Dragon Age is an enormous, enormous game, it’s possible for different people to have totally different experiences within it, and it’s not remotely ashamed of that. I’ve probably done quests you’ve never heard of, you’ve probably had deep insights to a character I never bothered speaking to. I never rescued Sten and he’s never been in my party, a friend of mine never had the Dog.
Anyway, this is the story of my Origin, which is not the same as anyone else’s City Elf Origin, because it’s mostly about how events unfolded and how I reacted to them. Needless to say there are spoilers ahead.
Class: Rogue
I’ve long been attracted to the thiefly classes in RPGs, which often conflicts with my desire to be a good guy, I thought after Mass Effect and KotoR I’d finally be moving away from that and sticking with stalwart Warrior types, but Dragon Age’s rogues sucked me back in. It’s not even the stealing, I haven’t put a single point in it, I haven’t laid many traps either, or really used poison, it’s the great, tactical nature of the combat. So see, playing as a Rogue is all about the backstab, getting behind people and inflicting massively increased damage. Even with the clever tactics system it’s hard to get the AI to do this which is why they make a good player character.
Origin: City Elf
When I briefly tried a warrior play though I started as a Dwarf Commoner, which pits you as an oppressed underclass beyond the contempt of Dwarven society, when I decided I’d rather play a Rogue I went for the City Elf, an oppressed underclass of recently freed slaves looked down upon by humans. See the pattern? I like a bit of class warrior in my origins.
Unlike the Dwarf Commoner, where your situation stinks from the off, the Elves are presented as poor but proud, trying to make the best of their lives and sticking to their traditions regardless of outside interference. This presents an immediate problem as one of these traditions is the arranged marriage I’m about to participate in. This presents an immediate dilemma, I’m committed to being a nice guy here, but I’m not sure I want to be marrying some woman I’ve never met, in fact arranged marriage is not an institution I’m remotely comfortable with and seeing it as being part of the ‘happy’ stage before all hell breaks loose is a little disconcerting.
This moral dilemma is handily resolved when an evil Sean Bean impersonator turns up and kidnaps my future wife, my cousin and all the female guests for ‘entertainment’ purposes.
As you may or may not be aware, Dragon Age is a grim game, and an ‘adult’ one in the actual sense of maturity, rather than the sense of tits and arse (although there is still some of that). The Sean Bean impersonator is probably one of the few characters in the game who is simply irredeemably evil (the other main one is helpfully voiced by Tim Curry) most non monster characters have complex and understandable motivations for what they do. Sean Bean man does not, he’s in for a stabbing.
I spend the next half hour cutting a bloody swathe through the nearby Lord’s estate, it turns out Sean Bean man is his son, something that a nagging feeling at the back of my mind tells me might come back to haunt me later, nonetheless I slash my way merrily along, enjoying the visceral combat until I eventually come upon Bean’s inner sanctum, where I discover he and his men have already raped my cousin.
Quite frankly I was astonished that the game went through with this, I knew it was supposed to be a nasty, dark grim little world, but to be hit in the gut with this, after only an hour or two’s play really shocked me. Then, as if Vaughan (referring to him as Sean Bean man seems now too trivial) wasn’t grotesque enough, he offers me money (forty sovereigns, which I’ve later learned is a small bloody fortune in game terms) to not only spare him, but to leave him the women.
Unsurprisingly I did not respond well to this suggestion.
I don’t think I’ve ever really hated a game character like I hated Vaughan in that moment. Oh we all say ‘I hate Raiden’ because he’s annoying, sometimes we resent a villain for the hoops he’s had us jump through, sometimes he’s killed a character we care about, that so far has been the apex of villainy in games. But this was different, not only was this morally repugnant in a believable, non-super-villain way, but it had shattered my own illusions at the same time; I’d been on an adventure, rescuing damsels in distress, it’d been fun for me, and then I’d walked in on this.
Once Vaughan is dead, the authorities come to arrest you for his murder, I stood up and claimed full responsibility for my actions rather than harming the Elves in general, and was rescued by Duncan, a Gray Warden, who conscripts you into his battle against the Darkspawn.
It was some time until I got back to the starting area, and when I did I immediately went to the Elven slum. I found it closed, the guard informed me the new Lord of Denerim, Arl Howe, had ordered the place razed in revenge for Vaughan’s death.
