Dragon Age: Origins (Creation Process)

Once I loaded up the game, the intro cinematic did a good job laying down the basics of the story. Generally it seems that magic is a vary dangerous art in the Dragon Age universe as a cabal of mages created some sort of gate to go to and destroy Heaven. This created a rift, from which something called the blight escapes from and soon monsters pour into the world. These are called the Darkspawn, and they carved a swath throughout the world killing everything in their way. Many armies fell, the first being those of the Dwarves. However, the humans are not far behind as they are beset upon by the dark horde.

The humans are brought to the point of near destruction, until the Grey Wardens are formed. The Grey Wardens are an organization of human, elf, and dwarf kind who have mastered the taint of the blight. With the help of the Grey Wardens the armies of the humans are able to push back the evil and kill the Archdemon who controlled it. With the defeat of the blight, the Grey Wardens are held in a high regard as the saviors of the land and are given special political power. However, after many many years since the last blight was seen, the favor is starting to run short. People are forgetting what the Wardens did, and now the warnings of another blight is on the horizon.

The intro cinematic which was very very good, it had several animated and in-game sections, both of them were animated smoothly and the voices were well done. I moved on to the character select screen, which sort of disappointed. While the mechanics were clear the lighting wasn't and so trying to figure out how I wanted my character to look like was difficult. The sliders added for a little customization but it wasn't extremely noticeable, unless you move the sliders to the extreme options. The races seemed different enough, as did all the backgrounds and class combination you could choose from. Sadly if you pick certain coronations you cannot be certain things, (you cannot be a rogue and a commoner for example.

The game does a good job of giving you a little background information of the classes, races, and backgrounds to get a general feel for your first foray. I picked an Elven Rogue, mainly because I love sneaking around and the lore of the Elves is actually quite interesting. Usually I hate elves, they are not my cup of tea, they are the ultimate form of human pride and manifest it into these semi-perfect beings. However, Elves in Dragon age are a downtrodden race who used to serve as slaves to the humans and have recently gained independence. The Elf Rogue start is of a commoner, not some rich noble, which I find more appealing. Once the background was picked I had to pick a name, and ended up with Rhemus.

The creation process was pretty smooth, though this was a very game mechanics intensive part of the game, I found plenty of art to appreciate. The models look very nice, if a little stiff, and the information offered makes it obvious that Bioware has focused on the story part of this game quite a bit. They obviously want to make it different from a normal fantasy story, a darker more interesting tone. I got the feeling that not all my characters would be flinging spells about and magic won't be everywhere. That serves for a great break from the normal spell-flinging game, and I was excited to get started.

The next post will deal with the beginning experiences with the game, and how the art compels one to immerse yourself into the world of Dragon Age.