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[Kagoshima_Luke]

First off, this thread has a soundtrack, so click this:




As I was grumpily looking over TGA GotY candidates today, in typical "old man yells at the cloud" fashion, I couldn't help but feel that we just aren't getting the same type of amazing games that we used to. Games like Dragon Age: Origins!

Now, to be fair, DAO was janky as hell. Animations were clunky. Visuals were... OK. I would almost classify it as AA instead of AAA. Also, The Fade portion sucked.

All of that said, the game was AMAZING. What Mass Effect 1-2 did for sci-fi games, DAO did for fantasy. The story was epic, characters memorable and the choices (and their consequences) still resonate with me over a decade later. I almost never care about characters in videogames, considering how awful the writing usually is, but in DAO I truly cared throughout the ups and downs.

Anyone else love DAO as much as I do? Also, why the heck aren't we getting games like this anymore??

More fun DAO stuff:

Remember post-battle dialogue scenes like this?:

Please, no swooping:




Leliana sings at camp:




Our boy Sandal:

Finally, if you game on PC and fancy another playthrough, I would recommend checking out the mod scene. There's a lot there to tweak the game and update some of the outdated visuals.

 

[SirKicksalot]

I didn't mind The Fade but the Deep Roads was like 24 hours long... Still, I enjoyed all parts of the game. It captured the Baldur's Gate feeling very well.
Mark Darrah, the former producer, has a Youtube channel with great videos on all three games and more from Bioware:

 

[Tallahassee]

love this franchise, DA:O is a masterpiece

 

[Puscifer]

Some great mods on PC that increase battle speed JUST A TAD, the increase finishers and and the skip the fade mod are the best in my eyes.

 

[-Zelda-]

Loved this game on PS3 and wish it would get a PS5 and Switch update. Sadly, it is the only one I liked in the series, so for me it is a standalone game. Did not like the others at all.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Really loved playing this one back in the day.

The sequels... The second one is a turd and Inquisition wasn't as bad, but felt more like a single-player MMO rather than a CRPG, probably because of it's large maps and shitty sidequests. Loved the environments tho, very cool visual design.

 

[-Zelda-]

Please, no swooping:

LOL! I reeally wish someone would make a clip of that guy from the start who says "you see ser knight, we might die, but we'll be warned about it first!"
Davril I think his name was, to Jory.

 

[tommib]

Origins was so good but the rest is terrible.

 

[stn]

Firmly in my top 10, loved the hell out of this game. I'm actually playing it slowly and going for 100% of the achievements. Admittedly, its just not a priority because I've beaten the game 3-4 times already.

 

[Rush2112]

Combat has not aged well. It was bad even then and now its unbearable.

 

[R6Rider]

I mostly remember the minute long load times on PS3.

 

[Raven117]

Such a great game.

 

[jaysius]

The only good Dragon Age, needs to be played on a PC to get the full effect.

Divine Divinity Original Sin have picked up the slack in a huge way.

I'm really looking forward to that dev's Baulder's Gate 3 whatever decade they release it.

 

[Amiga]

Western story based RPGs peaked with DAO (yes better than Witcher)


Last great game of good old Bioware before they died.

 

[lmimmfn]

This was amazing on PC, what an absolutely fantastic game, one of my favourites ever, such a shame DA went to shit afterwards, the sequels were horrific.

 

[Hendrick's]

Inquisition destroyed the franchise. I don't see them getting back to what made Origins great.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Actually played and finished dragon age origins it’s a unique style, tribes, kinda old school when I think of BioWare it comes to mind.

 

[JayK47]

Best of the 3 games by far. I also enjoy 2. I hated the trouble you had to go through for all of the DLC on PC. You had to have a Bioware account and manage your DLC through them. Total pain. Back when games were intentionally removing game content to hurt resale. Such a shit practice that was. But they won that battle. Most games are digital now with no chance for resale.

 

[Irobot82]

It just dawned on me, Alistair's VO is same as Gale in BG3 I think.

Inquisition destroyed the franchise. I don't see them getting back to what made Origins great.

Did you forget about Shit Mountain and press A for Awesome?

 

[Hendrick's]

It just dawned on me, Alistair's VO is same as Gale in BG3 I think.

