Dragon Age: Origins

by Electronic Arts

Product Features

• Scalable combat options that let you decide the level of control you have over your party, including NPCs. Issue orders, set your own tactical AI, or take control of any party member to lead the charge.
• 6 possible playable preludes known as 'Origin Stories' which along with your play, define how your hero character will see the world, how it sees you and sets the tone for the entire story.
• Travel across the vast and varied lands of Ferelden; from the conspiratorial halls of the last great dwarven city, Orzammar, to the untamed snarls of the Korcari Wilds.
• Dragon Age: Origins will give you deep character customization options including: class, race, appearance, abilities, and equipment.
• At the heart of the storm sweeping across Ferelden. Decide the fate of nations, people and, ultimately, yourself. Just remember: for every choice, there is a consequence.

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B001IK1BWC
• Item Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Release Date: November 3, 2009
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (647 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #334 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

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  Video Games > PC Games

Product Description

Platform: PC | Edition: Standard

Amazon.com Product Description

From BioWare, the makers of Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Baldur's Gate comes Dragon Age: Origins. An epic tale of violence, lust, and betrayal, Dragon Age: Origins is a single player role-playing game (RPG) set in a fantasy game environment, and featuring three playable character classes, accessible in the form of three races. In addition, the game features extreme character customization, a new game engine, party-based gameplay utilizing non-player characters and a built-in personal history system for each hero character rooted in a variety of possible origin stories. 6 possible hero Origin Stories. View larger. 3 classes and 3 races to play as. View larger. Gritty, brutal action. View larger. Frightening enemies and bosses. View larger. Party-based combat using NPCs. View larger. Stunning 3D environments. View larger. Story In Dragon Age: Origins the survival of humanity rests in the hands of those chosen by fate. You are a Grey Warden, one of the last of an ancient order of guardians who have defended the lands on the continent of Thedas throughout the centuries. Betrayed by a trusted general in a critical battle, you must hunt down the traitor and bring him to justice. As you fight your way towards the final confrontation with an evil nemesis, you will face monstrous foes and engage in epic quests to unite the disparate peoples of a world at war. A romance with a seductive shapeshifter may hold the key to victory, or she may be a dangerous diversion from the heart of your mission. To be a leader, you must make ruthless decisions and be willing to sacrifice your friends and loved ones for the greater good. Gameplay Dragon Age: Origins is a 3D oriented RPG based in a dark, heroic, fantasy realm where moral choices have a lasting impression on the people you meet, the members of your own party and the world around you. The inclusion of subtitle "Origins" in the game's title refers to the six unique origin stories available to new heroes as a new game begins. Each of these has an impact on the player's motivations and his or her experience, and renders a unique prelude, path, and possible ending(s) to the game. There are many different endings to the game based on the origin story of the character and the choices you make as you play through the game. The game features three character classes--warrior, mage, and rogue--and three races of being--Human, Elf or Dwarf--that can assume these classes. Although most game elements, such as weapons, magic, etc., are available to any character, each class and race has different strengths, abilities and affinities which lend themselves to better utilizing different elements. Dragon Age: Origins is a single player game based on party-based gameplay and combat where the player can join, control and quest with up to three non-player characters (NPCs). Players can also quest alone if they so choose, but with the chance of survival are slim. Convincing NPCs to join you, and treating them well may be necessary depending on the varying sentiments between the player and the NPC, or between the NPC's in the party based on the chosen history written into the origin story accepted at the beginning of the game. This uncertainty allows for a variety of possible dynamics within the party ranging from open hostility, all the way to romance. The game progresses in real-time via a pause-and-play tactical combat system that allows the player to check inventory levels, equip a character, etc. in a slight vacuum. Additional features found in the game include: a combination of a standard loot system and a currency system based on gold silver and copper; advanced character customization functionality; the use of poison, traps and herbalism; dual-wielding skills; and "spell combos," which allow players to chain together different spells to create a unique effects. Key Game Features BioWare’s deepest universe to date with over 80 hours of gameplay and more than double the size and scope of Mass Effect. Travel throughout dozens of environments and fully immerse yourself in a shattered world that is on the brink of utter annihilation. An epic story that is completely shaped and reactive to your play style. Complex moral dilemmas offering no easy choices. Tailor your Dragon Age: Origins experience from the very beginning by choose from six different origin stories. Decide how to handle complex issues like murder, genocide, betrayal, and the possession/sacrificing of children without the security of a good/bad slider to tell you what to do. Full character customization allowing the player to sculpt a hero in your own image or fantasy. Elaborate character creator allows you to create your own hero unique from anyone else. Shape your character’s personality and morality based on the choices you make throughout the game. Engage in bone-crushing, visceral combat engaging in battle against massive and terrifying creatures. Unleash legendary powers and choose from over 100 different magical spells and skills. Experience the adrenaline rush of brutal combat, beheading your foes or casting spells that make enemies explode from within. System Requirements: Minimum Recommended OS: Windows XP with SP3 / Vista with SP1 CPU: XP: Intel Core 2(or equivalent) running at 1.4Ghz or greater AMD X2(or equivalent) running at 1.8Ghz or greater / Vista: Intel Core 2 (or equivalent) running at 1.6Ghz or greater Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz Processor or equivalent RAM: XP: 1GB or more / 1.5GB or more 2 GB (XP) / 4 GB (Vista) HDD: 20GB Video: XP: ATI Radeon X850 128MB or greater, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB or greater / Vista: ATI Radeon X1550 256MB or greater, NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB or greater ATI 3850 512 MB or greater, NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater, AMD Phenom II X3 Triple-Core 2.8 GHz or greater Other: DVD-ROM drive for physical disc play; Mouse/keyboard/gamepad for gameplay

