Dragon Age Dragon Age: Origins is ten years old today

[moon knight]

Edgy as fuck, but it got my 15 year old self hyped

 

[Lagole Gon]

Dragon Age: Origins will always be remembered as the last Bioware game that at least kind of tried doing that RPG thing.

 

[Delterius]

Dragon Age Origins graphics had a certain charm to them. Maybe its nostalgia talking a bit but I replay the game every now and again and it looks fine. Certainly a lot better than that selected picture above meant to make it look as bad as it can.

The screenshot looks way too blurry. It didn't have the world's best graphics or art direction but it definitely looked sharper than that. Some cursory googling got me this:

I can understand their desire to go for a more stylized or trademarked art direction in DA2 it's just that they went way too far, and to make matters worse the project was too rushed and didn't lend itself well to polishing. Comparing, say, the elves in DA:O (short kibblers with weird cheekbones), DA2 (weird race of catoid-apes), and DA3 (petite people with finer features than humans), I'd say they eventually grew into an art style I can get behind. Kirkwall looked like a hospital with how white and washed out it was, but the new Tevinter style architecture feels like it comes from the same world as that of Orzammar.

 

[Dadd]

Edgy as fuck, but it got my 15 year old self hyped

This game gets gayer every time I look at it

 

[baud]

Edgy as fuck, but it got my 15 year old self hyped

same

 

[Cael]

They moved away from the whole Warden thing and it went downhill fast.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

It's just so brown and ugly and all the characters look like recovering meth-heads.

Spoiler

It's hard to remember the few good looking parts of the game.

Spoiler

 

[Camel]

Brecilian forest looks good. The last pages of the thread show the Codexers are graphics whores masquerading as grognards.

 

[jackofshadows]

DA:O looked fine enough. The only truly terrible thing I recall were pools of blood under the bodies

like that

coupled with a bit too fast animation of spreading of them.

 

[NecroLord]

Dragon Age: Origins will always be remembered as the last Bioware game that at least kind of tried doing that RPG thing.

Too right, mate.
Origins was the last Bioware RPG, a last "hoorah", if you will.

 

[Camel]

The only truly terrible thing I recall were pools of blood under the bodies

My party being covered in blood from head to toe was laughable.

 

[9ted6]

If you:
1. Ignore all the later games.
2. Ignore all the later tie-in books, cartoons, etc.
3. Ignore the occasional bits of retarded writing in Origins itself and DLCs.
4. Ignore everything the writers then say now about the games and their hackneyed views on politics and culture.
Dragon Age could make for a passable if not pretty good baseline setting for running TTRPGs in.

 

[Grunker]

If you:
1. Ignore all the other games.
2. Ignore all the later tie-in books.
3. Ignore the occasional bits of retarded writing in Origins itself and DLCs.
4. Ignore everything the writers then say now about the games and their hackneyed views on politics and culture.
Dragon Age could make for a passable baseline setting for running TTRPGs in.

It’s still just a poor man’s Witcher. I liked DA:O but worldbuilding wise so many did the same gritty take better than them. You got ASoIaF for fanatsy historicism or Witcher for fairy tale grittyness. DA World is superflous

 

[9ted6]

If you:
1. Ignore all the other games.
2. Ignore all the later tie-in books.
3. Ignore the occasional bits of retarded writing in Origins itself and DLCs.
4. Ignore everything the writers then say now about the games and their hackneyed views on politics and culture.
Dragon Age could make for a passable baseline setting for running TTRPGs in.

It’s still just a poor man’s Witcher. I liked DA:O but worldbuilding wise so many did the same gritty take better than them. You got ASoIaF for fanatsy historicism or Witcher for fairy tale grittyness. DA World is superflous

It clearly took inspiration from both and inspired Witcher itself later but I feel like it was a nice middle ground of those two, not going to the extremes that bring them down. It had the fairy tale grittiness of Witcher without being hypersexual or too edgy, and it had the mundane fantasy and backstabbing fictional politics of ASoIaF without being grim-dark or preachy about the devs' real politics, back then anyway. Now it's a lot less gritty, a lot more sexualized, and massively preachy. Origins wasn't really. I like the Darkspawn too, there's no equivalent in ASoIaF or Witcher even if they're just an alternate take on orcs.

 

[Technomancer]

DA:O looked fine enough. The only truly terrible thing I recall were pools of blood under the bodies

The blood portrayed on the screenshot is just a static level decal. Those that were animated and appeared under fresh corpses looked differently. Not better, just not like that.

