11.22.2010

Let's Talk Dragon Age

Hi there, remember me. No one is reading this anymore, but I have hopes that I can revive it by re-posting the links in a lot of places and making more actual posts. Which, I would do, if I were (a) doing anything interesting and (b) had time while doing said interesting things to write a post. Which brings us to now.

What have I been doing the last, oh, 3 years or so?

Not much...at least in the realms of things that need to be spoken of on this "nerd blog".

The last 2 months or so though.....I've been playing the super amazing EA/Bioware game Dragon Age: Origins!

I had been hearing about it from a good friend of mine for several months before I tried playing it. He had been playing the PC version and was downright hooked. As I generally respect his taste in most everything nerd related, and since the more I talked with him about this game the more I realized that the setting sounded amazing, he managed to convince me to play it. Now, I'm not a PC gamer. Never had been (with the exception of Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna when I was a senior in college and had nothing better to do). So, when I found out that this title had been released for the PS3, I (finally) decided to jump on it. And then it sat on the shelf for a while. Until the end of September, when I found myself all alone in the apartment for 2 and a half hours and didn't know what to do. So, I started a game of Dragon Age. And, since then, I've done almost nothing in my free time than play Dragon Age. Seriously...I've spent the waking hours of entire weekends playing this game. In fact, I've FINALLY started to see how people become so obsessed with WoW that they abandon their work and their families to play WoW. I've become a Dragon Age addict. I'm not afraid to admit it.

Now, I could tell you all about the setting and all about the story and things like that, but you could also just go to this website, and read more about this game than you probably ever want to know. What I WILL talk about is what REALLY got me into this game. The characters, and the amazing attention to detail on the dialogue that the game designers decided to write in. Seriously...the dialogue in this game is AMAZING. From the conversations options YOU can choose (each of which has the potential to lead to different paths/outcomes/endings.....bonus points for the game having SERIOUS re-play value....more on that later), to the HILARIOUS conversations your party members have while wandering around behind you, this game has GREAT dialogue. And most of the party members are ridiculously loveable (or hateable). Again, you can find a lot of detail on the characters and the dialogue on the wiki page for the game, but let me talk a little about some highlights.

1. Alistair. He's essentially a glorified altar boy, having been trained by the church to be a templar and control magic and mages. This makes me especially laugh since my main character on this playthrough is a mage. The game writes in romance options, and Alistair is definitely the goody-goody pretty boy that every girl dreams about as a child. (Ok, at least girls like me.) Being in a romance with Alistair is fun...it's....romantic. It's cute. And it's EXTREMELY AWKWARD....which makes for even more hilarity.

2. Leliana. She's another potential romanceable character....for a male lead AND a female lead. Yes, that's right, Bioware has made the EXTREMELY fantastic decision to finally go where few games dare to go. And they do it RIGHT. Very good news! Leliana has an interesting past, but she's recently joined the church and has become very pious. She comes to you saying she saw you in a vision from above and she thinks she's destined to join you. She's a really sweet girl, especially on the surface, but once you start uncovering her past, you learn that she's not always been the sweet church girl she is now. She's the kind of girl that, if you let her, will either be your lover, your best friend, or both.

3. Zevran. Zevran is, in my opinion, the most hilarious character in the game. He's an elven rogue assassin who is sent to kill you. He fails, and if you let him live, he'll join you. He was raised in a nearby country in a whorehouse and then taken in by the largest group of assassins in that country. He'll sleep with most anyone (male or female) and he'll likely pretty much start hitting on you from the moment you let him into the party. If you're in a relationship with either Alistair or Leliana and you start a romance with Zevran, bringing Zev along with either of those party members will incite HILARIOUS dialogue as they fight over you. Zevran also has the best one liners in the game. And...he's a terrible assassin and an even worse rogue. We'll talk about that in a later post where I post my favorite moments with all these characters. Just know.....Zev is a fricking riot.

4. Wynne. She's an old-lady mage who will come with you if you decide to help the circle of magi with something. She's always for doing the right thing, so if you want to be bad in this game, make sure you don't take Wynne with you to do it. Mostly, I like her because her dialogue with Alistair is some of the best in the entire game. I try to have them both in my party if I'm just wandering around an area because they will say THE BEST things to each other. Especially if you're in a relationship with Alistair.

There are other characters. Morrigan is the other romanceable character if you're a male only. She's fairly pivotal to the story line, but being a mage myself, I found more need for one of the rogues than for her. She and Alistair cannot stand each other. If you put them in a party together they will constantly argue. She also doesn't like Leliana very much, as Morrigan is extremely anti-church. Sten and Oghren are warrior characters. Oghren's dialogue can be funny at times as well. You also have a dog in the party and Sten and the dog interacting can be hilarious.

Last thing for now.....

This game is SERIOUSLY re-playable. For one thing, there are so many different types of character you can be, and each has a slightly different origin story. For another thing, you can make a lot of very pivotal decisions in conversations and in actions that will lead to very very very different outcomes. Also, who you decide to be in a romance with, if anyone, will have big impacts on the ending.

All in all.....this game is a serious win.

And I already know what type of character I'm playing next. And what type I'm playing the time after that......

Labels: , , , ,