You may or may not recall, but in a previous post I talked about a concept that Paul Barnett made me aware of – and that is that every game designer (and gamer) over the age of thirty has their Golden Age of gaming.  It was that time of their lives when computer games or video game were who we were.  And those games that we played shaped forever our perceptions about what we loved in games, and the kinds of games we were passionate about.  The defined, to a large extent, what we considered fun.   For myself, my Golden Age, which I remember with misty-tinged full-bloom recollections, occurred at about a time when what we back then referred to as the CRPGs were at their height.  So my fondest computer games were the Ultima series, the Gold Box series of SSI games, the Eye of the Beholder games by Westwood, and of course Joe Ybarra’s classic Bards Tale games.  Eventually, these games came to include Baldur’s Gate & Icewind Dale, and my mind still balks at the thought of the dozens upon dozens of hours I spent hunkered down in front of a computer screen in the cold hours of predawn navigating my individually created and hand-picked crew of six through the deepest caverns of a land that never existed.

Now, I burden you with this bit of tedium about myself because it’s important to realize where I’m coming from when I visit Dragon Age: Origins.  Two decades have passed since I played those games, and for the last fifteen or so years my gaming has consisted almost entirely of games in which I play around other people, and whose interactions consist almost entirely of nothing more than pushing a few buttons to perform some actions.  So when I load up Dragon Age and I roll the camera back to a chillingly familiar top-down view and I see those gold circles around my team and red circles around my enemies.. well lets just say it feels an awful lot like coming home.  And while I’ll try to keep an objective eye about all that I see while playing the game, the strong tug of nostalgia is not to be denied, and colors most everything I view.

Two Good Things and one Bad Thing

It’s hard to pare down just exactly how much to say and not say about the game, and I’m only about six hours into it.  I could go on at great length about the similarities (that I recall) between this game and its predecessors, and which new things work and don’t, in my opinion, but in the interest of keeping this post from taking my entire day, I’m going to try to give you a brief shot at some particular pieces of the game, and in the interest of objectivity, one I’m not too happy about.

The Story – Duh

Talking about the story in a Bioware epic RPG is a lot like talking about the scenery in Aion.  It’s gorgeous, and everyone knows it.  So this has been said, and I will only repeat it, but there it is.  This is a game you do a disservice if you try to hurry your way through it.  Be prepared to listen.  Think of it as reading a novel.  The entertainment is going to come as much from the having the story revealed to you as the actual gameplay and mechanics itself.  The story itself, honestly isn’t all that original, but I think I like better here the actors, than in some previous attempts at videogame narrative.  And as it is the actors that deliver the story, I think that perhaps is why I’m enjoying this more than my attempt to slog through Mass Effect.  I actually found myself chuckling a few times at the dialog that was delivered.  And we all know comedy is hard.  If you ever find yourself genuinely laughing at something delivered by virtual actors, it’s testimony to the writing.

The Content

I know a few people have talked about the graphics not really being all that.  I honestly haven’t had any real problems with the look of the game – nothing jaw dropping, to be sure, from a technical stand point, but certainly competent.  What has dropped my jaw though has just been the sheer scope and scale of the quantity of content developed.  Massive structures that feel like they have living and breathing people in them, large forests, grand ruins.  As I’ve said, I’ve only been in the game for a relatively short while, but already I’m duly impressed with the sheer quantity of custom hand crafted content I’ve encountered.  I may be a bit sensitive to this than the average person, knowing the amount of work and time and money that goes into creating video game content.

My Mute Hero

What I do find a bit annoying though is the muteness of my character.  Again, being somewhat sensitive to costs, I fully realize the extraordinary additional cost that would have been invoked in voice-acting all of the responses for the various voices they gave you to choose from in the game, but by God, if you’re going to build a cinematic experience, then in for a penny in for a pound.  And the way acting and dialog takes place all around my character and with my character but without him actually engaging in it makes him seem like a strange and curiously mute participant in an otherwise interesting scene. 

If this is a game for you, then this is a game for you!

I went into Dragon Age with some pretty well defined (and high) expectations, and I’m happy to say that, for me at least, the game has delivered in spades on all cylinders (and more mixed metaphors).  Feel free to caveat that with that this is only about a six hour impression, but so far, so good.  If you’re ready to give up a big chunk of your late evening hours or Saturday mornings or whenever it is you find time to game, then go get this thing.   You won’t be sorry.