The sequel: Got time to kill between Elder Scrolls games? Then allow us to submit the Dragon Age series, developed by BioWare and set in a magical fantasy kingdom the player must unite in order to fight an impending invasion by demonic forces. You can be a warrior, mage or rogue coming from an elven, human, or dwarven background - and that's just the tip of the robust character creation system - and you traverse through the open world role playing environment doing various tasks for NPCs, fighting monsters for experience and loot, and eventually level yourself up to a point that you're in a position to fight the ultimate evil. Oh and you can get mad laid, too. Yeeeeah boi! The original: All of which (except maybe the bumping of uglies) was previously on offer in the Baldur's Gate series, a franchise of role playing games set in the Forgotten Realms Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting that were also developed by BioWare. The two series are so closely linked that you can find countless mods online which turn the Dragon Age titles into next-gen versions of the slightly old hat Baldur's Gate PC games; the developers say they want to move away from their earlier, licensed work but Baldur's Gate - and especially the game that bridged the two series, the D&D-derived Neverwinter Nights - is pretty much identical to Dragon Age in terms of setting and styles of play. The only real difference is in the graphics. And the getting mad laid.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