Did you forget about Shit Mountain and press A for Awesome?

No I have not, but I think DA:I took it in a direction it's not coming back from. I'd be happy to be wrong though.

 

[Handel]

DAO is in my top 5 all time, it just has so many branching paths in the narrative/dialogues that are sorely lacking in most games since then, and my favorite party in any game. I enjoy the combat more than most, it's really rewarding to play on higher difficulties to appreciate the strategies you can employ.

DAO is the closest thing we have to a Lord of the Rings experience in video games.

 

[The_hunter]

I really like DA:O. EA should make a dragon age legendary collection.

 

[Esca]

Loved it in the pc. Played through it once in isometric iirc and 3rd person. Might have to fire that back up since I don't remember much

 

[fart town usa]

I have the PS3 version with all the DLC. I don't remember much of anything when it comes to the game itself but at the same time, I also remember absolutely loving it. It's been on my radar for years, want to go back and revisit it. Maybe this winter.

 

[light2x]

This game gets recommended every single time I ask for a good RPG game to play. I'll eventually come around to playing it one of these days.

 

[levyjl1988]

I fucking love this game. I bought the LE twice. I have one to play and one to keep sealed and preserved on X360.

Too bad they took down social.bioware.com and removed the option to download and install promotional DLC items (such as preorder bonuses and such) with the game.

 

[_Idea_of_Evil_]

DA:O is incredible. This game was an integral piece in shaping and reinforcing my devout love and appreciation for the fantasy genre as a whole.
As a kid I was already shooketh by the LotR movies, then this game drops years later and I was locked in from the start. Poured at least 200hrs into it with different classes/races.

 

[_Ex_]

Coincidentally I beat DA:O for this first time this very year, 360 version.
These were my thoughts (via my HLTB entry):

Spoiler

Overall it's a great WRPG.

 

[Laptop1991]

I've owned the game for years on Origin and have to admit i've never started it, maybe 1 day.

 

[Rykan]

I would love for this series to get the Mass Effect Remastered treatment. It could use with a few changes to put it on par with modern games, and the console versions especially could use a lot of work.

 

[Rhazkul]

Leliana based trad waifu.

 

[Icymanipulator]

Still the best game in the series. I love it to death. Played it through 4 times over the years. Morrigan is the best.

 

[cartman414]

First off, this thread has a soundtrack, so click this:




As I was grumpily looking over TGA GotY candidates today, in typical "old man yells at the cloud" fashion, I couldn't help but feel that we just aren't getting the same type of amazing games that we used to. Games like Dragon Age: Origins!

Now, to be fair, DAO was janky as hell. Animations were clunky. Visuals were... OK. I would almost classify it as AA instead of AAA. Also, The Fade portion sucked.

All of that said, the game was AMAZING. What Mass Effect 1-2 did for sci-fi games, DAO did for fantasy. The story was epic, characters memorable and the choices (and their consequences) still resonate with me over a decade later. I almost never care about characters in videogames, considering how awful the writing usually is, but in DAO I truly cared throughout the ups and downs.

Anyone else love DAO as much as I do? Also, why the heck aren't we getting games like this anymore??

More fun DAO stuff:

Remember post-battle dialogue scenes like this?:

Please, no swooping:




Leliana sings at camp:




Our boy Sandal:

Finally, if you game on PC and fancy another playthrough, I would recommend checking out the mod scene. There's a lot there to tweak the game and update some of the outdated visuals.

I liked it better when it was Baldur's Gate.

 

[gaming_again]

It is so hard to go back to. The combat is beyond dull.

The voice acting might be the best ever in any video game.

 

[kikkis]

Started playing this on x yesterday. About half hour in so no major impressions.

 

[Hastelander]

I really like DA:O. EA should make a dragon age legendary collection.

EA should leave DA alone.

 

[Bulletbrain]

Loved DOA despite not being into RTWP. What I most remember is playing around with the extended tactics mod and making elaborate tactics that pretty much eliminated the need for pausing.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Shortly after Origins released, it instantly became my personal number one videogame franchise.
I liked it better than Mass Effect which felt a bit like the KOTOR game Bioware wanted to make but couldn't secure the Star Wars franchise rights. The first game also felt a bit stiff and the scale of the events didn't really seem to fit the environment.
With DOA the setting, the conversations between NPCs during exploration that made me constantly switch between combinations, the NPC romances, the main story arch, the sidequests, they all felt really special and reminded me why I had loved Bioware's previous work.

