Dragon Age Origins - Still Amazing

[Ihateregistering1]

For those who want to go REALLY old-school, Morrigan was basically a love letter to fans of Baldur's Gate and Viconia DeVir, the Drow Cleric who could join your party.

Viconia was a narcissistic, arrogant asshole who thought everybody was beneath her and had extremely loose morals, and trying to get her to not be horrible was basically like pulling teeth. Not coincidentally, she was easily the 'most difficult' romance option in the game as well. Sound familiar?

Thing is Viconia had a legitimate excuse for her behavior and grew as a character throughout the game depending on how you interacted with her, complete with multiple epilogues and plentiful branching dialogue. Morrigan's excuse for being an almost irredeemably narcissistic asshole is a flimsy 'My mom's an asshole!' excuse at best and a lame 'No one ever really loved me!' at worst, and while she does receive some character development she's still ostensibly the same character at the end of Origins as she was at the start, only with potentially more or less of a fondness for the player.

That said however I did love Morrigan's dialogue with the other characters, and the back and forth banter between her and Alistair was great. Morrigan did also get character development in a weird roundabout sort of way as well, since in Inquisition her outlook can potentially have changed greatly in the years since the events of DA:Origins due to your previous decisions, which I very much liked.

I sort of took it as she basically had little to no interaction with other people (on account of being raised in the woods) and her mother essentially taught her from the day she was born that she was better than everyone else. So her behavior wasn't so much asshole-ish as simply a product of where she was from (similar to Viconia).

Admittedly yes, Viconia did have a lot more potential dialogue, but I think we pretty much universally saw that in the old-school Black Isle RPGs, since the vast majority of their banter was just text and not voice recorded. I can't remember where I read it, but they said Planescape: Torment (which wasn't even that long of an RPG) had something like 7000 pages worth of total talking text in the game.

 

[Aesir23]

I will start off with saying that I was fond of my first time playing through DAO. After going back and playing through it a couple more times (partially due to saves deleted by younger siblings) I found it really hasn't aged that well.

Like some others have said, it's pretty generic and the story felt pretty standard. Prologue/intro, meet X group, repeat x3, fight off world-endangering Big Bad. The story definitely had its good moments because I really enjoyed the sub-plots that accompanied the recruitment of each race, I enjoyed the characters, and I really like the lore that accompanies the world itself but at this point I have to wonder if I would have enjoyed it more as a book than a game.

Maybe it's just because I'm not a fan of CRPGs or, in this case, games made in the spirit of CRPGs but the gameplay itself felt like such a slog. The combat itself was incredibly boring and the dungeons... Well, the less said about that, the better.

Now, to commit the ultimate sacrilege and admit I actually like DA2 much better.

God knows it has more than its fair share of problems, most of which seem to stem from EA thinking that you could develop a great game in just a year. Much like DAO most of my plus points come from the characters and story but in this case I really preferred the smaller, more personal story compared to yet another world-saving plot. I also found the characters interesting enough that I wanted to learn more about them and what made them tick compared to DAO where I certainly liked the characters but didn't find them that fascinating except for Morrigan.

In terms of gameplay, I feel that they might have over-corrected on the speed of the combat but the game doesn't feel like a chore to play despite the fact that I've played through it multiple times now.

I guess I'm more of an Action RPG person.

 

[Jute88]

I'm probably preaching to the choir, but yes, it is still good. Heck, if a game can get me to play it more than once is testament that the developer's knew what they were doing. True, the story and the setting is pretty cliched, but for some reason it didn't bother me.

Personally, it's my favorite Bioware game. KOTOR frustrated me, I had even reached the final boss and I just couldn't care. Also, there was this annoying bug that ruined a certain decision from me, so yeah.

Mass Effect (1 and 2) are also great, the first one has a good story, but bad gameplay mechanics. The second has better gameplay, but the story was in some ways, kinda filler-ish and fan-fictiony. Not necessarely bad, but feels like it didn't reach its potential.

Also, Awakening was great. Haven't tried Withc Hunt. Tried Dragon Age 2 Demo. Hated it.

 

[Serio]

It's good, but I haven't been able to recapture the magic I experienced when I first played through it. In fact, I've found myself increasingly frustrated with some of the gameplay mechanics employed in sections of the game, such as the parts with the Fade. These annoyances doesn't entirely take away from the awesome character building and lore, but without mods to cancel them out, they do become chores.

