I find it hard how to put into words my relationship with the Dragon Age series. I hold firmly to the fact that this series has developed me as a person more than any other work of art. I tried writing this on multiple differing social media and forum accounts but was never able too properly convey what I meant. I first played DAO when I was 12, it was the first RPG I had ever gotten into beyond pokemon. I learned of it through the youtuber Angry Joe; me being a total fan-boy of his at the time as well as seeing how cheap the game was on my system (Xbox 360) I got it. DAO isn't the best looking game, even by the standards of when it was released (2009) they were less than good.
The combat was good but not amazing, it was more or less KOTOR's combat, honestly. What DAO lacks in it's gameplay and sexyhotyumish, it makes MORE then up for in it's story, characters, lore, and atmosphere. The two first main companions you get are Alistair, the new gray-warden... but, I'm sure you already knew that. The other is Morrigan, an apostate mage living in the korcari wilds. These two characters relate to me more than any other in all the fiction I've played, read, watched, etc.
Starting with Alistair, it is no exaggeration when I say THIS GUY IS ALMOST EXACTLY LIKE ME! Despite being higher rank than you, when you begin your, quest he insisted that you lead. Through a great mixture of dialogue and body language you find out he has a bad inferiority complex. Alistair is constantly anxious, terrified of failing and getting the group mad or far worse, dead. He uses humor as a shield to try to keep the pain at bay. His life was full of failure; He was an unwanted bastard, the result of king Maric and an unknown (Unless you read the books!) woman, the only thing he had of them was a single medallion. One that he had broken and lost as a kid out of anger.
He failed at being a templar. He hated spending hours a day praying as was mandatory. He always got into trouble, not doing his work, joking during training, etc.
I guess it would be prudent to tell you what a Grey-Warden is. They are an elite, politically independent group made of the best warriors and mages in all of Thedas. They are the only people that can effectively kill darkspawn, thanks to the joining ritual they become immune to the darkspawn taint. Someone infected with the taint usually dies horribly as their body is eaten away. Some are turned into darkspawn... you don't want that.
DAO helped me come to terms with being gay. I was playing a male warrior, for the first time in any game I played, a male character flirted with another male and it wasn't portrayed exclusively for comedy or as a bad thing. That character was the Bi-sexual Zevran, I pursued and by the end of the game we were a couple. This helped me start to feel comfortable, thankfully this was when the Gay marriage marches were in full swing. Seeing all these people proud of who they are, fighting for what they believed in, to say the least, helped.
[/size][/color]
[/size][size=78%] [/size][/size][size=78%] [/size][/size][size=78%] [/size][/size][size=78%] [/size]
Topic: Why Dragon Age: Origins is my favorite game of all time. (Minor Spoilers) (Read 848 times)