No western RPGs in recent memory have achieved the prominence and success that Dragon Age: Origins has. This is perhaps well deserved-despite the fact that there aren’t really any challengers (and WoW doesn’t count, got it?). As well, the follow-up expansion, Dragon Age: Awakening, makes a nice capstone for the experience, even if it seems to end all too soon.

Dragon Age: Origins

Dragon Age is set in a primitive medieval world rife with chaos. The back-story goes something like this: humans tried to invade heaven, were corrupted by their own sin, and returned as monsters called “darkspawn”. These monsters then ravaged the world, corrupting everything they touched with their Zerg-like taint, converting entire areas into an abominable distortion of nature. Eventually, an order of trailblazing warriors was founded which beat back the menace by voluntarily twinging its ranks with darkspawn blood, thereby gaining prowess over and sensitivity to them from a distance. Fairly standard material so far, right? Yet, BioWare seems to take this rather bland fare and give it a potent essence, a perfect case of a developer believing in the quality of their work despite the inevitable occurrence of clichés inside it. Thankfully, in this case, the good design decisions seem to outweigh the oversights.

The game starts off in a different manner depending on what race/class and background combination you pick. These different beginner vignettes are called “origin stories” and don’t have much effect on game play aside from a few beneficial items or relationships with NPCs that alter the experience slightly. Being in a traditional western style, the game play centers around a party of characters which can be ordered to move around and use abilities on three-dimensional battlefields, either with an overhead view or zoomed into the action directly. The game can be paused as the battle unfolds, allowing players to make a more strategic appraisal and issue specific commands for each character before allowing the encounter to proceed. Players expecting a Mass Effect-like experience will be disappointed-despite the amazing promotional CG movies, this is not a shooter, and you’re certainly not running around with a bow instead of a sniper rifle performing headshots.

Indeed, this is a full-blown RPG, echoing previous BioWare titles such as Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights. You know, stone-age stuff. Yes, the interface will feel clunky at times, given that influence, but it’s one of the most streamlined of its kind yet. Combat in DA is actually quite satisfying on the whole; the battles are more chaotic and dynamic than in previous RPGs of comparable build. The addition of special death animations, such as decapitations or jumping onto ogres to deliver deathblows, makes for the occasional happy excitement. Many moves force enemies to change positions (such as with knockback effects) and most have great animations and are fun to use. This leads to a relatively exciting atmosphere overall-depending, that is, on the skills you choose.

Being an archer is a poor choice. There’s no reason to do it, it’s boring sitting back and auto-firing, and to be completely honest, you’re mostly there to pick locks. Being a two-handed weapon style warrior is merely ok, being a bit underpowered and slow, but the real fun and meat of the game is being a spell caster, shield-warrior or dual-wielding rogue. Not only do these three offer the most variation and fun, they’re actually effective. In fact, the casters and melee rogues are often a bit… too effective. You’ll blast enemies into oblivion with elemental spells and completely neuter their marginal advantage with crowd-control magicks that also happen to crush and confuse-some of them area-of-effect. Don’t even get me started on how broken arcane warrior/blood mage can be! As a rogue, you’re not only incredibly utilitarian, sneaking, pick-pocketing and unlocking things, but also incredibly deadly. Dual-wielding large one handed weapons is simply spectacular, and you can survive almost anything thanks to a combination of high evasion, armor and survival-type abilities. Shield warriors are often needed to soak up damage (as usual) but being able to play one as the main character gives a satisfying sense of control and variance in battle, as well as the smugness of near-invulnerability.

Quests are completed in a World of Warcraft-like fashion (not that anyone these days designs differently). Interestingly, many quests and important weapons and armor are extremely easy to miss because they are only written about in your journal notes rather than assigned under the quests tab, making finding everything in the game a subtle challenge. I felt like I missed half the game the first time through after poking around in the wiki and scrolling through the lists of unique items.

Dialogue and characterization are generally very good. The voice-acting in Dragon Age is above-par, and each character has their usual quirks and uniqueness. Especially entertaining were the approval system (by which characters come to love you, the main character) and the occasional conversations the characters have with one another in your party. I found the amount of dialogue between them quite impressive, actually, as well as the depth of dialogue you can engage in with them directly.

Though the approval system will probably catch new players unawares (when they inadvertently insult Morrigan five times over), once you learn to be more careful and tailor your interactions to each personality, you’ll have no problem getting them to warm up. As well, gifts can be given to each character, and each one likes certain things, like rare alcohol and little figurines. Some gifts even open up side quests when given (and thankfully can’t be given to the wrong person, since they’ll reject them). The more a character approves of you, the more their primary stat (dexterity, intelligence etc.) is given a boost-thanks to your inspirational leadership, so to speak.

The characters are also pretty well worked into the folds of the story, and present an excellent facet to the Kingdom of Ferelden that lends it life and energy. Alistair, your basic dry-humored shield-wielder, is your only fellow Grey Warden after your joining, and provides friendship and guidance. Morrigan is a witch straight out of the deep wilderness, and given that the Templars, which Alistair used to belong to, hunt such witches, the two have rather interesting dialogue throughout the game. These are followed by Oghren, a foul-mouthed and incessantly drunk dwarf berserker; Sten, an ashen-skinned giant from a distant land; Wynn, an elderly mage who nags everyone; Leliana, a spoony bard from Orlais (read: France); Zevran, an elf you catch trying to kill you; a war dog, which you get to name and who’s completely loyal to you; and, if you have the “Stone Prisoner” content pack, Shale, a golem with a strange sense of humor and giant, pummeling fists.