 

[Grunker]

If you:
1. Ignore all the other games.
2. Ignore all the later tie-in books.
3. Ignore the occasional bits of retarded writing in Origins itself and DLCs.
4. Ignore everything the writers then say now about the games and their hackneyed views on politics and culture.
Dragon Age could make for a passable baseline setting for running TTRPGs in.

It’s still just a poor man’s Witcher. I liked DA:O but worldbuilding wise so many did the same gritty take better than them. You got ASoIaF for fanatsy historicism or Witcher for fairy tale grittyness. DA World is superflous

It clearly took inspiration from both and inspired Witcher itself later but I feel like it was a nice middle ground of those two, not going to the extremes that bring them down. It had the fairy tale grittiness of Witcher without being hypersexual or too edgy, and it had the mundane fantasy and backstabbing politics of ASoIaF without being grim-dark or preachy about the devs' politics, back then anyway. Now it's a lot less gritty, a lot more sexualized, and massively preachy. Origins wasn't really. I like the Darkspawn too, there's no equivalent in ASoIaF or Witcher even if they're just an alternate take on orcs.

yikes

 

[Camel]

DA:O was the last great Bioware game and it's setting and writing were good for a videogame. It's one of the last games and RPGs which were progressive and not woke. Even if it has some subtle hints of what became woke later. It has an isometric view and a party of 4 with a silent protagonist. I don't hate voice-acting and cutscenes provided they're good and DA:O voice-acting was great. MMO combat could've been implemented better and improved upon but alas. An amount of the DA:O trash combat is the biggest thing which hurts replayability.
Bioware wasn't that good with a videogame plot except BG2. Their strength was always great and larger-than-life characters and DA:O has them in abundance. For example, the Cousland massacre is a ripoff of the ASOIAF Red Wedding and as others already mentioned Gaider and others were obviously inspired by ASOIAF. Gaider and other DA:O writers were last RPG writers who read the literature and fantasy unlike modern narrative designers who only watch the movies and TV shows.
DA:O sure has some pozzed moments like a sob story of Avelline - the first female knight who was killed by evil patriarchy but you could always roleplay an authentic medieval aristocrat not caring about peasants with Human and Dwarf Noble origins. Leliana and Zevran are bisexual and romanceable but Leliana is feminine and is straight for all intents and purposes unless you court her as a woman and her lesbian tryst with her mentor is only hinted at.
Vault Dweller in his Codex review liked C&C and reactivity in DA:O with an example of a Redcliffe quest with so many permutations and reactivity.

 

[Vic]

never liked dragon age because of the religious undertones and generic looking graphics

 

[Fedora Master]

never liked dragon age because of the religious undertones and generic looking graphics

Who asked?

 

[9ted6]

DA:O sure has some pozzed moments like with a sob story of Avelline - the first female knight who was killed by evil patriarchy but you could always roleplay an authentic medieval aristocrate not caring about peasants. Leliana and Zevran are bisexual and romanceable but Leliana is feminine and is straight for intents and purposes unless you court her as a woman and her lesbian tryst with her mentor is only hinted at.

DA:O felt progressive in the D&D sense, or BG and NW. Men and women could both be adventurers, fighters, etc., because you could play whatever character you wanted. It wasn't progressive in the modern sense and especially not woke. There's never any shit about how men are all evil and women can be totally identical to men if they want to. The world itself is also a lot more "authentic" feeling than what came later, which is one of many things fans of the newer games hate and call "problematic."

There are lines like
"I'm braver than any of you, and I'm a woman!"
"I didn't know the Grey Wardens recruited women."
"Bryce's little spitfire, still acting like a man. (to a female Human Noble)"
Everything about the Qunari's gender roles.

Then things like Avelline's story, or especially the Orlesian woman who says that Chevaliers do whatever they want to women and get away with it. It's never the edgy retard extreme where that shit's portrayed as being great and funny, it's bad, but the world's obviously shown to not be an ultraprog Twitter wonderland. It feels authentic and distinctively not woke, which is again probably why Origins gets called sexist and racist all the time. It's D&D. Women can be heroes, but they aren't heroes just by existing and not every male character's an idiot or evil, so that's not acceptable anymore.

Now it doesn't matter, everyone can do everything and women do it better, and the Qunari literally educate their followers on gender theory and BDSM.

