Introducing Dragon Age
Curse was recently invited to Edmonton to visit the Bioware offices and play
their upcoming title Dragon Age: Origins.
Dragon Age is the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, and the intensity
from that game is carried over and amplified in the new title. You play a Grey
Warden, one of the last members of an ancient order that has guarded the world
from the Blight for centuries. The world is, as most worlds are, plagued not
only by the horrific terror that is the blight but also by political strife,
poverty, and injustice. Few remember the greatness or the purpose of the Grey
Wardens, and many are too busy with their own lust for greed and power to care.
This is a game that really delivers on it's promise. You will be immersed,
you will feel remorse, you will feel regret, you will revel in your marvel as
you make decisions that shape the world around you. If you've missed the
emotional attachment that you've felt in only the best of games then don't go another day without looking into Dragon Age.
At the beginning of the game you're able to choose how your character begins
life in the new world. The choices you make early on are going to reflect how
your character is treated and accepted later in the game. A few examples include
a poverty stricken Elf, or a Dwarf from a noble house. The story starts in a
completely unique way depending upon how you make your character, and the
decisions begin compounding from that point on.
The Blight is the enemy that the main storyline focuses on. Early on in the game you have your first encounter with the Blight. You're
helping the King, and the leader of the Grey Wardens, when a trusted general of
the King pulls back his reinforcements and leaves everyone to die. During the
course of the game hunting down and killing this traitor is part of the
storyline, but you also need to unite the nations and gather a massive army to help
defend against the Blight, as it's apparent anything less than a solid unified
front will mean death for every living person.
In Dragon Age you're able to gather a party, play each member of the party
during combat situations, and use their skills. Each character that will react
in a different way to the environment around them, and will assist you in battle
or give you their opinions when you're faced with a choice. Characters are
unique in Dragon Age in the fact that they each have their own moral compass.
Choosing to abandon a helpless child might earn you points with some of the
members of your party, but severely diminish other members' feelings towards you
as a leader. During the gameplay and demo it became apparent that if you made a
decision that was so out of the norm for the moral compass of one of your party
members they might even attempt to KILL YOU.
You can also use the very helpful system that is built into the game that
will allow you to set general rules and guidelines for characters in your party
to follow even when you're not controlling them. They can be INCREDIBLY in-depth
for the master tacticians or very simple for players who want to allow the game
to pick the best options. Everything is easily handled via a check box system
that only takes a few minutes to learn and can provide you with an incredible
advantage in some of the more vicious battles in the game. This gives players an
excellent amount of control over the members in their party, even when they're
not playing them.
The content for Dragon Age is incredibly vast, the game is said to have over
80 hours of gameplay, but with the number of choices and different paths that
those choices lead you it can grow exponentially. During the brief demo we were
able to observe several players playing the same game, and the most unique thing
about Dragon Age is you couldn't tell they were playing the same game, the
various decisions and choices a player makes actually impacts how events unfold
and will give each player a unique experience. A specific example would be a
mother begging you to help her son who's possessed by a demon. The apparent
options for the game we were playing were:
A. Kill the boy
B. Sacrifice the mother in a ritual that would allow us to fight the demon and
save the boy
C. Leave
After sacrificing the mother and saving the boy one of the game developers
told us that there was, indeed, another option that would have saved both the
mother and the son! Our actions specifically lead to the death of a character in
the game, and depending upon how we go there certain choices are made available
to us. This level of choice is unlike anything in any game to date.
Bioware is going to continue to support Dragon Age with over 2 years of post
launch content that will be seamlessly and easily integrated into the storyline
you've chosen and the world that the player lives in. They also plan to support
the community with development tools and sharing capabilities that will allow
players to quickly and easily create and share content.
Here's a look at the origin stories:
