Dragon Age Origins - Still Amazing

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

"The hell do you mean I've missed?! I am playing a veteran soldier of the future and you want me to believe tht s/he can't hit a mook with a gun on a 1 meter distance because I don't have enough POINTS in gun skill?! Go eat a poisonous plant, game."

That's how it should be...

A person, whose backstory states that they are hardened veteran of war, being unable to properly use the simplest of firearms even on small distance is far, FAR from "how it should be". If Shepard was a rookie, a fresh meat, I would've kind of accepted that. But not from a person with, supposedly, great amount of actual experience as a representative of a military forces.

Considering we are talking about games and that playing into its genre and setting up its own rules should always take precedent over being contextually realistic, then none of that is relevant.

For how many years games have been doing it, I honestly can't believe anyone can still complain about this kind of narrative disconnect.

Actually I can't think of any other shooter-rpg hybrid games that did something as stupid as what the first Mass Effect did. I also suspect it became a sticking point after it was removed for Mass Effect 2 and became conspicuous in its absence, for the better in my view.

 

[pookie101]

im with the OP with this. absolutely love it and and started playing it again recently and according to steam.. 788 hours in it

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I'm

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I'm afraid it didn't really get to it's feet to begin with for me.

I found the combat slow and clunky, had no interest in the world, story or characters and quit once I got to the first of the "get these 3 allies to fight with us" missions (the undead one). A year or so later I was very low on cash and bored so I tried again and managed to get to the end. I did find one thing I liked about it, and that was Zevran. If only he'd been in it from the start instead of that wet French woman. Same with Alistair and Loghain come to think of it.

Are you smack talking Liliana? 'Cos I'm a cut you if you are Seriously my least favourite character in that game was Morrigan. It seemed everything I did ended with "Morrigan Disapproves" to the point where I felt it should have been an option to tell her to fuck off if I was so goody goody. Wynne was a perfectly adequate mage companion and playing the class yourself meant listening to Morrigan's droning was totally unneeded.

 

[laggyteabag]

I do like Origins, though damn, does it have some issues.

Like pretty much everybody has said above me, the game's setting is pretty much as generic as you can get, as the game seems to have fallen down the fantasy cliche tree, and hit every branch on the way down. The game even has a drunk Dwarf, for Christ's sake. But yeah, it is the usual Orcish creatures invade the overworld, everybody has to band together to stop them, you are the only person that can do that, and the evil bad guy is a dragon because reasons. There are elves that live in the wild, dwarves live underground, and these orc things are killing people because they feel like it. Oh so generic.

Sure, the game spices things up a little every now and again. I like the idea of mages being dangerous and always prone to being possessed by demons, I like that elves are discriminated against by the humans, I like the whole deep roads thing, and how the Darkspawn have pretty much taken over, and all of the companions are a lot of fun, too.

The game is damn, ugly to boot. It was basically Fantasy: Beige Edition, because everything was just brown, grey, and nasty looking. The characters and NPCs had wooden animations, and the combat, slow and methodical, whilst it may be, looked like you were beating the enemy with a sword shaped club, and it had absolutely no weight to it.

The series in general seems to be filled full of great games, but each one has one large and glaring flaw that really detracts from the experience.

DA:O - Great companions, and lots of areas to explore. Generic (but not bad) story, weightless combat, and ugly.
DA2 - Good companions, more personal story, better combat animations. Even browner than Origins, limited locations.
DAI - Beautiful locations. MMO like quests and structure, boring story with reused villain.

Oh well, at least playing as a Mage was always fun, regardless of which game you played.

 

[Padwolf]

DAO is still one of my top favourite games to date. I am still a manic obsessive dragon age fan, and origins is still my favourite out of them all. I fucking love it. I still love the story, I still find new things in it that have me there like "how did i not see/realise this before?" And to me, it will always hold up that way. The combat is slow but I don't care, love seeing what variety I can throw into it.

I love the fact I can mod it and skip the fade. I find the fade fascinating but I won't deny that I find it a bit of a bore.

And Alistair is still my number one love <3

 

[Glongpre]

It is a good game. But games with the D&D style gameplay never really worked for me.

I beat it last year, and the only way I could get through it was using the OP dual wielding dps machine. Just let my party automatically function for the most part, and just sliced things to bits.

 

[Nemmerle]

As ever, that's subjective, because to me - as in most BioWare RPG's (e.g. ME's Normandy or DA:I's Skyhold. didn't Jade Empire also have a campsite?) - it felt like a reward. Maybe if someone's rather OCD and they keep popping back just to check for any minute differences in responses, sure, it could get trying.

