In tune with myetvmedia.com’s upcoming review of Dragon Age 2, we are looking back on one of the best roleplaying games from developer Bioware; Dragon Age Origins.

Backstory

Dragon Age is both a response to the backwards development of traditional Japanese role playing games that once dominated the console market and a love letter to the root of modern western RPG’s; Baldur’s Gate. In the early years of the nineties a pair of medical students decided they liked playing games a lot and subsequently began making them under their own studio: Bioware (a play on words of sorts as they are doctors making software… funny, huh), Bioware would go on to make the moderately successful Shattered Steel in 1996. Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk with the financial backing of the now defunct Interplay, created a game set in the ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ forgotten realms universe; Baldur’s Gate. It was a roleplaying game unlike any other before it; its story was dark and mature, its combat both tactical and action packed and its interface while deeply complex was also very user friendly and intuitive. Unlike Japanese roleplaying games that were mostly linear in both story and gameplay Bioware’s game offered players something they had not encounter before in  games like Final Fantasy: freedom and choice. A roleplaying game that actually involved roleplaying, which is living your character and making decisions that ripple throughout the span of the game. Baldur’s Gate launched in 1998 and was a smash hit, proving to be wildly successful and spawning a new era of computer RPG’s.

Baldur’s Gate would be followed by an expansion pack, a sequel and an expansion pack to the sequel which bookended its epic saga. When Baldur’s Gate series ended the developer continued making fantastic roleplaying games like; Never Winter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire and the recent Mass Effect series.

Bioware has after many years returned to the classical fantasy setting with the Dragon Age series. The new game offers everything their first great success did while tightening and improving the formula, deepening every aspect of the experience. While it is not perfect (I consider only two games to be perfect; Shadow of the Colossus and Another World) it is as close to perfection as a massive sprawling roleplaying game can get. It responds to the recent trend in RPG’s to offer less choice by offering more and its game play is both thought provoking and rewarding. It is quite simply the definitive roleplaying game of this generation.

Dragon Age:

Dragon Age is set in a somewhat familiar setting. There are elves, dwarves, dragons and mages and while you may be thinking this sounds a lot like the Lord of the Rings; and you would be exactly right, only in the best sense of the word “like”. Dragon Age takes its influence from just about every truly great fantasy saga ever written, though it never feels derivative. It actually feels original, innovative and mystifying. The game’s setting takes the classical realms of the Lord of the Rings and adds layer upon layer of complexity, history and reality. So while Dragon Age does have elves and dwarves they are undoubtedly and uniquely Dragon Age’s elves and dwarves.

Dragon Age begins with the titular origins. Bioware has seemingly reduced the genre to its basics with just three classes and three races to for the player to choose from, yet this is a cleverly disguised veil that beckons new players and especially those who have never even touched an RPG before. With a class and a race you then choose one of six unique Origins. The Origin is the prolog to the game, where you will play rather than learn the place that your unique character holds in the world and make difficult choices that will follow your hero right until the game’s end. No two Origins are at all alike and even then each Origin can yield vastly different outcomes based on the choices you make, many of them as complex as life or death. The Origins are just one of the fantastic elements of the game that draw you in and make this high fantasy world real for you.