 

[KainenMorden]

If you:
1. Ignore all the later games.
2. Ignore all the later tie-in books, cartoons, etc.
3. Ignore the occasional bits of retarded writing in Origins itself and DLCs.
4. Ignore everything the writers then say now about the games and their hackneyed views on politics and culture.
Dragon Age could make for a passable if not pretty good baseline setting for running TTRPGs in.

A TTRPG was made of the setting around the same time as origins was released

 

[Camel]

DA:O felt progressive in the D&D sense, or BG and NW. Men and women could both be adventurers, fighters, etc., because you could play whatever character you wanted. It wasn't progressive in the modern sense and especially not woke. There's never any shit about how men are all evil and women can be totally identical to men if they want to. The world itself is also a lot more "authentic" feeling than what came later, which is one of many things fans of the newer games hate and call "problematic."

There are lines like
"I'm braver than any of you, and I'm a woman!"
"I didn't know the Grey Wardens recruited women."
"Bryce's little spitfire, still acting like a man. (to a female Human Noble)"

2000s were better times and it shows in videogames too. Those lines will be called sexist and problematic now for sure. Queen Anora is a great character who thinks about the kingdom first and she's also a scheming bitch and you can say that to her face. Bioware was inspired by Toilkien, GRRM and history books about medieval Europe.

Then things like Avelline's story, or especially the Orlesian woman who says that Chevaliers do whatever they want to women and get away with it. It's never the edgy retard extreme where that shit's portrayed as being great and funny but the world's obviously shown to not be an ultraprog Twitter wonderland. It feels authentic and distinctively not woke, which is again probably why Origins gets called sexist and racist all the time. It's D&D. Women can be heroes, but they aren't heroes just by existing and not every male character's an idiot or evil, so that's not acceptable anymore.

I thought exactly about the Orlesian woman at Denerim and her story how her brother saved her from a Chevalier and my Cousland Noble can say it was Chevalier's primae noctis right as an aristocrat. The Dwarf Noble can do almost everything he wants to as the prince like ordering his servant Gorim to kill dwarves who displeased him or to have a threesome with two dwarven gold diggers. As much as I loathe to admit it, Hamburger Hepler did a good job with Orzammar and two Dwarven origins.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

They just added trading cards to the Steam version of the game.

 

[The Bishop]

DA:O was the last great Bioware game and it's setting and writing were good for a videogame. It's one of the last games and RPGs which were progressive and not woke. Even if it has some subtle hints of what became woke later. It has an isometric view and a party of 4 with a silent protagonist. I don't hate voice-acting and cutscenes provided they're good and DA:O voice-acting was great. MMO combat could've been implemented better and improved upon but alas. An amount of the DA:O trash combat is the biggest thing which hurts replayability.
Bioware wasn't that good with a videogame plot except BG2. Their strength was always great and larger-than-life characters and DA:O has them in abundance. For example, the Cousland massacre is a ripoff of the ASOIAF Red Wedding and as others already mentioned Gaider and others were obviously inspired by ASOIAF. Gaider and other DA:O writers were last RPG writers who read the literature and fantasy unlike modern narrative designers who only watch the movies and TV shows.
DA:O sure has some pozzed moments like a sob story of Avelline - the first female knight who was killed by evil patriarchy but you could always roleplay an authentic medieval aristocrat not caring about peasants with Human and Dwarf Noble origins. Leliana and Zevran are bisexual and romanceable but Leliana is feminine and is straight for all intents and purposes unless you court her as a woman and her lesbian tryst with her mentor is only hinted at.
Vault Dweller in his Codex review liked C&C and reactivity in DA:O with an example of a Redcliffe quest with so many permutations and reactivity.

One other point about DA:O writing that is often overlooked and underappreciated is that it's functional. Videogame writing is supposed to underpin gameplay. It's supposed to give you reasons to care about going into this dungeon or looking for this item other than "I need to trigger the quest node" or "I need to farm xp/gold/materials". At no point in DA:O you feel like you just pushing forward for the sake of doing it. There is always a convincing reason why your character should care about whatever it is you're doing right now, how this thing resulted from that other thing before it. The writing isn't super deep, super original, or super groundbreaking. But it works. It ties in all the strands of gameplay into a thing that can be reasonably construed as adventure.

This is in stark contrast with pretty much everything Bioware put out since. And it's not just Bioware. For some reason stories that work in most basic sense have become very rare beasts in videogames. As a player you know that you're completing quests and consuming content, and the game doesn't try to convince you otherwise.

 

[Aghoric Visions]

Manson? EWWWWWW

Anyway, I've dying for another game using DA: Origins combat system. Still pissed we never got one.