Dragon Age - Remembering DA:O

Eurogamer takes a look back at Dragon Age: Origins.

Dragon Age: Origins marked the point at which western RPGs properly moved into the spotlight. Knights Of The Old Republic laid the groundwork, combining a surprisingly geeky implementation of Dungeons and Dragons rules with its direct player control and swishy lightsabers. Jade Empire then tried to take it somewhere new, only to stumble right out of the gate. It modernised the genre, offering something fresh, but it never really got its due.

With Dragon Age: Origins, we saw a game torn between an old audience and the new, designed as a spiritual return to the hardcore charms of Baldur's Gate but at a scale where only a mega-hit would do. It was a strange combination. BioWare talked about the detail of its lore, and of taking inspiration from the likes of A Song Of Ice And Fire, long before Game of Thrones had become so popular. And at the same time we had trailers fast cut to Marilyn Manson and a cleavage-baring Morrigan.

Dragon Age: Origins was so often torn between its inspirations - dark, gritty and with a relatively realistic brand of low fantasy - and the needs of a big budget game. Magic is canonically rare, with mages locked up in Circles for everyone's own safety and every spell putting the user at risk of demonic possession. The idea was that most people would never even have seen magic performed in public, at least, nothing more dramatic than the pulling of a rabbit out of a hat. In practice, mages are everywhere, and nobody blinks an eye at spells like Walking Bomb that turn the screen into a swimming pool of gore. Why? Because people like throwing fireballs, and mages make for better opponents than endless enemies wielding the old sword-and-board.

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That article kinda came out of nowhere and I'm not sure what to make of it. Is January a month were nostalgia is at its yearly high or something?

oh and don't read the comment section…

What a great game. Don't need Origin craptastic platform to play it, the first and only entry in this series worth playing. I've played it through three times so far and I doubt I'll ever erase it off my computer. This and Mass Effect two were the end of Bioware for me.

Originally Posted by azarhal
oh and don't read the comment section…

I rarely do nowadays especially on large gaming sites.

Time for another replay of Dragon Age again as I love this game. I still remember when PC Gamer previewed the early 2007 version, and it looked like a 3D Baldur's Gate.

Seems the game went through multiple revisions in it's long development cycle.

This was the last BW title that had mod support, no? I'd kill for a BG II remake on this engine.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
What a great game. Don't need Origin craptastic platform to play it, the first and only entry in this series worth playing. I've played it through three times so far and I doubt I'll ever erase it off my computer. This and Mass Effect two were the end of Bioware for me.

I won't go as far as you, but DA:O and ME were both the end of the brilliant BioWare of old. Both were the pinnacles of those franchises, IMO.

However, even bad weird BioWare games are still good compared to most…ME2/3 had great moments combined with bland cover-based shooting. DA2 had great moments combined with no development time. DA:I I really enjoy actually…despite a lot of tedium.

Yes the first one was the only good one frankly

While I enjoyed the game, for me it marked the point in time when the skill system started to get dumbed down to the point of near stupidity. If it had a better skill system, it would have been an intriguing option for moving beyond the Electron Engine. Instead, DA modding more or less died off and the developers stopped releasing toolsets.

I don't like this article, it makes an impression as if what came after is better than what came before.

Originally Posted by Archangel
I don't like this article, it makes an impression as if what came after is better than what came before.

I knew not to bother reading the actual article after reading the first two sentences.

History will mark Dragon Age 2 as the point at which things got so bad the only way was up.

Dragon Age: Origins was a good game despite it's withdrawal tendencies towards controllable tactical combat and veering towards an action game. It was released at a time when there was precious little competition in the classical RPG market and when Bioware was still the name to look for. It was also before EA bought Bioware.

Originally Posted by Stingray
I knew not to bother reading the actual article after reading the first two sentences.

It is not that bad, most of it talks only about DAO.

I had unrealistically high hopes for DA:O before it came out, and was inevitably a bit disapointed at first. The volume of cut-scenes was a bit grating and some of the dialogue was poor (although some of it was awesome to be fair, especially as the game progressed). I did grow to really like the game and played it through with a couple of different builds to see how the origin stories played out. I remember my grumpy, sneering dwarven noble with particular fondness - I seem to remember that my innate cowardice led to a village being wiped off the map at one point! The way the franchise went in DA2 with the voiced protagonist was a problem for me, as suddenly my character was a sarcastic hero rather than the nasty small minded coward I kinda wanted him to be. I think DA:O got that balance and the potential fallout from choices right.

And the music was awesone.

Originally Posted by BoboTheMighty
This was the last BW title that had mod support, no? I'd kill for a BG II remake on this engine.

There was only two BioWare games with official mod support: DA:O and NWN. That didn't stop fans though, all their games have mods in some capacity.

Originally Posted by rjshae
While I enjoyed the game, for me it marked the point in time when the skill system started to get dumbed down to the point of near stupidity.

Dragon Age Origins just followed in the footsteps of Jade Empire and Mass Effect really.

Originally Posted by BoboTheMighty
This was the last BW title that had mod support, no? I'd kill for a BG II remake on this engine.

BG & BG2, real ones not recent cashgrab phone versions, need to be transferred to the new engine but not the DA:O one.
Bioware needs to fire whomever decided to emulate mushrooms with WASD in DA:I and put BG games onto DICE's Frostbite. IMO and ASAP.

DAO was great and a bit disappointing all at once.

Limited classes and skill trees were a bit of a bummer.

For The game itself - Origin stories were great but I wish they mattered throughout the story more. Up to and including ostegar was great, everything from the landsmeet to the end was great. The gooey center was just ok.

For DLC return to ostegar and shale were great. Others were mediocre and awakening expansion was blah.

Overall though I really liked it and was sad to see what the rest of the series turned into.

I guess for me this game holds a special place in my heart. Not because it was the best RPG I had ever played, but the first game period I had played in about 6 years and got me back into RPGS.

That's all.

One of my top favorites - played through this many times including add-on content later.