Dragon Age: Origins Review

The World of DA:O

The game starts, interestingly enough, with one of six beginnings, with very broad but distinct racial, professional, and economic backgrounds. I like that. It leads me to think a little piece of the old, original BioWare still lurks somewhere in the EA corporate division, from a time when what mattered most to a group of enthusiastic D&D-playing physicians was role-playing. And with these six game starts, DA:O is effectively nudging the kiddies who know nothing about roleplaying into assuming roles, while providing an introduction to the lore and backgrounds of the DA gaming world. Not all six stories are equally believable, or feature decent NPC depth, or reasonable backgrounds. But the average is pretty good.

Let’s flashback for a second to a time when I attended an E3 private press briefing of the original KotOR’s trailer. What caused the most comment was the way your PC would catch the drift of conversations as he or she went past, and could get involved with any one of them by coming closer. I didn’t think this would be realized in the game, and sure enough, it wasn’t; but something a bit like that seems to be operative, here. Not that you can get involved in many conversations as a drive-by, but you do hear the gist of people engaged in intelligent ones. (They’re nothing like those horrifically surreal faux conversations of Oblivion.) And yes, you can engage them in dialog, too. The only problem is that these witnessed exchanges recycle endlessly, with the same people staying pretty much in place. The first time through, it’s impressive.

BioWare clearly recognizes the importance of first impressions, and that’s something they’ve always managed well. Consider how much of an effect well-populated zones in DA:O make when you first load them. BioWare’s room designers create believable visual and audio settings, lifelike in their seeming complexity, with foreground characters engaged in a variety of activities that fit completely in. Dialog with these figures is frequently lengthy, often well written, and always well voiced though I still find it a minor annoyance that tony, upper class British accents go with upper class, serious NPCs, while Cockneys and other regional, social, and economic groups end up vocally cast as commoners and shopkeepers. It’s game typecasting, and probably will never go away, so it’s best to just shrug and accept it. (At least it doesn’t offer ersatz-Mexican accents for a slimy farmer you encounter, as the otherwise immersive Betrayal at Krondor did.)

The standard faux medieval world is prettier than before, though still just as bizarre a montage: staggeringly monolithic stone towers are filled with 20th centuries vanities and 19th century curio cabinets; enormous quantities of fresh, spoilable foods stand about in rooms that would have no climate control for nearly a thousand more years with only a single, small cooking cauldron and fire present. If you don’t look too closely, though, it provides a fun background to run around in. Good, too, is the attractive, sensible interface. Member inventories are grouped as one for easy access and dispersal. Right-clicking an item allows you to use, view, or destroy it. Skills, spells, and talents (of which, more later) all have easily distinguishable icons that can be added to, moved about, and removed from individual character bars at the bottom of the screen. Character screens provide instant access to personal items and basic information, while buttons at the top of the screen supply more detail.

The graphics as a whole are in fact, stunning. Backgrounds are both well drawn and colored. NPCs employ a number of different body and facial types, and their clothing varies, too. They look and move naturally except in video clips, when their sometimes grotesque body gestures betray puppet-like origins. Terrains are nicely varied, though the fact that your character is subtly skating along the top is made apparent on the pieced-together wooden plank bridges of Redcliffe Village. Edges of walking zones, too, are unrealistic, and if you cut a corner a little closely, you’ll find your PC running in place without anything seemingly offering obstruction. It’s not a major point, though, not with artwork like this.

The title’s linearity becomes very obvious as one plays, and something I find a disappointment. Granted, linearity is necessary, but it needn’t be so blatant. Areas often feel small and uniform as one explores; in urban regions, most doors are locked, and even a rogue can’t get in. This was less a problem in Baldur’s Gate II, where chapter 2 ingeniously threw so many quests at you quickly that it swamped the game’s obvious linearity. In this respect, DA:O takes more after KotOR, where there was no effort to conceal the hemmed-in feeling of the game, though the visuals in DA:O are far superior and more detailed.

