Dragon Age: Origins, or “Oh, Alistair!”
Warning, this post will contain MASSIVE SPOILERS!!!! If you haven’t played through the game and want to experience it all for yourself, then please please please stop reading now.
So, I only asked for one specific thing this Christmas from my family: Dragon Age: Origins. My mother, who is apparently inept at finding computer games, made me go to Target with her to purchase the game about 2 weeks prior to Christmas. I stood in line, paid for it, even had to get my license scanned because of its M rating. I was hoping that maybe I’d get to have a little taste of it early since I am the one who actually “got it”, but no, I watched as my mother wrapped it up and put it under the tree. I felt like a teenager again, waiting for Christmas so I could go unwrap Chrono Trigger for my SNES, or FFVII for my Playstation. I started counting down days until I actually got to play the game, and not until Christmas. I actually got it on Christmas Eve, and started it that night after the kids went home.
A week and a half later I have beaten this game twice. I can honestly say that it is the best PC game I have ever played. Which is saying a lot considering how much time and energy I have invested in WoW. I would put them on different tiers though. WoW is neverending, there is no personal story for your character outside of what you create for it. You go through the same quests and things everyone else does, you are no different than the other players. Dragon Age on the other hand sucks you in, gives your character a significant role and background, choices you make affect the course of the story. The story and how you can manipulate it, really are what makes it such a great game.
My first run through I went through most of the game blind, I played a City Elf Warrior. Being captured by the Arl’s son, the threat of abuse and rape, it was mildly disconcerting. I found myself pleased when she was standing over the corpse of the man who had stolen her from her wedding, killed her fiance, and ravaged her cousin. It would have been a great start to a terrible and vengeful warden, someone who took the injustices of her people and spat it in the faces of the rest of the world. Instead, I gave her a paladin’s heart. I’ve become a sucker for the noble and good characters in my old age. I find myself wanting to really dissect that. If this had been ten years ago, the moment my character met Alistair, I would have wanted her to cut his throat. Instead, I was enchanted, amused, and genuinely liked him. After looking around the internet for a while, seems I’m not the only one. It got to the point that I experienced something that hasn’t happened with a lot of video games, I had become Seriously Emotionally Invested (A future blog topic!). I knew that they had given me this great character for my character to fall in love with and they were going to take him away from me somehow. If the Baldur’s Gate Series, and Neverwinter Nights series has taught me anything, its that they will find a way to make things end on a sad note. Once I realized this I decided to no longer fly blind. I had to find a way to make a happy ending. Maybe it was me being selfish, but dammit for once I wanted the happy ending. I wanted all the bells and whistles and good things to happen. I wanted to keep Alistair.
I mean the guy had me with “Have you ever licked a lampost in winter?” and “Besides my unholy love for fine cheeses and a minor obsession with my hair, no.” His dialogue is some of the best in the game, if not the most touching at times, and funniest at others. So I set out on my own personal quest for my elf to keep him, keep him from being king, and living through destroying the archdemon. It broke my heart to make him sleep with Morrigan, really it did. But it was for the best right? I tell you right now that little decision is probably going to come back and kick everyone who played the game in the ass in subsequent sequels/expansions. I beat my first run through in about 43-45 hours. We lived happily ever after rebuilding the Grey Wardens.
I started a new character immediately after beating it. A human noble rogue, who didn’t know it when she started in the game, but I was going to make her queen. I could have explored the other relationships in the game, the different ways the game could end for sad and bad. But dammit, to me that queen position seemed the ultimate happy ending. So after about 53 more hours of gameplay, my dear Elissa Cousland, sits on Ferelden’s throne with her King Alistair. I did some things different the second time around though. I saved at key points in the game. I have half a mind to go back this evening, load the game I saved before agreeing to Morrigan’s offer and refusing her, so I can get all weepy when Alistair either eulogizes me, or he sacrifices himself for me.
Its strange to me, really, that I find replay value in this game. Its part story, its part the character interactions. I’m definitely going to be going in with a male character at some point and exploring all the options there as well. I just had to experience all the good with Alistair before I went any other direction in game. I became mildly obsessed with achieving that. The game has done something else though, it has sufficiently lit a fire under my ass to do some fanart. I want to draw my characters. I want to draw Alistair. Hell, I want to draw Morrigan. So keep an eye out here, I’ll be posting it when I get it done. 
