Dragon Age: Origins Editorials

The folks over at GreyWardens.com have kicked up a couple more Dragon Age: Origins-related articles, including a piece on bridging the narrative gap between Origins and Awakening and another on werewolves and dog culture in Ferelden. From the former:

In Awakening, it is now and Origins is the past. Yet, due to the varied nature of the Dragon Age narrative, your past is very likely different from my past. Since the story itself exists in a single timeline, but my experience of that timeline is not the same as yours, my expectation of the (now) of Ferelden is also not going to be the same as yours. We are living (playing) in a kind of parallel world system where for every choice I make, there is an experience somewhere of someone who made the opposite choice. However, when Awakening starts, all of a sudden, the (now) is of one kind. Regardless of expectations, your (now) and my (now) are the same.

It’s quite a challenge to a writer/designer to attempt to build off of a narrative that could have gone many different ways. While much of Origins involved the player making decisions about the direction of the story, when Awakening starts, those decisions do not matter. Without warning, the player must make a choice about which story to (believe) or else be content letting two (or more) variations of the same event be in their mind. Either Alistair died killing the Archdemon, or else someone else did and he is now the king. Surely, both of those cannot be possible. Immersion in the story at this point depends on how well the new narrative can overwrite your own past experience or else make you forget that this character’s past is not the one you remember.