The BioWare RPG. Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect. Even the 'smaller' projects that the wider world won't remember, like Jade Empire, show off such a devotion to the genre and a focus on building new worlds that they are deserving of a spot on the 1001 list.
It should come as no surprise that there is yet another to add to that list, a darker generic fantasy that puts the sex back in... fantasy? I have no idea where that sentence was going. Let's just go back to the start in Dragon Age: Origins.
Frustrations
Having never had an interest in the Dragon Age series, and knowing that that can often mean I miss out on some incredible games (see: Yakuza), my first run through Dragon Age: Origins ended with quite the whimper.
Owing, I assume, to my daring choice of graphic settings (1920x1080? In 2021?), my first piece of gameplay, which I guess was a dialogue option, was locked away behind letterbox bars and I couldn't progress any further. I'm pretty sure my views on Origins won't be spoiled by this problem, though.
Fun Times
The world of wherever we are (wouldn't mind some subtitles in the intro video, guys) isn't the prettiest. Like most fantasy worlds, someone is at war with someone else, and the evil forces of Dragon Age are the demonic kind, or demonic lead, perhaps, I'm not so sure.
A group of warriors known as the Grey Wardens are the heroes in this particular fight, but they don't seem to be so welcomed despite their victory over evil.
The character creation screen allows you to set yourself up as a male or female human, elf, or dwarf, each with access to several classes, from rogues to fighters and mages. It's not terribly revolutionary, but your selection will influence your introduction to the game itself.
Here, as my generic male human fighter (stick to what you know), my family is off to war.
Despite having multiple voice styles to choose from, you are not very vocal in Origins. Your dialogue choices, varied though they may be, are something you'll have to read aloud yourselves because as soon as you click, the next character speaks.
I'm not sure how these choices affect gameplay, pushing me to become liked or loathed and so on, but maybe it's a good thing that they're not so obvious. Always picking the clearly good answer, especially if in some games it's marked blue, almost strips away the character from the dialogue, gamifying it instead.
Here, you just go with what feels right to you, in the moment, like it ought to be.
Our journal remembers that our father wants us to deliver a message to our older brother before they head off to war, leaving us to defend the castle, but as with any other RPG, the route towards an objective is littered with distractions, and exiting the room dumps me into a conversation with this guy, who tells me my dog is causing trouble in the larder.
My brother can wait. Dogs need to be under control. To the kitchen!
So the first round of combat is against a bunch of rats. Probably inevitable, really. At least there's a quip afterwards. Combat is a case of right-clicking a target and letting your character start swinging, really. A quick bar gives you access to any feats or spells or equipment you might make use of - I've got some precision strikes and some shield bashes in there - and you can even switch between the characters in your party to more directly control their actions, should they get lost in the scuffle.
They each have a default stance that you can choose and modify, kind of like Final Fantasy XII, with if this then that statements, but this knowledge is a little too much for me at this stage - and probably for much of the game, really. The ability to fine-tune is nice, but so long as my party keeps swinging, be it on the attack or on the defence, I'm happy.
It's no secret that Origins looks a little dated. Lots of the character models look like they are built in a cloning facility, so it's up to the dialogue to do the heavy lifting, and I find that to be a bit of a mixed bag.
On the one hand, it's so generic fantasy that it's almost offputting. On the other hand, it's the kind of generic fantasy that you don't really see a lot of. How many RPGs have a king explaining what a wench is to his grandson?
Is that a reason to play Origins? No, not really. It's just an example that there's going to be a fair bit of dialogue in this game that you won't expect in others. Is it written well? Too early to say. I'm not grabbed yet, I know that much, but that may be on account of the voice acting, I'm not sure.
We'll need to press on with the story, but we won't be waiting long.
Who would have thought that the bloke we were introduced to at the start of the game - the same one who asked me that first question I couldn't answer because of letterbox bars - would be a traitor and attack the castle in the middle of the night?
Dragon Age, as a series, is far more nuanced than good guys versus bad guys. Characters and their interactions - of all kinds - are what makes the series keep on ticking, so it's best to either get invested or get out.
Right now, it's best for me to put some clothes on and continue the fight to escape this castle.
The king wounded and dying, the queen staying by his side to fight to the death herself, we're prompted to join the Grey Warden Duncan and continue to fight elsewhere, and joining the Grey Warden's means a lot more than you might think.
I've glossed over some worldbuilding here. The Blight spreads through the lands, led by an Archdemon that, as you can guess, is going to need to be defeated to stop the problem in its tracks. But the folks who can best stop this fella are the Grey Wardens, who don't have the best standing amongst the common folk.
