Dragon Age: Origins Part 4- With Flying Colours

At the core of both Gears of War, Dragon Age: Origins & indeed countless other video games. The plot can be boiled down into "Save the world" RPG's will allow for your own reasons as to why, and sometimes even how. Sure, it's possible to go into a huge degree of detail as to why we have to save the world, how we're going to do it, why it has to be us etc. The crux, however, often remains the same. We just have to.

I feel like before I go on, I need to address something else though. It may seem unfair to compare DA to Gears of War. Gears, is a 3^rd person shooter and DA is an RPG, surely one is going to be (and forgive the choice of words) geared toward story due to its nature? No. A game doesn't need to make sense to be fun, I've had fun with "Fusion Frenzy 2", an RPG doesn't need a good story to be an RPG & likewise, a shooter doesn't need a story to be fun- doesn't mean it wouldn't be improved by mixing these things together though. Consider games like Farcry 3 or Spec Ops: The line, both arguably just shooters- however they're improved by how their story conveys an interesting message.

Regardless, Dragon Age passes the first test of having a story that requires something of you and gives you a reason to fight. You need to save the world, not a particularly uncommon plot hook.

Now we move onto the characters.

There is a whole host of characters in Dragon Age, and to go into why I like each particular one and what I feel the bring to the entire experience of playing the game would be a foolish. There are so many, that contribute in big ways both to the story & the setting of Dragon Age. I will try to give an overview and perhaps I will talk about one in particular in another post. For now though, I'll try and stay as general as possible.

Each and every possible party member has a very well defined personality in Dragon Age, after interacting with them for just a few minutes- you understand them. You don't know them, and their goals aren't made clear right away- sometimes not at all. However, you get a general idea of the sort of person they are- without having everything given to you right away. Like meeting real people. Each party member has a bar for how much they like you, starting in the middle i.e. neutral, and either raising or lowering based on if you're a dick or not.

Talking these people and letting them know how you feel, in either a positive or negative way is a very rewarding experience. You'll learn about their past, what they think about other members of your group, what they think about you, their past, their fears and even their cherished memories. This process takes time, you can't just spam click different members of your party until they like you- Sims style. Certain conversations are only available during particular missions, or after them. Some members will even comment on your relationships with other members, either because they're concerned, jealous or just don't like them. Of course, all of this was ruined with DLC- you can just buy gifts to give to them and have them love you within the first hour of the game.

Dragon Age: Origins Part 3- Gears of War...

I promised I would talk about the good features of Dragon Age, now, I'm not trying to sell the game to you or "review" it in any real sense of the word, these posts are just my musings on Dragon Age: Origins.

Last post, you'll remember that I very briefly touched on DA (in places) having good presentation & style. I didn't really want to talk about that in my last post, because of the other issues I was writing about, but seeing as this post (and possible subsequent ones) are going to be praising the game, a least a little more than the others, I figured I would try to explain exactly what I mean by the general idea of style & presentation without today’s triple HD turbo remix graphically enhanced semi-sentient consoles/PC's.

For me, and huge part of gaming is story & characters- it may seem like an obvious thing to say, but if I'm not playing multiplayer, then I'll at the very least want interesting characters & a bare bones plot that gives this person/these people a reason to be doing whatever it is we're doing. Often, this doesn't have to be much more than “Shit, we've gotta save the world” I'm not asking much here.

So, lets take a game with more or less this exact plot, Gears of War 2: Gear Harder. The general plot, as far as I was interested enough to remember is the locust want to kill us & we want to kill them, if we don't kill all of them first then for all intents and purposes the world has not been saved & we have failed. What about the characters? Well, according to the very low standards I've set for myself GoW2 passes. These people have a reason to be fighting, or to be here, as it were. Because if they aren't, the world isn't going to fare as well. Right, that's ½ of what I'll need to even engage me slightly.