The plotting overall isn’t noteworthy. Not that I mind a series of clichés; most entertainment or art starts with that. It’s how you expand upon it that matters, and the development in DA:O is standard formula. I never came away with the feeling, as I did in BG2 or Ultima VII, of being a pawn successfully moved about in a much, much larger game, or disrupting a very carefully laid and complex plan, as in BG1, or discovering that everything I knew was wrong, as in Planescape: Torment. I gathered a party to punish a highly-placed, powerful traitor, then dealt with a still more powerful army of invaders. On the other hand, dialog between your party members and yourself is superlative for content, structure, immediate mannerisms, and the gradual unfolding of character traits you’d expect from successive pieces of dialog as your party comes to (know) you.

You have a selection of eight possible NPCs to choose from (and one as free DLC) as you travel, in order to build your adventuring party of four. All are well-defined in concept, with several supplying more than just hints of elaborate, story-based backgrounds. They come alive during the game in a way that BG2’s party-based NPCs do but with a lot of more detail thanks in part to a far larger script, and in part to fine vocal acting. Since many of us remember (and keep playing) BG2 for its party NPCs and their personalities, especially with mods that add still more of the same, this will prove a very welcome development. It may in fact be the most enduring aspect of DA:O, the one thing more than any other that you take away with you. Because though some players get excited discussing a character’s face or a weapon’s damage, in the end, it’s the written personality that appeals the most to our imaginations.

That may be why some of my most vivid memories of the game occurred in the game’s camp scene. This is a worthy retread of an attractive feature that first showed up in the original KotOR. The idea is that players hate leaving party members behind (due to size restrictions) in order to retrieve them at great length when they’re needed later, so a centralized location is created where they can all hang out for your choice on specific missions. Since by convention, time has no meaning when you’re enroute on the larger, geographical map, the camp is always available to you when you leave an area. The combination of a dark night, a bright, well-animated fire (or two; one of the mages your meet is a loner), a well-designed woodland clearing, New Age background music, and much of the best dialog referred to above, creates a considerable impression.

There are three general classes in DA:O: warriors, rogues, and mages. That’s right: clerics have been folded into a sub-class of magery. Leveling is based, as in most RPGs, on experience that derives from completing quests and defeating opponents in battle. All classes have access to the same group of skills: rogues get a skill point to spend every two levels, with warriors and mages getting one per three. Skills are identical across all classes, and not directly involved in combat, though some, such as poison-making and combat training, certainly can help.

Talents (rogues, warriors) and spells (mages) are another matter. These are combat- and class-specific, one free point earned at every new level. They follow a series of branches, several available at any time to a given class. For example, the first tier talent Powerful on one of the warrior branches is a passive ability that gives them greater health and less fatigue in battle, while the second tier talent following it is Threaten: a sustainable ability that uses up some stamina, but draws enemies away from other party members while it’s active nice for a tank. The system has an excellent selection of talents and spells, though people used to playing mages as a (box of tricks) with hundreds of spells available for everything from invisibility to stopping time may feel uncomfortably confined. I didn’t, but it’s worth remembering.

When an NPC or your character reaches level seven, they gain the ability to select one of four specializations, and a second specialization at level fourteen. There are four specializations per class, each representing a very different take on how to develop its potential. So a rogue who becomes an assassin gains great backstabbing bonuses, while a bard gives party bonuses or distracts and stuns targets; a ranger can summon an animal to fight alongside the party, and a duelist improves their attacks, defenses, and critical hits.

Each specialization brings with it attribute perks, and a branch of new, unique talents or spells. Many of these are ingenious game sub-systems that require strategy to manage well. Mages that become arcane warriors, for example, can gain tremendous defense and spell resistance capabilities, along with powerful weapons attacks whose bonuses derive ultimately from their magic attribute rather than strength. But armor fatigue is factored into the increased mana cost of spells during battle, while some spells require two hands to cast. (A mage staff is an extension of the mage, and doesn’t count.) This means sheathing a sword to do spells when you’re up close and personal with something large and vicious. Tactical and strategic tradeoffs, in other words, that you need to work out for yourself. Good job.

