Review:
Dragon Age Origins - EA

*Note about this review: This review was made using the PC version of “Dragon Age” and may not accurately reflect the game as played on the XBOX 360 or PS3*

Established in the mid-90s, Bio-Ware has developed games such as the “Baldur’s Gate” series, “Knights of the Old Republic,” “Neverwinter Nights,” and “Mass Effect.” “Dragon Age” (DA), the newest role-playing game (RPG) from Bio-Ware, has been hyped as the spiritual successor to “Baldur’s Gate” and advertised as a mature, dark fantasy RPG.

Story/Plot
The story, in a nutshell, is like that of many other fantasy games: a nation is under siege from a great evil and you, along with a rag-tag group of adventures, must unite the lands and defeat the evil bad guys. Thankfully, DA has taken the clichéd plot and spun an immersive and enthralling game built upon a solid story. Many times I found myself playing another hour or so into the night just to find out how the story would unfold after I completed another mission.

How the story starts depends on your starting race and class, and in-game actions and decisions will affect how you get to the end of the game; though, each play through will begin and end the same. Along with a good story, the plot is drive by a great cast of voice actors who bring to life the characters. However, I would recommend to the developer that the voice actors be told that not all that they read into the microphone will be heard in a linear fashion as they read it. Every so often in the game characters will sound a tad bi-polar due to drastic changes in their tones, but the rarity of these psychological phenomena make them exceptions to the rest of the well read lines.

As to whether the story is mature and dark varies on what you compare DA to. Compared to other role-playing games from Bio-Ware, I would say the elements of the game do live up to the hype. Romance between the player’s character and other characters unfold as would real relationships between adults and there are accompanying sex scenes which I would give a PG-13 rating to; during fights, blood splatters about, sometimes caking characters, and if a melee character lands a killing blow, you will be treated to a mini cinematic moment with a painful ending. However, I still feel that compared to games such as “The Witcher,” the maturity and darkness of DA is nothing that is groundbreaking, though it still helps to push the game to a level that can be enjoyed by young adults or adults who want something that admits they can handle more than a “Disney” version of fantasy.