Dragon Age is too short

The honeymoon is over.

So while I finished the entire game in 52 hours – and this included 75% of the sidequests, romancing (with both ladies *cough* don’t tell Leliana), maxed relationship with all of my party, and at least one of the DLC (Stone Prison) – it felt way too short a game then, and it certainly feel too short now. The origins does wonders to help you get through the usually tedious introduction by offer different stories depending on race and heritage, but after that it’s just the same.

The story is good, the dialogue great, but it is way too short. I would even say purposely short, as Bioware/EA seems intent on squeezing out DLCs into Oblivion (pun intended). Dragon Age, for all it’s glory, is definitely no Baldur’s Gate that you can squeeze out 500 hours of gameplay. Yes, in terms of combat, conversations, inventory management, spell combinations, etc, the game beats oldies like Baldur’s Gate by a wide margin – unsurprisingly. But in terms of replay value (and yes, I’m even counting the DLCs) Dragon Age is way below par.

You got a prologue in the origin. Then Chapter 1 where you travel into the wilds and the battle of Ostagar. After that you got a long Chapter 2 where you complete four long quests to gather allies (are some of them even mandatory?), and finally a Chapter 3 that is the Endgame.

The Prologue is fun since it’s usually different each time you do it. Chapter 1 became boring the second time I did it, and the third time I was just rushing through it and skipping all conversations. Chapter 2 can be enjoyed a couple of times as you can complete quests in different ways (the good diplomatic lets-all-be-friends-way, the neutral someone-has-to-die-way, and the crazy let’s-just-kill-everyone-way), and you can do them in what order you want. Chapter 3 is just combat all the way through so not much variation there. Exactly how many times can you play the game from beginning to end until it becomes tedious? For me it was exactly one and a half time.

I have to fall back on the impressions I got from the Character Creator: there just isn’t enough different combinations of races, classes and origins to make repetitive play enjoyable. There are just three different classes, and while mage stand out as completely different from the other two, warrior and rogue feel just the same. Both can become dual-wielders or archers, and you can dress your stealthy rogue up in massive armor. Hell, you can dress up mage in massive armor without problem thanks to the Arcane Warrior specialization (which from what I have heard is worthless). Furthermore, since your party is limited to only four (I would have preferred five), and that you will always need the usual setup of tank, healer and rogue for unlocking, your variations of companions is always somewhat limited. I want to bring the dog with me all the time, but his inability to perform any of the three roles mentioned make him a liability.

And no, I don’t think DLC will solve any of this. I highly doubt that Bioware will ever develop a DLC anywhere near the standard of one of the main-quests to gather allies. The Stone Prison was like, what, 20-30 minutes gameplay? Yes, you got a new companion that is really cool, but maybe I don’t want Shale in my party? Maybe the price determine the experience, but I don’t want to pay for the game one more time to get one fifth of the content.