This may come as a surprise to some who have followed me on here, but I’m a massive BioWare fanboy. I mean I’ve only mentioned them once or twice or something, it’s pretty subtle I think. Some have even applied the term ‘lunatic’ or ‘obsessed’ or ‘please leave me alone, I don’t know who Shale is- help!’ to me, mainly people who are physically in the same room as me and therefore have less escape options. I’ve dropped the big ‘B’ word a few times around here in my articles, and I did even make some articles about them, just one or two, trying to exorcise my doomposting about the company where I quickly went over their older games, the classics.
Before the dark days.
This game is woven into my gamer soul. There’s the subversive dark fantasy elements in its story and setting that I likely didn’t quite catch onto or think about until a few years later in my life, the great and understated writing across its characters, and the irreversible damage Morrigan did to m- I mean, the strength of its stellar voice cast. There’s not many games I can distinctly remember my first experiences with to the extent I can with Dragon Age. I breathed Origins for a very long time, much like Mass Effect and Jade Empire before it, and Baldur’s Gate even before that. BioWare is that personally fundamental to me; almost every era of my life, I’ve been wrapped up in a BioWare game, badgering those around me like an absolute ****ing weirdo. Is that still the case all these years later, outside of reminiscing and revisiting their games like this?
No. This is the first and last time I will even tangentially mention this game.
Why did it take me this long to do an article on a singular BioWare game? One is mainly that the games are kinda long on average, and it's a little harder to summarize them in a shorter article because of that. I’m also not normally one to go into particular details of a games narrative outside of the setup and vague talk of some of the moments, but with these sorts of games I couldn’t really not do that, you know? The storyline as it unfolds around and involving your character being an absolute psychopath is almost the entire point of a BioWare game; they definitely weren’t focused on the actual gameplay before more recent times, particularly with Dragon Age: Origins.
This is going to be a playthrough from start to finish, broken up into parts of course as this game is pretty ****ing long. Only time will tell on how many parts, but I’m aiming to do each major story beat and area in one entry, maybe with some dipping here and there for the various side quests and fun ****. We’ll go through the game, I’ll do my usual ranting and comedic screenshot observations about things as they come up, and discuss the greater game in-between of course; you know the deal. I’ll probably also take time to talk about the various odds and ends of lore that pop up and explain the setting a bit as we go; you cannot stop me from talking about Dragon Age lore.
The Beginning; What Kind of Psychopath This Time?
One of this game's many strengths is in its roleplaying, and before we do any of that we have to make our avatar with which we will murder untold numbers of things and/or people and maybe, if we play our cards right, see their really awkwardly modeled face lock lips with another equally odd looking face. We could also just abuse them with gifts to trigger the romance; that will likely happen too. The Feast Day Gifts DLC made it very easy to get some Ferelden horizontal handshakes on, frankly.Origins has a very simplified character creation system, particularly in its classes, following more of the style of Knights of the Old Republic. You have three to choose from, in the most basic of tropes; a warrior/fighter, a rogue, and a mage. They're as basic as they come, and I don’t really think they need much of an introduction or explanation here. They are exactly what you think they are already.
The biggest impact with the character creation comes from your choice of race, as all three choices are both very ingrained in the game's vast setting of Ferelden and also affects what opening and type of character you’ll play once you’ve finished creating your lunatic; the titular ‘origins’, if you will. You play through your chosen origin prologue before then being put into the same game as the others, but each origin also carries a few noticeable changes to the game later on; you’ll revisit each of their areas later, as well as encounter some choice characters from each again. You can play as a human, an elf or a dwarf. Each race has two possible origin prologues to choose from.
