I’m hoping that by tightly controlling these factors Bioware is trying to reclaim the Planescape avenue by upping the ante and creating six of these unique origins and felt that crafting a unique story based on these backgrounds would enrich the overarching story/campaign as a whole. Will it feel half-arsed spreading the story thin between these options and they should have just restricted it to one or two? Maybe. My confidence isn’t too shaken that I won’t be plopping down the coin to get the game on release.

My issues with Dragon Age is the comparison to the works of GRRM and the Song of Ice and Fire. If you make allusions like that then it better be a damn good story, six origins, one origin, or whatever. If anything, for those who have read these books, this may be the most damning comparison for this “dark” fantasy.

From the little that I have heard about the main character’s story in Dragon Age, you are a Grey Warden recruit, and that’s about it. They let you decide on gender, race, class and background… so obviously it doesn’t really care who you are in the story arc. Then why stop there? Why stop with just three races, when it doesn’t matter if you are a human, elf or dwarf for the purpose of the story?

Baldur’s Gate told an amazing story of you being a god-spawn, and it didn’t care if you where a male human fight, female gnome rogue, or male dwarf cleric. In my opinion you either do it full customization and a story that adapts like in Baldur’s Gate, or you do it with zero customization and a fixed story like in Planescape. Dragon Age is either trying to be both or just doing a half-arsed work of the first option.

I’ve kept myself in the dark about Dragon Age, I don’t know if the story’s that great or anything else but I do appreciate the effort to tell a unique story for different origins rather than come with a generic excuse for my Moon Elf Cleric of Shevarash to be arbitrarily inserted into some random village to help them with their Orc problem. Does this approach take away some of the freedom availed in NWN2 and Baldur’s Gate? Absolutely? But if restricting freedom yields the potentia lfor a better, tighter, focused story on a particular race combination or concept then I’m all for it.

Now what shakes my confidence is the Dragon Age media blitz with the tons of gore, the pounding heavy metal, and scantily clad women taking treks in some frozen region complaining about the cold and then throwing off their cloak to start fighting. We’ll see what the future holds but I wouldn’t damn the game on this alone. :)