With BioWare having just released the excellent Mass Effect, gamers who were more privy to swords and sorcery than they were to lasers and interstellar space travel began wondering if they'd see the legendary developer return to the high fantasy genre that brought them to fame. Thankfully, we didn't have to wait long before Dragon Age: Origins landed, becoming the worthy spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate series and the high-fantasy answer to Mass Effect. The game thrived thanks to all the BioWare hallmarks - an excellent storyline, convincing character relationships, and some fantastic moral dilemmas in which the player's decisions would significantly affect the story. The sense of consequence to your actions built on that of Mass Effect, as your judgements could kill off important characters, impact key points in the story, and of course affect the game's conclusion. Origins was also seemingly the last BioWare game to feature a combat system that allowed the player to do some serious tactical tinkering - fine-tuning AI behaviours to make you a lethal heroic unit come battle time. It may not have been much of a looker, but Dragon Age: Origins is one of the great story-oriented RPGs of the noughties.
Gamer, Researcher of strange things.
I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.
