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Sunday, November 29, 2009

A few thoughts on Dragon Age: Origins

2:54 PM / Games / 2 Comments

In gaming, the phrase "spiritual successor" is tossed around a lot. Developers are always waiting to cash in on biggest greatest hit, whether it's the endless sea of first person shooters getting cranked out (usually populated by gruff-voiced, steroid-abusing muscle men and colour palettes whose values consist solely of grey and brown) or the plethora of MMOs all attempting to grab a slice of the World of Warcraft pie. Let's face it, the games industry is shockingly derivative, plagiarising to a degree that would make even your average Hollywood executive blush.

And yet I'm inclined to think that originality is overrated. Case in point would be the much-hyped control system Nintendo devised for their Wii console. Hyped as something that would revolutionise gaming, in reality the number of games that actually use that curious controller in anything approaching a creative way is small in the extreme... or so I'm told. Whenever I catch sight of the Wiimote, I always find myself wondering what's so wrong with the good old fashioned mouse and keyboard setup... or I suppose a gamepad if you insist on being so uncultured (joke, guys). There's no sense in reinventing the wheel, not when the original design works so well.

Dragon Age: Origins doesn't attempt to reinvent the wheel, but it does what it does rather well... very well, in fact, although with enough significant problems to prevent it from attaining classic status. Developer Bioware's long-anticipated return to the world of fantasy role-playing, it has been broadly publicised as a spiritual successor to their own Baldur's Gate, which took the unwieldy Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rule set and somehow managed to translate it into something that worked in the context of a real-time isometric PC game. Despite a series of problems stemming from the unsuitability of the AD&D system to what Bioware was actually trying to achieve, Baldur's Gate and its various Infinity Engine successors (Planescape: Torment and the two Icewind Dale games, to say nothing of Baldur's Gate II) became classics of the genre, with their complexity providing something of an antidote to the deliberately straightforward hack-and-slash mayhem of Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo juggernaut. Various circumstances meant that Bioware was unable to continue developing AD&D games, the disappointing Neverwinter Nights being their final foray into the Forgotten Realms. In the ensuing years, they turned their attention to games based on the Star Wars license, as well as their own proprietary Jade Empire and Mass Effect franchises, the latter of which rather impressed me in spite of its fundamentally unoriginal sci-fi universe.

"Fundamentally unoriginal" is an apt way to describe Ferelden, the land we are introduced to in Dragon Age: Origins, the first of a projected franchise set in the same world. Essentially the Forgotten Realms in all but name, I'm inclined to agree with Oli Welsh's review at EuroGamer, in which he describes the developers as having "summoned an entire world into existence in the most meticulous detail, but failed to give it an identity beyond the blandest cliché." A massive amount of work clearly went into creating Ferelden, right down to employing linguists to develop the original languages used by the various races that inhabit it. And yet it, in the end, all they were ultimately able to deliver was something that, far from simply being the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate basically is Baldur's Gate with a slick new 3D engine, fully vocalised dialogue and a handful of unique quirks that distinguish it from being a total facsimile.

Of course, the Forgotten Realms aren't exactly staggeringly original themselves. Virtually all modern fantasy owes a massive debt to Tolkien, whether the influence is direct or indirect, and the Forgotten Realms, with their savage orcs, cheerful halflings and reclusive dwarves, not to mention their general tone, perhaps owe a great debt than most. I'll probably say this again when I come to review The Lord of the Rings, but Tolkien's influence on our understanding of fantasy is so vast that we almost don't notice it. Even if they've never read any of Tolkien's writing, virtually everyone knows what a hobbit or an orc is, and we have no trouble conceiving of elves as noble creatures of great dignity rather than the mischievous imps that were once common in children's stories. Even our spelling has been affected: Tolkien's "elven" and "dwarves" are probably now more common than the "proper" "elfin" and "dwarfs".

Baldur's Gate may not have been all that original, but that doesn't let Dragon Age off the hook. When making Baldur's Gate, working within the confines of an existing license limited Bioware's potential to be truly inventive. With Dragon Age, there's no excuse. In developing a new property from the ground up, the developers had the perfect opportunity to deliver something bold and daring; instead, they served up an extremely conservative high fantasy world with little to differentiate it from the competition. That's not to say that there aren't a handful of unique touches. Indeed, the two different elven castes - city elves and Dalish elves - and the extent to which the former are ghettoised by their human neighbours, is an inspired idea. Likewise, a forest-dwelling matriarch depicted as part-tree and part-humanoid is an image I won't soon forget. But even when Dragon Age strays a little outside the box, its influences are not a million miles away from home. The subterranean slums of the lower dwarven caste, for example, is clearly plucked straight out of the Planescape setting's Trash Warrens.