Then Dragon Age 2 didn't budge my top preferences at all. It's a bit more arcadey but I liked the action, story, lore and environment still the same. At the time the only thing that could compete with it was The Witcher 2 but CDPR's gameplay before Witcher 3 just wasn't great.


And then Inquisition released, bought the game on day one. I felt it was so bad I couldn't even finish the game after spending some 25 hours on it.
The gameplay had me manually mining ore for an army (oh yeah let me spend 10 seconds hitting this little rock with a small hammer which will enable my settlement to produce 400 spears) and getting real-time waiting periods for base upgrades like it was some stupid F2P game. Combat felt boring. Then they hit all female romanceable NPCs with the ugly hammer and turned them into the man-with-boobs trope (why?).

And I can swear all these happened within a very short period of time: the cute Elf girl turned me down because she only liked women, then I followed a sidequest from the super funny and fabulous gay mage where his sexuality wasn't accepted by his father and all the drama that followed (after 2 games showing middle-age societies with complete sexual freedom, all of a sudden homophobia was an issue in Dragon Age) then I had to listen to an unsolicited explanation from the guy with horns on how his sexuality is so open that he bangs dudes and girls from other species (ookay..?) and then I had to listen some guy saying he's transgender and horny horned dude is so good for accepting him into his team.

The whole thing felt like a fucking lesson I didn't ask for and the gameplay wasn't making up for it, to say the least. At some point I asked myself why I was spending time on the game. I started playing other genres in the intent to go back to that game eventually, but the moment Witcher 3 came out I just couldn't bear myself to go back to Inquisition's chores.

 

[Drizzlehell]

I remember my initial reaction to this game when it first came out was "ugh, this isn't Mass Effect, fuck outta here"

Then it changed to "this game has a pretty generic fantasy setting but the characters are pretty fun, I guess... please marry me, Morrigan"

And then I went into the god-tier brain level of understanding and started playing through the whole trilogy obsessively, spending at least few hundred hours with each installment. Origins is still easily the best, and what I appreciate about it the most is how it's a near-perfect example of what a computer role-playing game with a 3D camera view should be, i.e. simple yet engaging and epic storyline, deep and interesting lore, fun characters, and decision system that provides actual, tangible consequences of your choices that have an influence over how the story will play out dozens of hours later. I could go on, really, but it's enough to say that it's just a really good game.

Although maybe it's not the best entry point for someone who's not into fantasy fiction or computer role-playing games in general. Because I know I wasn't and I initially bounced off of this game because it felt so generic - especially after playing Mass Effect which was positively bursting with imagination when it came to its world building. In Dragon Age it's like going through a Tolkien fantasy trope checklist:

• High fantasy story about ancient evil that's about to return? Check!
• Medieval setting where everyone talks in various English accents? Check!
• A "chosen one" type of protagonist who has to carry the whole quest on his shoulders for some reason? Check!
• Wizards, knights, bards, and rogues? Check!
• Dwarves and elves? Check!
• Dragons? Go fuck yourself!

So yeah, before I ever got into fantasy and back when the extent of my interest in that genre was watching Lord of The Rings movies, needless to say that I wasn't very pumped about what Dragon Age had to offer. But what's funny about that is that the overall lore of this game starts to get really interesting once you take a much closer look. But it probably wasn't until DA: Inquisition when I became fully invested and actually went back to replay both Origins and Dragon Age II, at which point I was fully immersed in that world.

And even though Dragon Age II had some major flaws of its own, I still love that game. I actually do like that it attempted to make its combat a bit more dynamic and action-oriented because the combat in Origins always felt really wooden and it was the least interesting part about that game. Which sucked because of how much fighting you had to do in it. But back to Dragon Age II - what I loved about it the most were obviously the characters, but I also liked the story a lot. It was such a departure from a traditional fantasy RPG and an interesting approach to telling a story that's more like this literary epic, conveying a story about a central character and how his life's story unfolded over many years. I also loved how it touched upon some really mature themes, which is something that I think only The Witcher series managed to surpass in terms of role-playing game storytelling.