If you’re a human, you’re either a minor noble from a rich family or a mage in a Circle tower; we’ll get there eventually, but for now think of it as a sort of wizard college, only enrollment isn’t optional and if you ever try to leave some drug addict knights will cut you down without mercy then snort magic heroin. We’ll get there. If you’re an elf, you’re either a free hippy (‘Dalish’ as they’re known in the game) living a nomadic tribal life off the land, or a slave labourer in the capital city of Denerim; if you’re an elven mage, you have to either be Dalish or in the Circle. If you’re a dwarf, you’re a member of a criminal cutthroat cartel family, or a member of a noble cutthroat family in the largest dwarven city called Orzhammar. They kinda go hand in hand for dwarves, really. There’s only one class/race restriction with dwarves being unable to use magic due to them not being connected to the spirit/dream world called the Fade; it will come up eventually.
A great thing about Origins world is that you end up encountering and interacting with just about every aspect of it multiple times throughout, so we’ll cross info bridges when we get there. There’s something to be said of how each origin is fantastic in terms of both roleplaying and world building; I don’t think there’s a single ‘bad’ one, really. Some I don’t personally care for, like the dwarven noble, but it’s still a well written prologue, and most importantly they all deal with and introduce you to some important aspect of the greater world. The games greatest strength is its world building and setting, and just how easily and flawlessly it introduces concepts to you.
This brings us to the burning question; what am I, and sort of by extension you, going to play this time around? I think for this kind of showcase playthrough I want something that makes the most oomph, the most impact and really shows off some of the games strengths. The human noble was a good candidate, being its likely the biggest one in terms of impact on the game's greater story and is the only one that can end with you becoming ****ing king; this game ****ing rocks. But, I didn’t go for it and instead went with one far more metal befitting the dark fantasy; the city elf.
Meet Darrian Tabris (you always have a locked last name based on your origin), the city elf rogue. I think I’m going to try and play an archery focused character this time around, only using melee when necessary, as it’s the one style I don’t think I’ve ever attempted previously in the 19 years I’ve been playing this game.
He’s here to kick human ass and chew bubblegum, and bubblegum probably hasn't been invented yet; the codex is unclear on that one.
Elves in the Dragon Age world are a major subversion from the usual elven trope. Where most settings have some amount of Tolkien-pastiche where elves are these ethereal perfect beings, haughty and aloof, BioWare went a different angle here. Elves used to be something close to that, but after a whole bunch of various epic tragedies and world shaking events, they have been left as mere shadows of what they used to be. Elves now live in one of two forms; as the previously mentioned Dalish hippies, or impoverished ‘not-quite-but-basically slaves’ in human cities corralled into designated slums called alienages. As a city elf, Darrian is from the Denerim alienage. Really not sure what real-world allegory this is supposed to represent, it’s really subtle if there is even any meaning so let’s not get wrapped up in it.
The Titular Wedding and Slaughter
Let’s go over the basic setting premise of Origins. It takes place in a land called Ferelden, essentially a fictional medieval fantasy version of England given all the accents you’re going to encounter many times, across the same 4 or 5 minor character voice actors. Every few hundred to a thousand years, terrible monstrosities called darkspawn emerge from underground and begin doing their business all over the place with the whole thing being called ‘a Blight’ as a proper noun, led by a gigantic black dragon called an archfiend. Only by killing the archfiend will a Blight ever end. The church, called the Chantry here, claims that darkspawn are divine punishment from the ‘Maker’, the god of the setting essentially. He’s forsaken the land after a whole bunch of events we’ll likely get into at some point, and now that’s why Ferelden is objectively kind of ****ed. You got your unstoppable evil monsters that rampage around, cities and even countries are always being razed and rebuilt and then massacred and rebuilt again, and there’s always some level of dismal hopelessness written all over the place. The game takes place in the early stages of such a Blight, with darkspawn once again being sighted around and starting their little murder frenzy.Surprise, I’m being woken up by my cousin because it’s my wedding day! Darrian’s betrothed has shown up far earlier than expected from another alienage, so the arranged wedding has been moved up. Yup; I’m getting married to someone I’ve never met before. I always wondered why the arranged aspect of the wedding was important, but going off of how many of your cousins you meet throughout the next hour or so maybe it just kind of makes sense. I counted five characters who referred to me explicitly as their cousin or some other relation to themselves; maybe playing matchmaker outside of your own alienage isn’t a bad idea. The person who so rudely awoke me, Shianni, is one such cousin. She has some fire in her, is something you quickly come to learn about her.