However, what Dragon Age lacks in originality, it more than makes up for in terms of the sheer depth and breadth of the world it depicts. Borrowing a leaf from the page of Mass Effect, it allows players to customise their character with a choice of back-stories, although it goes considerably further with this than its sci-fi counterpart ever did. Three classes (the conventional warrior, rogue and mage roles), three races (human, elf and dwarf) and six backgrounds (human noble, city elf, etc.) allow multiple permutations, all of which provide a significantly different prologue (or origin story) and directly affect how non-player characters respond to you throughout the game: a human warrior noble, for instance, will experience a very different game from an elf mage, and not simply because they have a different arsenal of abilities at their disposal. There are some fairly significant limitations - for instance, a human warrior is restricted to the human noble background, while all mages, regardless of race, must choose the "magi" background (and dwarves can't be mages at all) - but they largely make sense in the context of the rules that are established for the world. It would make little sense, for instance, for an elf to be able to choose the origin story of a dwarf commoner. It's also worth pointing out that not all origin stories are created equal: the second character I rolled, a human warrior noble, completed his in just over an hour, whereas my first character, an elf mage, took much longer and had access to several more quest lines.

Dragon Age uses the tried and trusted multi-person party system of Baldur's Gate and its successors, and it's here that the PC version scores a major coup over its Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 counterparts. Whereas the console versions are locked into a World of Warcraft-style "over-the-shoulder" third person perspective, which makes flipping between the up to four characters at your command and getting a decent view of the battlefield something of a chore, the PC version can be played both from this perspective and from a top-down "bird's eye" viewpoint, or anything in between. Implementation isn't perfect - on a number of occasions, most often when colliding with tall buildings or trees, the camera inexplicably jumped from a top-down to an over-the-shoulder viewpoint and refused to go back until I moved my characters to another location. It's a shame, because the top-down viewpoint is definitely the best way to experience the game, not only because it's instantly familiar to anyone who played Baldur's Gate but because it allows for a far better view of the battlefield, making combat more tactical. It's perhaps in this respect that the game's pedigree becomes most obvious: it's possible to play in real-time, but you're likely to get slaughtered very quickly if you simply dive into a battle and try to issue orders on the fly. As with the Infinity Engine games, you can pause combat at any time by pressing the spacebar, and queue up moves for your party to execute. When played in this manner, combat is still a challenge (and indeed I'm told that the PC version's difficulty is considerably higher than its console counterparts), and you can expect to make continual use of the quick-save and reload functions, but at least it's no longer the bewildering, claustrophobic free-for-all that is attempting to fight up close and personal in real-time.

Like Ferelen itself, the game's character and combat systems clearly owe a lot to AD&D, with the traditional strength, vitality and charisma stats (or craftily renamed variations thereof) affecting damage, hit points and the ability to influence NPCs in conversation respectively. A handful of tweaks and changes, however, have been made to remove some of the irritation that stemmed from the AD&D rule set's somewhat ropey translation into a CRPG. For instance, mages no longer have to rest to recharge their spells after a single casting: instead, the number of spells you can cast is based on a standard mana (or lirium) system, which can be replenished on the fly by drinking a lirium potion. Likewise, health and mana regenerate quickly after each battle, minimising the need to hang around or scarf replenishment potions after every minor encounter. Perhaps best of all, player characters who are felled in combat are not killed outright but rather KO'd until the end of the encounter, eliminating the need to haul their carcasses and goods to the nearest priest for resurrection. Only if every single character is killed will you be faced with a "Game Over" screen, although it's worth pointing out that, each time a character is KO'd, they will take a hit to one or more stats, which accrue with each KO, eventually rendering them near-cripples. These critical wounds can be cured with injury kits, or by going to camp and resting for the night. Finally, and perhaps best of all, all characters have a single shared inventory space capable of holding up to seventy items, eliminating the need to constantly transfer items from one character to the other, not to mention getting rid of the headache caused when you eject a character from your party, only to realise that they were the one carrying a vital quest item.

And you'll certainly find yourself adding and removing characters on numerous occasions, given that, while there are a total of ten possible companions, you're limited to four active characters at any given time (one of which must always be yourself). Some key quests require a certain companion to be present in order for you to proceed, but most of the time you're free to shape your party any way you see fit. The available characters have a good mix of abilities and personalities, and those who favour story over combat are likely to find themselves outfitting their party based on the latter rather than the former. In a fairly rudimentary form, Baldur's Gate and to a greater extent Baldur's Gate II explored the idea of your companions being more than just mindless meat shields but rather living, breathing individuals with fully-fledged personalities and, crucially, actual opinions. Commit an action that a companion disagreed with than they would more than likely exchange a few harsh words with you, if not quit the party of their own volition or come to blows with you in particularly severe instances. The AD&D alignment system (good, neutral, evil) meant that this was all fairly simplistic: a good character, for instance, would be unlikely to take to you slaughtering an entire village of innocents, while an evil character would turn up his nose at you if you continually indulged in altruistic behaviour.