Note that you don’t start the game knowing specializations. As in Planescape: Torment you can be taught them by special NPCs, though you can also find some in odd places, or spend very large sums of money to buy an occasional instructional books from a few merchants. Specialized classes add a lot of character tailoring to the game, and are challenging to master. This, too, is an excellent idea, keeping many specializations as something that will suddenly jump out at you, rather than something you can actively seek. It makes the game feel more alive.

Mods

Strongly on the positive side, a modding toolset has been released for the game. How deep this goes remains to be seen, but within a few weeks of initial release there were already plenty of face mods (as you’d expect) and a few extensive tweaks to combat. With a little luck, we may see new, elaborate quest systems, such as Morrowind and Oblivion possess, or new specializations, as in BG2. But these take time. In any case, the prospect looks good, and BioWare deserves credit for doing this.

Remember that basic interface already discussed? It definitely deserves a brief re-mention for its transparent use in battle. I like the way you can easily swap between two sets of character’s weapons at a keypress, as well. You can pause combat at any time, and enter commands for your four party members. This is basic commonsense, but it’s fascinating how many RPGs have gotten it wrong in the past. Drakensang, for instance, lets you direct any one party member, and switch among them, but the others immediately default back to the horrendous AI.

The visual battle sphere of influence an old game concept, first used in an RPG in Betrayal at Krondor makes it simple to calculate areas where flank attacks and backstabs will work. Spells have generally attractive appearances that don’t get in the way of viewing anything else. And when you direct a character to drink a potion from the group inventory, you actually see this in progress. You can also see when a character has been knocked down, blown across the floor, watch them rise, etc. In other words, it’s WYSIWYG, to use the old word processor term. What you see is what you get. Nothing needs to be reinterpreted for symbolic accuracy, except the degree of severity for wounds. But since the game system doesn’t pay attention to specific body parts, all you need do is monitor each character’s health, and that’s easy enough through the character icon displays.

I find combat in the 1.01a game both repetitive, and moderately unbalanced, however. It’s understood that mages are storehouses of mana. Once exhausted, that’s easily replenished through lyrium potions that your magically inclined team members can make with ingredients that are both cheap, and plentiful. On the other hand, stamina powers many talent-based moves that warriors and thieves can use in battle, but once gone, those two professions have very limited opportunities to replenish it until combat is over. This leaves the warrior brandishing a two-hander at melee, for example, and unable to make another Pommel Strike, Critical Strike, Powerful Swing, etc, or for the Rogue to engage again in Dirty Fighting, employ a Deadly Strike, etc.

A still greater problem is the off again, on again combat AI. Left to themselves, warriors and rogues make very good choices about what talents to use, and when. (Few things warm the heart as much as observing an opponent being laid out by a shield-bashing Alistair.) That said, it appears two or more party-based melee types don’t always appear to comprehend the value of concentrating on a single enemy, even if they’re standing next to one another. I’ve also repeatedly watched thieves ignore opportunities for backstabbing right in front of them, while they focus on another opponent who is facing directly their way; and no amount of resetting their AI seems to change this. Winning the battle frequently comes down to micro-management, and/or endless potions. Three wizards are a killer. As one party configuration, certainly, that’s fine, but warriors and rogues should be just as powerful, each in their own manner, so that players can find multiple combat teams if they wish, emphasizing different professions. (Other players appear acknowledged this as well, since there are already several player-designed modifications to each of the professions’ talent/spell systems and several offer better options to warriors and rogues. I haven’t tried any in preparation for this review, however, as they weren’t pertinent.)