She seems cool, I hope nothing happens to her to spur an explosion of racial violence.
After getting a talk from our very weary seeming father about not brandishing our weapon skills that our tragically dead mother taught us (aka, some basic explanation as to why you’re a player character), we’re off to wander and find another one of our cousins who’s also getting married. Elves do weddings shotgun style, apparently; just a whole bunch at once. This is the first open area, the BioWare strength. Being the prologue, there isn’t as much to do here in the alienage compared to the later areas, but what is here is some fantastic world building.
The design of the alienage conveys exactly what we’re looking at; a slum for some very downtrodden elves. Your house is tiny, hardly more than one room and a bed. All around are loose burlap sacks of…something, I’d guess grains or something. Everything looks worn down and dilapidated, houses with a few clearly hastily thrown together fixes and patchwork repair jobs. In true OG BioWare fashion, almost every person you see can be interacted with and will say a non-conversation voice line at the very least. The people milling about are all gathered for the day’s wedding(s) and either congratulate you or give you a cheeky little joke about ‘the old ball and chain’, and it makes it apparent that despite the impoverished situation and racism around them, these people really come together as a tight-knit community. All of this from just some building models, and a few voice lines as a first impression.
There’s far more to it than just some first impressions, of course, which brings us to the first little side quest/interaction. I’m feeling pretty good on my wedding day, walking through the alienage square when I spot some people fussing over a cart. Turns out, it’s an old couple and their daughter, and they’re, again, tangentially related to me as cousins or something. It’s a small alienage.
Here they drop a little mention of some important bits; they’re trying to leave the alienage since the human owner of their house kicked them out to turn the place into storage room, they’re planning to go to a place called Ostagar where the Ferelden army and the current king, Calian, are gathering to fight the darkspawn menace to work as servants until they can save some coin, and after talking to the parents who I guess are one of your aunts or uncles, the girl who’s your other cousin approaches you to ask you to find a way for her to stay. She doesn’t want to be in a camp with a bunch of human soldiers who, as a direct quote, ‘haven’t seen a woman in months’. There’s a lot here, and it's testament to the great writing that it never feels perfunctory or like an obvious exposition drop, and it really helps set some tone while also giving you an objective to do. Oh, and **** humans, am I right?
Dragon Age: Origins is I think the BioWare game with the most ability to be an absolute psychopath in, if you so choose. ‘You may not like it, but they will’ is such an unhinged and vile response.
I manage to convince her father to let her stay in my father’s house while they go off to Ostagar alone, and so ends the first side quest. And in true BioWare fashion, they simply disappear from the map and you can’t find the daughter anywhere in this prologue after doing this; she’s not in your house, or anywhere else as far as I could find. It wouldn’t be BioWare without some jank, after all.
I mill about a little more, talkin’ to some elves who may or may not be somehow related to me, talk to some family friends I have no memory of about my mother who was a totally really cool rogue, tell some kids about an elven legend I make up on the spot to spread the seeds of elven superiority to future generatio- I mean, to have them connect with our rich history. It’s a pretty cool little interaction for, as you’ve likely caught on to so far, world building; no one here in the alienage, player character included, even knows elven legends anymore as they’ve spent so long separated from them at this point. That’s essentially the vibes of Origins’ elves distilled into one point; they are so far removed from their golden years that they’ve forgotten their own stories. Even the Dalish aren’t spared entirely from this tragic subversion as we’ll come to see much later on. They’re a people who have forgotten, and arguably even have had it forcibly taken from them.
