A huge part of the fun of participating in any sort of serial story is chatting about the story with your peers and friends as it progresses.  And as I make my way through the story of Dragon Age, I constantly find myself wanting to chat about the story and my characters.  But I’m extremely sensitive to spoilers.  I’m enjoying this game immensely, and want none of it spoiled for myself, and certainly don’t want to spoil it for anyone else.  So here are the parameters of this discussion:

I’ve progressed in the game to and through the village of Lothering, and am now in the first “world camp”.  If those words are unfamiliar to you, and you don’t want anything spoiled, then proceed no further with this post.  Just promise you’ll come back when they do make sense to you.  And if you’ve progressed past this point in the game, this should provide a clean breaking point for which you to talk about the game, and not discuss anything past this point – out of respect for my wishes to not have anything spoiled.  Also, even though I have only done the Mage’s origins story, I don’t mind mentioning of other origins stories.  Considering the breadth of this game, the origin story seems to be only a small portion of the grand scheme. 

So, to be clear: If you are worried about spoilers, then do not proceed past this point unless you’ve at least got to and through the village of Lothering, and don’t mind discussion of the origins stories.  If you have got past this point, and are ready to chat about the game, then read on!

Okay lets get to it.  The great thing about a game like this is your story is similar to everyone else’s version of the story, but skewed by the choices you make from the very beginning.  And as Syp mentioned in his own post, this game challenges you to think about the make up of your character – his world view, and how he approaches things.  Being the nerdy role-play geek I am I had decided upon all of these when I created my character in the pre-game character creator.  I had decided I would try to recreate an older incarnation of Dlangar, my ubiquitous game character (we all have one, right?).  Dlangar was a human ice wizard that spent an inordinate amount of time in the presence of vampires, and eventually became one himself.  So my dragon age character was a human mage, strong in primal magics, especially ice, and with just a sampling of darker magics – dabbling from the spirit pool, and also proficient in making poisons. 

The poison choice was a poor game choice – my thought was that Dlangar could create poisons the other party members could use on their blades, but I didn’t realize until the choice was made and my first poisons created that only people with poison proficiency can use the poisons they create.  Fortunately, the poison also applies to mage’s staffs, so it’s not a complete loss.  

I won’t go into the game-provided backstory for mages – you most likely know that already, save to say that it worked perfectly to help define Dlangar’s world view.  Raised in the solitary confines of the tower under the watchful eye of the chantry, he has had politeness and obsequiousness drilled into him all his life, and he is thusly unfailingly polite to most all he meets.  But beneath that politeness is a seed of resentment, and a desire for exactly those things the chantry most forbids – for no other reason than it has been forbidden.  Overall, Dlangar wants to do the right thing – the good thing as presented in the game.  But this does at time come with some resentment.

Now mind you, these things were decided before I had ever begun the game.  So you can imagine how much I chuckled when the party at last meets Morrigan, the wild witch.  She has almost exactly the powerset my main hero had – strong in ice, with a dabbling of life-tapping magics.  She also has the advantage of being a shapeshifter already.  In fact, once she was a member of the party I quickly began rummaging through her belongings to see if there was gear i wanted to swap out to Dlangar.  I was half way through swapping out her robes which had a very nice +10% to ice damage with Dlangar’s rags when I noticed the For Morrigan Only restriction.  Hmpfh.  They probalby look much nicer on her anyway. 

In any event, Dlangar (and admittedly his player) is completely smitten with Morrigan.  She represents an entire life that he has longed for, and forbidden to pursue: A mage – free to do as she pleases, unbound by the restrictions of the chantry, deeply versed in the very magics he excells in.  From a story perspective, it absolutely makes sense.

Unfortunately, from a game player perspective, it’s a complete mess!  First, I now have two members of my party with almost the exact same powersets.  The smart thing to do would have been to immediately stop speccing Dlangar in primal and spirit, and start speccing him in creation!  Our party needs a healer.  And as Morrigan was actually further down her trees than Dlangar was, it would make sense to switch him over her.  But that would mean pretty much abandoning Dlangar’s background for the sake of stats.  I may not know much about Dlangar, but I’m pretty damn sure he’s not a healer.  For many of you, this wouldn’t even be a choice, but for me, if you’re going to spend eighty plus hours in this game and not even attempt to humanize these characters somewhat, you’re missing out on a huge part of the enjoyment of the game.  This doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally also turn my characters into piles of stats and treat them as such, (“Hey Morrigan, gimme that robe!  What do you MEAN no!”) but the interesting dynamic in this game is at what point do you draw that line.

Second, attempting to win the favor of Morrigan is damn hard, if you are trying to “do the right thing”.  It’s become increasingly clear as I play that often the things that make Leilana and Alistair happy are things that make Morrigan unhappy – they’re also the choices that are usually “help the poor bloke out” kind of things.  Morrigan has no patience for that sort of thing.  Again, I often come out of a conversation thinking YES another quest, only to realize that Morrigan has once again turned her nose up with a minus 7 approval rating.  Bitch.  But grumble though I may, I love the fact that I’m weighing choices in the game between what I think will gain approval from one of my party members versus progressing the game in the right direction.

As for the story itself, I’m both pleased and disappointed.  I’m pleased, because I really enjoyed the turn of the battle at Ishal’s Tower, in Ostagar.  And as you ran across that bridge, I hope you paused long enough to go over to the side and look down below, because I was blown away at just how friggen cool of a scene that was. 

I’m disappointed, because the “visit the generals and gather the armies” story is just about the oldest damn story in CRPG lore. Eye of the North anyone?  And there was that SSI Dark Sun game – Shattered Lands.  And wasn’t it the basis of at least one of the Ultima games?  In any event, seriously Bioware, I expected better.  But maybe there’s a twist coming and and you really have to destroy the generals!  We’ll see.  And no I haven’t ready any spoilers, I’m just making my prediction now though – Loghain is the arch demon.  Okay probably not, but it sounds good! 

So what do you think?  Enjoying the story so far, or just find it trite and cliche.  Which are your favorite characters?  OH so I didn’t even get the dog because I accidently progressed the story without finishing that quest.  In my story those dogs all went to battle and perished on the field with Duncan and King Calain.  I’m reading some of the other posts going “there’s a dog? what dog?”.  So tell me about the dog!  Or anything else you want to talk about in the Story So Far..