Dragon Age: Origins - We Have Begun

As I have mentioned before, I purchased a Playstation 3 (PS3) just after Christmas, at the urging of my boys.  Until recently the only games I had bought for it were the X-Men arcade game (my initial reason to want the PS3) and then Uncharted: Drake's Fortune - again at the recommendation of Lucas and Adam.

For months, though, I have not had a new game.  Well, on my birthday, all my kids pooled together to get me a nice sized Best Buy gift card, and so -- with all that virtual cash burning a virtual hole in my wallet -- I looked to the boys again for advice on a game I might like.  And, if possible, would there be something Sherry might like to watch me play.

Dragon Age: Origins was the result.  I have been playing it for several days now, and wow, am I glad they thought to recommend it!

It is a "Role Playing Game" variety of video game.  As you can tell from the name, it is a fantasy-world game; magic, swords, monsters - just the sort of thing I'd like.  It reminds me quite a bit of the Dungeons and Dragons-based Baldur's Gate games, but there is a more manageable amount of complexity, I think.  At least, more manageable if Sherry is watching, and that matters.  She is really enjoying watching me play, keeping track of the status of the other three members of my party while I am in battle, helping me remember quest details and so on.  We are on a long quest to rid the land of the monstrous beasts which are once again attacking the civilized world.  Ultimately, we will have to face an "Archdemon" -- who will likely take the form of a really cool, but evil-to-the-core dragon.



The game expects the player to recruit a party of adventurers -- up to three of which may join the player for most missions.  The advanced design, and helpful AI allows the non-player characters to have fairly full stories, and reasonably complex personalities. They react to the main character's choices -- even to his choice of words. Deciding how, or whether, to placate other party members is a very interesting challenge in the game, and nicely supplements the development of the "hero" as he (or she) works on the many quests on the road to the final battle.  [The figure pictured on the left is one of the non-player characters, Morrigan, a mage who joins the player character early on.  I really enjoy her abilities.  And I quickly recognized her voice as that of Claudia Black, who I have enjoyed immensely in Farscape and Stargate.]

I anticipate this game will take us several months to get through, since Sherry will be back to her "school schedule" before we know it.  But that's great.  We'll have something to wind down with for an hour or two on the weekends.

It's making me think I should finally finish Baldur's Gate sometime.  But for that, I might need a new PC.

Uh oh.