Not only do you lose their tactical value in battle, but you never get to hang out with them. I also killed the mage Wynne in the Circle Tower without realising she could join my team. On my current playthrough, I obviously corrected that. By never going into the tavern in Lothering, a town later destroyed by Darkspawn, I never met the Orlesian songstress Leliana – another cult favourite among fans. It feels like the following two Dragon Age games used Morrigan and Alistair as templates for all your companions: big personalities, driven by different ideologies, who command followings among the series’ fans.Īs a testament to how much your choices influences Dragon Age’s story, it’s possible to miss party members entirely and even send some to their deaths. Your fellow Grey Warden, Alistair, is so cheerfully wry that it’s hard not to bring him on every quest, while the other obvious breakout character is the mysterious and cutting dark witch, Morrigan. It helps that despite the amount of dry fantasy terminology in Dragon Age, the style of dialogue is realistic and modern – it’s a nice contrast to the overly familiar dark fantasy iconography that surrounds you. Like Mass Effect, Dragon Age is at its best when you’re interacting with your party, and while Origins doesn’t have a world-beating array of companions, it still has several of BioWare’s best.
The characters are better than the story they’re a part of, thanks to the quality of dialogue that brings them to life. Likewise, Loghain, the only notable antagonist, has his reasons for being the way he is, and you have the opportunity to unravel them. But it certainly has its moments – early on, the ritual that leads to your character becoming a Grey Warden results in two other candidates dying horrifically, suggesting that you’re not as unambiguously on the side of good as you’re initially led to believe. The main story just isn’t that interesting, either, and it attracted a fair amount of criticism at release for being a generic fantasy joint. These are far worse stretches than anything in the subsequent Dragon Age games (except maybe some of the side quests in Inquisition), and life may just be too short to grind through them again if you’re considering a second playthrough on Xbox One. There’s just so much fighting in often tedious locations – the utter slog that is the underground dungeon of the Deep Roads, for example, or the long sequence in the demon-infested Circle of Magi tower. I don’t think a great combat system and compelling levelling-up options alone make a great RPG, though, and the balance of combat to story is off in Origins. On that level, it’s certainly more considered than either Inquisition or Dragon Age 2, which lean a little too far into spammy set pieces. It’s a bit frantic to control on Xbox 360 – there’s the lingering sense that the constant pausing and manoeuvring of your party was primarily created for mouse control – but there’s a lot of satisfaction in using your characters’ abilities effectively.
The combat is a lot trickier than it is in subsequent entries, too – hammering the A button only gets you so far, and on normal difficulty, area-of-effect spells can do damage to your own party.