Mike Re-Visits Dragon Age: Origins

By Mike Lim, June 14, 2010 3:21 pm

Alright, so this will pretty much be a “lead-up”post to my Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening review. Before I get into the thick of things though, I’d like to offer fair warning to my readers. This post will contain screen-shots depicting and/or suggesting “virtual sex”.

In any case, let me start off by saying, I love this game. I absolutely freakishly adore this damnable RPG. Being the fantasy buff and Bioware whore that I am (having played KOTOR 1 and 2 like, a billion times), it only came as a given that I’d eventually get my grubby hands on Origins. Here’s a quick breakdown of all the characters I’ve played thus far in Origins.

3x Dual Wielding Warriors
1x 2-Handed Weapon Warrior
1x Archer/Ranger
2x Dual Wielding Rogues
1x Arcane Warrior
2x Mage

I know, I know, it’s overkill. Having bought Awakening earlier this year, I decided to have yet another go at the game as a Cunning-build Rogue, which by the way, was carried forward into Awakening following my Origins run.

That’s her on the far left, Annaliese Cousland.

Now, despite being rated one of the best RPGs to come along in recent history, Origins has been criticised for its clunky combat mechanics and low challenge value. Sadly, there is a great measure of truth in said criticism. For the most part, I’d have to say that the award for the strongest class goes to the Mage, what with its crazy nukes (e.g. Walking Bomb, Storm of the Century, etc.) and overpowered crowd-control spells (e.g. Forcefield, Nightmare, etc.). Heck, any Mage heavy party would rip this game to shreds on any difficulty.

For my recent playthrough on Annaliese, I went with my trusty 1 Tank, 1 Rogue and 2 Mage setup. On any difficulty, said setup pretty much implies “easy mode”, even without using that despicable “Taunt > Forcefield” tactic. Still, despite having played the game oh so many times, Origins possesses an innate charm that keeps me coming back. I can’t place it really, but I figure that it was to do with character depth and the game’s dynamic storyline. Bioware never fails to amaze with the complexity of its characters, companion system and choice-driven gameplay.

As opposed to last year’s series of playthroughs, I decided to try out a bunch of different mods for the game, most of which served little more than aesthetic purposes. Regardless, here’s a short list of the mods I picked up and used on my recent playthrough.

(1) No Helmet Hack – Leather headgear looks absolutely retarded. No helmet graphics FTW!
(2) Stealing CD Fix – 10s cooldowns on Steal killed pickpocketing for me in the vanilla game. The CD fix allowed me to take kleptomania to the next level.
(3) Pretty Faces 2.5 - It feels good to have a female character that doesn’t look absolutely fugly.
(4) More Hairstyles - If I’m not mistaken, this was originally a TES: Oblivion mod. The new hairstyles go great with Pretty Faces.
(5) Storage Chest – There are in actuality a bunch of different mods under said name that do the same thing, i.e. it places a storage chest in the Party Camp.
(6) Sacred Ashes Face Mod (Morrigan and Leliana) - I never really liked Morrigan, but Leliana looks hawt with this mod loaded.
(7) The Pearl Redone – Alright, this mod was plain hilarious, and yet oh so sick at the very same time. It’s hard to describe, you’ve got to see it to believe it.
(8) Natural Bodies All In One – Combines a bunch of different aesthetic mods that focus on the naked form. Works great with Better Sex Cutscenes.
(9) Better Sex Cutscenes – Well, truth be told, the vanilla “granny-undies” sex scenes do kind of suck.

Besides these mods, I remember having tried out a bunch of other mods as well, mostly minor gameplay/graphic fixes and a couple of user-made side missions. For now, I can’t entirely bring to mind the full mod loadout that I used. Oh well.

In any case, as a lil’ teaser, here’re a couple of shots of mods number 6, 8 and 9 in action.

So sexy, so wrong, and yet, oh so right. I know, I’m pathetic. Give a guy a break, I’m one lonely son of a bitch. The red-head’s Leliana by the way.

On a more serious note, as I mentioned at the top of the post, I eventually carried Annaliese over to Awakening, at the ripe level of 24 no less. Sadly though, I can’t say that I enjoyed Awakening as much as I did Origins. More on that in my Awakening review, which will probably be written following my playthrough and review of Bioware’s recently released “What If?” darkspawn campaign.

Sexy pictures and Awakening aside, Origins did not fail to disappoint, albeit on my tenth/eleventh run through. The mods definitely livened up the game, to a very large extent. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself having yet another go at Origins in the near future, given the variety of mods and DLCs being released by DAO Nexus and Bioware respectively, and my gluttonous penchant for re-rolling RPG characters.

Long live Bioware’s ever-epic dark fantasy, Dragon Age! Long live the Grey Wardens!