To begin with, I’d like to state that is game is fricking awesome. Thank you for your patience with my sudden idealisation of the game.
Now, Dragon Age is, in style, a cross between Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Oblivion. The combat style from the former, the general look of it the latter.
So yes, to begin with, a little background. It’s made by Bioware, of the highly successful Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. It looks like Oblivion but with better facial expressions and voice acting. Actually, a moment to pause there for my nerdy references. A character called Flemeth, a powerful sorceress, is played by none other than Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Star Ship Enterprise. Star Trek fans rejoice! Or her real name: Kate Mulgrew. Tim Russ, or Tuvok, also joins the cast. Insert geeky smiley face here.
This is Duncan, bloodied, and in a battle. He's shocked about a plot twist that I, for one, saw coming a mile off.
The game is centred around you, surprisingly enough. You play a members of the Grey Wardens, a group of people who exist to save the world from evil, blah de blah de blah. The plot seems predictable – and in an overall sense, it is. But what really makes this game is the details it pays so much attention to. There is, in fact, a reason for the term “origins” at the end of the name. You choose your race, speciality - I chose an elf mage, myself. And where in other games this affects how you fight, here it affects everything. The way people react to you, the way you play the game, the methods you go through to get to your end – all depend on who you are. Unfortunately, I can’t give a completely balanced view of the game, since I don’t know how other characters would fit into the entire thing – so much depends on me being this elven mage.
Details, details, details! Everything is so detailed. The myths, the looks, the backstory – it’s a game based entirely on what’s out there to be found. At first glance, it seems a very boring game, a long fighting slog with unpausable cinematics and generic characters. But there’s so much more to it! Every time I sit back and start to tire of the predictable plot twists or the long episodes of hard fights, then there’s suddenly something to keep me interested. A plot I didn’t see coming, a clever sequence, even just a basic puzzle.
But one of the most incredible features about this game is the way your party interacts. Wherever you go, whatever you do, someone has something to say about it. For example, I was engaging in a general romance with a character named “Morrigan”, a black sorceress of sorts, and every so often I’d flirt with her, or so on. Then I met another woman who joined my party, a sort of fake priestess who’s actually more of a thief. I had them both in my selected party (You can take up to 3 other people around with you wherever you go) and, while running along, Morrigan randomly starts up a dialogue with her. Something along the lines of “If you want to fight for him, I’m prepared to do so.” And a whole conversation followed! It’s the same for each character – they start up dialogues with each other, you, in camp – in certain situations, they give you advice on what you should do – follow it, and they’ll approve, and get stronger for it. I can’t really stress enough in text how good this is – you just have to play and find out.
The levelling up system is to be expected. The combat as a whole, in this game, is somewhat over-stressed. Fight after fight is what leads you to long speeches interspersed with question and answer sessions that could lead you to a fight, your destiny, or, behind door number three, another plot twist that sends you off across the map.
Ah, now, the map. That reminds me. While I have compared it to looking like Oblivion – right down to the point where I could swear I’d visited that Ayleid ruin somewhere before while travelling in the Frostback Mountains – the game isn’t open world, at all. You select places to go from the map, and you go there, barring the odd fight or encounter with a travelling, grumpy dwarf merchant. You can’t jump, there aren’t any high ledges to kick “Adoring Fan” clones off, and you certainly can’t step in a puddle any deeper than half an inch for fear of getting your cute little bloodstained tootsies wet. And they are bloodstained – as soon as you get into a fight, pretty much, even if you’re a mage and try to stay well away from enemies, you end up with blood splattered all over your body, for your trained war dog to lick clean, or to wash off when you go back to camp. Surprising, really, that each stab should cause so much of a blood stain – more surprising is that no one bats an eyelid.
From left to right - Wynne, a self righteous healer who gets on my nerves. Sten, who's a great fighter but hates everything I do. Me, the wonderful Elven Mage Nomeda, prepped to kill. Shale, my favourite character, and part of bonus content that costs £15 more. Supposedly he has a complex backstory, but really he just likes crushing pigeons with his bare hands. There's one great sequence where...no, you can find out yourself. Finally, elven guy, who I persuaded to commit suicide. Fun.
But what Dragon Age lacks in Oblivion-like sandboxness, it makes up for in cutscenes. The occasional loading session carries you far off to, for example, a massive battle scene that nearly parallels that of Lord of the Rings. Gruesome deaths, and one incredible sequence when an enraged warrior jumps through the air, bearing two swords, and stabs an ogre in the gut, lifting one sword out to stab it in further up, and repeating, like climbing a wall of flesh with two bars of metal. Glorious.
Another thing you should know about this game, is that’s it’s huge. And by huge, I mean REALLY huge. I’ve been playing it for a week, about 12-15 hours so far and I still have a fair way to go before I combat any arch-demons. And the replay value I’ve already stressed, in that you have a choice in about 9 different ways to play through the whole game. And I’m sure you’d be happy to go through all the same fights, over and again, when I tell you that each class, Warrior, Rogue, Mage, has four different specialisations to branch off into – giving you a further 12 ways to fight from each viewpoint. I can’t be bothered to do that maths, but already you can see that this game is massive.
So, I implore you – buy this game. Think about it – the more money you spend on this company, the more they have to make a sequel…
Nometet.com says: 
+Great cutscenes
+Great story
+Huge
+Replayable
- too much fighting
- impossible to pause long speeches
- not open world
-no ability to jump
