The First 3 Dragon Age Games are still an Amazing Experience that Need to be Played by Everyone

An Unexpectedly Inconsistent but still Enjoyable Journey.

Sep 11, 2024

Back in 2009, when Dragon Age: Origins came out, I played it and absolutely adored it. It had so much variety with different decisions and the race and class of the character influenced the beginning you got. I loved this game so much that I spent 100 hours replaying it over and over. When Dragon Age 2 came out just a year later I never really played it. I owned it and always meant to play it but just couldn't get myself to because it "wasn't as good as Origins." I eventually played it 9 years later. Then when Dragon Age Inquisition came out, I really enjoyed it. I played through it twice. It was genuinely fun and even though the world was pretty MMO-y, I still enjoyed exploring. Well, earlier this year, I decided that because Dragon Age The Veilguard was coming out in the fall, I had to replay all three of the games. I had no other choice.

Let's start with Origins. The plot of Origins was pretty classic fantasy, a big bad and army are coming to wipe out as many as they can and you are a character who has been chosen, whether by prophecy or by chance or by being in the group that was fighting it, to help fight it. Even all these years later, 14 years since I played it, I got hooked and loved the plot just as I did back then. You know what I didn't enjoy? The combat. Don't get me wrong, there were some good parts of it, I enjoyed the different spells and such. But the combat was incredibly slow and honestly rather boring most of the time. I would just press a button to do a spell every so often when my magic had regenerated. I would run around to avoid enemies then stand there and be stuck attacking until I moved again. It lead to the same thing happening that happened even further in the past when I played Knights of the Old Republic, another earlier Bioware game, I would fight, have my teammates die, run around in circles only pausing to send one attack or heal, and maybe if the map was large enough I'd find a spot to hide by myself to let myself heal or have my teammates teleport to me and revive themselves. I cannot be clearer, this is not what "Tactical" combat is supposed to be.

Let's examine a recent example of tactical combat. Baldur's Gate 3. It had actually tactical combat. You decided what your teammates did in a turn order, just like playing DnD with your friends, and you didn't move around as much as you do in the Dragon Age games. You have to manage your health and mana during your turns, prepare for your enemies to attack by trying to predict what they will do, and move around the playing field as strategically as you can. Your enemies also often had much more reasonable health that felt like you were doing a reasonable amount of damage to them as opposed to some dragon age enemies who were very chonky. You couldn't just run around in a circle in it to avoid your enemies attacks. Origins was a smash up of tactical and live combat with none of the good parts of either. This is not what I thought back in 2009, I genuinely thought it was great back then. I don't know if it's just because of the amount of progress in the industry and gameplay since then, or I've just aged and changed what I like, or that the game has just aged poorly and is usually being looked back on by people that loved the combat back then with a tremendous amount of nostalgia, but this combat was just not good. Add in the fact that your character runs around like they were taking a dump and someone forced them to get off the can because they needed something that only you could get and you get combat that is frustrating and honestly a little funny.

The way I improved this combat, i.e. made it more fun, was by cheating. I set my spell cooldown to 0, set my mana to infinite, and made myself immortal which didn't apply to my teammates but this still made the combat much more interesting. All of a sudden I could make more interesting combat encounters by using a ton of unique spells that usually barely got used because of the more "tactical" nature of it. If the combat was quicker, was smoother, had more realistic, non-dump taking combat stances, then I would be more satisfied with my experience replaying it.

The story was still amazing and had just as interesting plot hooks and quests and details. I still love walking through the halls of Orzammar and deciding who will be King, choosing the Werewolves vs the Dalish because they were the rational and empathetic choice to me, choosing to kill Loghain at the Landsmeet because he's an asshole, and making sure that Alistair and my character don't sacrifice themselves to kill the Archdemon. These were all decisions I made with awareness of the next two games and I thoroughly enjoyed making them. The story of Dragon Age Origins is not the problem, it's the combat that infuriated me and made me so frustrated, but hey, it's okay to cheat.

Next was Dragon Age 2. I first played this game back in 2019, and enjoyed it back then. But now? I enjoyed it a whole lot. The thing that jumped out at me the most? The combat. I can not express enough how much better the combat actually is in Dragon Age 2. Particularly from a modern perspective, Dragon Age 2 holds up far more than Origins did. The spells were just as interesting but the animations and variety of animations were worlds better, the smoothness was immensely improved, the quickness of your characters actions were sped up, and most importantly, when running around the battlefield, Hawke didn't look like she was interrupted while taking a dump.

