Dragon Age: Origins review

Another area that Dragon Age succeeds in well is severing the idea of “good” and “bad”. The game can reward you for being pragmatic–in fact, there are times where you may need to do things you are not proud of in order to finish a task, whether you’ve decided to act “good” or “bad”. You are not tied down in one direction or the other either, and because of this, your relationships with your party members can change significantly throughout the game. These relationships are important–if you make someone happy often and they grown fond of you, they will receive permanent bonuses to their stats and skills. Drive someone up the wall on the other hand, and they may leave your party–or outright fight you. This is not just limited to people in your group though, as your persuasion and intimidation techniques come in handy when you find people you may be able to recruit, or for influencing the story. If you wronged someone earlier, they may have a hard time following along with whatever plans you concoct for saving Ferelden.

Of course, if someone really likes you, then you can maybe sleep with them. There’s not much in it for you, unless you’re into Trophies/Achievements (you get one for each of the characters you can have relations with, as well as another for securing all possible romantic connections). The animations are somewhat awkward, and character models can, in some cases, look more attractive when they are wearing clothes than when they are about to blow out the candle for a romp under the sheets. But hey, if you’re into that, it’s there for you; I just wish that, since they were including it, that it could have been done a little more gracefully. And sex is not relegated to man with women or woman with man–feel free to experiment away, because you have characters in your party that are more than willing should the opportunity present itself.

Let’s get to the actual gameplay though. Dragon Age is a third-person action game with somewhat of a top-down perspective if you choose, thanks to limitless camera control. In its most basic form, you press X (or A, if you play on the Xbox 360) to attack, and use the other three face buttons for mapped attacks, items, spells and talents. Talents are skills, such as Shield Bash, or Dual Strike, or more extended options that allow you to put up shields or use a Berserker’s rage. You can play the game this way, and easily–the AI, for the most part, does a good job of not getting itself killed, and if you pick a good mix of classes and specialties, you should be able to take down almost any foe. If you want Dragon Age to be an action RPG then, it is.

If you want Dragon Age to be a bit more involved–say, you want to control all of your party member’s actions, not just your main character–then you have the Radial Menu, which can be accessed by holding down the left trigger. This opens up a menu with shortcuts to Talents, Skills, Items, and so forth, and you can queue up an action for your party members through here. There are also tactics slots you can augment for your party members that tell them how to react in certain situations; this is something else to toy with in this more hands-on mode, or you can just mess with them so that you can play with your main character without having to worry about the AI doing what it wants rather than what you want. For many, this will be the way you want to play, especially on a PC where you can hotkey all of this stuff together. The console versions do an admirable job with the Radial Menu though, and it’s very easy to use should you care to utilize it.

You can use those battle and relationship skills in a 40 hour main quest that has plenty of going on and some great pacing no matter what path you choose (you can perform the main bulk of the game in any order, assuming you’re strong enough to survive the undertaking). There are multiple endings, depending on many choices and relationships you make and break along the way, and there are various ways to achieve your goals as stated. In addition to the main quest though, you have hours upon hours of sidequests. You can go to the Chantry Boards (think Churches) and do the mercenary type work there to save people, locate items, clear out Darkspawn and the like. You can speak to a secret association of mages that needs work done for them. There’s an order of knights that would like to work alongside the Grey Wardens that you can perform jobs for. There are random people who need help scattered throughout every nook and cranny of Ferelden, and there are even quests that you can undertake somewhat accidentally simply by picking up some papers you have found that detail a job or mission someone was on.