Virtual 100 – Game 22
I didn’t like Dragon Age Origins the first time I played it. If I remember correctly, it was a Blockbuster rental. I was a Bioware fan. I played Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire back on the original Xbox. Of course, that was as far as my Bioware knowledge went at the time. As I’ve stated many times before, I wasn’t much of a PC gamer back in the day, aside from some Doom or Wolfenstein and a Rollercoaster Tycoon game here or there. CRPG’s were never on my radar. So I had no knowledge of Baldur’s Gate or Fallout or anything even closely resembling them.
Anyways, I was highly anticipating DA:O upon release, so I snatched it up the minute I saw it on the shelf. And oh, man, did I hate it. I hated the graphics which, let’s be honest, were pretty damn ugly, even for 2009. I believe the reason for that was that the game was originally intended to be played from an overhead perspective, and one of the design decisions was to bring the camera in closer to the character, hence the somewhat low-resolution textures on pretty much everything besides the character models themselves. This could be a complete fabrication on my part, made up by criss-crossed memories and a little bit of a Mandela effect, so take that whole thing with a grain of salt. I do know it wasn’t due to technical limitations of the hardware though, as we were already enjoying graphically impressive games like Half-Life 2 and Bioshock on consoles by that time.
In any case, DA:O was not a pretty game. And the game systems turned out to be completely over my head. I mean, I loved KOTOR, but that game was pretty shallow in the game mechanics, due to it being developed with consoles in mind. They went hard with Dragon Age though, and all the things I thought I loved about those types of RPG’s absolutely kicked my ass. Also, Dragon Age was just a tough game in general, and you could totally screw yourself with poor decisions.
So I made a decision of my own, and the game went back to Blockbuster pretty damn quick.
Still, it was one of those games that always intrigued me. Then over the years, during Microsoft’s Games With Gold promotion, I found myself with free copies of both Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age II. And they’ve been in my digital catalog ever since.
I had started Dragon Age Origins a number of times. I like the game. I’m just not terribly good at it. This last time, which was about a year ago, I started a character and put it on casual, and wouldn’t you know, it actually stuck. Yeah, yeah, it’s on Easy, I get it. But it wasn’t the first time I had played it on Casual and bounced off. So the fact that I was able to get invested in it and stay invested was a nice change for sure.
I took my time. I made careful choices. I tried to save as many people as I could. I tried romancing Morrigan and Leliana, and of course I failed with both. I played the game almost exclusively for probably a couple of weeks. Then, for whatever reason, I fell off.
And so it was, for a good 12 months.
Then, with the recent gameplay reveal of Dragon Age: Veilguard, I found myself getting interested in the land of Thedas once again.
I considered starting over again. But then I remembered the trials, and how that seemingly unending questline almost killed it for me. So I loaded up my previous character and realized something interesting: I was 99.9% of the way through the game. I stopped playing literally on the dragon’s doorstep.
So I played it last night, and after about an hour, I beat Dragon’s Age Origins. And I cheesed the shit out of it.
One of the main reasons I suck at games like these so bad is the fact that I’m absolutely terrible at party management. I was never much good at it to begin with, and as I’ve gotten older and more impatient, I’ve only gotten worse. I got my butt kicked the first few times I fought the dragon. Not by the dragon itself, but by the wave of Darkspawn it sends out when it reaches about half health.
My party consisted of my rogue Warden, Loghain, Leliana, and Wynne. For the life of me, I don’t remember what happened to Morrigan, but I must have pissed her off because she was nowhere to be found. Regardless, it was the numbers of Darkspawn that kept getting me, not necessarily their strength.
Somehow I managed to get the dragon into a loop where I could shoot it repeatedly with the ballista and it would just kinda sit there and let me chip away at it. Then every once in a while it would fly up and land somewhere else, in which I would just adjust the aim and keep chipping away. When the halfway point triggered the Darkspawn, the General came toward my party but all the others just stayed back. I killed off the General and went back to chipping away while all the other Darkspawn just stood around and watched.
The funny thing was, during the final cutscene when Loghain killed the dragon (cuz yeah, the dude wanted to martyr himself, so I was like go ahead bro) all those Darkspawn were still standing in the background. They got a good show, I guess.
So anyways, I beat Dragon Age Origins in probably the pansiest way possible. But when you have a game sitting in your backlog for like, 15 years, it’s nice to get it done, one way or the other.
Now I get to actually start Dragon Age II. I’ve heard many times over the years how a lot of fans didn’t like the direction they took with the sequel, but I’ve never actually booted it up. I’ve read that it mainly takes place in the city of Kirkwall, and that it doesn’t have much variation in the setting or environment. That might be enough to get me to bounce. I get bored easily. But we’ll see.
You may have noticed by now that I haven’t even really talked about the game itself. I haven’t commented on the gameplay mechanics, the story, or anything. That’s because Dragon Age Origins has been talked about and analyzed to death over the years since it released. There is a pretty die-hard fanbase out there that can explain everything much, much better than I can.
What I can say is that I was pretty bummed I wasn’t able to romance Morrigan. That’s mainly because she’s voiced by Claudia Black, whose low, kinda raspy Australian accent could read me the damn phone book and I’d die a happy man. I failed in Dragon Age Inquisition as well, now that I think about it. But I’ll be playing through that again in the near future so hopefully we’ll remedy that little misstep.
I have a weird mix of feelings for Dragon Age. The story, as in the actual plot of the game, doesn’t really do much for me. But the world and the characters are excellent. They stick. This is the Bioware of old, after all, and their character development was top notch back in the day. I remembered the Dalish elves and Morrigan and Leliana easily, even though I had not booted up the game in forever. Alistair being a little bitch. That uncomfortably muscular dog. The creepy possessed kid. They are all easily recalled and identified. I was like “oh yeah THAT guy!” Contrast this with the last game I played, Steelrising, where I couldn’t tell you who was who or what they were about while I was playing the game.
Dragon Age reminds me much of the Witcher series. All of the smaller stories and moments in the game are far more interesting than the overall plot. I can tell you about a handful of quests in any Witcher game, but can’t for a second tell you what the overall story was about. I would love to see the world of Thedas expanded in a different way, I just can’t think of what that might be. Usually we see glimpses of a bigger world and think, “man I would love to explore that,” but that’s kinda how we start off here. It doesn’t have the luxury of a Dungeons and Dragons game, where there are multitudes of books and games and other stuff that explores every nook and cranny of an established world. I mean, it could have, had EA and Bioware had the foresight to license it out to more than just a prequel book or two.
It will be interesting to see just how big Dragon Age Veilguard turns out, or if it’s even more limited in scope than the games before it. Inquisitor was pretty damn big, and judging from the gameplay footage it looks like they’re going back to a more focused, linear experience. Time will tell.
I’m debating whether or not I want to jump right into Dragon Age II after this. I have so many other irons in the fire, but I’d rather get into the story while this one is still relatively fresh in my mind.
Three more games until I am exactly 1/4 of the way through my Virtual 100. At this rate it will take about three more years to hit my goal. That’s both humorous and depressing.
