Saturday, November 7, 2009

Dragon Age: Origins - Quick Thoughts!



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I had preordered Dragon Age: Origins a while ago and Nov. 3rd FINALLY came and I got to play the game I have been waiting so long for. I have already logged close to 24 hours in the game and I doubt I'm even half way through it. All I know is that it is amazing. I love rpg's. I mean, I love video games in general, but holy hell, rpg's are the best kind. Throw in a little dark fantasy into the mix and I'm a fangirl of the game for life.

Also, it's super safe to read this, in case you don't want to be spoiled!

The game is SUPER dialogue heavy and your character responds quite a lot and you have a variety of ways to respond as well. There are the normal "good" responses and also the "bad" ones but there are a lot of others as well, that make you feel like you're really creating someone unique. The main quests are pretty complex as well. They all have different ways to solve a problem with no clear cut answer. You might be persuaded go about something one way and the next minute, you no longer think it's best. I just love how deep things are and they made me stop to say, "Oh no, what do I do?!" more than once. I wish the lesser, random quests were as deep. They're usually "Go here. Fight. Come back" kind of quests, but they aren't that bad and reading the background of thethem can be interesting.

I also thought I would hate combat but it's actually pretty fun. I'm really bad at strategic battles and that's what you have to do in this game to survive (unless you play on easy), but it turned out to be really easy to get used to. It is really fun recruiting characters and then being able to use their ability. More often than not, I switch to my mage/healer ally to do the heavy hitting and when I fought the first High Dragon, my main character went down really fast so I finished the dragon off with just my mages alone. Learning all the intricities of the combat system took forever for me, but I got the handle of it eventually and I was soon taking down dragons and darkspawn like nobody's business!

The only thing that I don't like are the graphics. They sure aren't terrible but, come on, this is a 2009 game and it looks drab and shabby compared to 2006's Oblivion. Some textures are kind of nice but then you look at the texture of what is supposed to be hay, and you kind of throw up a little bit. There just isn't any consistency. You walk into Orzammer and you think it definitely looks like some grand place but then you walk into Redcliffe and it looks so bland! Like there is nothing there! They can't even say that they designed the town to look bland because goodess, Fallout 3 is all about the bland and that environment is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Maybe it seems like complaining but I just think it could've been so much better than it was in the graphics department.

Overall, the game is definitely turning into one of my favorites games. People who like straight to action games are definitely not going to get this game but it really is, to me, an rpg dreamgame.

1 comment:

  1. The graphics and textures in this game make me want to cry. I know it's supposed to be a PC game, but damn! Would it be a bad thing to have higher resolution graphics for the console versions?!

    I wish I could play more, but I can't concentrate here. I just got Morrigan.

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