Dragon Age Origins & Me, in the times of Blight
Unite Ferelden, Slay the Archdemon, Ad Infinitum…
The golden armoured body of the young King Cailan and his army lay dead on the field of Ostagar, and the fabled Grey Wardens lay beside them, felled by the treachery of man, and the malice of the Darkspawn. The Fourth Blight has begun. Darkspawn pour from the Southern Wilds of Ferelden, acting on the call of the corrupted dragon, known as the Archdemon. The Wardens exist to stop this, they’ve done it before; the last time was a long time ago, and far from here. Now only two remain in Ferelden, myself a new recruit, and Alistair, with only a few months under his own belt, with ancient treaties at our disposal, we can collect upon old oaths sworn to the Wardens and assemble a new army out of disparate factions before it’s too late, and most importantly, we must slay the Archdemon. It’s the premise of Bioware’s 2009 dark fantasy RPG Dragon Age Origins, my favourite game. By now I must have united Ferelden and slayed the Archdemon two dozen times, and I will inevitably do it again, but why do I have this cyclical relationship with the game? Of course, I could just say ‘I play it for fun’ which would be true, but I’ve enjoyed lots of things that I haven’t habitually revisited like I have with DAO, with The Lord the Rings trilogy being the exception. A large distinction between those two is time, the latter takes 9 hours to watch, whereas the former takes 80 hours to play, and that’s just the first game. Suffice to say I’ve spent a lot of time with the game.
How did this habit begin? Being born in 1998 meant many of my foundational media related memories began in the hallowed halls of a Blockbuster, the same was true for Dragon Age Origins. My older brother rented the game for a week. I don’t think he ever finished it. My earliest memories of playing the game exist within that rented week. My unoriginally named human Grey Warden warrior Aragorn lived and died on borrowed time. I distinctly remember running around Witherfang’s lair in a bow-legged stance, thinking it was a glitch, I reloaded the save to find no correction. Of course, now I know that poor Aragorn’s legs were just severely crippled, and I wasn’t healing him. Easy as it was, I didn’t know how. Another character had their journey cut short, as my prepubescent self-struggled to navigate the dwarven city of Orzammar’s realpolitik and its magma lit wards alike. After many more years of playing on the Xbox 360, and my supposedly fully developed brain I basically became omniscient within the game. Believe me I’m not bragging. During my first year at university I stayed away from games, with no TV, no Xbox 360 in my room, just my Lenovo laptop and a free Celtx account. In my second year, during a rather special bout of unproductivity at the university library I ordered a PC disk copy of DAO as a treat to my future self. I’d already spent the money, so I’d have to play the game on PC as Bioware clearly intended, but I just had to buy a PC first. Two years later during the August of the first lockdown, I finally relented and realised the rainy day I was saving for had been and gone, and I was up to my neck in water already. I bought my gaming PC, and right after setting up my essential software I installed Dragon Age Origins, with a code right from the box. I launched the game, and was met with Inon Zur’s title theme, and I was a teenager again, there and ready to play with a pint of ASDA’s own cola, leaving water rings on my hand-me-down TV stand. With the PC came the chance to taste the hitherto forbidden fruits of modding the game. After scrolling through Nexus Mods, you’ll soon realise why some fruits are better off forbidden, but there’s a lot of great mods too that complement the original experience by improving the graphics, UI, animation and overall verisimilitude. In November of 2020 I played it again, with all the trimmings that PC gaming provides; I had a great time.
What has kept me coming back? Role playing games contain more replayability than most, by virtue of their increased level of interactivity, and DAO is considered to be one the best RPGs ever made by many people, myself included, and for good reason. Mechanically there’s a lot of variety in the game, down to your character’s gender, race, class and origin. There are hundreds of skills, spells and weapons to use, over hundreds of quests. This replayability was the reason I returned to it year after year. But there’s nothing new in the game for me, it’s all familiar, and there’s comfort in that. I know it like the back of my hand; since I have no strong feelings for the back of my hand, instead I’ll say that returning to DAO feels like stepping barefoot onto my bedroom carpet after time spent away, it just feels right. There’s a lot to love about DAO, but it’s the story which excels at placing you in the greaves of a hero that can make a difference.
By playing the game repeatedly across all these years am I trying to escape into some unmindful childhood self, content with a pint of cola and penguin bar, or am I just using the same means, to achieve the same end of achieving escapism? Personally, I lean towards the latter. I certainly don’t want to be a teenager again; neither am I pining to escape to a life in Ferelden. Dragon Age Origins is piece of dark fantasy, and no one should want to live upon the continent of Thedas, in Ferelden or any other place. It’s riddled with turmoil much like our own world, barring the darkspawn, demons and dragons of course, but unlike our own world, in DAO as the Warden I can do something about it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I returned to DAO and the franchise during a global lockdown, playing gave me the chance to escape somewhere even worse where I can do infinitely more to help. I believe that’s the appeal of dark fantasy, if we can imagine fighting, enduring and even defeating inhuman horrors, then perhaps we might just be able to make it in the waking world. In my experience no other game has fuelled that imagination more than DAO, and that’s why like a loyal Mabari hound I keep coming back. A day may come, when Dragon Age Origins is surpassed as the best dark fantasy adventure RPG, and a new game fulfils that same fantasy of righteous purpose, comradeship and power. On that day I will consign DAO to its place as a nostalgic old favourite. But for now, Dragon Age Origins stands apart, and as such, I foresee myself always succumbing to the call as Grey Wardens do, to slay the Archdemon again, and again…