I have finished two play throughs of BioWare’s latest RPG blockbuster, Dragon Age: Origins. As expected from a BioWare game, the storyline of Dragon Age is one of its many highly touted strengths. On the whole, I feel like the game delivered on its promises of a strong story. But it also had areas that I felt fell rather flat as well. I’ve personally got into more than one argument about its strengths in relation to BioWare’s previous RPG, Mass Effect.
I’m obviously more interested in analyzing the story side of the game, but let me first touch on the game play aspects. On the whole, I felt the actual game of Dragon Age was decidedly average. Nothing done is particularly innovative and what is done is mostly done in an unspectacular way. Combat was at times clunky and frequently aggravating. The Tactics system, which is similar to the one used in Final Fantasy XII, only served to show how bad the game’s AI was. There were many things that you can’t set with tactics, like telling your mage not to throw a fireball on top of your fighter just because he happened to have two or three enemies nearby. On the whole, you needed to either micromanage characters and tactics to a ridiculous degree, use a small number of somewhat exploity tactics (like having three rangers summoning wolves and bears all over the place), or turn the game down to easy (which should be called nonsensically easy, because there is virtually no challenge on the easy setting). Additionally, some of the skills and classes are pretty worthless, such as the Shapechanger subclass or the Survival skill.
But to the thing that really matters: the story.
Dragon Age’s major strength is the quality of the NPCs, particularly those that join your party. All nine of them (not counting the war dog, which as a dog has no real character) are well fleshed out and entertaining. None of them fall easily into tired cliches. Alistair may be the classic templar type, but he’s no goody-two-shoes stick in the mud. Instead, he’s a witty, sarcastic snarker. Zevran is a flamboyant assassin, but he has a deeper side and isn’t just the standard charming rogue. The closest you come to “standard” characters are with Oghren, who as a drunken dwarf is suitably drunken and dwarf (and also hilarious) and with Shale, who is more-or-less the Dragon Age version of HK-47 (though with unique twists).
The characters also each have their own small side-stories/quests that can be unlocked by having the right type of relationship with them at the right time. These stories do a good deal to flesh out their characters, but did little to expand the story as whole. A few of them do allow for a limited amount of character growth with the characters, which is something that is mostly lacking through the rest of the game. That’s my real complaint with the characters. While Mass Effect didn’t do it to an extreme degree, Wrex and Garrus both had opportunities to change their outlook on life and the events. That doesn’t really occur in Dragon Age, outside of convincing Alistair that he should become a king or not.
My biggest complaint about the NPCs is the relationship mechanic, which basically boils down to “give them junk they like” and “talk to them in the camp and flatter them at every turn”. Sure, there are areas where if you make certain choices, they lose relationship points. But it’s very easy to avoid most of these and still keep everyone supremely happy with you. There are some dynamic moments with romance options, but these are fairly thin. It would be nice to have more dynamic relationships, with characters in the party having interpersonal relationships and conversations being more in depth than telling people how right they are about their opinions.
There’s also the issue of your character, who aside from being given an origin story, is kind of a blank character. You do have the choice to be nice or mean to most characters you meet, but aside from the interaction with that one person (and perhaps an NPC liking or disliking it), your actions have a limited persistent effect. The few exceptions are the large quests, where it’s less your character’s personality that matters and more their choices (you can be a jerk to someone but if you support their actions, they’ll like you just as much as if you were nice to them).
The plot of Dragon Age itself was relatively straightforward. Evil threatens the world and you’re the only one who can stop it. There are a few twists and turns here and there, but not by a great deal. In all, it’s very reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings. The Blight is Sauron’s hordes, the archdemon is Sauron, Teryn Loghain is Saruman, and so on. The background world that was created is fairly interesting, but at the same time pretty strongly falls into a standard fantasy setting. Despite some mild variations (elves as former slaves, dwarves with a strict caste structure) the races fall pretty much in their traditional fantasy roles. Perhaps the Quarians could add some spice to the setting, but aside from Sten you don’t meet any outside of generic enemies. You can learn some facts from Sten, but you don’t really do any interaction with the culture.
It’s all very well written. There were no moments that made me groan. But there were no real moments that made me go “Ah, that was really awesome.” It felt too much like the setting was made to have mass appeal, which is fine for creating a franchise (which is what BioWare is apparently doing, what with having Green Ronin create a pen-and-paper RPG). But it doesn’t really do much to create a deeply interesting setting. Compared to Mass Effect, I felt the plot and setting of Dragon Age were rather underwhelming. Mass Effect’s setting was by no means cutting edge, but it had more interesting features than Dragon Age did.
So, in the end, while Dragon Age had a decent story and awesome characters, it didn’t blow me away on the whole. It was not the ground breaker that Planescape: Torment or even Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines was in terms of a truly interesting story with interesting characters. But as a franchise, it’s definitely a good start.
