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Video

Launch Player

Singularity ³⁶⁰

Dante's Inferno ³⁶⁰

Preview

Dragon Age: Origins

Format Xbox 360

Developer BioWare

Publisher EA Games

Genre Role Playing, Action

22-Mar-2009 Just as long as it doesn't dragon...

6 Comments

There's something indescribably alluring about the freedom to make your own choices in a game. The days of following a rigidly set path are long over for us gamers.

And BioWare is making the upcoming Dragon Age: Origins an even more deliriously dense series of ethically branching paths for us to navigate. But how?

The answer is in the game's title: Origins. Out of the gate, you'll have to make a choice: do you play as a dwarven noble with the potential to ascend to your kingdom's throne? Or do you take up arms as a magi and have to endure The Harrowing, a rite of passage for all magic users?

Whichever class you choose, each has a unique origin story that's riddled with choices. These will affect not only how the world looks, feels, and reacts to you, but also who you'll be once you reach the quest that all of the characters will have to eventually apply for - becoming a Grey Warden.

The world of Dragon Age is a dark and brutal landscape populated by fantastic creatures, many of which aren't exactly cuddly unicorns. Humans, dwarves, and elves are all under constant threat of being overrun by a quasi-race of supernaturally powered beasts known as Darkspawn.

But reaching the point where you're fighting Darkspawn as an official member of the centuries-old Grey Warden clan is a large part of Dragon Age's path-defining joy.
Your origin story - and your decisions therein - will help determine whether you'll seize the power and glory of defending humanity as a noble-minded saviour or a grinchy, tyrannical bastard.

For instance, if you're playing as an elf, you'll discover that most of the human world doesn't care much for your kind: in the past, elves were mostly slaves, and that stigma remains to this day.

Even if you're considered elven nobility or have reached Grey Warden status, random conversations with humans get frosty at times. How will you respond? Will you get all righteously indignant and strike back for your peeps? Or do you take it on the chin and travel the high road to get what you want?

Your decisions can lead to consequences you might not realise until later in the game.
Whatever the outcome, it makes for delicious replay value if you want to taste-test every origin story and its unique ethical quandaries.

We're looking forward to mucking up the moral waters with reckless, decision-making abandon.

Ryan King