Dragon Age: Origins Reviews

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Written by Brother None on December 1st, 2009

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Now we come to the most important part of any game - how does it play? In this instance, I find that the differences between the two come down to the differences in mechanics. With the PC being a more tactical experience with a more flexible camera I felt more comfortable selecting more spells, specialty attacks, and active skills. On the console, with a limit of only 8 quick-slots I found myself selecting more passive skills for my team, improving their overall performance instead of gaining specialty attacks and area of effect spells. This changes the gameplay significantly as the PC version is then played more like Knights of the Old Republic with its pause-and-go gameplay. The console version played far more like Mass Effect, leaving your party to execute their attacks based on the game AI in real-time, pausing to issue occasional special attacks or to take direct control of a character to help flank or otherwise engage the enemy tactically. I'm not saying it's impossible to run Dragon Age: Origins on the console in the same tactical fashion as it is on the PC, but I'm saying that it is difficult to the point where the rewards are too few. The occasional AI issue does hamper gameplay, especially in the aforementioned "Mage thinks he's a tank" scenario, but it behaves fairly well for the most part on both platforms. Certain characters will come with a many tactic slots open, giving you a great deal of flexibility in their intelligence, while others may need to spend the points to gain those slots. The AI is much like anything else worth doing - the effort is proportionate to the reward.

Coupled with the dialogue is the fantastic score. The use of music in every stage is so meticulously chosen that you will often feel an even stronger connection to the story. From the tense battles to simply walking around a village, there is never a moment when the music feels out of place. There are even times when no music exists but the ambient sounds do more than enough to keep you immersed in the environment. This is by far the best use of sound in a game I have played in a long time.

It's no secret that there's sex scenes. But when they're doing it, they strip down only to their underwear. I can understand why this might be done in our weird puritanical society that doesn't mind a firehose of blood spraying out of a nun's decapitated corpse but freaks out over seeing a pixellated nipple. What I cannot understand is why said underwear consists of large strips of what appears to be burlap. It is approximately as sexy as a Golden Girls marathon. What's worse, is that the regular everyday outfits worn by some characters show more and look less like some sort of abstinence-cultist diaper. I guess the good news is there won't be any storylines about accidentally knocking Leliana up. But I guess my point is that Mass Effect's nude scenes showed us that this whole business can be done tastefully, without getting too graphic, and with the basic premise intact that your characters are not dry humping. The game is not called Amish Age: Bundlings.

BioWare has done a tremendous job in the creation of Dragon Age: Origins. Aside from a few graphical hiccups, I have not one complaint of Dragon Age: Origins. While this game may not be for all (since BioWare caters to a niche audience) I find it to be one of my favorite RPGs of all-time. It definitely is my favorite BioWare RPG yet and if you love "western" RPGs, give Dragon Age: Origins a run. I already have begun my second playthrough. It's worth every minute.

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