Dragon Age: Origins

Raz Review: "I have been waiting, no, praying for a KOTOR/Mass Effect-style RPG from Bioware to hit the PS3...and here it is!  In fact - here is quite a lot of it.  This thing is bloody massive.

I'm not talking about the world of Ferelden, which actually looks deceivingly small - I've visited about 3 major towns and it's taken me almost a month to get that far.  As ONE character, I haven't even looked at the other origin stories yet.  My dear sweet lord; there is a lot of conversation in this game.  You might almost say that conversation is the game, spiced up with battles and loot and magic and upgrades and missions and a storyline.  If you're the sort to forge ahead, just skipping all the encounters with liberal use of the square button, then it's unlikely you're the sort of person who'll get much out of this game unless you're into real-time group management combat.

People like me, however, LOVE this kinda stuff.  It's called 'building character', and no, I don't mean in the traditional leveling up way (though there's certainly plenty of that, Final Fantasy style w/tactics, powers, potion-making, trap-making and dungeon crawling).  I mean in the way that one of those old 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books would allow you to begin with something generic and end up with a nuanced person as the end product of your choices and interactions.  And of course, you've a camp full of women (and men!) who just might be a little sweet on you; so there are romantic options to explore as well (thank you, Bioware, for remaining true to that added dimension.  Now when are we going to get a proper, uncensored love scene?  Even softcore nudity would be nice..).

It's KOTOR, Mass Effect and Final Fantasy in a medieval setting.  How can you go wrong?  Complain about eye-candy if you want (water effects, framerates), I don't care.  Because the people who enjoy this game will enjoy it for the story, the characters, the dialogue, the detailed RPG elements and the voluminous depth of interactivity - the very best RPGs will always get these right, and actually make you care what happens enough to go back and reload an old save so you can take a different path."

Online: No
Rated: 9/10