Eventually, I wander over to my objective; my other-other-other cousin, Soris. Apparently he’s not so into the whole ‘arranged marriage’ thing, and getting some cold feet. This is the first time that you get to do some real roleplaying as part of the game, which is another singular strength of Origins. Through your dialogue choices, you can frequently choose specifically how your psychopath reacts and establish little details if you so choose. There’s big choices absolutely do affect the story of course, but there’s plenty of other conversations where the point is just roleplaying without any ‘game-ified’ element; whether or not you act like you’re into the arranged wedding or not doesn’t affect how the prologue plays out, it just lets you get into your character more if you so choose.
Something I particularly enjoy about Origins related to this; there’s no alignment or morality point system, unlike something like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic. With no game-ified element like that, you’re really free to act however you want to without worrying about some arbitrary points scale, making for some actual free roleplaying. I’m not a fan of any set-in-stone morality mechanics in game systems whether its video game or TTRPG, as I feel its pointless to try and rigidly state what’s good or evil or lawful or ‘renegade Shepard’ in things that are often a combination of so many variables and perspectives.
Anyway, me and cousin Soris head back into the square and finally meet our bride, Nesiara.
She seems nice, and she also has one of the only really unique female face models in the game for whatever reason.
While we’re all hangin’ out, us and our innumerous cousins and soon to be spouses, a human, Vaughan, walks in with some of his lads, and damn does he immediately set the tone going forward.
Jesus dude; what the ****. There has been a whole unfortunate racism thing we’ve seen a few examples of throughout the last half hour or so, but this is just going fully in on that. He and his associates have decided to crash the wedding to ‘grab some girls’, which of course should cause most sane people to cringe out of their seats as a healthy direct response. You get a chance to act either confrontational or more cowardly here, but regardless of what you say, first cousin Shianni glasses him on the back of the head. One of his friends then exclaims that he’s the arl (more or less the mayor type role) of Denerim’s son. Well, here we go.
This sets in motion what makes this particular origin prologue easily one of the most memorable in the game, which again is saying a lot as they’re all very good. We’ll get to the whole ‘slaughter’ side of this article’s title…after we meet Duncan.
Right after Vaughan gets carried off, me and Soris spot another human milling around who in fact has one of the only entirely unique character models in this game and is also armed. You go up to him, and after being either cautious or outright hostile as befitting how you’re feeling in this particular minute, he speaks vagaries about coming here to find something, and how he thinks he’s found what he’s looking for. Eventually your elder Valendrian joins the conversation, and reveals that he’s good friends with Duncan, but seems a little apprehensive about him being here, like the elder knows more than he’s telling you…
Behold, Duncan, one of the most understated and greatest characters in this entire game, which is saying a lot.
I’m sure it’s nothing, so I finally head to the ceremony. And then the metal begins.
Vaughan and his men return, kidnap some women including both the brides and Shianni, and knock you out. This starts a tense discussion with all the elves deciding what to do about this, before ultimately deciding to send you and Soris into the arl’s estate to rescue the women. Just in case you hadn’t really caught onto the specific vibe going on here, the elder himself states that he’s heard of Vaughan’s ‘terrifying appetite’ with women. This is why I think this is the most impactful origin; just holy ****, it’s not afraid to go places. Origins is very much a dark fantasy type of experience, and this is one very heavy representation of that.
Just look at his stupid ****ing face. Is there any more punchable face in a video game?
And so begins our righteous slaughter, and our first encounter with the games combat as we storm the estate. How is this game's combat? I say this as someone who utterly loves this game in ways I cannot articulate sometimes, but the combat in this game is ****ing atrocious.
Origins originally started as a spiritual successor to BioWare’s earlier Baldur’s Gate series, aiming be the continuation of that style of CRPG combat with some added bells and whistles. The combat on a mechanical level is little more than right clicking on things to start attacking, watching the same few animations play out until either side drops. There’s of course abilities you can learn over time, but they are generally very ‘low action’ cooldown type of things like knocking someone down with your shield or throwing the ol’ pocket sand into people's eyes as a rogue, especially compared to what the series would become later when your rogues start doing teleporting shadowmancy backflips somehow.