So here comes the tricky part, despite the list- in it's most basic form- being two items long, making your characters interesting isn't as easy as giving them a reason to be somewhere. Even more so when the basic premise of the game is saving the world, because they have to be here. They're part of the world, and of course they want to save it. So, perhaps there's another reason they're/we're fighting, a slightly more personal reason? A reason that will, over the course of the game, let their character develop and grow as a person. Gears attempt at character development is the whole Dom's wife situation, it's far too ham fisted to even remotely work from my point of view. So then the game falls back on “You have to save the world” hook, and for me, that just isn't enough.

Now keep in mind, that doesn't stop a game from being fun. I find Gears of War fun, I find Darksiders fun, I find dude bro shooters fun, but that's it. There are so many more ways to enjoy & experience a video game that isn't along the lines of “Sweet, that head shot was awesome”

Dragon Age: Origins is one of them.

Dragon Age: Origins Part Two- Honestly, this game IS good!

If you guys remember, the last post was a brief overview of the Dragon Age series- combined with some hate for Mass Effect- that eventually and unavoidably turned into an entire different topic all together, but I did use DA as a segue- so it’s all good.

As I’ve said before, Dragon Age 1 suffers from a lot of issues from both a game play and a technical aspect, but it’s still fun. I touched briefly on this subject & gave the vague reason as to why I still think it stands tall amongst the vast sea of modern RPG/JRPG’s. Before I really get into the why feature or character X makes the game stand out, I think it’s important to talk about the flaws this series suffers from. Because without knowing what this game has done wrong, and how much that would drag down most other games, you can’t really get a sense of how much good dialogue & character development can save a game with terrible game play & visuals- a game that otherwise would be simply awful.

First things first, this is going to be from the Xbox 360’s point of view. One day I may tackle the PC version in some other format, like an LP, but don’t quote me on it- because I take ages to do anything.

Graphically, Dragon Age is a mess- there’s clipping issues, terrible animation, dated graphics, stupid ass walking animations (particularly when you have your weapon drawn) awful lip syncing and in places underwhelming environments. So in conclusion it looks like ass. On its own this isn't that much of a problem, you see a lot of people give a lot of praise to games that don’t have great graphics- but have great presentation & style, and in places, DA does have this.

Another of DA’s issues (and this is console specific) is its interface, on the PC the interface makes sense for the type of game it is- you’re given a standard World of Warcraft style action bar. However, on consoles you get 3 quick binds- the XYB buttons and another set when you hold the R trigger and whatever the equivalent on the PS3 is. This is a large problem when you’re controlling a party of 4- each with their unique skill set & build. It makes combat a lot slower than it would otherwise be on the PC. Speaking of the skill set, this games skill tree (and I use the term lightly, because it is in no way reminiscent of a tree) is terrible. It is improved on in Dragon Age II, but that’s another post all together.

To get to each skill on the tree, you need the one before it. This basically means that your end game character will have an entire truck load of skills that you won’t be using, because all you really want is the end tree skill- in most cases anyway. Of course, with progressive skills this makes sense- to get level two speech craft I obviously need level one. However, to shoot a fireball why do I need to know how to shoot an ice blast? It’s a game design flaw that gets worse as the game goes on. Your first few levels you’re blazing through and it doesn't matter if you have to spend a skill point to get to the next one because you’ll level up in another 5 minutes anyway, but in the late game where you level up once every hour or so it makes your time feel completely wasted.

So, in conclusion playing Dragon Age Origins for the combat, on the console versions anyway, is a very acquired taste. It's quite slow paced (especially if you are on the harder difficulty) and I feel like it can drag when you're fighting Darkspawn for the most time if you've played DA as much as me- you'll learn to hate the Deep roads as much as any sane person. Dragon Age II improves on the combat system and comes off as a lot more action RPG like. So if that's what're you looking for, just pick up Dragon Age II. Whilst you can carry over saves, they have very little impact as you don't play the same character. So you're only going to miss larger information about the setting of Dragon Age in general, nothing a Google search can't sort out for you.

Next time, I'll talk about the features of Dragon Age that really justifies the response & praise it gets given or maybe I'll talk about the combat, not going to lie- I haven't written it yet.