Dragon Age: Origins: Or, How I’ve Been Trying to Get My $50 Back

Steam keeps track of how long you've played a game,
but now how often you've enjoyed it.

When Bioware’s critically acclaimed computer role-playing game, Dragon Age: Origins, came out on November 5^th, 2009, I was inexplicably intrigued. Intrigued because it was getting a lot of positive press and because that press seemed to imply that it was one of the last bastions of old school PC games. I’m an old softy when it comes to games: I align computer games, even now, with the wonder they produced when I was a kid. I never had a NES or Genesis, so PC games were my source for geeky entertainment. Of course, I was also a kid so I didn’t have much money to buy games by myself. As a result most of the memories I have associated with computer games are severely tainted with whatever imaginative lens I viewed them through. I never actually played a lot of computer games, but I was fully aware of their existence. I spent quite a lot of time perusing PC gamer magazines and imagining the fantastical lands these games could take me to. And PC games were different back then: I never really put it into these terms, but PC games and console games were entirely distinct markets and the games that came out for them reflected that. PC games tended to be much slower and more precise; console games were far more inspired by arcades and were often, dare I say, more simplistic. Now, console type games dominate the market even on PCs. The console market is easier to develop for and more lucrative, but I don’t have a console and don’t really have any plans on buying one (plus playing first person shooters with a controller is hell – how do those people do it?). So when a game is lauded for its commitment to PC gaming conventions, it has a certain amount of pull for me. Because, you know, fuck those console gamers.

But, really, despite all that, my intrigue was still inexplicable. That’s because, despite the overarching taint of nostalgia and PC loyalty, I knew full well that I don’t really like Bioware role-playing games. You see, there’re a few different kinds of role-playing games. Of course, there’s the traditional pen and paper role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. There’s Japanese Role Playing Games like Final Fantasy. There’s traditional western Role Playing Games like the ones that play off the rules of Dungeons and Dragons, but put them in a more linear PC setting, such as all the role playing games I saw while perusing PC gamer magazines, and, importantly, older Bioware games like Baldur’s Gate. Western RPGs can certainly be divided much more precisely as there are more action oriented games like The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and more hack and slash types like Diablo. I enjoy Oblivion quite a bit, and played a hell of a lot of Final Fantasy in high school with my friend. But, those games are vastly different than Dragon Age. Final Fantasy is fairly simplistic, and, as the series has progressed, increasingly linear. Oblivion is less linear, but the way you engage in combat is less tactical than Dragon Age.

The only Bioware game I’d played previously was Baldur’s Gate II and I did not get very far. In fact, I really only got to one of the first towns in the game. I didn’t do much there except wander into a house and kill a child just for the hell of it. This disappointed a few of my party members and they left. And then so did I. That’s not because I severed my party by murdering an innocent kid, I actually thought that was pretty cool, rather it was because despite the vast opportunities available to me in the game, the one I found most intriguing was killing an innocent kid. I realized I just didn’t care about the game. I was bored.

You! Go over there and hit something!
You! Come over here and shoot something!

Plus, and I’ll freely admit this: I sucked at the combat. A lot. When you fight people in these kinds of games, your party just kind of does their own thing until you tell them differently. You can pause the combat at any time and issue orders, and then the party will follow those orders. You can also set up more nuanced tactics such as “Heal party members that are below 20% health” or “Attack enemies with the most health.” Unfortunately, you can’t really just sit back and watch the fight take place then, you have to micromanage things or your party will just continue to do the same thing until they die. At least that’s the impression I get. Like I said I suck at this. My party members just wander up to enemies and keep bonking them on the head, getting hit by them, and then bonking them again. Unfortunately there isn’t a tactic command for, “Bonk enemy on the head until they die, but don’t let them bonk you on the head.” That would make things so much simpler.

You! --Oh... we're dead.

And I knew all this. I knew what I was getting myself into, I knew I would suck at it, I knew I wouldn’t really like it… and yet… and yet… honestly I don’t know. So I dropped fifty dollars on the game a year and a half ago, and to this day I have barely scratched the surface. That’s partly due to someone stealing my computer last year, and subsequently preventing me from access to my game files, but I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really feeling it before that happened. Still, a week or so ago, partly because of a resent sequel, partly to get my money’s work, and quite a lot because I’ve got nothing better to do, I reinstalled this stupid game and have been reluctantly playing it. And as for you, you few readers that are for some reason still here with me, I’m going drag you along for the ride.

First, I suppose I should let you in on the basic plot of the game, though it’s your typical fantasy stuff: Fereldan is a country or something divided between different races and stuff: there’s the humans, the elves who the humans basically use as slaves, the dwarves who are around but I’ve never seen them, and the mages, who everyone is scared of. Currently the most important thing going on is the blight, a term used to describe the invasion of the Darkspawn. No one really knows where the Darkspawn came from, though there’s heavy implication that they came from human sin. You see there’s this thing called the Fade… you know what, fuck it. There’s some evil things running around and there’s a group called The Gray Wardens who are trying to suppress them.

