Dragon Age: Origins

Don’t listen to the murmurings of late that Dragon Age: Origins is some kind of innovatory departure from traditional fantasy. That’s just the game’s marketing machine attempting to expose a new audience to the product through metaphorically shaking off its associations with Dungeons & Dragons anorak-wearing stereotypes. It has no basis in reality. Because the truth of it is that fantasy doesn’t really come any more traditional than this.

There are elves who sport dangly earrings, ornate bows, twin knives on their backs and croon piously over the ills of the blighted forest. There are dwarves who drink too much, style their hirsute faces in a mass of platted ginger macramé and live in cavernous subterranean cities where they pine after precious rock and gem. There are humans of different factions, each neck-deep in political skulduggery – blood-heirs and wicked usurpers abound. And in all but name, there are Orcs galore – here called Darkspawn – and living trees who, naturally, take… a… very… long time… to… say… anything… hooom, hooooom! If this all sounds remarkably like The Lord Of The Rings, then you’d be right. It’s exactly like it. The game even goes as far as to thematically steal key scenes from Peter Jackson’s trilogy of blockbusters, albeit to admittedly spectacular dramatic effect.

But staying very much in the safe zone when it comes to exploring a fantasy setting is no bad thing in the hands of BioWare. Ratchet the clock back a couple of years and the developer’s last original IP, Mass Effect, pretty much did for Star Wars what Origins is now doing for The Lord Of The Rings. That is to say; taking the best bits from an arguably tired genre, stuffing it with just enough meme to wield a comforting level of familiarity, then channelling new zeal back into its broken cadaver.

BioWare primarily achieves this via character. Those with whom you meet, befriend or manufacture enmity – despite the game’s boilerplate visuals – are more interesting and lifelike than any we’ve come across this generation (if that comes across as an insult to other RPG developers, then it’s because that’s exactly how it’s meant – it’s about time someone gave them a kick up the bum). As well as being, broadly speaking, well-acted, they are unpredictable, reactionary, emotional and bar none bring their own agenda, which will sometimes gel with your own, sometimes not. And it’s your ability to manage the goals of those around you that will see you weave your way deeper into Origins’ malleable storyline.

Friends and enemies are by no means set in stone. From the very outset your choice of race and character class will define your back story – one which is played out uniquely in the first couple of hours and whose afterimage echo’s throughout what remains – not least because those who decide to join your quest will differ from player to player. But what is truly remarkable is that these interchangeable followers not only gel neatly into the game’s main plot, but are also fluid in their feelings about both you, and each other. At various points you’ll have to decide whether you wish to capitulate in assisting them to meet their own goals – be those good, evil, or entirely unclear.

Unlike Mass Effect, which draws strict moral lines between the dire and the virtuous, Origins appears to understand that no matter where your actions fall between the yin and the yang, there are always shades of grey. That irrespective of how much holier than thou your intention, someone will inevitably suffer some ill fortune. That regardless your level of despicability, someone, somewhere will be better off as a result. So the usual swingometer employed to playfully track your moral whimsy is replaced instead by a numerical means to gauge your popularity with each of your party members. And believe it or not, this has huge ramifications to the way in which your particular iteration of the game’s plot plays out.

We can offer no finer credit to the team behind Dragon Age: Origins than to say that our usual moral stance – that of playing the entire game through the eyes of a childish, belligerent prick – stumbled at the starting blocks. Such was the gravitas of guilt we felt in putting these characters through the mill just for the shit of it. Because while calling your best friend’s new love a fat cow right in front of her was initially pretty funny, it soon became clear that the ramifications of such actions were going to affect the entire course of the game. Often, though, the temptation became simply too great. Such is the healthy vein of comedy BioWare has injected into the available dialogue options that we often let consequence be damned in exchange for a quick fix of the giggles.

So as well as your traditional RPG questing, combat and endless tinkering with equipment loadouts – more on all that in just a second – your role throughout the game is rather like that of a judge. You’ll flit here and there making off the cuff decisions that will affect the entire course of history for a particular race, person or people. We’ve rarely if ever felt so much the architect behind the destiny of every single body or entity in a game’s narrative. Truly a remarkable achievement even if much of it is probably smoke and mirrors.

Combat is uncannily similar to KOTOR for those who remember it, but also takes elements from successful combat management ideas implemented in a plethora of other games. Mages, for example, are able to pause gameplay to decide where to rain their elemental wrath, while melee fighters adopt a more traditional button-mashing approach. Spells – or talents in the case of the more barbaric classes – can be mapped to the top three face buttons while clutching of the right trigger allows access to three more.

It’s really all pretty straightforward, as is your ability to assign tactical defaults to your party NPCs, each with logical names like healer, scrapper, defender and so on. But the genius of Dragon Age is how it so easily integrates time-saving features for the statistically disinterested while still providing those who seek the hardcore enough depth to scratch through the crust and into the piping mantle. Taking a leaf out of Final Fantasy XII’s gambit system, as each character develops, a greater number of tactical slots become available in which you may embed a specific if/then logic instruction. For example, you may wish your healer to concentrate her healing on your tank, so her first instruction may be ‘If Alistair’s health is below 50%, heal him’, this coming before a healing instruction for the remainder of your party. But fear not if you aren’t of the delving persuasion, we admit that we only once got involved at that depth to trounce a particularly huge and entirely optional dragon.

There are dozens upon dozens of side quests, too, each offering all the more reason to visit parts of Origins’ rich world that you may not otherwise see. We finished the game in around 40 hours, but by no means saw everything and of course only played through the eyes of one of six possible character backgrounds. We’d hazard that there’s justification for at least one replay, making Dragon Age: Origins fantastic value for money. That’s if being the best traditional fantasy RPG on Xbox 360 won't sway it for you in and of itself.