Dragon Age: Origins

This one goes back a long long way. I think it was back in my first year of university that I stuck Dragon Age in to my Xbox for the first time. I earned six achievements in about five hours of play, came across one monster I couldn’t kill first time, then stopped playing. I didn’t find the game play too engaging if I’m honest which may have contributed to my apathy. Anyway, after about five months of dipping in and out of the game I finally completed the last few DLCs and nailed the achievement list.

Dragon Age is/was a new action adventure RPG with an original story and characters. You play as the Grey Warden who can be from one of about six different backgrounds and also male or female. Your goal is to unite the land of Ferelden against the all consuming evil known as the darkspawn. The darkspawn and led by the archdemon, a giant ugly dragon type thing and your ultimate goal is to kill the archdemon and save the world from death and destruction. Simple enough, right?

The different character you chose makes a difference to the opening 2 hours of the game and the decisions you make will result in different outcomes that affect your personality and how other characters perceive you. The way the game is constructed is actually quite good if your mind hasn’t been destroyed by all the bang, bang shooty fun going on at the moment. All of the other party members you can recruit on your adventures have an opinion of you which can be influenced positively or negatively depending on your actions. Some of them will actually attack you if you make a decision they don’t agree with, which can result in some hilarious consequences.

One example of this is that you can actually ‘romance’ four of the in game characters. By ‘romance’ the game actually means ‘have sex with’ but you have to get some of them to fall in love with you before they will consider taking their clothes off. You can get Leliana to fall in love with you and doink her, then take her on one of the main quest missions. The decision you make at the end may force her to attack you and you will kill her – a strange turn of events considering she was rolling around semi-naked with you just the previous morning.

When I say bang, bang shooty fun destroying minds, Dragon Age is not the fastest game in the world. The combat is more about strategy than speed and dexterity and the dialogue takes forever to get through. That said, I did invest in the characters a lot and as Leliana was so hard to romance, I actually did buy in to her background in the end. I must have not been the only one either because she has her own DLC.

The gameplay element is the bit which resulted in me becoming bored. Now, there are difficulty levels and I must confess I played on the lowest one but only because the game doesn’t appear to have any kind of difficulty curve. There are some super hard bits early on and really easy bits later in the game. The attacking and defensive structure seemed too complicated for me to do well – you basically have an attack wheel and you can learn various attacks and defensive skills from levelling up. You can’t max out the skill trees so you have to pick your stuff carefully. I could never do this well so I didn’t invest too much time in it. Despite not doing this, it still took me in excess of 100 hours to complete the game.

Achievements – 1,750 Points – 76 Achievements

God, where to start with this one. Nearly half of the achievements relate the numerous DLCs so starting at the beginning feels like a reasonable idea.

There are six different types of character you can play as. Each has their own origin story and there is an achievement for completing each one. I did a couple of these at the end of the game after completing my various playthoughs but don’t panic, you do not have to complete the game six times.

In fact on to that, the maximum amount of full playthroughs you need is actually only one if you use tactical saving. You will, however, need to play for a while as a character of the opposite sex as you need to romance heterosexual male and female characters. That’s not to say Dragon Age doesn’t encompass homosexuality as there are two characters who swing both ways allowing you to engage in both gay and non-gay sex scenes.

There are four total romances and five achievements attached to them. The hardest one to do is Leliana because, to be frank, she is a fussy bitch. The others you can bed simply by engaging in casual conversation but Leliana, you’ve got to talk to her, complete her personal quest and bring her flowers before she will even consider getting down and dirty. Then to top it off, you have to have some very specific conversations with her giving the exact responses required. I managed to achieve this about half way through my first playthrough and after I did, I felt like the rest of the achievements would be easy – and I was right.

Throughout the course of the game, you are presented with 5 moral choice decisions in the main plot lines which are obviously designed to spawn a second playthrough, however a few well placed tactical saves can get around this which results in 10 achievements for the price of 5.

In addition to the moral choices, there are four different endings you can get which are in no way related to any choices you make outside of the last hour of the game. Again, another few tactical saves at the business end of the game can result in the least amount of work for the maximum reward.

There is another requirement for a partial third playthrough if you are not planning on doing the DLC. You need to get the three different classes to level 20. Thankfully, there is a glitch that can be exploited at the beginning on the game to get to level 20. Having done it twice, I have to say it’s not quick when you have to rinse and repeat the same conversation over and over again but it’s a lot quicker than playing through the entire game three times.

Outside of this, there are a few other things you need to do such as intimidate and persuade a certain amount of people,  kill a certain dragon, inflict 250 damage with one hit (use a mage’s mana cleanse ability) keep your troops alive in the final battle(most easily done by not using them) and kill 1,000 darkspawn. This last one is the most arduous. You have to personally kill the darkspawn but the game only tracks the party kills, not your individual ones. Also, there isn’t an infinite number o darkspawn in the game once you get to a certain point. Thankfully, it counts kills up to a death or reload which means you can rinse and repeat the final battle over and over to grind this one out.

Downloadable Content

There are a grand total of eight DLCs available for Dragon Age. Three of them form part of the main game so playing it when I did was actually an advantage for these. The 3 DLCs in the main game aren’t really noteworthy but two achievements are missable. During The Stone Prisoner missions, you can miss one of the two achievements available if you don’t do the correct actions at a certain point in time. In Warden’s Keep, you will come across a potion which you have to drink but the game asks you if you want to destroy it.

The other five are standalone DLCs which can be played at any point. Leliana’s Song and Darkspawn Chronicles are not connected to the storyline from the main game whereas the other three are. Leliana’s Song has another two missable achievements where you need to either collect some stuff or perform certain actions at the beginning of the DLC.

Darkspawn Chronicles sees you take control of the darkspawn for the final battle and you have to kill the grey wardens. This is only DLC that is wildly different from the main game and it’s a massive faff for the achievements. You basically have to get all the different types of darkspawn to like you to the maximum level. If they die as your companion, the like meter resets and you have to start again. You also have to save an ogre at the beginning and keep him with you for the entire DLC. It’s quick but not straight forward.

The next one on the list is Awakening which serves to extend the story from the main game. You don’t keep your companions from the main game though and I found it difficult to invest in these new characters. By this point I was bored of the game play too. There are three missables in this DLC, two of them are related to a choice you have to make so another tactical save is needed. The other one is for upgrading your hold fully which you need to complete side quests for. This DLC is massive and takes up to ten hours to complete. It felt like twenty after the boredom set in.

The last two DLCs see you complete smaller missions and thankfully neither of them have any missables – the only DLCs to not have them. Nothing really worth mentioning other than the fact that the game difficulty comes in to play here. After not having to do anything on any specific difficulty, the two DLCs both have bosses that need to be beaten on hard. Witch Hunt isn’t particularly difficult if you have maxed your level but Golems of Amgarrak offers a ridiculous boss fight that it nearly impossible if you don’t prepare with over 300 health potions or exploit a glitch where you can’t be hurt. As you can probably guess, I took the glitch option and smashed him on the first attempt – very rarely do I get to say that even with glitch exploitation.

The main game of Dragon Age was enough for me. The extra DLCs gave people more of what they wanted but playing it when all of them were released, it became more of a chore than anything else. There are a total of 35 missable achievements across all of the DLCs and game so getting all the achievements in the quickest time takes a little bit of planning and lots of patience.

Dragon Age was a rewarding completion despite the onset of boredom towards the end and I haven’t written off Dragon Age 2 or Inquisition just yet. Maybe their reviews will appear here in 2025.