Inquisition on the other hand... well, let's just say that it's really great to play from moment to moment, and it has some truly epic moments throughout the campaign. But overall, I remember being severely disappointed with how it handled the decisions that you've made throughout the game, and how inconsequential they felt at the end of the day. Evey part of this game existed in a vacuum, separate from each other and without any tangible effects of your actions being visible anywhere in the story or the levels you explored. Like, I remember that one moment in Crestwood, when I first arrived in that area only to see it in disarray, with a lot of monsters and ghouls running around, and torrential rain pouring all the time. And then I ventured into this underground cave system to locate and close a fade portal that was stuck under a lake, and when I emerged from the other side, I found that the rain has cleared and the map suddenly gained a completely new look. And it was a great feeling because for a moment there, I felt like I actually did something that had an affect on the world at large, and that whatever I was doing as an Inquisitor actually had a positive effect. But then I realized that it was just a scripted event and once I returned to Skyhold it was as if nothing had changed and no one really cared that I fixed things around Crestwood. It completely deflated my enjoyment and immersion, and it was a perfect example of how this whole game essentially fails at letting you role-play as a character in a reactive world, and also how it's vastly inferior to the excellent Dragon Age: Origins.

 

[AncientOrigin]

I fell in Love with this game had all the DLC.played it also on PC with mods.especially loved the music and especially Lelianas song.I was sooooo disappointed when the second game turned into more of an 3D action game.

 

[Mephisto40]

I'm one of those crazy people that actually enjoyed Dragon Age : Inquisition

 

[lifa-cobex]

Defiantly an all time fav.
Why were the squeals so fucking bad?

I actually pirated this when it first came out as I was jobless at the time.
First payday i went out and got it plus the dlc's

I always wanted to know what became of Flemeth and Morrigan but i couldn't get into inquisition.

 

[Imru’ al-Qays]

Real shame what EA did to this series. Origins was a spectacular game but 2 and Inquisition just plain weren't

 

[MysticalChaos]

One of the greatest RPGs of all time. If they remade that game and called it Dragon Age 4, I would be fine with that

 

[Bragr]

Bioware created the Mass Effect and Dragon Age universes back to back, both were interesting and intriguing.

It's so rare to get great new triple-A worlds built like that today, especially something so deep with well-made and thought-out lore. Bioware under the doctors was something special indeed.

 

[Rhazkul]

The combat is beyond dull.

This was the reason why i couldn't finish my re-run last year. 15 hours in, i just never returned eventually uninstalled it. Glad i completed it though when it came out 2009.

 

[gaming_again]

This was the reason why i couldn't finish my re-run last year. 15 hours in, i just never returned eventually uninstalled it. Glad i completed it though when it came out 2009.

I feel the same way about KOTOR. it used to be my favourite RPG ever. I fail every replay attempt. ;’(

 

[kikkis]

I thought this was going to boring for the first hours but it shows some intensity early.

 

[Hastelander]

Why were the squeals so fucking bad?

I always wanted to know what became of Flemeth and Morrigan but i couldn't get into inquisition.

II wasn't so bad, in fact it did some things better than Origins; the story wasn't your typical "Hero saves the world", though the narrative is not nearly as good as Origins, and still you have Varric's shennanigans; The art was more stylized compared to Origins' Lord Of The Rings-esque design, particularly the design of races; the music used more varried instruments and orchestrations; And your character's looks affected those of your family. The problem, for the most part, was that it was rushed and many of these either didn't come to full fruition, or were affected by other incomplete aspects (repetetive locations demeaning the change in art direction); Gameplay was not nearly as deep either. Still you can consider II some kind of Dragon Age (or another Bioware RPG) in compact form. Inquisishit though is so far from the formula, and more importantly quality, that I can not fathom how can one enjoy it in anyway, maybe gamepads somehow make it work (but what about the awful inventory and sponge enemies?), but this is all before we bring up any of its powerful yet extremely inflexible engine's faults.
And you're not missing much on either of those witches.

 

[Josemayuste]

I found a Xbox 360 Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition recently (Base game + Awakening + all dlc's on disc) for like, 12€ LOL I bought it instantly, it keeps looking good nowadays, it is my favourite Dragon Age by far, I love it.