Furthering my love/hate relationship with Bioware comes another smashing success, Dragon Age: Origins. Strangely, I didn't hear about this game until a few weeks before its release, but I was excited nonetheless. It was dark, gritty, with magic, swords, and possibly some dragons - or at least an age named after them. Plus the added bonus of no more annoying Hobbits! Bioware is known for making near-perfect games, and this is another prime example. Seriously, I have been missing sleep to play.

It's true, Dragon Age has a bit of a Lord of the Rings feel, but it's hard to create a realm with elves, dwarves, magic and dragons without having a touch of that. The world of Dragon Age is dark and deadly; there's murder, betrayal, and maybe some slaughter of possessed children. With the exception of some difficulty keeping up frame-rate in dialogue scenes, the visuals are beautiful, but somehow not a huge strain on most computers – our older PC's GeForce 7950 was able to handle the game without a hitch. Even dialing down the graphics won't lose too much luster. It's immersive, and keeps you hooked and begging for more.

However, the graphics pale in comparison to the writing; the characters are fully fleshed out, with distinct personalities and spot-on reactions to most of your choices. The script is witty, fast paced, and will occasionally have you rolling in the aisles with laughter. The story is why I have been losing sleep; I couldn't stop because I had to find out what happened next. Be ready to spend a lot of time going through the conversation trees with your party members because every member has a fully written background story that opens up new plots and quests as you go through it. Fans of KOTOR or Mass Effect will know what I mean.

With six different origin stories to go through, there's also the possibility for a lot of extra missions. I choose an Elven Mage as my main character in this initial play-through. In Dragon Age, most elves are seen as second class citizens, little better than slaves – although I have it on good authority the caste-less dwarven lower-class has it even worse somehow. Consequently, the conversation options that pop up for me can be anywhere from defensive to just plain rude - “What, just because I'm an elf I can't be a Grey Warden, or my own woman?”  The people you meet in your Origin have a high chance of coming back and either helping you or completely screwing you over. Note that the “theme” of the game is “betrayal.” Each play-through promises to be different and entertaining based on the choices you make.

With Dragon Age, Bioware decided to do away with the handy Good-to-Evil bar letting you know just how bad you are. That doesn't mean people won't react to your choices, but it does mean that people need to witness or hear about your deeds in order to react to them. If you slaughter innocent people, the witnesses are going to run away from you, and your party members might object to helping you murder children, even if they are possessed by strangely hot demons.  However, in the next town over the people may not have heard about you yet and their reactions will be more realistic. Some of your party members are more inclined towards “good” choices, while others have a more “survival of the fittest” mentality. It would be very difficult to try the romance plot with a “Good” NPC if you were going full-on corrupt, because the chances of getting them to like you are lower. If you anger an NPC enough they may leave your party, and you lose the chance to do their side quests.  Lots of choices to be made here and enough consequences to make you think twice before making them.

As with most of Bioware's RPGs, there are romance plots - four or five of them in fact. I pursued romance with Alistair, mainly because he seemed like the “good” choice; and since I am trying for the “Save the World” ending, he was my best bet. He was charming and awkward, blushing and shying from some of my more direct advances. I was tempted to later crush his tiny little heart, but I will save that for a different play-through. The temptation is pretty great. There is even an achievement for doing his romance plot. Priceless!

He's “the funny one."

MMO fans will be happy to know that there is Crafting in Dragon Age. It's not necessary for plot progression, thankfully. A skilled Herbalist can make Health kits and other nice things, which can be used by your party in a few early missions, or simply sold. There are three crafting skills: Herbalist, Poisons, and Trap Maker. More skills can be put into them as you gain levels but I have found it more useful to focus more on skills such as Persuade and Combat, or even Stealing for my Rogue.

Bioware has a formula for good control which they had it right in Knights of the Old Republic and it's present here in Dragon Age; why mess with what's good? It's your basic WASD controls, with the Spacebar being your pause button. Nothing really overly genius, but its solid nonetheless. I do like how they tweaked the combat, where the earlier games they produced have used a variant of turn-based combat but now it's a mix of auto-attacking and your slotted abilities. That paired with the ability to pause to switch and mess with each character in your party, means a lot of control for those of us who don't trust the AI of our party members.

Dragon Age has done an excellent job of making me feel every bit the Basement Gamer this week, and with over 80 hours of gameplay and multiple plots, you can be sure to kiss your social activities good bye. Dragon Age is an extremely immersive and exciting game that sucks you in and keeps its claws in you until the very end. For those of you who work, and want to play, here's a word of advice: take your vacation now and just spend a week playing. Did I mention, Claudia Black (Stargate and Farscape) voices the very sensual (and misanthropic) Morrigan, with whom you can have a romance plot?

Pros

• The writing is excellent


• Claudia Black voices one the party members


• The Achievements and an addictive story

Cons

• Long loading screens


• Tutorials can be easily missed, especially on a widescreen monitor


• Some origin stories have a glitch, losing your premium content (Should be patched now)

Overall Score:

9.0/10 - Damn near perfect!