The land of Ferelden is richly illustrated and fleshed out, and there have likely been few traditional RPGs created with such enormous environmental detail. From unique Aztec-inspired dwarven architecture to small Germanic influences present in houses and castles, such as big wooden warrior carvings and stylized rafters, the game has a plethora of environmental eye-candy. Sometimes the characters look a bit weird, or at least not like their CG counterparts, but I can’t lay too much blame there. Certainly, more dynamic hair might be nice in the near future.

The musical score, composed by Inon Zur, is pretty excellent, although despite the large number of tracks it sometimes felt there weren’t enough to spread around throughout all the game’s situations. The main theme, with haunting vocals by Aubrey Ashburn, was particularly wonderful, and seems to be getting downloaded at a fast clip all over the net.

Overall, your journey to stop the darkspawn and recruit the various factions of Ferelden is relatively enjoyable. Something, though, seemed amiss; something difficult to grasp. It was as if the story was slightly too loose to inspire a sense of forward direction, or perhaps the scale of the assignment was too great-and at times strained to move forward fast enough with the story. Something funny was going on. It’s not game-killing by any means, only off-putting. At some points, the game is challenging to stay interested in simply because of variety vs. volume. I’m looking at you, Deep Roads.

However, Dragon Age managed to surpass previous expectations in its niche market and has many admirable and enjoyable qualities. Not perfect, but it seemed to get most of the important things right. If you’re a fan of dark fantasy, high fantasy, strategy and traditional RPGs, this one is certainly for you.

Dragon Age: Awakening

The expansion to Dragon Age: Origins takes place some short amount of time after the original posse disperses and the Wardens are given Arl Howe’s old land holding to help rebuild their order. Being the Warden Commander, your character must now take charge of the entire region-no small task! The campaign starts with your character and a guardswoman entering the hamlet near Vigil’s Keep, which is effectively your lordly fortress, but naturally, the darkspawn show up to crash the party.

From there, Awakening takes the player through a whirlwind of character drama and combat, making a fresh go at the slightly stodgy encounters seen in Origins. The enemy mix and battle design in Awakening are actually very fun, and it seems like the team that produced it learned a lot with the previous installment.

Warriors and rogues receive awesome new abilities; two-handed fighters will find that their weaknesses have been obliterated and replaced with incredible area-of-effect moves and stuns which in some cases seemed slightly too powerful. Warriors in general also now have an AOE which automatically kills opponents who are non-elite as well as a single-target version and a move that restores their stamina for long fights. Rogues gain a move called “heart strike” which is also an auto-kill (doesn’t work on bosses) and an AOE backstab as well as more survivability via a ghostly dodging ability.

Dual-wielding receives some excellent moves that synergize with each other, among them an automatic dual-weapon critical and an endless stabbing move. Archers gain slightly more attractive options, one of them being a mode called “arrow time” (haha) which slows enemies the closer they get to the archer, as well as a powerful AOE burst shot and “hail of arrows” style thing. Magic-users mostly got shafted this time, gaining but two lines of abilities, although some of them seem pretty powerful-such as time spiral, which finishes all spell cool downs, and a big ole’ aura o stamina/mana regen.

The task of uniting the arling (your lordly domain) is an interesting one, and big political and military choices come at you fast and furious. There are plenty of fun ways to deal with plotting nobility and rampaging darkspawn, including some hands-on solutions. Vigil’s Keep has to be improved and tunnels underneath explored and cleared, giving you plenty to do around the house. Then there’s the city of Amaranthine, where you get to decide to stomp out or join smugglers breaking your laws-and more.

Truly, each of the areas was very well arranged and interesting in its own right. I felt personally that they were far better than in Origins-in terms of overall aesthetic appeal, as well as from a game play standpoint. Blackmarsh was especially fun, with its blighted werewolves popping out of the darkness and the weirdness of the abandoned village by the sea.

The characters are also more interesting with this iteration than in the previous go; “Justice”, a spirit of justice trapped in a dead warden’s body; Nathaniel, the son of Arl Howe trying to reclaim his home from you (but who ends up working under you after being caught); Velaana, a wildly hateful elf killing people by animating trees; Oghren once again (and even more drunk); Sigrun, an urbane dwarf lady from the Legion of the Dead; and Anders, a flighty mage that’s escaped the Circle of Magi seven or nine times and finally became a Grey Warden. Actually, this time around literally everyone becomes a Warden, which is exciting, because it means you’re finally rebuilding the order.

Awakening is heaps of fun being hurled at you much more quickly than in Origins, but unfortunately, it was too short. You’re going along blowing stuff up and melting faces, forging weapons to challenge the false gods themselves, and then, right when you have the whole team assembled and it’s time to really get down to business… it abruptly ends. Not only that, but the final boss is a complete pushover, and required little more than a minute of direct melee with my dwarf strike team and maybe a single group heal.

Aside from petering-out, which may or may not cast a pall on the experience for some players, it’s still an enjoyable romp and proof that the series can progress given some effort and creativity. Overall, it was a very entertaining.

Syndic Shadow’s Score:

Dragon Age: Origins: 8.2 / 10
Dragon Age: Awakening: 8.6 / 10
Combined Score: 8.4 / 10