But to me it just felt part of the natural flow of traveling and deciding what to do next. I really liked the setting, too (shame it never changed to suit each location), and the music, so to me it was also an enjoyable, [mostly] warm'n'fuzzy ambience in between the walking and fighting.

Hmm, for me what made the home-base mechanic work well in KOTOR was that there was a good reason to be going back there[footnote]to travel to another planet.[/footnote]. Whereas, in DAO it was pretty much something I had to remember to do.

Like you sit down and you want to go do a quest, kill some mooks, whatever. You're in an area, you're doing something - it doesn't feel natural to travel back to this location to... just access the conversation in it. Like if you were out adventuring you wouldn't be like 'Well, there's that dragon I kinda need to kill. But, hey, let's go back to base so I can talk to Joe about his family first.' ^_^

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Are you smack talking Liliana? 'Cos I'm a cut you if you are Seriously my least favourite character in that game was Morrigan. It seemed everything I did ended with "Morrigan Disapproves" to the point where I felt it should have been an option to tell her to fuck off if I was so goody goody. Wynne was a perfectly adequate mage companion and playing the class yourself meant listening to Morrigan's droning was totally unneeded.

Damn straight! That bleating, soggy baguette of a woman is only remembered because she was so irritating. The rest I can barely remember enough about them to dislike. Except Zevran, he was cool.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Hmm, for me what made the home-base mechanic work well in KOTOR was that there was a good reason to be going back there[footnote]to travel to another planet.[/footnote]. Whereas, in DAO it was pretty much something I had to remember to do.

Like you sit down and you want to go do a quest, kill some mooks, whatever. You're in an area, you're doing something - it doesn't feel natural to travel back to this location to... just access the conversation in it. Like if you were out adventuring you wouldn't be like 'Well, there's that dragon I kinda need to kill. But, hey, let's go back to base so I can talk to Joe about his family first.' ^_^

I see your point, mechanically/spatially, but I RP and almost consciously structure stories (at least for ensuing runs) in these kinds of games, i.e. I like knowing I have a plot or character arc relevant scene to trigger, and kinda build that in to the pacing of the typically RPG loop of travel/explore, fight'n'loot/be rewarded, plot stuff, etc. I tended to visit the campsite after and before certain trips/events, and in terms of how the group would be traveling across Ferelden forwarding the story, it did feel very natural, at least to me.

 

[SpiralLegacy]

Are you smack talking Liliana? 'Cos I'm a cut you if you are Seriously my least favourite character in that game was Morrigan. It seemed everything I did ended with "Morrigan Disapproves" to the point where I felt it should have been an option to tell her to fuck off if I was so goody goody. Wynne was a perfectly adequate mage companion and playing the class yourself meant listening to Morrigan's droning was totally unneeded.

Damn straight! That bleating, soggy baguette of a woman is only remembered because she was so irritating. The rest I can barely remember enough about them to dislike. Except Zevran, he was cool.

Morrigan is so much a better waifu than Leliana it's not even funny.

 

[Mister K]

Are you smack talking Liliana? 'Cos I'm a cut you if you are Seriously my least favourite character in that game was Morrigan. It seemed everything I did ended with "Morrigan Disapproves" to the point where I felt it should have been an option to tell her to fuck off if I was so goody goody. Wynne was a perfectly adequate mage companion and playing the class yourself meant listening to Morrigan's droning was totally unneeded.

Damn straight! That bleating, soggy baguette of a woman is only remembered because she was so irritating. The rest I can barely remember enough about them to dislike. Except Zevran, he was cool.

Remember how Morrigan demanded that you renew the race war between werewolves and whoeverelse just for shit and giggles?

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Are you smack talking Liliana? 'Cos I'm a cut you if you are Seriously my least favourite character in that game was Morrigan. It seemed everything I did ended with "Morrigan Disapproves" to the point where I felt it should have been an option to tell her to fuck off if I was so goody goody. Wynne was a perfectly adequate mage companion and playing the class yourself meant listening to Morrigan's droning was totally unneeded.

Damn straight! That bleating, soggy baguette of a woman is only remembered because she was so irritating. The rest I can barely remember enough about them to dislike. Except Zevran, he was cool.

Remember how Morrigan demanded that you renew the race war between werewolves and whoeverelse just for shit and giggles?

For those who want to go REALLY old-school, Morrigan was basically a love letter to fans of Baldur's Gate and Viconia DeVir, the Drow Cleric who could join your party.

Viconia was a narcissistic, arrogant asshole who thought everybody was beneath her and had extremely loose morals, and trying to get her to not be horrible was basically like pulling teeth. Not coincidentally, she was easily the 'most difficult' romance option in the game as well. Sound familiar?

