Dragon Age: Origins Review

Dragon Age: Origins opens six different ways and the choice outlives the prologue. A dwarf commoner is still treated like dirt in Orzammar hours after leaving it. A city elf carries a grudge that changes how nobles speak to you. BioWare uses those openings to make Ferelden a place with a class system rather than a fantasy backdrop, and the darkspawn invasion works mostly as a deadline that pushes you into rooms with people whose problems have no clean answer.

The Landsmeet is the payoff, a political trial where every ally you gathered and every promise you made is counted out loud. Morrigan, Alistair and Loghain are why people still argue about the ending, and the game is willing to let a companion walk out, or die, over a decision you made three regions back. Combat splits by platform, which is why gameplay sits a step under the rest of the card.

On PC it is a pausable tactical system with a scripting layer that rewards a prepared party and punishes a careless one. On consoles it is thinned into an action game that keeps stopping. The art is drab even for 2009, all brown keeps and gray fields, and the blood that cakes your party after every fight and never washes off is a choice you either enjoy or switch off in the menu.