjoy some excellent enemies (including awe-inspiring dragons) and set-pieces, fantastic dialogue and acting which is in turns genuinely witty and enjoyably melodramatic), and some lovingly-crafted areas and special effects. This is the definitive RPG for fans of Tolkien-inspired fantasy, and actually manages to do Dungeons and Dragons better than it does itself. It also masters this ‘Paragon or Renagade?’ approach to morality that Bioware love and that seems to be so popular in video games today. There are a few bugs (I counted four glitched achievements and a few problems with graphics and sound) and the combat is epically challenging if you’re not willing to play on Casual difficulty, but for sheer depth of gameplay, story and imagination, no other RPG can stand up against the might of Dragon Age.
Digital Lard’s Dragon Age DLC Round-up
Seriously, we had a vote on that name and everything.
Dragon Age: Origins offers up enough downloadable content to stuff a dragon for Sunday roast, but who eats dragon for Sunday roast? If you do, you may want to consider checking out our handy breakdown of what’s worth buying and what’s worth frying. Also, you might want to cut down on carbs. Maybe buy a pedometer, I don’t know.
The Stone Prisoner
Cost: 1200 Microsoft points (approximately £11.25)
Length of Play: Between 2 and 4 hours.
Benefits: Adds Shale the golem to your party and unlocks two new areas to explore.
Review: The Stone Prisoner is great bonus content as it adds one of the best characters to your party. Shale is a fantastic addition to your line-up – as a golem, he is a powerhouse tank, and as a friend, he is a bitchy, hilarious asshole. The two areas and the bonus items that are also provided aren’t worth writing home about, but as Shale is fully-voiced and has his own storylines and dialogue with the party, this pack is worth picking up. Shame that it’s a tad expensive. 8 out of 10.
Warden’s Keep
Cost: 560 points (approximately £5.25)
Length of Play: Between 1 and 2 hours.
Benefits: Adds the Warden’s Keep area, also provides a new shop and a storage area.
Review: This is a nice additional story, complete with voice-acting and new characters, but is very much on the short side and could have done with a few more rooms being added to the Keep. Once you have completed the fun-but-brief quest, the owners of the Keep will allow you to store items there and purchase new and exciting weapons. It’s ok. 6 out of 10.
Return to Ostagar
Cost: 400 points (approximately £3.75)
Length of Play: Between 1 and 2 hours.
Benefits: Adds Ostagar to the map, allows you to recruit Dog if you missed him the first time.
Review: This is a fun dungeon crawl set in the snow-covered bloodstained remains of Ostagar. You don’t get too much content here but considering the price, it’s not too bad. If you like to have a fight and you want to pick up some handy new items, this is perfect. 7 out of 10.
The Darkspawn Chronicles
Cost: 400 points (appoximately £3.75)
Length of Play: Between 1 and 2 hours.
Benefits: Adds a new game mode.
Review: This add-on lets you play as the Darkspawn enemies during the final battle of the game. A fun novelty, and it’s cool to control the ogres and stuff for a bit, but it’s very much based on repetitive, seemingly pointless combat with none of the story that the human characters get to enjoy. A bit basic, and doesn’t add much to the game. 4 out of 10.
Leliana’s Song
Cost: 560 points (approximately £5.25)
Length of Play: Between 2 and 4 hours.
Benefits: Adds a new prequel-style game mode and a new item for rogue characters.
Review: You take control of party member Leliana during her early years as an assassin and bard. This is a great prequel, full of story and fun ideas, and will take longer than most of the other packs to complete. Well worth checking out, especially if you’re a fan of Leliana. 8 out of 10.
The full-on, hours-long Dragon Age expansion pack, Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, can be purchased as DLC but is also available as a disc. As it is too hefty to sum up as briefly as the other DLC packs, Digital Lard will be reviewing it seperately in the future. Watch this site!