Newcomers will revel and veterans will be pleased by the quality role-playing experience that Dragon Age offers.

User Rating: 8.5 | Dragon Age: Origins (Collector's Edition) PC
The story of Dragon Age is but a shell that provides the impetus for the player and characters to act. Rather than relying on plot points to drive the story as was done in titles such as KOTOR and Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age instead expects the player to be driven forward by a desire to further explore the world of Ferelden. Thankfully this unique universe in which Dragon Age takes place is one of the most thoroughly developed settings for a video game seen in recent memory, and it is clear Bioware is using this as a stepping off point for a host of content to follow. While plenty of background is delivered in the game's dialogue, interested bookworms will find even more information in books and scrolls scattered throughout the game's locations. All of these pieces of data you collect are added to the game's codex menu, which by the end of your journey will be brimming with facts and features of the world.

For those not interested in the extensive back story, you will likely find solace in Dragon Age's characters, which are nothing short of the most interesting and well-developed of any RPG ever. The game ships with ten potential party members (one of which is acquired through DLC), who run the full gamut of fantasy stereotypes including the heroic but slightly awkward paladin, the old and experienced mage, the drunken dwarf, and so on. While initially the characters may seem pretty standard, throughout the course of the adventure their backgrounds and personalities start to show there's much more to them than what was initially presented.

The amount of dialogue and intra-party interaction in Dragon Age is the most ever included in a RPG. While traveling the world, your companions can't help but chime in with advice, opinions, and general observations on the events unfolding around you, most of which if not helpful is absolutely hilarious and greatly enhances the playing experience. Each character also has a unique side quest you can undertake that will present them with a life-altering event, in some instances changing their personality for the remainder of the game and changing the game's ending.

There is also a influence rating in place for each of your party members. Every choice you make in the game will have ramifications on your party members and modify your influence rating up or down. Choose to go way out of your way to be nice and you can expect to be chided by Morrigan and Sten for wasting time on fruitless labors, while executing a beggar for petty theft will draw the ire of your more forgiving party members. In Dragon Age how much your party members like you matters a great deal since higher influence ratings unlock ability bonuses for those characters. In this way the game encourages you to travel with a party who shares your ideals in order to maximize combat effectiveness, and creates replay opportunities in order for you to see how the other choices would have played out.

The choices in Dragon Age however are not always black and white; in fact the game makes a concerted effort to make many decisions in the game as gray as possible. For instance, in the dwarf city of Orzammar you must side with one of two factions competing for the throne, but in true political fashion each side has their good and bad qualities forcing you to make a decision based on which qualities most appeal to you. There are very few times when your dialogue choices subconsciously flash "THIS IS THE GOOD CHOICE" that many games fall victim to, and in the rare cases that they do your decision may have ramifications you never would have anticipated. This is one of the high points in Dragon Age, because while Bioware has been known for having multiple dialogue choices in their games, never before have the options been so numerous and varied.

The game play will be what you make of it. If all you care about is the story and party interactions then you're free to set the game to easy and auto-attack all the way to the end. There is essentially no cool down on health and mana potions, making your tanks nearly invincible and your mages able to cast forever if you have the resources. If however you wish to embrace the tactical nature of the game the higher difficulty settings will test your skills in even the most mundane of fights, and thoroughly challenge your resolve in the game's biggest encounters as the enemies are far more punishing.

I would struggle to find a more fitting subtitle for Dragon Age than Origins, because this truly feels like the start of something big. The heir apparent to the legacy of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age takes what made those series classics and updates it for a new generation of gaming, resulting in an accessible and enjoyable package.

As a hardcore RPG fan, however, Dragon Age left me wanting more. The storyline was a total bore, with all essential plot points resolved within the first hour and no major twists throughout the entire 50+ hour adventure. The primary villain in the game is also a total bore, offering nothing in the way of characterization besides "big evil bent on annihilating everything." The main quest as a result fails to compel the player forward towards their goal in a way done so effectively in previous Bioware titles. The dungeon-specific subplots that come up over the course of the game are interesting enough, but it really feels like the writers spent all their time building out each individual region rather than focusing on the core storyline, much to the game's detriment.

The game is also unnecessarily long, as a few of the dungeon sequences more than wear out their welcome. When the game has consecutive linear hallways full of the same types of enemies, it is time for the designers to move on to something else. The main quest is already longer than 80% of RPGs released these days, so reducing the redundancy would have in no way negatively impacted the longevity of the experience and made me far more willing to undertake multiple playthroughs.

My verdict on Dragon Age circles back to my comments on the story, that the game is a shell into which a bevy of ideas have been allowed to flow. While the core of the game is nothing special, with a mediocre story and turn-based RPG action has been done before, it has rarely been done with this level of skill and dedication. There are a lot of ideas at work here, far more than can be explored in the course of one game, and Bioware is clearly setting itself up for a long string of expansions and sequels that will continue to explore the Dragon Age universe. This is the purpose of Dragon Age: Origins, to introduce a wide range of players to the foundations of the game, give them a little taste of everything, and set up for what I hope will in the future become one of gaming's most beloved franchises.