I am so incredibly disappointed with Dragon Age: Origins. There is common discourse online that this is one of the greatest fantasy RPGs ever made. To address this, let's look at the two core pillars of the genre - gameplay and writing.
The writing for this game, the plot and setting, the dialogue and the characters, feels lacking in a way. The world is well crafted enough, but it lacks a distinct edge. It's fantasy, it's evil monsters, it's civil war - but it's never innovative. I found the characters to be underwhelming too. Alistair and Morrigan were my two favourite companions, while everyone else I found felt disconnected from me. They just join you basically out of some vague duty to save the world or just because they don't have much else going on. I can recall very few characters relating to quest lines that were interesting enough to make any lasting impression either.
But whatever lacks in the writing department, it's still a cut above most video game writing - I will give it that. My number one issue with this game is ironically how much the game gets in the way. Simply put, the gameplay is tedious. Bad, even, at times. And yet there are literal hours between story beats that oblige you to trudge through dungeons killing room after room of bland enemies. I know this is a 2009 release, and therefore isn't going to be technically fantastic, but the enemy variety is so poor. This is exacerbated further by every enemy being fought the same way anyway, meaning any visual variety (of which there is little) hardly matters.
On that note, the game is ugly. Again, expected, but that doesn't change the fact. Animation is stiff and the world is so utterly bland. This is worsened by the abysmal soundscape; the game's soundtrack is so poor it may as well not exist, while the sound design is distinctly lacking. From a bustling market in the capital city to the otherworldly planes of the Fade, there is basically just complete silence - maybe the bare minimum ambience just to keep you from thinking your sound system has entirely stopped working.
So in the end I find little to recommend about this title. I have seen online that this game is placed alongside other contemporaries in a certain "big three" of the fantasy gaming genre. This in 2009, Skyrim in 2011 and The Witcher 3 in 2015. These comparisons do the game no favours. The world is far too unimmersive to be mistaken for Skyrim, while its narrative lacks the charm, wit and creativity of The Witcher's setting and characters. There is a place in the gaming canon for Dragon Age, but I don't believe it is worth revisiting. Know it's place in history, but feel no obligation to ever visit it.
The writing for this game, the plot and setting, the dialogue and the characters, feels lacking in a way. The world is well crafted enough, but it lacks a distinct edge. It's fantasy, it's evil monsters, it's civil war - but it's never innovative. I found the characters to be underwhelming too. Alistair and Morrigan were my two favourite companions, while everyone else I found felt disconnected from me. They just join you basically out of some vague duty to save the world or just because they don't have much else going on. I can recall very few characters relating to quest lines that were interesting enough to make any lasting impression either.
But whatever lacks in the writing department, it's still a cut above most video game writing - I will give it that. My number one issue with this game is ironically how much the game gets in the way. Simply put, the gameplay is tedious. Bad, even, at times. And yet there are literal hours between story beats that oblige you to trudge through dungeons killing room after room of bland enemies. I know this is a 2009 release, and therefore isn't going to be technically fantastic, but the enemy variety is so poor. This is exacerbated further by every enemy being fought the same way anyway, meaning any visual variety (of which there is little) hardly matters.
On that note, the game is ugly. Again, expected, but that doesn't change the fact. Animation is stiff and the world is so utterly bland. This is worsened by the abysmal soundscape; the game's soundtrack is so poor it may as well not exist, while the sound design is distinctly lacking. From a bustling market in the capital city to the otherworldly planes of the Fade, there is basically just complete silence - maybe the bare minimum ambience just to keep you from thinking your sound system has entirely stopped working.
So in the end I find little to recommend about this title. I have seen online that this game is placed alongside other contemporaries in a certain "big three" of the fantasy gaming genre. This in 2009, Skyrim in 2011 and The Witcher 3 in 2015. These comparisons do the game no favours. The world is far too unimmersive to be mistaken for Skyrim, while its narrative lacks the charm, wit and creativity of The Witcher's setting and characters. There is a place in the gaming canon for Dragon Age, but I don't believe it is worth revisiting. Know it's place in history, but feel no obligation to ever visit it.