Dragon Age Origins

Dragon Age - Origins

Dragon Age origins is a 18 rated, third person RPG (Role Playing Game), developed by Bioware which then led onto 2 more games and with Dragon Age 3 being announced very soon, this franchise is quickly becoming the biggest RPG icon out there today.

Released in Europe in November 6th 2009 on Xbox 360 and Play station 3, the game took the world by storm with its unique setting and a great and deep storyline. On its release it received amazing reviews and an overwhelming response, with Metacritic giving the PC version a 91 out of 100 and the other two consoles 87 and 86. IGN rewarded Dragon Age origins with the title of PC game of the year in 2009. You could say that the game is quite like Runescape but in my eyes it's completely different, with pretty good graphics for 2009 and one of the best storylines I have ever had the pleasure to play, this game keeps you going back for more and with different plots to take I don't see why anybody wouldn't be intrigued to play this game.

The game is set in kingdom called Ferelden, at the start of the game you are given several options to pick from in terms of backgrounds and classes. Your options are either to be a elf, human or dwarven. Then you choose to be either a warrior, mage or a rouge, I prefer to be a dwarven warrior, because seeing a dwarf doing magic would seem pretty weird to me. But since I've played as each character I can be slightly biased and have different opinions on each character and class. As you level up you can choose to increase your stats, stats can include from strength which with a high enough level you can wield better and more damaging weapons, dexterity allows you to equip better armor etc... These two stats are the main ones if you are to pick a warrior class. To carry on with the story then, each character you pick from meets a grey warden called Duncan who is at your settlement to see your potential to become a grey warden. After exploring and battling demons and such your character eventually leaves with Duncan to go to Ostagar where he meets the king of Ferelden Cailan. There he tells you why you have been chosen by the grey wardens, and it is to fight against the darkspawn who are vile demons who are pretty evil. There your character learns that the darkspawn are being controlled by the Archdemon who is a monster of a dragon with god like abilities. I'll leave it at that for now, I don't want to spoil the whole of the game in this short and brief plot of the start of the game.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the game is blood, In a completely none physcopath way... The game offers the player the full range of splatter techniques, you are guaranteed to be covered in blood after every cut scene, battle or even dialog parts. In my opinion the blood is a little exaggerated but I love it.

The game play is quite simple to be honest, and is the same with the controls. You simply press A to attack your enemy (Xbox 360), you can heal your character either with a potion or if you are a mage then you can magically heal yourself. Since this is a RPG game then there will be plenty of side quests to go along with the main storyline, doing these side quests can help you gain experience which will then allow you to level up, acquiring new weapons and armor to help you fight in the struggle against the darkspawn and Archdemon.

The best part about the game in my opinion is the complete control of your character, the fact that you can either make your character good or evil is brilliant, and the amount of weapons and armor which you can pick up is incredible and keeps the player involved and makes you feel like you have the control of the game itself. But there are downfalls for this game and that is that it can be slow and will take you while to get really deep into the action and storyline. Players who play games like Call of Duty or FIFA may not like this game because of its slow pace and the amount of dialog that's within the game. But in my opinion that's why I love this game and have actually got two copies.

To conclude on this review, the game is fascinating and the storyline matches it. With the customization of the character and the complete control of yourself, then I understand why the game has had so many good reviews. The only sad point is that it won't get the attention that some of the bigger names have, but with the new game coming in 2014 onto the next gen consoles, then I can't see why it won't compete with the big names.

 I give this game a 9/10