Dragon Age: Elevating The Narrative

CaK over at GreyWardens.com let us know that they’ve published a new article titled “Dragon Age: Elevating The Narrative” that focuses on the way the storyline unfolds in Dragon Age: Origins, and what you’re left with when the credits start rolling.

Where Dragon Age takes this and turns it on its head is by allowing for the possibility of some really, and I mean really, sad endings. That’s what real literature does, people. That’s what the great films are about.

Sixty-five years after Casablanca hit the big screen, people still remember, people still obsess, the audience still hopes that somehow, some way, Bogart just might get on that plane this time. But, would we remember if he’d flown away with Ingrid Bergman? Why are Shakespeare’s tragedies the ones that lodge in our minds and hearts?

I saw my first sad film at the age of eight. Having been raised, like most children of my generation, on the saccharin happy endings of the Wonderful World of Disney, I was in for a shock when I sat through Yasha-ga-ike or Demon Pond. As the heroes sank, dead, beneath the water of their flooded village, I waited waited for the magic to happen that would being them back to life, for the fairy godmother, for the miracle, whatever . and all I got was the credits rolling up the screen.

And that is exactly how I felt as the credits rolled on my first play through of Dragon Age.

Personally, Planescape: Torment had far more emotional impact on me than DA:O or any other role-playing game in recent memory. The Nameless One’s plight and his ultimate fate struck me in a way that I don’t think any other game will do for a very long time.