Bioware's poorest effort to date? Maybe, but that still makes it better than 95% of the other RPG's on the market.
To begin, you select a gender, race, and origin which will determine the angle from which you will see the story unfold and the perspective from which you will attack the main storyline. This will give you a moderately interesting opening sequence where your character will ultimately end up recruited by the Grey Wardens (a group of warriors dedicated to the eradication of Darkspawn in general, but Archdemons in particular) and thrust into the thick of political and military intrigue.
From there, you must make the decisions that will ultimately shape your future, that of your companions, and that of your home; Ferelden.
Visuals: 6.5
Oh what could have been. In this day and age, this kind of presentation is almost inexcusable, especially when previous offerings this generation looked significantly better, if terribly repetitive.
Thankfully, graphics are, perhaps, the least important factor in an RPG, but from the weird moldy colored single tooth that everyone seems to have, to the remarkably low quality textures used for every part of character's bodies other than their faces, to the awful environmental textures, Dragon Age fails in this category.
Also worth noting, spell effects are incredibly bland, almost to the point where I wonder why they bothered to include them.
Again though, this is, at least for me, the least important factor for a successful RPG.
Sound, Music, and Voice Acting: 9.0
From stirring war marches to enchanting forest ballads, the music here is a nice high point that really captures and conveys the emotions of a particular event better than either the story or the visuals do.
Sound is well done and appropriate, dragon roars are particularly fun.
Voice acting, too, is very well done for the most part with a few small exceptions and does a great job of setting the atmosphere (again, much better than the visual segment of the game manages). Several of the party members are particularly well done, while the others range from boring (Wynne) to terrible (Oghren).
Gameplay: 9.0
Another high point. Even on consoles, Dragon Age plays in a very user friendly manner. Combat plays out much like Knights of the Old Republic did with a splash of Mass Effect's Radial Power Wheel.
By default, as you'd expect, you control your main character in combat with a simple set of buttons that are mapped to special abilities or commands that all come from your radial wheel; hotkeys essentially. You can, of course, switch to one of your other three party members if you need to and directly control them, or rely on either their default combat attitude or set up your own custom set of commands, similar to the gambit system if Final Fantasy XII.
It's all very easy to control, and it's a pretty rare event when you'll need to control another character in your party as the game is not overly challenging.
Story: 7.0
I will be making a brief departure from my high points here, as this is, quite frankly, a low point in Bioware's storytelling efforts. It all just feels like a mailed in effort with no real though going in to how they could make the world of Dragon Age unique and interesting. It's essentially C grade fantasy novel material, which is a huge let down for me personally.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, distinguishes this world from almost any other high fantasy RPG you've ever played. Not that this is necessarily terrible, but it also doesn't do much to distinguish itself from the pack in its plot moving methods. It's all basically the same since Knights of the Old Republic. Korriban, Kashyyk, Menaan, and Tatooine are pretty much interchangeable for Feros and Noveria, which are pretty much interchangeable for Orzammar, Redcliffe, and the Mages Circle.
To me, it all just feels like a tired and played out method for telling a story. It's not a beat up pothole filled street yet, but neither is it a state of the art bullet train; just in need of some revision and some change in delivery.
The story itself features no interesting twists and turns, just the usual political intrigue plot elements like an unsettled throne and a poisoned leader. In fact, the only interesting twist you encounter, if you want to call it such, comes about 30 minutes before the end of the game where you get to decide how weird you want the story to become.
Now, since I've spent the past four paragraphs telling you it's terrible, you're probably wondering why it still scored a seven. It's still relative to its competition, though my comments are largely based on comparison to the developer's library (the most fair comparison possible for a Bioware game, I think) and that being said, it does have some interesting things going for it.
For example, in each of the story segments, you have an option of two groups to side with which will affect the way your story will play out. At the risk of a minor spoiler, the dwarf king of Orzammar is recently deceased. As a result, you get to decide which of the two contenders you will support, and through that, you determine whether you will rally the dwarves, or something else entirely from Orzammar. As I said, each location has such a choice and it allows for a good deal of end game tailoring for your story.
In summary, good but not great, and not up to Bioware's standard.
Overall: 7.9, Gamespot 8.0
In review, Dragon Age Origins was a very good title that needed more work. It just felt totally unpolished in almost every aspect, though there is definitely a foundation for a good series here somewhere. Bioware just needs to sort it out and have a shorter development cycle where no content was created 5 years before release. That is what makes this game feel so uneven, I think.
Time to completion: 53 hours