The game is fundamentally smaller than Origins of course, there is SO much backtracking and going to the same spaces and repeating the same maps over and over and over. Most of the time trying to make it feel different by having you enter and exit at different locations. Now of course it's incredibly important to note that the game was made in 14 months with EA being incredibly unreasonable with their demands. So all the maps being repeated and the backtracking is entirely understandable, game development is hard and when you're changing the art style in such a stark way you can't just use the same assets as Origins.

The story takes place over several years and in 3 acts all being told by our unreliable narrator Varric, a staple of the franchise since then. The first act has a whole lot of quests and interesting things to do while pursuing different avenues to get your money to go to the deep roads and finding different companions and recruiting them. I enjoyed this first part of the game more than I was expecting, but completely unsurprisingly since playing a game isn't just story, it's gameplay and when the gameplay was better than Origins. I just thought of it as a breath of fresh air. I still had a similar issue with Origins where my teammates would die and I'd have to run around in a circle avoiding enemies, but it was a lot easier to avoid those moments here in 2. The second act goes deeper into Hawke's story with having moved you up in the world. I think I enjoyed this part the most as it built significantly on the first act.

Something I liked about this game more than Origins is the multiple time skips. Origins doesn't really have time skips. It's hard to understand how much time has passed except when it occasionally gets mentioned or in the mission where you go back to Ostagar. But here you are literally told how much time has passed. Your characters have grown, Hawke has developed, relationships have changed, people have done things with their lives. It really made the game feel...alive. I felt like I was playing a game where the characters felt closer like real people, where they were believable.

Inquisition was daunting. It's open world and I do not personally think games necessarily benefit from that addition. Inquisition I think could have had much smaller areas and it would have been more manageable. This time we have another world ending fantasy story. It has a really good opening that I can't say the other games have. I played it a couple times figuring out what character I wanted to play and constantly second guessing myself because the gameplay was a bit more involved and I wasn't sure how it was gonna go. When I finally started actually playing, I instantly noticed that Bioware didn't like when in Origins and 2 you could just press a character to attack and not have to be active because they decided that the player has to hold the attack button now. Which was a terrible move. I understand the purpose, that the combat feels more interactive and less passive, and this could even be an engine issue given they were still learning how to use the EA mandated Frostbite, but it is not fun to be constantly holding a button to be able to attack. It ended up feeling like a team of developers not wanting to entirely abandon the "tactical-ness" as they had been accused of doing that in Dragon Age 2 four years prior, but still wanting to have the player have more fun. It just wasn't a good mechanic.

They also had a tactical mode, which also felt like another instance of the devs wanting to address core fans complaint 2 wasn't tactical enough. As we have seen with Veilguard, the devs decided to say "to hell with tactical, lets make the combat interactive and fun!" From the gameplay I've seen I think they've done a great job but it isn't out yet so I can't be sure. But I wish this had happened in Inquisition. I think the game would have felt less like an MMO even though it wouldn't have changed the structure of the game.

Most of them were just go to this location, press a button, maybe do a puzzle, and collect this object. Nothing super interesting; Just boring busy work. Even most of the side quests were the same thing. Several of them were just to do the busy work as to try and give incentive to do it. But XP didn't make me enjoy doing it. Now, the actually interesting side quests I rather enjoyed.

I enjoyed helping Morrigan with her son and helping Sera deal with her Friends of the Red Jenny. My queerness made me cry while helping Dorian tell his homophobic dad to go to hell. I liked helping Varric with his Dwarven idol troubles. I know these were technically companion quests but they were the truly enjoyable side content for me. I also played the DLCs and thoroughly enjoyed going into the Deep Roads to discover the Heart of the Wellspring, and then discovering the fate of the last inquisitor and fighting the dragon to avenge his death.

The game ended a lot faster than I thought. Largely because I didn't do a ton of the wondering around busy work. I read a bit about the development of the game and found that the team at Bioware wanted more to happen with an actual siege on Skyhold. Which I think would have helped the game feel more complete. Corypheus was an incredibly distant villain. When he was introduced as the villain I could have sworn I'd killed him back in Dragon Age 2 when I played that DLC. I did not like that they decided to make the villain a person that I literally killed in the prior games DLC, all they had to have done was allow him to just get away at the end of the Dragon Age 2 dlc , leaving him open as a future villain. But now they just had to wave away when Hawke killed him as he "avoided death somehow" which was incredibly disappointing. When I originally played inquisition I hadn't played Dragon Age 2 so Corypheus was brand new to me. Now that I know him, I did not like his presence in the story. Which ended up being distant, as I stated earlier. If there was another villain I think I would have enjoyed the story more.This applies for the third arc too where the first and second act are built on and then blown up, literally. This act felt rushed but again, 14 months of dev time. But even with those 14 months I felt rather satisfied with my decisions. I felt like I had reason for my decisions but also that the characters had reason for them. When I chose to spare Anders I felt like I did it because of the depth of the friendship that had developed with my Hawke and him. When I helped Merril handle her demon I felt like it was the culmination of the relationship my Hawke and her had. When Aveline and I stood together against Meredith I felt the tension between them and the tension of my mage Hawke just standing there sarcastically. When I ended up having Fenris stand against me because I sided with my fellow mages, I felt the decision he made and it genuinely made me sad he chose to die by my hand.