I had a new enemy.
I also think Dragon Age is one of the best games i’ve ever played, on par to its counsin Mass Effect, but I can’t disagree more on: “it’s possible for different people to have totally different experiences within it”. It was advertised like that, but it’s just an illusion.
I couldnt take the dog as a companion, matter of a fact I didn’t even know you could have a dog as a companion until a friend, who used it all along the game in his default party, talked about it. I didn’t enter the code, so I didnt even met Shale. And I killed that assassin sent to kill me. By the way, being able to do so raised my opion of the game: leting him into my party would have been that forced move you are not asked in every other RPG. I didn’t know anything about Wynne, though she was my healer all along.
But all those are just little branches around the big trunk of the story we are FORCED to go through. For example, the dwarf “stage”. You may have sided with one dwarf or the other, but I honestly can’t renember any of their names, or even which one I supported. I’m sure we all renember the colisseum thingie… because we all had to do it, no matter what.
Do you want to strike Loghain before he knows you are even alive? It doesn’t matter, you can’t, just follow the given plan. Do you think the landsmeet is a good idea? It doesnt matter, there WILL be a landsmeet.
Did you kill the damm kid? Did you have her mum do it? Or did you save his life? All three great and outstanding moments (those moments are the biggest asset this game has), but guess what: it just doesn’t matter, it will only be a footnote in the ending. His father will act the very same, save for a couple of sentences. Same goes for the next king, his name will be filled in a blank in a sentence like “xxxxxx is king”.
There is no way to affect the main story in a sense of choosing your path, you just have to follow the given one. In the end, I think most players get a very simmilar experience, with small different footnotes.
But with the sheer size of game that is required to have completely divergent paths based on your choices it’s clear that such a game (at least with this sort of depth, polish and size) is a pipe dream. It would just be too risky and expensive. The only game I’ve played which pulled off the completely different experience thing is the interactive fiction Masq (google it – it’s absolutely superb). However it took ages for them to make and was basically an interactive comic strip; never mind a fully realised world.
I’m with you; in that my ideal game would have proper branches rather than slightly different approaches to the same events along a linear story path – but sadly this is just too impractical.
The illusion in Dragon Age is more strongly achieved than in many other games of its ilk and for that it deserves plaudits. I think the only thing that truly annoyed me was (spoilers ahead!) that on my second playthrough (a Dwarf noble) I wasn’t able to resolve the succession by reclaiming the throne after coming out of exile. Although my character was being played as a conniving, scheming backstabber (I did actually kill my brother – then tried to blame it on the other one) he did have the love of his people before exile and I thought there was going to be an option wherby through popular support and behind the scenes backstabbing I’d be able to reclaim the throne for myself instead of my dickhead brother or Harrowmont. Alas it was not to be; and I was kind of diaappointed with that.
I mostly agree with you. Making a full branched game of the same lenght of Dragon age would be faraonic. But, does it need to be? When I finished Dragon age, replaying it just wasn’t even considered. I’ve tried twice since then, and failed. It is too long and the differences too few or too insignificant. Closest thing I’ve done is replaying the landsmeet from an old savegame.
But, if it were, lets say, a quarter of its size, with four different paths…
Closest thing there is currently: Heavy Rain. I haven’t played it myself, but I’ve been told it fails. Yes, there are several “branches”, but once you know who the assassin is… well, it loses a lot.
A game called Alpha Protocol will be released in may and it advertises just what I want. I’ll tell you when I play it.
I’m designing an RPG like this myself, I want to see how does the work needed scale, as the branches expand.
I was quite interested in Heavy Rain, but lack for a PS3.
I also have high hopes for Alpha Protocol; but I have to admit to being less excited about it after reading a few previews, which have (considering the usual hyperbole of previews) been relatively lukewarm. Still I hope it lives up to its promise – if nothing else I’ve been eager for an RPG with a contemporary setting like Alpha Protocol’s.
The game looks solid, but from what I’ve seen, it seems to have a disturbing lack of stylistic cohesion. I know that the branching paths allow you to be be Bond or Bourne, however, I don’t think that one can write those characters into the same world convincingly. It’s like Sherlock appearing in a Raymond Chandler novel.
What I’d really love is a bona fide spy game influenced by Spooks and Deus Ex.