Another issue is the way battle centers on the PC. In neither the BG series nor the KotOR series was that the case, so if you created a mage, you didn’t have to worry about them being stuck at the front of confrontations that decayed into pitched battles but that occurs in NWN 2. With DA:O, your character won’t be placed at the front of encounters, unless you deliberately put them there, but you’ll still find that melee party members will periodically run to you if your mage logically hangs back and fires off spells at range. Apparently, they think you’re retreating. That is something which could have been solved with a retreat button on the interface, otherwise leaving your party to ignore your leader’s position. As it is, watching your tank turn and run away from the front, pursued by a herd of opponents who gang up on your mages, is not a path to true happiness.

How you play will determine how much these last two points bother you. I tend to micromanage mages while letting melee types do the sharp-edged voodoo they do so well, so I was highly irritated by both of these problems as they repeatedly cropped up. If you micromanage your front lines, though, you’ll select better targets for your warriors and rogues than the AI will, and if you play the only warrior tank on your side you won’t encounter that (Look, our leader is in the back lines! Hi, there! Let’s do lunch–now!)

Combat Tactics

I’d like to pull out for separate treatment what should have been one the most notable aspect of combat in DA:O and could easily have been, with no trouble at all that was insanely hobbled, instead. I refer to Bioware’s decision to treat the ability for users to configure and improve combat AI as an in-game, level-related skill called Combat Tactics. Four lines are furnished to each member of your party. Each line lets you add a logical statement such as (If attacked at range by weapons or magic, use Winter’s Grasp) with all sorts of options to configure content every step of the way. As a system to build your own combat AI, it’s the best I’ve seen, for ease-of-use and specificity. However. Bioware then proceeded to do a mix of allowing you additional AI-configuring lines only at extra levels, or for expended skill points. That’s right: you’re rewarded the ability to control your party better, or you have to spend one of a character’s hard-earned skill points to gain one additional line of logic for the first two levels of Combat Tactics, then one point per two lines for two further levels.

Combat Tactics should have been freely available, with as many lines as you cared to use for each party member. Instead, they went with a counterintuitive decision that is breathtaking. Note to Bioware: good combat AI is a necessity in a game, not an in-game perk.

Many players consider this the primary part of their RPG experience. I wouldn’t go anywhere near that far, but quests are important, challenging a player’s strategic thinking and reasoning abilities at least, when they’re done well. Here, for the most part they are accomplished in a competent but unspectacular fashion. Most side quests are short FedEx types, run-grab-kill-return, and there are no puzzles that will cause even a pre-teen to break into a mental sweat. The major quests occasionally throw in what appears to be a nice curve, such as the time in the Fade when you have to learn and adopt new forms to proceed; but it quickly resolves into a simple, repetitive 1) take each room exit, and 2) free a captive mage you eventually find who then give you a new form, to 3) try further room exits, to 4) free more mages. Clever at first, it quickly becomes rote. Forget about quests relying upon knowledge of lore, or figuring out solutions by sifting through complex evidence. The lowest common denominator approach is sadly at work, here.

The Unreality of Game Reality

You can make the game beautiful, you can fix all the combat issues, but more important still for me in a computerized RPG is the ability to suspend disbelief over the new environment I’m witnessing. I make allowances for conventions such as endless day, no need for food, drink, sleep, etc, but I expect things in the game world to make a basic sense. Not within the terms of the real world, but that of consistency within any logical universe. It’s where I have the most problems with DA:O. None of them are major by any means, but for me, at least, they all add up. Your mileage may differ.

This is where all those chickens hatched by the mix of 19th and 20th century furniture and Tudor frames, and the party tank running to the back rank where your mage party leader is during battle, come home to roost. Let’s add some more. Why does just about every charred corpse and there were over a dozen of them throughout the many first level rooms of the multi-level Circle of Mages possess poultices and potions; and why are they all intact, if the corpses themselves are just extra large charcoal briquettes? Why if you suspect a piece of locked furniture contains something valuable, and your party isn’t too virtuous, can’t your tank who possesses a huge sword and an arm the size of a nuclear missile, reduce it to kindling? And what’s with having skills that let every party member become an expert pickpocket, while only a thief can open a lock?