Product Description

Become immersed in a dark and heroic fantasy world realized with BioWare’s trademark depth and expertise, enriched with its own unique lore and brought to life by some of the best artists in the industry. Deep customization gives you control over your character in Dragon Age. Race, appearance, abilities, and equipment all affect how you look. What you do will affect how you are perceived. Your origin defines your place in the world and how others see you. These playable sequences introduce the world and let you decide how your character becomes a hero, setting the tone for the entire story to come. Stand at the heart of the storm sweeping across Ferelden. Choose the fates of nations, people and, ultimately, yourself. Just remember: for every choice, there is a consequence. Control your perspective as you guide a party of four into battle. Issue orders, build your own tactical AI, or take control of any party member to lead the charge. Downloadable content will provide you with exciting new stories and ways to expand your Dragon Age experience beyond the original game. Use the provided toolset to author your own adventures to share with friends.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

258 of 272 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kind of like a cross between Witcher and KOTOR 2, November 4, 2009

By	sporked "backfromspace" (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Dragon Age: Origins (DVD-ROM)

Dragon Age is a kind of game that is becoming increasingly rare: a deeply immersive single-player RPG with an interface clearly designed for the PC. It's easy to sling around the word "immersive" at any game that looks pretty, but DA isn't messing around - the world of Ferelden shows a unified sense of design and depth that blows even famously vast games like Oblivion out of the water. Coupled with consistently excellent writing and across-the-board quality character design even down to relatively unimportant NPCs, the game truly does feel like it's reacting to your choices dynamically from the very beginning, and how you play your character can have amazingly subtle effects on the way the story unfolds.

Graphically, the game's a little uneven. All the design elements are there, and it has plenty of high-quality textures and strong environmental visuals - particularly fire effects. The polygons themselves, particularly on character faces, are a little simpler than you'd expect from a 2009 game. Overall, the game looks about on level with Oblivion, although the visual distinctiveness and design ethic of areas and characters are significantly better. Animation stands out as a strong suit here, particularly during the game's frequent dialog sequences, with none of the dead-eyed staring or bizarre walk cycles that plagued other RPGs like Fallout 3.

