I've always been a big fan of the theatrical aspects included in Bioware games. In this I would have to say Dragon Age is almost more a movie at points ( and a good movie ) than a game. It does still manage to be keep the player involved through plot choices and dialog options. I was upset that the main character doesn't actually speak as was the case in Mass Effect, you can hardly say too much against the voice acting in Dragon Age because there is literally hours of spoken dialog to the game. Every conversation in the game, every little chatter and scream has a unique set of vocal lines. My only annoyance with the amazing voice acting in the game is the group conversations while just traveling around ( I call this 'idle chat' ) repeats enough that you get tired of hearing it. I would prefer these little conversations be less frequent, so that the limited conversation between characters doesn't repeat so often.

The story itself is very long, and with enough side quests to keep you busy for days on end. Dragon Age will take you many nights of gaming to finish all quests. I don't think it is quite as long as old classics like Baldur's Gate 2, or Icewind Dale, but it is still quite long.

Graphics are a bit of a disappointing aspect. This is a hefty game and will put a bit of stress on higher end systems with all the bells and whistles active. You would expect some very nice looking graphics in the game this stressful on a system, but a few graphical anomalies appear that are very off putting. The most blatant example of this is the armor. When wearing any kind of heavier armor, clipping is a major issue. One plate of armor will clip into all other parts of the armor, and body of the character. There is hundreds of different armor types in the game, so perfection is a difficult thing to expect, but almost every character in almost every piece of attire has clipping issues. I would prefer that armor be adjusted visual rather than have everything show up as a big mess of clipping.

I've played through under a few different circumstances and with a few different outcomes on certain quests, but the outcome of the finale changes very little. I was a little annoyed with certain party members. Alistair is a pain. Every single remotely bad thing I did in the game caused his acceptance of my leadership to plummet down the tubes. Having Morrigan in the party at a given moment can actually lead you to lose out on one of the already limited choices for party members.

From a technical standpoint, I didn't really have too much in the way of game breaking bugs. I, and several I questioned seem to have trouble with load times as the game goes on. At the beginning of the game load times are very short, but for some reason the longer I play, and the deeper I get into the storyline, the longer load times become. As of this writing there is no patch just yet, but I hear there is one coming soon. Hopefully a patch will correct this, and the other small issues I've mentioned. Dragons Age Origins is on the cusp of a truly great game. Promised supplemental content and upcoming fixes could make it one of, if not the best games of the year. It's a shame you console players miss out on so much of the actual game in the thinned out versions you play.

<-Back | | Next->