Yup, it’s a whole lot of this; just watching some animations play out for about a minute.
Continuing from Baldur’s Gate, it’s essentially real-time combat with a tactical pause option and forgoes the action stack mechanic of the similar Knights of the Old Republic; you issue orders to your characters one at a time. There is some excitement put into it, such as rogues being able to backstab targets for bonus damage by physically moving behind them, or spells sort of being able to combo with one another in a few ways that we’ll start getting into later, but it’s not the most dynamic or exciting combat, basically. Especially this early on, when all you have is likely 1 or 2 abilities. We’ll talk more about this as this little series goes on, I assure you.
Absolutely riveting. I’m on the edge of my seat.
Me and my increasingly panicking cousin just kill a whole lot of guards, basically, who immediately attack you on sight past the first few rooms. The righteous slaughter begins. Maybe I’m being a little more gun-ho about this than I should be, like maybe not all humans here are terrible people or anything. As long as I don’t open up a door and find three of them standing over the dead body of one of the kidnapped elves and start joking about necrophila in a really bizarre conversation, maybe I’ll calm down a bit.
Goddamn, city elf prologue. What the **** is wrong with the humans in Denerim?
Well, okay, maybe you’re almost comedically justified in this bloodbath.
We finally fight our way into the final room; Vaughan and his friends standing over the cowering Shianni. He offers us a deal/bribe money, after seeing that we’re visibly soaked in the blood of a whole bunch of guards. I of course weigh this 40 gold bribe very carefully, really taking in the different possible outcomes of this situation.
Nah, absolutely ****ing kill this guy. Is there any other option? Shoot him right in his stupid face.
Afterwards, a clearly traumatized Shianni asks you if you killed all of them, to which you can be varying levels of psychopath in answering. Soris finds both the brides in the other room, and Nesiara explains that they’re mostly fine as Shianni took the brunt of it; Vaughan claimed he was ‘saving them for later’. The gravity of this whole situation is something that just cannot be understated, and this is the opening hour or so of our game. Just holy **** man, what a tone establishment. Nothing else of this particular brand of ‘dark’ fantasy really shows up again, which is entirely for the best, and I do want to say how it never treats this subject matter in a casual or a hand-waived fashion. I don’t think BioWare is disrespecting the real implications of this type of thing which is something that could have easily happened with it in a lesser story, and ultimately go out of their way to establish just how ****ed Vaughan and the rest of his guards and friends are in this. There is no gray zone here, or deniability, or trying to downplay its implications and effects. It’s something really ugly used to show how ugly this game's setting can be.
The next morning, the inevitable guards show up at the alienage and go to arrest you for some obvious reasons. Just like a dozen or so dead bodies in the arl’s estate, nothing that big. Duncan then comes to our rescue, and starts the game proper off; he evokes the Grey Warden’s ‘right of conscription’, forcibly making you one of his charges. The guards, entirely outranked on this, are forced to stand down. Duncan then explains that you are what he came to the alienage for, and that you are now the newest trainee for the apparently prestigious Grey Warden order. He gives you time to say your goodbyes before leaving for Ostagar (foreshadowing paid off!). You can say goodbye to everyone, including your arranged marriage bride you never even married, with everyone showing some mixture of sadness, maybe a little traumatized but excited that you’re ‘getting out of here’ as your father explains.
And so ends the opening chapter of the game, and this series, with the great call to adventure, the most essential trope of the heroic story and one BioWare liberally used in literally everything. Who are the Grey Wardens, and why do they seemingly have enough name recognition to grant Duncan such power? We’ll find out, and there will be another novella of me talking about Dragon Age: Origins, I promise you.
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