Dragon Age: Origins

Ok, first off, I just have to say, this game is amazing. You have a choice when you start off this game of three races (Human, Elf, Dwarf), and each race has classes to choose from (Warrior, Mage, Rogue). Then after that, each race has you choose you Origin (the background from which you came. Such as Commoner or Nobility). All of these choices affect the flow of the game, changing the way people interact with you, and the outcome of certain aspects of the game.

You also are able to choose how your character will appear by editting the major facial features of them with a radial bar. Along with that, you may choose to setup the stats and beginning talents your character will start the game with.

After your character is setup, you start the origin portion of your story. This is basically where you came from, and what happened to cause you to enter the large war in the world. Your choices here, and in every other portion of the game, change the overall outcome of the story.

Now, as you progress through the game, you will be able to interact with your party members, and either grow closer to them, or farther apart. If you make them dislike you too much, they may leave you, but if you make them like you enough, they may teach you how to become their "specialization class". Specialization classes are specific to which class you started the game with, and become available at levels 7 and 14. For the warrior you may choose to be a Champion, Templar, Berserker, or Reaver. For the mage you may choose a Shapeshifter, Spirit Healer, Arcane Warrior, or Blood Mage. For the rogues, you may choose Assassin, Bard, Ranger, or Duelist.

Now, once again, I must stress that you are not able to specialize into a class unless you have unlocked it first. Thus, if you wish to become a Templar, first, your character must be a warrior. Second, he must have at least reached level 7. And third, he must have learned to become a Templar, either from a party member that teaches it, a book sold by a vendor, or a specific story event that unlocks the specialization. The great thing, though, is once you unlock a specialization, it is saved to your profile, and unlocked in every character save you have. This means you can unlock the Shapeshifter speciality on your Warrior, and then go start a new game as a Mage, and ave it unlocked. Once again, though, you must first reach at least level 7 to specialize.

There is much to love about this game: Stunning graphics, amazing story, fun gameplay, varying difficulty levels, multiple choices that affect the outcome of the game, and the fact that its replay value is very high. Also, the game unrs about 60-80 hours to complete, more if you do many side mission.

Overall, I find it to be an amazing game, and would like to see everyone's thoughts on it

(Note: This game can be found on the Playstation 3, X-Box 360, and PC)

Human, Elf, Dwarf, Warrior, Mage, Rogue... RPGs really are getting old...

Honestly, besides the origins effecting the story, how is this any different from any other game?

It is true, it is much like other games, but the fact is, there is a quality in this game over even games like Oblivion and such. Also, not just your Origins affect the story, but your choices and actions do too. Also the class you choose and specializations you choose can open doors, and close doors too.

This game is like transformers....more than meets the eye (I had to throw that reff in there)

i like this game a lot i'm glad bioware made this they are awesome, i like the gameplay and at first i began to wonder should i get it for the Xbox 360 or PC but while i was deciding that my brother went and got it for PC so i play it on his computer.

i like the game and the story, the graphics are somewhat amazing and then you see some other graphics and there just like bleh, i love how the blood stays on your character and if you add flame enchantment then the fire stays on in the videos.

The characters are quite good and the amount of space to explore, at the moment I'm a level 6 elf mage i like the mages there good for long range and healing, have yet to see if they can do any dynamic kills yet since the other characters keep stealing my kills lol.

I thought this game was fantastic.

Its really challenging, maybe little too challenging.

I played on easy and still found my characters dieing alot.
Maybe it was just me and the way I played but I could never find enough healing items and Alistair died in almost every large fight...

But when things were going well and I wasn't dieing it was extremely fun lol.

Ryojin wrote:

Human, Elf, Dwarf, Warrior, Mage, Rogue... RPGs really are getting old...

Honestly, besides the origins effecting the story, how is this any different from any other game?

I don't believe I'm saying this... But I agree with you .

DA is just another RPG. It's going to be just like the rest of them. It's pathetic. Honestly, I found it nice, but ultimately it was the same old shit I've been playing for a long time.

Honestly, we need more Personas, Star Oceans and Final Fantasies.

@ GB: Star Ocean is coming out... Today. On PS3. *** Its awesome ***

@ Ryojin:
The human, elf, dwarf, warrior, mage, rogue is getting old. I agree with it that much. But they are the most used races and they quickly became the standard. NOT having them in a fantasy RPG is like playing Call of Duty without a gun.

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I like the class system and story flow. And in a role-playing game, story is all that matters for me.
DA is good. I've played it. I give it around a 9/10 which I don't give lightly.

PC version is the best apparently.

Coldhardt wrote:

NOT having them in a fantasy RPG is like playing Call of Duty without a gun.