Gameplay is pretty straightforward, and very much in keeping with previous Bioware titles like Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. You control a party of up to four characters, each of whom develops a plethora of useful abilities to keep track of. The inclusion of a minor programming element (very much in keeping with the gambit system from Final Fantasy XII) will let you set up a few default actions on each character so you're not stuck frantically switching between them to make sure they drink their healing potions, but battles frequently require some degree of tactical planning. Setting up ambushes and planning your party strategy to play to strengths is necessary to get through some tougher areas. The interface is, shockingly, clearly tailor-made for the PC (the console versions have their own interfaces designed from the bottom up and are apparently easier games to allow for the sacrifice in easy access to skills). You have an insane number of quick-access slots, and nearly the entire keyboard is bound to one thing or another. It's the kind of interface that hasn't been in vogue since before the PS2 came out. The game is extremely linear, although the frequent and varied dialog options give it the feel of a more free-roaming game, and it's very tempting to go back and replay huge chunks of the game just to see how the complex and dynamic conversations will play out. The main downside is that there's no easy way to level-grind, which is to the game's benefit to a point (no tedious circling around killing wolves) but occasionally means you can get in over your head.

What the game sacrifices in terms of sandbox free-roaming it more than makes up with in the excellent writing and characterization. An absurd attention to detail and across-the-board excellent voice acting breathes a lot of life into the game's conversations, which make up a significant chunk of gameplay. Characters are extremely varied and the interplay between them is a major draw, a trademark of Bioware's games, but Dragon Age has some of the most likable characters I've ever seen in a video game and the excellent performances from talents like Tim Curry, Kate Mulgrew and Claudia Black really put the game a notch above. Even the game's fairly generic-on-the-surface fantasy world is livened up by a few critical details - for example, the elves in Dragon Age are a massive underclass of servants.

It's actually difficult to find things to level complaints against in this game. One petty gripe is Morrigan's visual design - her character is one of the game's strongest, and she has great personality and some very clever writing, but visually she's a pair of giant breasts with a cloth draped improbably over them. Other women in the game are treated with a bit more restraint, though, and female armor is gratifyingly sensible. Another issue is that it can be difficult to manage battles on the fly, and accurately targeting enemies with skills frequently requires tactical pausing just to line the cursor up over their relatively small active areas. It's a petty annoyance, but the game clearly wasn't meant to be played Diablo-style anyway.

A few other things to know about the game:
-The game is mostly DRM-free, and ships only with a simple disc check. EA has a reputation for fouling up its customers' computers with DRM malware, but DA seems to be free of those problems.
-If Dragon Age were a movie, it would be rated R. I don't remember ever seeing any swearing, oddly, but the game is rife with violent imagery, extremely dark themes and frank sexuality (including a handful of relatively tasteful sex scenes and occasional demonic nudity). The game handles all of it with maturity and depth, but it's clearly not meant for children, and even parents of younger teens should be cautious.

Overall, Dragon Age is one of the strongest games to come out in recent memory, and is another installment in Bioware's increasing resume of superbly-written RPGs. Players looking for a fast-paced hack-and-slash "rpg" should look elsewhere, but anyone who likes deep and elegant plot development, memorable characters and excellent role-playing will love this game.

341 of 363 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars So what if the graphics aren't perfect? Highly recommended!, November 5, 2009

By	Michael Snyder - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Dragon Age: Origins (Video Game)

So I purchased the Xbox 360 version of Dragon Age: Origins yesterday and have spent WAY too many hours in Ferelden when I should be doing far more constructive things.

Is it too much of a stretch to think that someone who names their blog after semi-mystical airships might enjoy a roleplaying game or two?

The game is not perfect. The graphics are decidedly sub-par, audio glitches occur far too frequently, and on a regular basis I notice tiny white specs, which are the "seams" showing between some images that display environmental graphics. Screen tearing, I think it's called. The latter wouldn't be so bad, if I didn't also have to look for a similarly white-ish graphic that indicates a chest or box or crate or body requires ransacking for the requisite reward. I'm always rotating the camera back for a quick second to be sure I'm not missing out on some loot.

But so what?

The game is deep, the voice-acting well done over all, and this may be the best WRITTEN roleplaying game of the current generation, even if the story itself seems safely (perhaps too safely) rooted in standard RPG conventions. Not even Mass Effect has dialogue options that are as "realistic" and rewarding to hear as what can be found in Dragon Age.

