The story is a familiar one, culled from the tales of Middle-Earth, Christianity, and even BioWare’s previous works. Driven by power and greed, mankind awakened the grotesque forms of the Darkspawn, and only the Grey Wardens were able to thwart the ensuing Blight. Four centuries have passed. The Darkspawn have become folk-tales, and the Grey Wardens, forgotten relics. The signs of another Blight cannot be ignored and, as in all circumstances of human tragedy, there are those who would bend their kin’s misfortune to reap the benefits. You are the newest conscript of the Grey Wardens, tasked with stemming the flow of Darkspawn and uniting Ferelden as it falls into civil war. Dragon Age: Origins can’t boast the decadent array of options witnessed in Bethesda’s RPGs, nor does it limit you to the ‘orphan with a single path to greatness’ approach made famous by Square Enix. This is a world in need of soldiers, not emo-fashionistas. You choose your race – elf, human, or dwarf – and your class – warrior, rogue, or mage.
Which one of the six opening acts you choose dictates the experience, setting in motion a butterfly-effect of decisions and events unique to that character. You must understand that Dragon Age is incredibly dialogue-laden. Mass Effect hardly counts as preparation and, for pure action-junkies, I imagine that completing a single mission of the main quest will be like watching Citizen Kane after downing a pot of coffee. Conversation is always engaging though, because it is constant and delivered with the greatest voice-overs in gaming. The responses are rarely divided like black and white across the line of good vs. evil. A simple question may yield as many as six responses, be they polite, crude, positive, negative, or indecisive. The point of conversation in Dragon Age is not to build an archetype. It is to build a character, complete with motive and personality. You have room for three companions on your journey, and potential recruits are dotted all across the landscape. Some are called to vengeance, patriotism, or the allure of cash.
Not everyone will see eye-to-eye with the intentions of their fearless leader though. They hover over your conversations like a quarrelsome subconscious, lending their thoughts on the best courses of action. Please them, and their approval-rating will rise, possibly to the point of gaining improved combat-abilities and revealing quests. Disappoint them enough and they may abandon you, unless you shower them with gifts. As you converse with them at camp and their approval ratings rise, they confide in you, praise you, and look to you for advice. The very thought of disappointing them muddles the line between duty and friendship. At one point, circumstances ended with the blood of a child on my hands. I believed that my actions were unavoidably just, and that I was serving the cause of my kingdom. Afterwards, my mentor, the man whose trust I had strove so hard to gain, had lost all but a scrap of faith in me. I spent the next five minutes staring at the campfire, wondering where it had all gone wrong. I don’t want to give the impression that Dragon Age is all about non-stop chatter.