Lies! If anything, it's like playing Call of Duty with a laser gun, or something else out of the ordinary. You see, you can have fantasy RPGs without your typical Warriors, Mages, Elves, etc. You just have to be...




Creative! *gasp*





90% of all RPGs are set in pretty much the same settings, and use pretty much the same classes... I'll pass this one up for something with a bit more originality.

Well, the fact is though that your warrior, mage, rogue classes all specialize themselves into other classes. Some of these classes are typical, but some of them are ones that are fresh and new.

It doesn't necesarily matter if the game isn't the most original in terms of concept and gameplay, the fact is that its a fun game with a pretty good story. Its not so much about WHAT you do, more about HOW you do it, and this game did it right.

DA is a very good game, but it lacks balance. Playing a mage is waaay too easy, and while playing a warrior or rogue soon proves impossible without a mage in party, be it nuker or healer. Also characters covered in blood from head to toes simply ruin the climate of dialogs.

Despite its drawback, the game is fun to play and it's world is interesting and beautiful. Fighting animations also were top-notch. It's great to see your dwarven berserker spin with two handed axe in his hand, turning enemies into mince meat. Ah...

Cromell wrote:

DA is a very good game, but it lacks balance. Playing a mage is waaay too easy, and while playing a warrior or rogue soon proves impossible without a mage in party, be it nuker or healer. Also characters covered in blood from head to toes simply ruin the climate of dialogs.

Despite its drawback, the game is fun to play and it's world is interesting and beautiful. Fighting animations also were top-notch. It's great to see your dwarven berserker spin with two handed axe in his hand, turning enemies into mince meat. Ah...

Well you're majorly overlooking the fact that it's an offline game, in which case, there is no balance issue. You create the easy classes and the difficult classes to change the difficulty and experience of the game in these types of offline RPGs. Examples are if you've ever played any other BioWare RPGs or any Bethesda RPGs, Sierra, or any of the likes. All of them have the easy classes and the difficult classes. In my opinion, balanace is not an issue in offline games.

Now, the blood splatter is a bit much, I agree, lol, especially with how fake it can look at times. It just doesn't flow at all, lol. Tis why my dog was always in my party to lick me clean, lol.

Nevertheless, I think that the difference is too big. In Morrowind/Oblivion it was possible to customize the character's class to cover most of its cons. In KotOR, your char ends up as a killing machine that could pretty much solo the game. In BG/ID series you could have 6 chars in your party to cover everything you need. You can play whatever class you want and the difficulty of the game won't change THAT much.

When I want to play a mage I want to scorch some asses and when I play warrior I want to chop some friggin heads off! It shouldn't have anything to do with changing the game difficulty, IMO.

Oh well, it's just my nagging. I still like the game

I thought it was a pathetic excuse for a game. I mean, is it really worthy of the title of Best PC Game 2009. I personally thought BioWare could have done better. Look at Neverwinter Nights 2, for example. It's one heck of a game and you can try so much for variation while designing your character. And the main stimulus while playing an RPG game is its story. I'm afraid to say that Dragon Age has one of the most pathetic stories in RPG games history. Sure, the character development (through conversations) that BioWare developed is absolutely stunning. The "evil" dialogues are also some of the funniest and most sadistic replies a human being can ever give in those situations. But heck, the story is completely boring. I slept in the middle of a fight once! And the fighting adrenaline is nowhere near NWN2 either.

Overall, I'd say that this game is a flop in my mind because of its non-captivating dull colorless story. And that weird "Morrigan's Plan" really pissed me off. WTF was that. "Make me pregnant" and all.

Meh, you know kids these days... Story doesn't matter to them. Just put in some shiny stuff and make it look good, and that's all that matters to them.

(I've never played the game, so I dunno if it has shiny stuff and looks good, but I can only assume)

Shiny stuffs? Yeah, it has some shiny stuffs. You can have sex with Morrigan.

I don't understand. Games should have at least either of the two: a perfect story, like Final Fantasy, or the feel of adrenaline through your veins, like Gears of War. If a game has both (like Mass Effect 2 or Half-Life 2), then that game eventually usually becomes one of the best games of the year. DA: Origins, on the other hand, has none. It has a sloppy sloppy story, plus no feeling of adrenaline. A battle begins, you pause the game, plan out your moves, resume the game, the characters start fighting, you pause the game again, use another spell or power, and then resume again. And I also felt like that the game was unnecessarily stretched so that they could make the game longer.

The story wasn't THAT bad. Oh well, ok, it was bad. But the way it was presented, the way the characters and relations between them were presented - that's probably what made the game so popular. That and excessive amounts of blood.

The characters were what I liked the most in DA. And I mean, I LIKED them. I enjoyed listening to their stories, their dialogs, and such. Hearing more about them was what drove me to play the game until the end.