But, just to meet my "geek" and "nerd" quota for the day, I read some reviews. I've never seen so many one-star "reviews" based on just one or two aspects of what is otherwise a fantastic game -- one-star bashing based on (you guessed it) the graphics or the heavy (oh so time-consuming) dialogue.

My take is that this phenomenon exposes a fundamental shortcoming of this particular generation of games -- there simply aren't enough good RPGs that elevate story and dialogue as THE fundamental pillar of the game's success.

In just one short decade, gamers have forgotten how story-heavy games like Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, KOTOR, and other RPGS really were.

In just one short decade, everything is about graphics.

What a tragedy.

Gaming has gone from a hobby filled with gaming enthusiasts with imagination and open-mindedness (in terms of what can be considered a successful kind of game), to a hobby filled with mindless addicts seeking the nearest, the quickest possible thumb-twitch to get their needed dose of adrenaline.

And the internet is such a "perfect" forum for them to express their distaste. Twitchers with short attention spans "write" quick, twitch-like reviews that say GRAPHICS SUCK and FAIL and give one star reviews, as if that's all that matters in a game.

Hardly.

Rather than pay attention to either the mostly positive or mostly negative reviews, rather than pay attention to the polarization that can occur in the review sections of buy-sites, be sure to check out Metacritic or GameStats or other sites that organize and collate reviews from ACTUAL CRITICS.

There's a concept.

Dragon Age is a fantastic game. Deep characterization and playing fundamentals/strategy (on higher difficulty levels), lots of looting and blood and gore, romance with a pretty guy or girl, long-term support from Bioware (hopefully) as evidenced by the downloadable content available on the day of release, and huge "bang for your buck."

Even at 60 dollars retail, that averages to at the very least a dollar an hour in terms of value, for anyone who completes the game. And this isn't 60 dollars of sandbox. Dragon Age doesn't appear to be as much of a "sandbox" game as Morrowind or Oblivion. While great games themselves, they left some players feeling a little left out in the cold, wandering around without enough of story-driven momentum to sustain interest. One can only loot so many caves, kill so many monsters, close so many gates, that don't have significant impact on finishing the game.

And did I say dragons, arch demons, and dark fantasy elements?

Anyone who enjoys RPGs should buy this game. Now.

90 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another great title from Bioware, November 4, 2009

By	Mithrandir the Elven Mage - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Dragon Age: Origins (Video Game)

Here we go again... Bioware releases another game and I lose another 100+ hours of my life to gaming. After 11 hours of play (completing 8% of the story) I thought I'd share a few thoughts in case you're considering purchasing this game.

What's good:

Bioware RPG's always have great stories with deep background and entertaining character interactions. This one does not disappoint. New for this game are multiple character opening stories-- hence the "origins" in the title. Depending on your class and race, you experience an extended opening that really sets the stage for your character and gives you something to think about. The opening for the mage included two quests to play through and a several difficult decisions to make before it merged with the main story line.

Voice acting is excellent, graphics are good and 1080p (though nothing like Metal Gear Solid or GTA4). Combat is fast, furious, and just a little out of control-- and exciting.

What's bad:

I had hoped to see the next generation of RPG, but the game's architecture feels like reused modules from other Bioware games. Character gen is from Mass Effect, 3rd person view and movement from KOTOR, inventory mechanics and interface much like Baldur's Gate. It's all competently designed, but feels a little worn. But maybe Bioware is suffering from Pixar Syndrome - if it doesn't outdo itself with each new release it seems plain.

My only real complaint is that character attributes and abilities are not sufficiently explained. The small paper manual says things are explained in detail in the in-game help but that is not the case.

Lastly:

Be aware that this game isn't suitable for kids. It's a mature game with some disturbing subject matter-- that's why Bioware calls it a "dark fantasy." Kudos to Bioware for aiming for a serious game, but know what you're buying before putting it on the holiday gift list for your little ones. (Wait until after they're in bed and have an epic time playing it yourself!)

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