I also didn't actually mind the direction the series took after Origins, but I think that's more to do with my own leniency towards franchises and "staying true". Was it a sharp turn? Certainly. Did the series suffer? No doubt. Would I like to see another game as focused on character building and the old CRPG standards as Origins? Absolutely. But did I hate DAII and Inquisition? Not at all.

Still, would be bloody fantastic to see another game of Origins calibre in the series. Especially with the staggering amount of options for mage characters. Gorgeous stuff, that.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

It's good, but I haven't been able to recapture the magic I experienced when I first played through it. In fact, I've found myself increasingly frustrated with some of the gameplay mechanics employed in sections of the game, such as the parts with the Fade. These annoyances doesn't entirely take away from the awesome character building and lore, but without mods to cancel them out, they do become chores.

I also didn't actually mind the direction the series took after Origins, but I think that's more to do with my own leniency towards franchises and "staying true". Was it a sharp turn? Certainly. Did the series suffer? No doubt. Would I like to see another game as focused on character building and the old CRPG standards as Origins? Absolutely. But did I hate DAII and Inquisition? Not at all.

Still, would be bloody fantastic to see another game of Origins calibre in the series. Especially with the staggering amount of options for mage characters. Gorgeous stuff, that.

I'm pretty heavily in the "disappointed with the direction of the franchise" camp myself, but I'm kind of resigned to the fact that we will never get another game like DAO from Bioware. I think there are a whole bunch of reasons ranging from EA business objectives, lead dev preferences, target platforms, industry trends, etc. that make it almost impossible for a AAA dev like Bioware to make an old school Infinity engine-esque RPG that will work on consoles and sell the kind of numbers EA is looking for from a flagship franchise. DA has become what it kind of has to (a console focused ARPG) to ensure it's ongoing viability as a commercial product. While one can cite Pillars of Eternity as an unashamedly old school PC RPG that exists in the present market, it's worth noting that it has not sold anything like the kinds of numbers a company like EA is after, and that Obsidian had to resort to Kickstarter to get it made because no publisher believes these kinds of RPGs are commercially viable anymore, so clearly the odds are heavily stacked against another game styled like DAO ever happening again.

As for DAOs expansive choices, I think those are relics of a game that was made as essentially a "one off" at the time. DAO had far more choices because the devs clearly weren't concerned about having to reconcile them in later games. As the series has gone on, the devs have tried to limit player choice to a few key options, and to avoid creating new hanging plot threads that may complicate later games to keep control of all the variables in the continuity. The option to kill off all party members is the obvious example; in DAO, you could kill all of the companions, so clearly the devs weren't concerned about how characters being alive or dead could affect their subsequent use in later games, but in DA2 and DAI, most companions simply leave if you anger them enough and certain companions can only be killed in very specific circumstances (Eg. Anders, Iron Bull), which the devs have clearly planned for. The devs have obviously learned from the Leliana situation, and taken steps to avoid repeating it, but a casualty of that change has meant that players have their choices curtailed by the limitations Bioware is imposing.

I also found this the other day - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-01-31-remembering-dragon-age-origins It's an article from Eurogamer written a couple of months ago looking back on DAO, and while don't necessarily agree with everything it says, it's still a good read.

 

[Stewie Plisken]

Loved it back in the day, love it now, among my top-10 games. I love the generic setting (no, really), I love how it's simply the foundation to discover a bunch of diverse worlds and environments in it, I love the characters, I love how the choice-system works, I love the combat. Trim the Deep Roads and that part in the Fade a bit and it's near-perfect, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

Again, sucked in for hours on a Friday night last night. That combat....oooohhhhh that combat's SO good. Every fight feels fresh STILL, with the whole dynamic of each fight changing with each second, and affecting how you react.

Just brilliant stuff. So much care and attention must have gone into this game! I'm baffled how anyone can think DA:2 or DA:I's combat even comes close to DA:O's (playing as a mage & rogue anyway. I never play as a warrior in any RPG)

I also found this the other day - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-01-31-remembering-dragon-age-origins It's an article from Eurogamer written a couple of months ago looking back on DAO, and while don't necessarily agree with everything it says, it's still a good read.

Thanks for posting, enjoyed reading that