You have to hand it to those guys over at Bioware. Whether its intentional or not on their part, the times at which a player is presented a particularly dicey scene right after jumping into one of the developer’s games at the very first chance they get can either be highly arousing or terribly underwhelming until enough hours have sunken. For me, it was pretty amusing right from the get go when I chose to play it safe as a Male Warrior. While walking into a kitchen where my soon-to-be-possessed pup was found stirring up a bit of conflict with the local Nanny, a gang of rats had ambushed us in the pantry. Rats! You can’t imagine how underpowered we were for this battle, even if it was a mere 1/10th of an entire nanosecond. Regardless, we took those grimfaced bastards back to the Maker. One of my party members takes the time to reflect on the situation through a dialogue tree, while looking absolutely smeared in rats blood. Clearly, this was no ordinary encounter. This was goddamn war.

Right, so maybe it wasn’t completely intentional on their parts, but I couldn’t help laugh. For all the grandiose I’ve witnessed through their trailers of epic tease and those previews of journalistic gloat, it was clear that Dragon Age: Origins (a role-playing game that’s been in the making for some time) had some hefty +2 DEX boots to fill in. Returning to their roots, Bioware once again proves that it knows how to work the fantasy realm, and that some fancy-schmancy Dungeons & Dragons ruleset wasn’t going to make or break it for anyone’s who come to love the Baldur’s Gate series. But how does such an experience fair on the mighty world of console gaming?

Before getting into that, there are a few things to consider, as well as a fair warning. For anyone who’s never been accustomed to Western-style RPGs, pack your bags and seek for another place to gain a proper foothold. Dragon Age: Origins, for the most part, isn’t something you’d only spend playing in a few moments at any given time, nor will it have nearly have as much patience as the next game. Despite its linear nature with how quests are dolled to you, there are multiple situations where a number of options can be given to you when least expected, and nothing you can say or do will result in a “bad choice”, so long as you and your party members are able to persevere. But if you’re still inclined to experiment, you’ll be happy to know that there’s a difficulty setting that can toggled at your own leisurely pace.

For the rest of you number-crunching, pocket-protector wielders, Dragon Age can feel like a boon at times. The amount of customization to character classes and races, while nothing especially ground-breaking or new for us, is well appreciated and thought-out. Even better, once you’ve reached to a certain level and fulfilled the right requirements, you’ll be entitled to choose two from four specializations. And the fact that each race you choose will yield a different “Origin” story (which can take as much as an hour to complete at a time) only adds to the package. While the lack of multiplayer support is frowning, Dragon Age does give you a wide range of characters integrated into the story for you to play around with and assign commands to. It can be a lot of micromanagement, sure, but there’s a certain satisfaction to be had when donning party members the right skills to help compliment your play-style.

Unfortunately, and this is where the PC comparisons start taking their toll, everything is not as robust as it seems. While Dragon Age definitely goes out of its way to try and cater to an audience weened on more action-oriented experiences (which can’t be any more evident than the third-person perspective driven camera controls), there are times where you can’t help but feel that something was missing in the translation. The lack of any option to zoom-out in combat is a bummer, especially at times when a narrow corridor packed with enemies can easily obscure your view by a good degree. This isn’t nearly as troublesome as it sounds at the first few initial hours, but after a couple of intense battles later, it becomes all the more apparent when trying to maintain your fighting ground. Factor in the absurd difficulty spikes and framerate dips, and this tactical disadvantage only piles up from there.

Thankfully, there’s more to Dragon Age than just the combat. Bioware took special care in crafting a world that’s full of political intrigue and characters that you’ll either come to love, like, hate or downright despise. How you choose to engage in conversations with these fictional muppets is upto you, but whether you take the role of the dashing boyscout or the hardened douche bag, playable characters will react accordingly to your actions and won’t be ashamed to share their feelings toward you in a handy little Approval Rating meter. It might break the suspension of disbelief if you’re trying to woo a lady (or man!) in bed, but for the most, your party members carry a heavy personality and history that can be further peeled, if you so decide to probe deeper. If anything, it’s amusing in itself to hear Allistair and Oghren banter about polishing their swords. Hey-o!

The wealth of time and energy spent into manifesting the game’s lore is attributed to the interesting art direction found in the wide variety of vistas you’ll explore, as well as the hefty script of spoken dialogue. There are some technical issues that can mar the visual experience. Aside from the aforementioned overuse of blood splatter during conversations, spell effects like fire and ice are kind of a hard thing to miss during these instances too. Some scenarios will see your characters locked up in an animation before returning to combat, and no matter how remarkable the areas you visit may look, your movement is actually a lot more limited to what’s shown in your compass. Being accustomed to more sandbox-y games sorta has that effect, I suppose. But at least I can have dimwitted enemies chase after me while my mage casts spells from afar. Who needs abilities like Taunt when you got advanced pathfinding like this?

Its not the prettiest girl I’ve laid my eyes on, but for all the extra silicon required to do make it one, a smothering of polygons and shaders wouldn’t matter to me. At the very center, you have a 40-plus hour journey that, while certainly unforgiving, presses you to play on and on. For those willing to invest their souls and partake in an adventure with a grand finale sitting on the other end, Dragon Age: Origins won’t disappoint. Heck, even when everything is over and done, you can still do it all over again with another newly created character, or cozy up to the encyclopedic Codex in your spare time.

9.0 / 10

Review Copy Courtesy:

Distributor: Milestone Interactive

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