Dragon Age: Origins (Xbox 360)
11/5/2009 6:52 PM | 21 Comments | Page 1 of 2
What's Hot: Intricate story framework for great character moments; Lives and thrives in the grey area of game morality; NPCs given many moments to assert themselves
What's Not: Ratio of grind to climax is skewed far toward "grind"; Interface scoffs at your gamepad; Even after hours of tweaking, your party AI may not behave as instructed; Ugly as dragon genitals
It's rare that I spend this much time on a game with as many problems as
Dragon Age: Origins. It's even more rare that I'm enthralled enough, despite many issues, to want to keep playing for a great deal longer.
With this fantasy role-playing game BioWare ditches many of the advancements of
Mass Effect -- like emotion-based dialogue trees and accompanying animated "performances" -- and goes resolutely old-school. But as a friend once said when the Beastie Boys rediscovered their roots on "Hello Nasty," the old school was never quite like this.
Superficially,
Dragon Age looks like a dozen other fantasy RPGs. A young hero is assimilated into warrior subculture, then tasked with undertaking a quest to save his civilization, each step of which leads to additional side quests. There are elves and dwarves, dragons and chainmail, swords and bows. Arrows and spells fly in battle. Young gamers will think it looks a lot like
World of Warcraft; those who've been around will instantly recall BioWare's 1998 RPG
Baldur's Gate.
Yep, you'll fight dragons. Don't take one on too early (you'll have opportunity to do so) because you'll be roasted.
BioWare hasn't just recalled the feeling of that earlier effort. The aesthetics are there, too. This is one brown, blocky, ugly game. It would've looked great on the original Xbox. I played on the Xbox 360, but the interface was obviously designed with a PC in mind. Nested submenus accommodate your spells and combat commands; accessing all but your most-used commands takes concentration and renders any combat beyond one-on-one encounters awkward at best.
The world isn't
quite a routine Tolkien knockoff. Elves are a societal subclass often relegated to slums. Mages are looked upon with suspicion and policed by magic-resistant Templars. The frontier of civilization is threatened by a definite enemy, the Darkspawn, but civil war still brews. Keeping your head down and going with the flow seems like the best way to stay alive; there is scant glory in heroism. The real danger isn't the encroaching Darkspawn (which really are stripped straight from Tolkien) but the selfish motives of men. Oh, OK, that's Tolkien, too. Dammit!
But there are the characters, written with enough detail for you to earn an emotional connection, and the possible ways to approach the story, which are as plentiful as the loot you'll scavenge. The witch-mage Morrigan is resentful and sneaky, but powerful and an essential battle ally. Alistair is a warrior with confidence issues and a past he's afraid to live up to. I could go on, but I'll limit myself to this: Get a dog when the opportunity arises, and think twice about executing a would-be assassin who can become a valuable party addition.
Alistair looks fierce all covered with blood, but the guy's got some issues. Treat him nice.
For every two or three hours of grind, you'll hit a tension point that is more potent than the climax of most games. Just playing through my character's prologue (I've rolled a few heroes, but my primary playthrough was with a City Elf mage), I had to think long and hard about how to resolve two conversations. Should I put my allegiance in a friend, or with my superiors? Who do I trust, and who do I sell out?
Those tension points set the tone for the entire game. While the grind is off-putting, coupled as it is with interface difficulties that had me reloading some battles a dozen times, the best beats in the story are like treats dangling from a stick, leading you on. They're not groundbreaking or original; quite a few places felt like homage to established styles. Here's the "Twilight Zone" moment, here's the Alexandre Dumas point, etc. But they work in context, and they take advantage of each character's weaknesses and idiosyncrasies.
Turning points in the tale, both those obviously major and many seemingly minor, become real moments of existential character assessment. "Moral choice" is a pathetic marketing term that has been applied to many games in which proffered binary "either/or" scenarios really represent no choice at all. Yet in a series of games that includes
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and
Mass Effect, BioWare has been one of the few developers willing to revel in the grey zone of moral relativity.
Dragon Age is a respectable achievement in that arena.
