by Peter Mutuc
Platform: PC, PS3 and XBOX 360
Developed by: Bioware Edmonton
Published by: Electronic Arts
Granted, Dragon Age: Origins is already an excellent computer role-playing experience which features a story rife with complication, racial politics, boss battles which will drive at your masochistic tendencies and forces the player to pick and mix the fates of a country and its people. It was one of this year’s most satisfying games you’ll play which when you get to the end will make you sigh in contentment, look back and then realize you just really want to do it all over again.
If this game was a girl it would be perfect and I would marry it and we’ll have lots of babies.
Now Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening would be that same girl getting breast implants, a bikini wax and a skimpier dress.
It’s not over yet
The game starts you off at Vigil’s Keep, a refurbished Grey Warden outpost in Amaranthine. From there the game wastes no time pitting you immediately with darkspawn who have made a surprisingly organized attack at the keep. A Ferelden warrior named Mhairi helps you clean up the mess. Along the way you’ll meet Anders, an apostate mage with a penchant for small, cute things and an old friend from the original game (hint: big axe, always drunk, 4-feet tall). Eventually you’ll encounter what could possibly be one of the weirdest moments you’ll ever have with Dragon Age: an eloquent darkspawn. He starts off by kicking some guy over a fence of huge wooden spikes and waxes poetic about the ending of the Blight. Your guy finds this guy and everybody basically votes to cave his head in. After the battle you’re given an idea about the enormity of the task ahead of you, the brunt of which is basically restarting the order of the Grey Wardens.
And you’ll be doing that while trying to run a stronghold, keeping the people under your protection happy and fed, swaying assassination attempts and oh yeah, let’s not forget the darkspawn too and those rumors of a new Blight coming in.
Yeah. No pressure.
Back with a vengeance
You could choose to make a new level 20 Grey Warden from Orlais or if your character survived their ordeal with the Archdemon, import him over from Origins as you’ll be missing a lot of reference material from the original game. Importing your character also allows you to keep some of the stuff you had in tow together with all the spells, skills and talents you’ve earned.
You’ll also gain access to several new sets of skills, spells and talents to learn together with six new specializations further extending your Grey Warden’s methods of dealing death. It’s worth noting that the new specializations totally make you rethink how your character fights his battles.
While these new abilities seem awesome enough they tend to make gameplay a wee bit easier since you’ll be fooling around with at minimum a couple of level 20 characters. Sure, the game sometimes makes up for it by pulling off ambushes and ridiculous amounts of enemies. You’ll still panic when you notice an emissary powering up a spell but more often than not you’ll be prepared to counter what they’ll have under their sleeves.
The thing to really watch out for are the boss battles. While the Inferno Golem and others are “staple epic” the fight to really get ready for is against the Queen of Blackmarsh. If you remember how ridiculously hard that battle against the high dragon during the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest was then, this is bound to bring in spastic bouts of bitter nostalgia. Meaning yes. It’s that fun.
A bit less shiny
Origins calls itself something of a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate. And by all accounts I’m inclined to agree. Awakening follows up by answering a few system-related issues, a slew of neat new features and more of the good old ultra-violence. Unfortunately Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening doesn’t exactly do a better follow through on this and doesn’t deliver as much punch as the first game did.
I find it sad that your companions this time around aren’t as interesting as your old friends back in the original game. At times I even found it a bit hassling to talk to them about it. The story, while infinitely better than most cookie-cutter fantasy role-playing games, still pales in comparison to its predecessor’s.
Of course it simply really is what it is: an expansion for an already excellent role-playing game. I like that it doesn’t pretend to be anything else other than a meaty supplement but it’s a bit painful to see that it has the potential to be so much more than just that.
Pros: An eloquent Darkspawn, more awesome abilities, unpretentious storyline, masochistically-pleasing boss battles
Cons: Could have been much better, boring companions
Trivia: FFVII’s Vincent Valentine crosses over to Ferelden in the form of voice actor Steve Blum, who voices Oghren and the temporary companion Gorim.
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