Some can see their importance, for sure - we've already seen two Kings that will work with them - but you're not exactly given the idea that becoming a Grey Warden yourself is a noble thing to do. To join their ranks requires partaking in a probably spooky ceremony, and for that, we'll need some blood.
Levelling up will allow you to increase your stats, which allow you to wield better weapons or have a greater chance of success in convincing folks to do your bidding, as well as unlock new feats and abilities based on your class.
I went through a couple of levels in my playtime but ended up with more defensive feats than I expected I would go for. Defensive insofar as I use my shield to wallop targets over the head and push them to the floor, rather than hunker down and absorb the blows, but I'll take it - I usually forget to use them in the first place.
Further Frustrations
Again, Origins continues to visually impress, he says sarcastically. It's a big game, it's serviceable, and I actually think I'm on lower settings than I can probably run the game at, but there's something that I feel is getting in the way of my fun here, and if it's not the graphics, it may well be the combat.
It's not the only game on this 1001 list to have weird combat. It's not even the only BioWare RPG to have weird combat, but this game seems to have combat that gets in the way. It's like the dialogue is telling us to lean in and invest time and attentiveness, but the combat tells us to sit back and just let it play out.
If you're playing for the story that's probably not too big a deal, but I read that Origins is on the difficult side when it comes to combat, so you might want to bear that in mind in deciding whether to dive in or not.
Whether you're a fan or not, some of these guys have enough Darkspawn blood for the ritual, but we've been given a two-part task and need to find some paperwork while we're out here.
The paperwork isn't at the quest marker, but Morrigan the witch is. You can't not notice the amount of skin on show here. Dragon Age isn't one to shy away from dealing with those aspects of peoples character and attitudes to one another, but that's for another time. Instead, our party are dumbstruck at having seen a woman and blurt out rumour and ramblings about what she might be.
As it turns out, she knows where the paperwork we seek is being held - by her mother.
Her mother doesn't speak a whole lot of sense, or nearly an hour in, I've lost the will to follow along with tales of the Darkspawn and the Blight and the Archdemon... In all honesty, if a conversation has given me what look like branching lines of questioning and conversation to flesh things out, I've avoided them.
I think it's because what is going on right now, even if it has its own Dragon Age-specific terminology, just isn't grabbing my attention. It's just unusually written generic fantasy. I'm not even looting the bodies of the foes I've slain. I just don't find myself caring about whatever it is that I'm seeing.
Joining the Grey Wardens turns out to be a bit of a messy affair. We need to drink Darkspawn blood, and if we survive, we'll be tainted with it, but that's how we roll. That makes us who we are. We need to risk death so that we may devote our lives to risking whatever's left to remove the Blight from these lands.
Like I said, it's never been portrayed as an obviously good thing to do, and as this other guy is about to find out, it's not the kind of cult that allows anyone to back out at any point, either.
Final Word
And that's the start of Dragon Age: Origins, or that was my start, at least. You all join the Grey Wardens, but how you get there will differ. What you do afterwards, well, that's for you to find out.
Why you? Because I'm not seeing anything that screams that I must play Dragon Age: Origins. I can see it a lot has gone into it, I can see how it is trying something a little different, and I can see that it still has that BioWare stamp on it, but it's just not doing it for me.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic had Star Wars, Mass Effect has space, Baldur's Gate has Dungeons & Dragons - I'm interested in their universes, making the game easier to get into, but I'm also interested in fantasy, especially darker or different takes on it, and yet Dragon Age: Origins isn't sitting right, for some reason.
As the story develops and the characters really get to know each other, and your party members come and go across whatever journey they find themselves on, Dragon Age: Origins probably does live up to its reputation, but for me, it has always come across as too generic to bother with, and I honestly say that based on basically nothing substantial. Trailers, and the like. I've really got no idea what the story of Dragon Age is about. Dragons, probably.
I don't think I'll be pouring hours and hours into it any time soon. I might look for a playthrough and give that a watch to see if there are some interesting developments in the early story, but if there aren't, then I'll just have to enjoy the many other solid BioWare RPGs instead. That there really is something for everyone is marvellous, and that it comes from a single developer is something else.
Whether interested in Dragon Age: Origins or not, you can't ignore what they've managed to do.
Fun Facts
More than 68,000 lines of dialogue feature in the game, so many that QA testers were given cheats to skip all the cutscenes.
Dragon Age: Origins, developed by BioWare, first released in 2009.
Version played: Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition, PC, 2010.