Dragon Age Origins – A 2018 Review

Dragon Age: Origins is an old game, being nearly 10 years old at time of writing is a fairly dated game, with a lot of the things that made it innovating at the time now nothing more than generic. This review will be my opinion on how the game has held up after all these years.

Introduction

When loading up a new story, you will be given a cut scene that gives you an overview of the world, or at least what you need to know at this specific point in time, and from there you will be thrown into the character creator.

The character creator is fairly extensive, having around the same level of customisation you could get in games such as Skyrim, having the ability to fully customise your portrait was a nice touch too. There are also options for your voice, which will affect your personality overall and how your character reacts to your commands.

“Want me to get a ladder, so you can get off my back?!” – Soldier Warden

From there, you pick your class, race and origin, which is one of the great things this game does that I think has held up, as this choice will offer you a unique starting zone and a unique 45 minutes of game play with ramifications that can be seen throughout the game, as in a mage will remember their blood mage friend on the outside, which is a nice touch.

Before you can jump into your origin, you have to go through some fairly standard RPG stat allocation, which is a nice call back but not exactly a vintage feature really worth talking about.

Graphics

In terms of the graphical fidelity of this game, it hasn’t aged well unfortunately, the graphics weren’t exactly cutting edge on release and has a similar graphical fidelity to oblivion, at least when regarding environments and props.

Lots of older games can get away with this thanks to a unique art style, but this game went for a very generic fantasy look, which proceeded to shaft it in the future. Character models look good though, but animations aren’t going to blow your mind either.

Game Play

From the moment you get control of your character, the initial movement can feel very Janky, and will take some time to get used to. In terms of the rest of the game, the game play loop overall is the standard Bioware RPG sort of thing, y’know, the basic choices and consequences, party based, semi tab targeting time pausing to plan ahead sort of thing…

That’s not to say that’s a bad thing, of course.

Combat

Combat in dragon age was rough, at least to begin with, and like the combat can take time to get used to, with combat sometimes feeling unresponsive and a bit of a pain overall. But once you have a full team with a tank and healer, and some abilities to play with, the combat does pick up.

Combat in the sequels was far better and more responsive, and the combat in Origins isn’t going to blow any minds, its more that its good enough to get to the good bits of the game.

Dialogue

With persuasion, intimidation, bribes and discussions that can go any way, the dialogue in Dragon Age is one of the things that makes it special, as each character feels unique, and has to be handled differently, characters judge you on your actions, and some will agree with your actions, and others will not, its one of the old school RPG things I like in dragon age.

Story

Lore

The overall lore can be summed up by saying they took the world of JRR Tolkien, and then added things on top, with the major addition being the blight, blood magic and the fade, which help to bring the lore into its own, but a lot of things will wear their inspiration on their sleeve at times.

Later games did a fantastic job improving the world and lore surrounding it, Dragon Age Origins was a classic first game in the series regarding lore, of which I mean it had to set everything up for sequels and DLC to be able to fill.

Campaign

The campaign is the standard ancient evil must be destroyed else the world ends type of thing, with your character following the heroes journey to a T.

Fairly standard nobody to legend sort of thing, but then its not the campaign that brings you in and doesn’t let you go until its 4am and you have a meeting in the morning, its everything else, the discussions you have with your party, the adventure you go on and things you learn on the way, there are decent plot twists along the journey and the game always has you on your feet.

To Conclude

Dragon age origins is a great game and RPG, which is further improved in its sequels.

Would I recommend playing this game in 2018? Yes I Would.