 

[The Raw Shark]

It is still pretty alright. And don't get me wrong when I say I LOVE this game even now.
I like all the characters I've made in it, I like all the characters I met with, I liked the world and I liked some moments when the color palette at least felt rather warm when indoors next to fireplaces. But the entire game is severely held back for the same reasons that Inquisition was such a piece of trash in so many ways.

It never committed to everything it put on the table. Yeah the combat was all well and good and I still love it for what it was, but everything else was just lacking.
Yes there was plenty of character development but not enough to go around. Yes there was interaction but there wasn't enough for me to understand how some characters stood with others. Yeah you can be pretty axe-crazy but it was at so few moments that you barely seem like your own character.

It's textbook "Why I Hate Role-Playing Video Games" sometimes. You and your party are literally the most dangerous thing walking around all of Fereldan and you have to sit there and take shit from some small-fry pricks like the Templars? And it gets worse from that leading in to the rest of the games where you literally do NOTHING BUT EAT SHIT FROM PEOPLE YOU COULD RIP IN HALF WITH YOUR BARE HANDS. And don't give me any of that "Oh but they NEED to control themselves-" I'll do whatever the damn hell I want you wuss.
It doesn't help that a majority of the sidequests you pummel through don't even do anything for you. "Here's some gold, now piss off". Also why can't you save anyone in that town you visit in the beginning, Lothering was it? (Stupid-ass name by the way). I swear I cleared DROVES UPON DROVES of Darkspawn, Loghain's men and bandits. What the hell did I miss that people are still dying and the rest are talking shit about the Wardens to this date?
Also there are some plots with such glaring plotholes for me that to this day I can't comprehend them.

What the HELL was Duncan expecting was going to happen at Ostagar? Was he ACTUALLY BETTING that the Archdemon was going to show up out of nowhere for him to stab to death? Was he ACTUALLY GOING TO GO THROUGH WITH THE IDIOT KING'S PLAN JUST TO APPEASE HIM?! And why the hell don't you ever get Alistair to stop bitching about it? I mean I love the guy, but all the companions pretty much boil down to what the idiot writers at BioWare THINK accounts as moving on. The companions, though fun, almost all of them never truly have a moment of confrontation when faced with you. Why can't Alistair ever be told that Duncan was just an idiot and that he should get over it? He just gets worse the more you tell him and you never get the chance to confront him about it even when he pretty much hates you over it.

Why can't you tell Zevran to just cough up all his contacts or else? Why can't you tell Leliana to spill the beans on why she expects you trust her the entire time without knowing all of her past decisions?

Yeah Morrigan gets this, Shale gets this, Wynne gets to move on, even freaking Sten gets over any affliction he might have over your existence. But even then it seems halfed.
Anyone remember the elf girl from the Human Noble Origin?(By the way, notice how BioWare ALWAYS makes some sort of Nobility connection for whenever you pick Human?) You freaking find her daughter in the Elven Alienage and the game just casually hand-waves over it. I mean if you weren't the Human Noble or didn't really talk to her much in the Origin story then I could kinda understand the lack of interaction but I'm pretty sure I'd like to help the kid out considering my Noble slept with her mother......

I swear the game both acknowledges and ignores you so annoyingly passive-aggressively it's a pain in the ass and just kills it entirely. It's still a pretty good game and while Inquisition is pretty much the last Dragon Age game I will ever play until they fix everything they did in it, it's still a pretty fun series.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

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[FakeSympathy]

While i do enjoy this game, there are couple of things that I don't like, and this is from my experience just couple of hours ago playing DA:O.
1. The graphics looks outdated. Some part of the game just looks terrible
2. The fade quest in Circle of MAgi and The Deep road in Orzammar is really boring.
3. Lack of nudity and detailed sex scenes. Honestly, who has sex with their clothes on? If you look at Witcher 2 and 3, they did much better job in romance and sex scene.
4. The whole game feels like LOTR. Your mentor Duncan dies (Gandalf), Loghain doesn't like Alistair comig for the throne (Denethor and Aragorn), multiple races unite to fight the evil force (Whenever humans fight alongside themselves or other races in LOTR), Hopeless defense against the dark forces at OStagar(I feel this is what would've happened of Helm's Deep was lost), and finally, only you have the ability to stop the true evil.
5. Lack of weapon and armor variations. Unless you got the dlc or premotion bonuses, they all look pretty much the same.
6. Lack of unique abilities between you and your companions. You can be a warrior, rogue, or mage, but so will your companions, oh sure, they each have their own specialization, but they can teach you if they like you enough. This defeats the whole purpose of having exclusive specialization.
7. Combat feels slow. Even the daggers, which are suppose to be one of the fastest weapons in the game, is swung at slow pace.
8. No matter what decision you made throughout the game, the results are either you die or live

Regardless, I still enjoy DA:O as one of my all-time favorite classic games.