One of the heavily advertised things about Dragon Age: Origins was the individual back stories that came with each character class. When you start the game, you get to pick which kind of race and… well… sort of profession, you’re a part of. I won’t get into the individual choices you have, it suffices to say, I chose a mage. The mage starts out in a mage tower, where the general population keeps the mages because magic is scary. You’re a new initiate, and at the start of the test game to pass an initiation process.

Despite having several origin stories, the game quickly convenes them all after a short while. When I initially played, I started the game as a human noble. After some drama, you’re picked up by a Gray Warden called Duncan and initiated into that order. The same thing happens with the mage: after your initiation, Duncan comes along and says, hey, would you like to be a Gray Warden, and despite the illusion of choice, you basically have to say, sure, why not.

This is one of the most frustrating things about this game. No matter what path you take, it all basically leads to the same conclusion (at least so far). Since the mage origin story is really only setting the stage, it functions more as an introduction to game mechanics before shuffling you off to the real meat of the game. There’s little choice in the outcome, though there is slight variation in how you get there.

There’s a principle in video game narratology called “ludonarrative,” a concept usually used adjectivally in the phrase “ludonarrative dissonance.” The ludonarrative is the narrative that comes across during gameplay, and when that conflicts with the story told through more traditional narrative devices, like the little movies called cutscenes throughout a game, some dissonance occurs. Role playing games, in my opinion, are especially susceptible to this dissonance, because despite often striving towards realistic character interactions, the actions you take, have little effect on the narrative. For instance, the big conflict in the mage’s story is that a friend of yours wants to break free of the Circle of Magi and the tower where apprentices are kept. He’d like to do this because he’s in forbidden love with a female priest and he knows they’re going to turn him into an emotionless tranquil. You can either tell him to fuck off, or you can help him. Unfortunately both options lead to the same conclusion: he runs away and you move on to the Gray Wardens. Even more obnoxious though, is that how you get to that conclusion is basically the same. If you agree to help him, you have to break into a vault to destroy… well, some vial that’s keeping him there… if you don’t agree to help him, then either you stand around doing nothing, or you have to tell on him to get the narrative moving. Once you tell on him, you still have to break into the vault and destroy the vial. Once you do that you’re greeted with the exact same cutscene: the party is confronted outside of the vault, your friend splits, you get in trouble, but you’re eventually saved by Gray Warden Duncan who taps you for a secret special mission of utmost importance.

This is unfortunate, because it dissolves the aspect of role-playing. You have some choice in how events transpire, but the story only moves in one direction. You’re not really living in a constructed world, you’re only being dragged kicking and screaming in one direction. But, I feel like role-playing games have an even large ludonarrative dissonance built into their design. If you’ve played these games before, you know that you’ll need all the supplies and experience you can get your hands on. So even if it seems to conflict with the story, it’s best to go off the beaten path as much as possible to find battles and rummage around in chests to get supplies. So when your friend tells you that the head mage wants to see you after your initiation, it’s best to not go directly to him. Instead, you should go into every room in the tower and rifle through all the containers that you find to get supplies. You’ll probably need them, because getting in fights is pretty much all you do.

Could we go wash up in that brook over there?
I'm feeling a little... gross

I know that violence is one of the easiest ways to introduce excitement into a game, and I understand that this game takes place in an increasingly dangerous environment, but you are personally responsible for more deaths than entire wars. Even peaceful party members don’t seem to question it; when battles begin, bonking heads is the business. And, for some reason, the game designers decided to highlight this by splattering your entire party in huge amounts of blood, that remain even during the conversations you have after a battle. It’s a little odd to be discussing politics with someone while you’re covered head to foot in blood.

I’ll freely admit that these are minor complaints. Anyone who plays computer games on a regular basis takes what I’ve mentioned for granted. I’m really not attempt to review, or even really critique the game; everything I’ve noted (besides, perhaps, your partying being spattered in blood for much of the game) are conventions of the medium. And I don’t doubt that, for people that are more tactically oriented, and have a greater tolerance for genre conventions, this game is a joy, but I can’t help but feel that, personally, I’m sludging through this stupid game.

Still, there are occasional bright spots to the openness that the game provides, and the odd situations that you can create. For instance, if I know that I’m going to lose a party member, I strip them of all their gear before I lose them so that I can sell their stuff. Since the cutscenes use the exact models of the characters as they enter the scene, there are often supposedly dramatic moments that occur withsome of the players in nothing but their skivvies. 

Perverts.