I have to be completely honest; until a few days ago, Dragon Age: Origins wasn’t really on my radar. I wasn’t a huge Mass Effect fan. I know, gasp. I saw the appeal, just never got into it myself. I never played Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter Nights. I KNOW – GASP. It’s not that I didn’t want to, I just never got around to them.

So what qualified me, above all the other Binge Gamer staffers, to review this game? Luck, that’s what. The review copy accidentally got sent to me instead of James, and once I popped it into my 360, I refused to send it to him. “Luck” is an understatement. This game is blowing my mind.

I say “is blowing” instead of “blew” because I’m still playing it. It’s true that we always attempt to completely finish a game before writing a review here at Binge Gamer, but the truth of the matter is that I’ve already sunk many, many hours into this game and I can see myself playing for hundreds of more hours in the future.

When you “finish” the game with one character, you can start over as a new character…and in Dragon Age: Origins, you don’t just have a few attribute boosts because you pick a certain race and class. No, you have well over an hour worth of backstory, during which time you set the stage for the rest of your game. Will you unlock certain side quests? Will you be offered certain storylines? Will you meet certain characters? Will your efforts be successful? Will you find love? The answers to these questions and more all depend on the choices your character makes. So, as you play through for a second…third…fourth time (or more), your game experience will be extremely different. While most of the backstory is limited to the beginning and end, your race and class also affect how you’re treated throughout the game by NPCs.

The Plot and Characters

Dragon’s Age: Origins follows the story of your character as he or she joins the Grey Wardens in Ferelden to fight the blight, a new wave of demons that are returning to earth, as they do every hundred years or so. These creepers are led by an archdemon, basically the game’s equivalent of Satan, which appears in the form of a great dragon. Along the way, you also have to fight other evil groups, such as bandits and a pack of werewolves. After a disastrous battle early in the game, it is up to you and a few survivors to bring together elves, humans, and dwarfs to fight the blight together.

The game has a typical Bioware feel in terms of conversation. Like with Mass Effect, you can talk to a large number of the NPCs in the game, and you usually have at least three reply options – one that is nice, one that is neutral, and one that is mean. As you get farther into the game, you can choose replies that require skills such as intimidation or persuasion, and the NPC will respond differently depending on how far you’ve leveled your character in these areas.

Other characters in your group respond differently depending on the conversation choices you make. For example, the young warrior Alistair who is with you from the start disapproves when you use force to get what you want, but the more morally-gray shapeshifter Morrigan (pictured above) approves when you do so. Their opinion of you also changes when you talk to them about their past or ask them questions, and the higher their opinion of you, the better. I really like this feature in the game, though it does cheapen it a bit that you can buy and give them gifts to also raise their opinion of you, no matter what you’ve done or said.

The Combat System

Another feature I really like is the combat system. If you’ve played Final Fantasy XII, you’ll find it very similar to that gambit system. Basically, the combat doesn’t feel turn-based like a Japanese RPG, but instead, there’s a tactics system where you choose how your characters should respond. I found the system a little clumsy to use at first, but once you get used to it, it’s actually pretty awesome. But then, I was a huuuuge FFXII fan, so maybe I’m biased.

There are two things severely missing with this type of combat system. One, players should be able to change their party members mid-battle. Two, there needs to be a readily-found item or skill that revives party members who have fallen. Those two things might sound like easy ways out of a battle, but the real issue here is that some enemies (not bosses, just regular enemies) do way too much damage with one hit, so there isn’t time to heal all of your party members, even if you pause and do it manually rather than let the tactics system take care of it. At a higher level, there are spells to take care of this (at a high cost), but there should be an option from the start.

Of course, this means that you have to be very strategic with your fighting, which is the silver lining. As soon as you see an enemy group approaching, you need to pause the game and think about how to approach them, which party members to use, and what weapons set-up will work best.

Graphics and Audio

The graphics are definitely passable, but nothing to write home about. I guess I’m spoiled by recent games like Fallout 3, which blew the graphics out of the water. They weren’t distractingly bad, but I expected a little more in terms of the characters. One thing that really bothered me was that after every battle, the players faces were covered with blood splatter. Even the mages and archers, who weren’t standing near the battle. Even if you were near a battle, wouldn’t you wipe your face to clear the blood from your eyes? It was just really weird looking when your characters were talking to other characters immediately after a fight. “Oh, yes, my face is covered in toxic demon blood. No big deal. Just another day at the office.”

Throughout the game, I encountered little graphics-related bugs. For example, at one point, as I approached a certain NPC to talk to her, she disappeared, except for the bow on her back. You should still talk to her, and when you did so, she reappeared, so it wasn’t a big deal…but a bug like that shouldn’t have gotten through. There were also a few points where the camera, which I liked for the most part, bugged out and showed my the inside of a rock or something. I guess in a game this massive, it’s to be expected that there will be a few problems, but it is always disappointed when there are.

What the game lacked in graphics it made up for in audio. I absolutely loved the voice acting, and was impressed that there were so many different NPC voices, along with accents to go with every race, class, and city. The background music during battles fit well without being overwhelming, and I’m a huge 30 Seconds to Mars fan, so I liked what I heard of the soundtrack. Event the sound effects while walking, opening chests, etc. worked well.

Game “Extras”

Along with elves, humans, and dwarfs, the game also includes other races, and members of these races join your party at times. One of my favorites is the war hound class, dogs that are “imprinted” to protect a certain person. Early in the game, if you help to save one of the sick dogs in a side quest, he’ll come back and join your party. They’re actually really effective in battle.

I will say that the sheer history included in the game is a little overwhelming. There’s no shortage of side quests to do, each of which has a backstory, but that just scratches the surface. Along the way, you’ll also learn about history of the kingdom, the races, and tons of little shit about which you just don’t care. At least you don’t have to read through it all, but die-hard fans will be happy to know that there’s hours of reading material.

This isn’t the type of game that you want to skip stuff, though. You can rush through and finish it in probably 30 to 40 hours, but that’s a disservice to the game. With just one character, you can easily spend 80 hours in this game, completing all of the quests and exploring all of the worlds. And you should. That’s the point of Dragon Age: Origins. It’s supposed to be a long game. You’re supposed to really care about the characters. This isn’t a hack-and-slash game that you bolt through as fast as you can. If that’s your schtick, buy Madden.

Final Thoughts

You’ll get your money out of this game, and it even makes sense to buy it new rather than used, since new copies will come with DLC codes for a special set of armor and an entire new character, complete with an extensive backstory and a unique quest. Is Dragon Age: Origins the RPG of the decade? Maybe. It really depends what you like in an RPG. If you want Oblivion punched in the face by Bioware, you’ll love it.

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