 

[The Madman]

For those who want to go REALLY old-school, Morrigan was basically a love letter to fans of Baldur's Gate and Viconia DeVir, the Drow Cleric who could join your party.

Viconia was a narcissistic, arrogant asshole who thought everybody was beneath her and had extremely loose morals, and trying to get her to not be horrible was basically like pulling teeth. Not coincidentally, she was easily the 'most difficult' romance option in the game as well. Sound familiar?

Thing is Viconia had a legitimate excuse for her behavior and grew as a character throughout the game depending on how you interacted with her, complete with multiple epilogues and plentiful branching dialogue. Morrigan's excuse for being an almost irredeemably narcissistic asshole is a flimsy 'My mom's an asshole!' excuse at best and a lame 'No one ever really loved me!' at worst, and while she does receive some character development she's still ostensibly the same character at the end of Origins as she was at the start, only with potentially more or less of a fondness for the player.

That said however I did love Morrigan's dialogue with the other characters, and the back and forth banter between her and Alistair was great. Morrigan did also get character development in a weird roundabout sort of way as well, since in Inquisition her outlook can potentially have changed greatly in the years since the events of DA:Origins due to your previous decisions, which I very much liked.

 

[babinro]

DA: Origins was among my favorite games of all time. I played through it at least 7 times.

When re-playing it in preparation for Inquisition I finally found myself bored with the game. The character interactions didn't feel quite as good as I had remembered. Combat was decent but it's also a HUGE slog. The game is a grind in how much senseless combat it throws at you and the number of HUGE maps you just run through. There's a major pacing issue in Origins.

It starts out wonderfully and then drags out upon opening up. I still love the conclusion and think the game as a whole is great but I don't think it truly holds up anymore. Not sure if I'll ever revisit it again.

Dragon Age 2 on the other actually IMPROVED with time for me. I already loved them game but had only played through it about 3 times before. The combat remains thrilling and the focused story and location are amazing. I absolutely love the time passing element that shows how your actions have impacted people's lives. Act 2's build up and ending were as great as I remember and act 3 remains the key weak point of the story.

I've been VERY tired of open world sandbox RPG's and DA 2 delivers the type of experience I want. I'll definitely replay DA2 in the future and it leaves me wishing we had more games like it.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Are you smack talking Liliana? 'Cos I'm a cut you if you are Seriously my least favourite character in that game was Morrigan. It seemed everything I did ended with "Morrigan Disapproves" to the point where I felt it should have been an option to tell her to fuck off if I was so goody goody. Wynne was a perfectly adequate mage companion and playing the class yourself meant listening to Morrigan's droning was totally unneeded.

Damn straight! That bleating, soggy baguette of a woman is only remembered because she was so irritating. The rest I can barely remember enough about them to dislike. Except Zevran, he was cool.

Morrigan is so much a better waifu than Leliana it's not even funny.

Morrigan shat me to fucking tears. It got to the point where I was actively trying to lose approval with her - which honestly, was about as hard as getting shot in Syria.

Plus Liliana is from Orlais, which means she was open to a threesome with Isabela. So take that swamp witch!

 

[pearcinator]

I got it when I was waiting in anticipation for Mass Effect 2. Unfortunately I had no idea how big the game actually was and I ended up having to rush through the second half of the game to finish it in time for ME2. I basically skipped all the side-content and went straight for the finish (I'm normally a completionist so it felt kinda wrong).

A couple of years ago I bought the ultimate edition on Steam and gave myself 6 months to get through it all properly this time in prep for Dragon Age: Inquisition. First of all, playing on PC was so much better than Xbox 360. Secondly, I thought it was incredible and loved how there were only 3 or 4 dragons in the game (and most were optional fights). The dragons were so difficult as well so it really felt like an accomplishment when taking one down.

Dragon Age: Inquisition had like...12 dragons and while the first one or two was difficult the rest were really quite easy to beat. This is one reason why Inquisition (while great) is inferior to Origins. In Origins you actually had to approach and prepare for a battle in advance because you felt like you were outmatched. It made the game feel more epic and gave a greater sense of accomplishment when getting through a particularly difficult spot. Sure the graphics are a bit dated now but Inquisition looked fantastic yet I would sooner replay Origins, that just shows that gameplay > graphics any day.