So I Finished Dragon Age…

52 hours played from start to finish on my rogue main character, with some additional hours on a warrior and a mage. It certainly sounds like an impressive number of hours, but as I did over 75% of the side-quests (I got an achievement for that just before the endgame) I only wish it was more. Time really flies by when you are having fun.

Most of the side-quests are picked up by various people who belong to certain factions, and they are all pretty much “travel to location X, kill person Y”, with a short text that barely give you the reason. The main quests on the other hand are fantastic stories with interesting dialogues, sudden twists, and difficult moral dilemmas. Most of them also offer vastly different paths to take, so you can always create a new character and do the opposite thing than last time. For example when confronted by a large force I chose to attack, but I discovered later that if you chose to surrender you got to do a prison break.

You can play the game with a top-view like in Baldur’s Gate, but I played the entire game with a behind-the-shoulder view of my main character like in Neverwinter Nights. Part of what makes that possible (and not having to jump between characters every second) is Tactics. Tactics allow you to set a limited number of commands with different priorities to each party member. For example my mage would cast Heal on any ally that dropped below 50% health, and only use damage spells if she was above 25% mana. The Tactics interface felt complicated at first, but it was easy to learn and not much harder to master. At the end I even thought it was a bit lacking and would have preferred more exact conditions to be specified.

I know I complained about the lacking character creator before, but when I actually sat down with the real thing in the game I really liked it. Some spells and talents to pick between, and the different “origins” are more than just some description in your character profile. If you play as a Human Noble you start the game in your family’s keep, get to experience a betrayal, and ultimately end up as a Grey Warden. I really enjoyed how the “origin” story was a part of the future game and not just something you did once and forgot. For example as a Human Noble you meet the man who betrayed your family later in the game and get to decide his fate. I did the mage origin before I settled on the rogue, so I was a bit surprised when I met a person from the mage origin when playing on my rogue. I only did two of the six different origins (dwarves are not for me), but I’m torn between whether they are an awesome introduction to the game, or wasted time better spend on the main story so that everyone gains from it. I guess not having to go through the same introduction twenty times in a row weights in the origin’s favor.

Something I absolutely love about Dragon Age is the characters. In other games I can see party members as numbers and stats, and pick the best ones all the time. This time I ended up with certain people because I liked them, not because they had 48 strength. Alistair is the prime example of this.  Sword ‘n’ board fighting felt very lacking in the game, and if I needed a tank I would probably pick Shale first, but Alistair is the kind of guy I would buy a beer and sit and chat with. Your party members sometimes have random conversations when you run around exploring, and one between Alistair and Morrigan had me spurting the tea all over the screen from laughter. This pretty much describes all of these conversations. Even my dog (named Barkspawn of course) had his share of conversions, consisting of *whine* and *happy bark*.

Because I started the game as a warrior with the ambition to be a plated shield-fighter, I came at odds with Alistair after a while. He was a tank, and I was a tank. With all the defensive stances we used there wasn’t much stamina left to use abilities, so things didn’t die too fast. But when the choice came to either dump Alistair or reroll a new character… I actually picked the second. That’s how much I love Alistair. But just like in previous Bioware games (i.e. Baldur’s Gate) certain companions don’t go well together with others. So if you want to bring both Alistair and Morrigan you would have one of them disapprove in every decision you make. Alistair is happy you saved the puppy from the wolves, and Morrigan thought you ruined the show.

Conversations was a surprisingly large portion of the game, and up until the moment that I discovered you could skip parts with the Esc key it was a feature I didn’t like very much.

The game engine is nothing short of beautiful, but still runs very well with a lot of mobs on the screen at once. Lightning falling over statues in some old ruins was just gorgeous at times. Spell effects looks good. The character models look good. Animations are good, and facial expressions and movements during cut-scenes are always spot on. The lip-syncing to the voices is so good it seemed natural all the time, and even the voice-acting was perfect. So all in all it’s hard to find bad things about Dragon Age. There are some, but it’s mostly my personal issues with different spells and abilities.

Dragon Age is a superb role-playing game, and naming it “spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate” is not such a load of horsecrap it once sounded like. I actually tend to agree with that statement now. There is much more I want to mention about the game, but I save it for later instead of writing a wall of text.