These matters might be shrugged aside, but then there’s also the matter of the game’s poisoning mechanic. In every other game I’ve played where you could engage in that venerable and delightful human practice, it was applied directly to a weapon. Not so, in DA:O: you apply it to a thieves’ hand. If you move the weapon to the other hand, it will no longer be poisoned. If you give it to somebody else, it will no longer be poisoned. If you equip an un-poisoned weapon in that hand, it will now be poisoned. And somehow, poisons have acquired a timer. Which means stopping directly before entering a room where you know a battle will occur to poison a weapon for no evident reason, at all.

And what is the deal with your party’s Codex? This is your journal, the collection of material on quests, party members, history, artifacts, etc, that you find throughout the game. There are literally several hundred of these sometimes large reference documents in a few categories; and to access them, BioWare offers only Mac-like note icons with little numbers, like the saucy (56,) not to mention the extremely expressive (223.) If you don’t jump to one of these codex entries when the game informs you it has appeared, you can’t easily find it later, precisely because of numerical anonymity. And the numbers themselves, and their plain graphical wrapping, certainly kill all that flavor some members of BioWare’s team thought important enough to dish up in this great informational package about the DA universe. It makes no sense.

This leads naturally into DLCs, because BioWare engaged in some reality-breaking here, as well. They’ve literally stuck an NPC in your camp who informs you of a quest that, if you accept it, immediately drops you out of the game to purchase the download. He also shows up in your personal journal. It’s certainly sensible to advertise DLCs on the developers’ website, but a website is in the realworld. DA:O is supposed to be a game world, a place where you can go and experience something else. Sticking what in effect is an ad in your face in the camp where you regularly travel was another one of those inexplicably stupid decisions BioWare made in DA:O. Creating a new social site wasn’t enough; free DLCs dependant on registering characters wasn’t deemed sufficient, either. They had to break their own game world open to get your attention. Selling DLCs themselves is fine. Killing the game world immersion to do so isn’t.

Again, none or only part of this this may bother you. Some players accept it all with a chuckle, or a shrug. I notice these things about settings, and characters, and stories, without thinking; as do others. I remember when the dragonflies whose corpses yielded books were among the many things pointed out by a variety of people about Might and Magic IX back in 2002. So if you’re the sort that blissfully wallops the daylights out of anything without a care, that’s fine; but as for me, I’ll diss those dragonflies and their modern counterparts, and take the consequences.

Conclusion

If I had to come up with a single phrase to describe DA:O, it would be very professionally done, with numerous goofy exceptions. The game is smoothly executed. Everything fits together well. It looks good. The faces of the NPCs draw you in. The music stirs the heart. The voice actors are well chosen. The party dialog is vivid. There are strange anomalies, such as hand poisoning, and corpses loaded down with safety net products, and a walking, talking DLC ad in your camp. The latter are the price of the admission for the former, and if you want the game you just have to accept the bizarre flaws as the price to pay for everything else.

Yet at the same time, I get no sense from the game of a giant creative vision, or even a strong imagination. It is an exceptionally slick hack-n-slash, and a good example of what this new engine and system can do. The structure is there, with some tweaking, for an RPG that could do a lot more. DA:O’s dull, obvious plot, unbalanced, boring combat, rote quests, pay-for-combat AI, and numerous reality breakers simply get in the way too often for me to regard it as superlative. Yes, I moderately enjoy it, but I’m frankly more curious as to where BioWare will take the DA franchise next. Hopefully, it won’t be into the kind of cookie cutter mode that made those SSI gold and platinum games of the 1990s so interchangeable and ultimately forgettable. There’s a great opportunity here to improve upon a first offering, and I hope BioWare rises to the occasion.