Dragon Age: Origins is Bioware’s latest success in the RPG-market and it’s about as standard fantasy as you can get without a group of midgets trying to propose to a volcano. It’s got elves living in a wood, dwarfs in mountains with braided beards and a bunch of humans messing everything up. Depending on your race and class combo there are six starting quests – all ending with you being in the same spot drafted into killing an army of demons and of course it all goes well until Sean Bean betrays everyone… I mean one of your Generals betray everyone…
Due to some poor choices, and bad luck with the saving, I played through most of the starting quests before setting so much as a toe into the main game and it’s a bloody good job I did! The small bit of text doesn’t really sum up the three classes, since each class has about four different subclasses you can fit into, so, in the end I went for a human warrior (original I know.) After playing around with the rather over-the-top character customarisation I began my adventure and within the first two minutes I found my identical NPC-twin. Strangely enough it was my brother’s wife - then a moment later I got my first helmet and all that character customarisation was completely pointless. Throughout the game I had to wonder how promiscuous my character’s father was considering most of the human NPC:s were strangely familiar, but still I pressed on.
I was really struck by two things.
1) How badly designed the interface was. I was playing the Xbox-version and even navigating the menu was like trying to play Guitar Hero on expert. I’m told the PC-version is a lot friendlier and as long as I can put more than 6 spells on the quick cast bar I’m inclined to believe it. 2) The other thing was how much like every other Bioware-RPG this was. If I replaced the elves with Jedis I could have been playing Knights of the Old Republic. All that being said, after almost ten hours I was still playing and eager to find out more. I’d built an army, saved a few thousand people, settled down and was now picking out carpets for my future castle. For your information, they’re red.
Due to some poor choices, and bad luck with the saving, I played through most of the starting quests before setting so much as a toe into the main game and it’s a bloody good job I did! The small bit of text doesn’t really sum up the three classes, since each class has about four different subclasses you can fit into, so, in the end I went for a human warrior (original I know.) After playing around with the rather over-the-top character customarisation I began my adventure and within the first two minutes I found my identical NPC-twin. Strangely enough it was my brother’s wife - then a moment later I got my first helmet and all that character customarisation was completely pointless. Throughout the game I had to wonder how promiscuous my character’s father was considering most of the human NPC:s were strangely familiar, but still I pressed on.
I was really struck by two things.
1) How badly designed the interface was. I was playing the Xbox-version and even navigating the menu was like trying to play Guitar Hero on expert. I’m told the PC-version is a lot friendlier and as long as I can put more than 6 spells on the quick cast bar I’m inclined to believe it. 2) The other thing was how much like every other Bioware-RPG this was. If I replaced the elves with Jedis I could have been playing Knights of the Old Republic. All that being said, after almost ten hours I was still playing and eager to find out more. I’d built an army, saved a few thousand people, settled down and was now picking out carpets for my future castle. For your information, they’re red.
