Dragon Age

Once every few hundred years, the Darkspawn Blight comes to the lands of Thedas. These unholy creatures bring death and pain wherever they roam and spread a rotting taint in their wake. They are led by the Archdemon, one of the old gods infected and driven mad by the taint. An ancient beast of immense power, it would surely destroy us all if it were not for the stalwart courage of the Grey Wardens. Their duty to stand against the horrors of the Blight; forever our vigilant guardians, protecting us from harm. In Ferelden these are dark times. A new blight is emerging against a backdrop of backstabbing politics, racial unrest and the shadow of civil war. The Grey Wardens are low in numbers and unpopular with many nobles due to historical events. The remaining few Grey Wardens have begun to voice concerns of Darkspawn movements. Their worst fear is about to come true: an Archdemon is on the move once again and only a unified force will be able to fight this coming Blight. In a land as fractured as Ferelden, building such an army may prove even more difficult than fighting the darkspawn head on.



This is the setting for Bioware’s latest epic RPG. It is the evolved progeny from the developers earlier days of Dungeon and Dragon licensed games. Those older games such as Baldur’s gate 1 & 2 as well as Icewind Dale 1 & 2 layed many of the key foundations in development techniques for the majority of current day RPG’s and their influence is clearly apparent in their successor. While the D&D licence has been dropped, many archetypical fantasy elements such as elves and dwarves remain. The sprawling locations of crumbing ruins, woodland clearings, maze like dungeons and medieval cities are all realised, as are the professions and skills of warriors, rogues and magi. However, there have been changes that the freedom of an original rather than licensed setting has been able to provide. The available classes have been streamlined and condensed down to these expected three from the many differing options offered through the D&D rule sets and ideology. I believe this is a welcome change as in later D&D games the player often felt overburdened with choice and balancing the infinite available abilities proved almost impossible. Here instead, Bioware have simplified and polished the reduced options so that they provide differing play styles while also fitting well within the setting and story. This has been helped dramatically by the introduction of origin stories for differing classes and races. It gives the player a personal history for their character, a tutorial hidden within an introductory chapter to the story and it helps build an identity for their character that impacts on many future interactions within the game. This is a simple and clever idea that is hard to implement. Bioware have done this brilliantly and I was impressed with how much your decisions in building your character and your attitude within the origin story could further personalise your journey through differing consequences to your decisions. There are six origin stories in all spread across the three playable races. They are chosen in the character creator alongside other expected options such as appearance, name and voice type; though the characters voice is limited to battle cries and calls for aid rather than the full voice acting provided in Mass Effect.



This clever structuring of decisions within the origin stories is also carried through to many of the major quests within the game. Most RPG’s give options to play as good, mercenary or evil characters but not many give options to be religious/secular or racist/tolerant. It is these and other similar details that really add to your immersion within your character. You can even choose your own sexuality within the various romance options you have with characters you can recruit to your party or that you otherwise encounter. Decisions you make will have major impacts on how the game plays out, especially at the later stages and the obligatory multiple endings. This gives the game major replayability that will be necessary anyway if you intend to gather all possible achievements. A large number of side quests for various factions as well as for the various recruits to your party adds to the scope of an already huge game. It is quite easy to clock 60 hour on one play through and I found that the detail and immersive interaction between characters kept my interest well with only a small amount of gameplay feeling like filler. This is a great improvement on the identical planets and quests found in Mass Effect.

One thing I was a little disappointed with was some of the quests triggered by your party recruits. While the results could grant impressive items or even personality changes to some of the characters, the fact that a couple of the side quests involved, go to such a place and have a conversation with someone left me feeling a bit ‘is that it?’. More meat could have been added to the bones of these quests as you do come to care about the various characters you come across and each of you will have your favourites. They will also interact differently with each other in your primary party and some of the conversations they have as you travel will definitely give you a chuckle.



This leads on to another impressive aspect of the game, the sound. The voice acting is top notch and there is a big enough variety of casting to make sure everyone doesn’t sound the same. The scripting is sharp and emotional but with plenty of laughs. The music score also sounds like it’s out of a Hollywood film with the big orchestral pieces and the sound effects are natural and provide realistic sounds for practically every action you take or come across.

Another major aspect of the game that has caused slightly more debate in print and on the web is the appearance of it. Some have praised the breadth of different environments and care and detail that have gone into them. Others have criticised the many low resolution textures and stiff facial animations. In comparison to other fantasy RPG’s of a similar size the graphics are good but not spectacular. In comparison to Bioware’s other market leader, Mass Effect, Dragon Age suffers a little more. Maybe we are all a little spoiled by Mass Effect’s massive leap forward in RPG graphics but Dragon Age does not provide the same Hollywood level of polish. This is especially noticeable in the facial animations where many models look as though they have overdosed on the bottox. In saying that, Dragon Age is a larger game than Mass Effect and does not re-use textures and maps anywhere near as much. This obviously means that a compromise has to be reached between quality and quantity and overall I was quite happy with Bioware’s decision. The texture and facial animation problems never intruded enough for me to become irritated with them and the grandeur of some of the locations still makes you spin the camera round just to have a look. One aspect of the graphics that did bring a smile to my face and is greatly appreciated is the combat animations and finishing moves. Bioware have greatly increased the number of animations and interaction in combat from the Neverwinter Night series in which I always found watching the fights unbelievably boring. In Dragon Age your duel wielding rogue actually looks quick and agile while your sword and shield wielding tank uses their shield properly rather than just waving it about a bit. The different abilities have suitable specific animations and the finishing moves such as decapitations are the icing on the cake.



In conclusion, Dragon Age is not perfect but it is one of the best RPG’s I have ever played. The story and characters will keep you gripped while the diversity and depth in its playability will make sure you come back to it even after you discover the end of its tale. An awful lot of effort has gone into realising the smallest of details meaning that you feel as if your travelling with your character in their world rather than just playing different levels of a game with a bit of story tacked on. Any rare bugs and the slight graphical deficiencies are more than compensated for by the quality of every other part of the experience.

Score:
Sound – 9/10
Graphics – 7.5/10
Story, characters and script writing – 9/10
Gameplay – 9/10
Multiplayer – N/A (Dragon Age has no multiplayer component)
Replayability – 8.5/10
Overall – 9/10

Nice review. I REALLY want this game. Sounds and looks alot like KOTOR and I loved that game. Just can't afford to get it atm with all this christmas palarva. This review just makes it harder to wait .

My surprise game of the year. I really found myself caring about every character and the story lines of the game. I liked the fact that through character interaction you could find out such history about the world and the characters and end up changing your opinion about which races/factions you wanted to side with. Also having seen all four of the endings I found each one to be highly satisfying and emotional. Great review, great game, roll on the DLC

very nice review mate, was thinking about getting this for a while now, think you may of twisted my arm now.

Great review buddy.

Consider yourself officially invited to join the review team.

The real test will be when I send you a game you don't enjoy too review

Nice review mate may take a look at this game.

Nice review man. Dragon Age would be probably be my game of the year as well. Epic game ,keep up the good work.