Dragon Age's master-stroke, therefore, and in my opinion its single greatest improvement over its predecessors, lies in dispensing with such a basic alignment system in favour of vastly more complex characterisation. While there are clearly characters who lean towards a benevolent lifestyle of helping the less fortunate and those whose motives are more self-serving, "good" and "evil" do not exist in such black and white terms. Alastair, therefore, may superficially seem to be on the side of good, but he's also a self-righteous and pompous bastard who rigidly supports the status quo. In comparison, the witch Morrigan initially seems not a million miles away from a conventional AD&D "chaotic evil" alignment, but as the game progresses it's possible to develop a bond with her to the point that she becomes one of your most loyal companions. As a result, continually following a "good" course of action is not sufficient to keep a seemingly "good" character on your side, and in any event most of the choices before you are not so straightforwardly determined as "good" or "bad". More often than not, you are forced to make a choice between two equally troubling courses of action, each of which will have significant consequences, closing down future story paths while opening up others. All characters in your party have an approval rating which starts at 0 (neutral), but quickly slides into positive or negative figures as a result of actions or conversations which reveal your own attitudes and how they compare with those of your companions. Get a high positive rating and a companion will become more loyal and supportive (and, in some cases, enter into a romance with you). Drop too far into negative figures and they're likely to become shirty and uncooperative, or worse. Throughout most of my first playthrough, I journeyed with Sten, a mass murderer with a keenly developed sense of honour; Morrigan, the dryly sarcastic witch from the wilds, pursuing her own hidden agenda; and Zevran, a double-crossing bisexual assassin with a fine assortment of one-liners. Sten was a humourless bastard throughout and I kept him around mainly because of his muscle, but Zevran and Morrigan remained in my party more because I enjoyed their company than due to them excelling on the combat side of things.

That these companions come to life on the screen is more a testament to the writers' and designers' ability to weave compelling characterisation throughout the multi-stranded plot than anything else. Technically impressive though the game engine is, the characters all behave like wooden mannequins, resulting dialogue encounters coming across as stilted and unconvincing. The voice acting is a mixed bag, as it virtually always is in games, with some competently delivered material and some cringe-inducing blunders, consisting of the usual combination of English or quasi-English accents and misplaced mid-Atlantic drawls. (Props, though, to the casting directors for not going down the usual route of giving every dwarf character a bad Scottish accent.) Inon Zur's dramatic score is by far the best element on the audio-visual side, kicking in when it needs to and dipping out when it's unwelcome. Unlike the Infinity Engine games, every line of dialogue is fully vocalised, which is both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because it eliminates the need to read through scads of dry text, a curse because some of the line delivery is truly embarrassing. Unlike Mass Effect, your own character's dialogue interactions are not vocalised, making conversations appear rather one-sided. On the plus side, you at least know exactly what you're going to say to an NPC when you choose a dialogue option, unlike Mass Effect, in which you would frequently find that the words that came out of your character's mouth bore virtually no resemblance to the response you had actually chosen.

Before concluding this review, I feel I should mention an element of the game that really hacked me off no end, and that is the way in which the developers have integrated paid-for downloadable content into the game itself. The first time I set up camp, I came across an NPC with the familiar exclamation mark above his head (the game's way of signifying that a character has a quest to give you). Clicking on him, I was presented with a number of dialogue options, one of which was "Download New Content." Clicking on this took me to a screen informing me that this new content required 560 points in my player account - points which must be purchased with real money. At the time of writing, 560 points costs UK players £4.76, which I don't object to in and of itself. Paid downloadable content isn't really my cup of tea (give me a fully fledged expansion set on physical media and then we'll talk), but I can see the appeal: get instant access to new game material for a relatively small transaction. My problem is that paid content is presented in-game as a legitimate quest line which remains there, effectively taunting you to hand over your credit card number of PayPal account details. This is of course par for the course with publisher Electronic Arts, whose business practices can only be described as extremely shady. By all means make new content available via the game's web site or indeed an announcement on the main menu when your first log in, but don't tell me I have a new quest available to me and then ask me for money for the privilege of undertaking it. Whatever happened to the days when the game that came in the box you bought was fully self-contained?

Dragon Age: Origins is a fine achievement in the CRPG world. It's been a long time in the making, but the wait has largely been worth it. I completed the game the first time round in a little over 34 hours (according to the in-game counter, which doesn't take into account occasions on which I died and had to reload and repeat content I'd already accessed), but I suspect a more thorough playthrough, exploring every possible quest line, would take considerably longer. The game world itself is significantly smaller than that of Baldur's Gate II, still in my opinion Bioware's crowning achievement, but I would argue that it's considerably richer in terms of detail. It's hard not to come down on the game for its near-complete lack of originality or its inability to make the rich, detailed world on display actually come to life, but in terms of actual gameplay mechanics it's a welcome return to the niche Bioware carved out for itself a decade ago with the Baldur's Gate series. And for many, that may well be more than adequate.

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