The decisions in Dragon Age 2 were not all massive world changing decisions like in Origins, except for freeing the mages of Templar rule, but I felt like I related to them more and understood the ramifications on a character level more. Don't get me wrong, I loved the story of Origins, but it was standard world ending fantasy, while Dragon Age 2 was personal and character changing. I loved my time with Dragon Age 2 and was genuinely sad to finish it and head into Inquisition. But I kept moving forward.

Speaking of the structure, the game is separated into multiple large hub zones. Each has a pretty different theme, except for the two desert locations in the west, and that helps make running around less tiring. But the game is just speckled with boring things to do. I know people had this same criticism back in 2014 when it came out, but I didn't. Yeah, I was very wrong. Most of them were just go to this location, press a button, maybe do a puzzle, and collect this object. Nothing super interesting; Just boring busy work. Even most of the side quests were the same thing. Several of them were just to do the busy work as to try and give incentive to do it. But XP didn't make me enjoy doing it. Now, the actually interesting side quests I rather enjoyed.

Overall, Inquisition wasn't bad, it was just disappointing. I had three main problems. First, I wish Bioware had gotten another year or were willing to blaze forward with a new combat system as they're doing with Veilguard. Second, the maps with the significant number of busy work just made the areas more boring, And third, the story was most interesting the farther away from the main conflict it was. Trespasser, the last DLC added some to this, it felt like a nice goodbye to the characters I knew and grew to enjoy, except Iron Bull who turned on me. It also felt like a good lead in to Veilguard.

I think one thing would have helped the game, a reduction in scope. They intended to create the largest Dragon Age to date but it just made it more shallow. Similar to Skyrim in that way, except I would say Skyrim is significantly shallower than Inquisition. This issue was also similar to the future Mass Effect Andromeda which I might talk about one day. But back here in Inquisition, I think the story needed more focusing, again a reduction in scope, that would have allowed Corypheus to feel like a better more influential villain. The best mission to me was Here Lies the Abyss where you end up in the fade with Hawke and the warden ally and I think if we had a game that kept that same tone where you see Corypheus' influence, then enter the fade and have to make an influential choice that impacts the people that are around you, Inquisition would have been much better.

At the end here, I genuinely think that each game has its own positives and negatives. Origins has a bad and outdated combat system but has a great story and amazing set pieces with variety. 2 made the combat better and had amazing personal tales but had so much repetition. Inquisition had an interesting story but it was disjointed and its combat felt too restrained with trying to include tactical capabilities but also make it more active, and it had rather boring hub zones that while filled with things to do, felt disappointing.

The Dragon Age games have morphed a lot since their first dark fantasy version, but the thing that describes them best to me isn't the type of fantasy, but the type of characters. The experiences might be different but the games all have characters that you can grow attached to. Characters make the games, and it's where Bioware are at their best.

With that in mind, I think my ranking would be 2, then Origins, then Inquisition. But experiencing these games back to back felt like playing 3 rather different games. It didn't feel like much of a positive evolution between them like the Mass Effect Trilogy did, something I will talk about eventually. The story wasn't connected that much because it's an anthology series but the crossovers still exist and were interesting and often satisfying. But the experience left me only partially satisfied. It made me very much crave Veilguard with the hope that the combat will be better so that I can enjoy the game as a whole instead of having nitpicks with the combat no matter the story or set pieces. But it also made me tired of fantasy RPGs for now. Sure I'm gonna play Veilguard, but that's the only fantasy RPG I think I could play right now. I'm hoping it actually fills my fantasy hole that has been only partially filled by this experience.

If you're looking to do this for yourself, I would say that you should be prepared for some outdated and frustrating gameplay mechanics. You should remember that nostalgia is okay to experience, or if this is your first time playing, that people in the community yearn for a tactical RPG at all similar to Origins but that doesn't mean Origins' core gameplay is necessarily good. And you should remember that you don't have to do everything in each one of them. The characters and story are what make these games, put that first, if you try to do everything, it could dilute the wonderful tales of the world of Dragon Age. Enjoy the experience and make some morally questionable decisions.

See you in Tevinter on October 31st!

Meow,

Cat

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