Ugh. Just… ugh.
Revisiting BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins feels like unearthing a relic—one that carries the weight of nostalgia and frustration in equal measure. I beat it once (how?) a half-decade ago during my peak live streaming days, where I took the time to perform the content for an audience of a handful of Internet randoms. I decided to give it a retrospective play here at the end of 2024 considering the controversy surrounding the most recent entry into the franchise, Veilguard. Regarding that noise, I’ll say this: As gaming evolves, we’re witnessing an era where not all big-budget video games from legacy studios are tailored to the white adolescent male demographic. And it’s up to you, the consumer, to do your research and decide if purchasing and playing a game that doesn’t align with your politics will be worth your time and money.
I have a long history with both BioWare and Dragon Age: Origins. For me, the pinnacle of computer role-playing gaming is still the original Baldur’s Gate. It came at a time in my life when I was transitioning into the responsibilities of adulthood and slew my senses with a story and moral message that stays with me to this day. Yes, I have played Larian’s masterwork Baldur’s Gate III, but it failed to hook me due to how jaded I’ve become since 1998. When BioWare announced Dragon Age: Origins in 2004 and claimed it would be a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate and developed by most of the same key people, I became obsessed with the product. I clung to every piece of information that came out in the five years between that announcement and the eventual 2009 release. I pre-ordered the deluxe edition, a decision that ended up as the last time I would lay money down for any video game, sight unseen, until this year’s Shadow of the Erdtree, an add-on for FromSoftware’s stellar Elden Ring, and content that I still have yet to play.
Don’t pre-order anything unless you’re certain of the quality or want to support the creators. Any other reason is frivolous and will only lead to heartache and a smaller bank balance.
I was hyped for Dragon Age: Origins, and that led to me despising the game. It lived up to none of its promises (in my mind) and I would only play the first two acts until that live stream series. Part of this was due to my Vancouver Film School education which was going on at the time of Origins’s release, though that was the same year I threw hundreds of hours into Minecraft, so it wasn’t so much a question of engagement as it was of my disappointment. There were other people in my classes at VFS who were playing Origins and raving about it, but none of them had my history with BioWare and Baldur’s Gate. Mass Effect had come out two years prior, and I ended up playing it that year of my Dragon Age disappointment and not understanding how BioWare had managed to release such an incredible sci-fi product and yet fail to move me with their fantasy offering.
In retrospect, I oversold the game to myself in the five years of following it. I so wanted it to fill that sense of gaming unfulfillment that I’d carried ever since finishing Baldur’s Gate that I lost sight of the reality of video games. I would get some value from Origins, playing it live on Twitch while collecting subscription fees and donations. I’d even take a failed run at Dragon Age II. But nothing could ever reconcile how I’d sabotaged any real enjoyment I could have derived from playing the game.
And yet. And yet.
Playing Dragon Age: Origins on Xbox Series in 2024 was not something I had on my bingo card. I burned myself out trying to power through the Resident Evil franchise, stalling out in the third act of Resident Evil: Biohazard. This burnout set the stage for my eventual decision to revisit Dragon Age: Origins, hoping for a different experience to reignite my gaming enthusiasm. Fortunately, MachineGames’s excellent Indiana Jones and the Great Circle appeared on Xbox Game Pass and cleansed my palette. After watching the credits roll on the best action-adventure game I’ve played since Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, I was filled with that overwhelming sense of emptiness that always accompanies completing a magnificent work of art. It was then that the urge arose to play through Dragon Age and see for myself what all the Veilguard fuss was about.
I think I put twenty-five to thirty hours into this run of Origins. I played on casual, because I didn’t much care for the challenge of the aging combat system. And I had a good time. Dragon Age: Origins is a classic, dark, high fantasy that takes place in an original setting. The narrative is well written and strikes a balance between humor and seriousness rarely seen in video games (or any popular media, for that matter). Sure, it looks like a potato compared to the glory of modern graphics, but there’s something charming and suitable about the art direction. Enough time—fifteen years, one month, and twenty-something days, to be precise—has passed where I could see the game through a lens that wasn’t smeared with the tears of disappointment.
And then I reached the final boss. Leading up to this point, I had felt a sense of gradual mastery over the game, my party becoming stronger and the narrative pulling me deeper into its dark, high-fantasy world. Each victory affirmed that I had come to appreciate what so many others saw in Dragon Age: Origins. But the climb to the summit was deceptive, masking a sharp and sudden drop I never saw coming. A final boss that was in no way tuned for whatever the developers had decided “casual” was. A final boss that ate me and my—previously overpowered—party of stalwart adventurers again, and again, and again. This morning, after three hours of banging my face against a sudden and undeserved wall, I deleted the game from my Series X and swore never to touch another Dragon Age game. I have no idea how I beat this game on normal difficulty.
I don’t know what I’m missing by choosing not to pursue the rest of this franchise. I feel that I’m better served by another run through Baldur’s Gate that culminates in a second attempt to enjoy Larian’s game. Or, you know, not playing video games for a while. But we both know that’s not going to happen.
2024.12.18 – 2024.12.27