BioWare announced Dragon Age at E3 in 2004 and then went quiet for more than two years. When Edge finally interviewed the team in early 2007, the game’s project director, Scott Greig, explained it in a sentence: “We’ve been describing it as the spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate.” The aim was to “capture that party-based adventuring that we had originally, but bring it up to date”. It took until November 2009 to arrive, by which time BioWare belonged to Electronic Arts.
The result split the critics. Most rated it about nine out of ten. Edge gave it five.
Fast facts
- Developer: BioWare, Edmonton.
- Publisher: Electronic Arts.
- Announced: E3, May 2004.
- Released: November 2009, for Windows PCs, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.
- Setting: the kingdom of Ferelden, in the world of Thedas.
- Expansion: Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening (2010).
- Sequels: Dragon Age II (2011), Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014) and Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024).
Waiting for the actors
Greig, BioWare’s first full-time employee, told Edge in 2007 why the game had been so long in the making. Members of the original Baldur’s Gate team had moved on to it, but BioWare decided the technology was not ready. The company saw its games as “story-based adventuring”, and its “digital actors” were not yet good enough to carry the emotion. In Baldur’s Gate, he said, an angry character had to be written as angry words; Knights of the Old Republic added the voice; Dragon Age and Mass Effect would add faces that could “just look at the camera, and just glower”.
While the engine was built, the designers built a world. A team of five spent about four years on a history that went back 5,000 years. One of them coined the phrase “dark heroic fantasy” for it: dragons, magic, heroes and villains, but with monsters that were “terrifying” and characters who behaved “what real people would do if they were put into this sort of situation”. BioWare even played through the whole story once in Neverwinter Nights, using that game’s toolset as a prototype.
Six ways in
The player is recruited into the Grey Wardens, an old order that fights the darkspawn, a monstrous horde invading the kingdom. To win, the Warden has to unite the forces of men, elves and dwarves against them, solving each faction’s problems before it will help.
What Greig called “origin stories” are the game’s opening hours, and the part that gives it its subtitle. After choosing race and class, the player picks one of six backgrounds, each a separate adventure of an hour or two: Human Noble, City Elf, Dalish Elf, Dwarf Noble, Dwarf Commoner or Mage. “If you picked dwarves, you’d have the option of becoming a dwarf noble – so you’re essentially the son of the dwarven king, or the daughter,” Greig explained, and the story would bring every player back to the dwarf city later on, where a noble’s past “totally changes the story outcome”. Most origins also give the player a personal enemy who returns later in the game.
The world they set up is a harsh one. Edge’s reviewer noted that in Ferelden “political factions bicker, magic users are corralled and persecuted, elves are disenfranchised or banished,” and that the player ends up judging “matters as disparate as slavery and blood magic”.
Pause and plan
Combat works like Baldur’s Gate’s: real time, but the player can pause at any moment to give orders. The party has four members, and Edge described battles as “complex micromanagement dances” of pausing and queueing actions, in which “co-ordination between tanks, healers and archers is entirely necessary for survival”. Companions not under direct control follow behaviour that the player sets up in a Tactics menu. Edge found that all this suited a mouse and keyboard far better than the Xbox 360’s controller.
The companions, among them the witch Morrigan, voiced by Claudia Black, and the dwarf Oghren, have opinions of the player’s choices. Each one’s approval rises or falls with what the player does and says, and a companion who disapproves enough can leave.
A split verdict
Edge was harsh. It found Ferelden “realised in some detail” and its history able to stand up to examination, but called the game “an RPG of great length, dubious execution and sparse charm”, attacked its dialogue and voice acting, and gave it five out of ten. Its readers disagreed: in February 2010 Edge‘s letters page set its five against a user average of 9.1 from more than 6,000 votes and a critics’ average of 9.0 from 35 reviews. A year later, previewing the sequel, Edge itself was warmer: “It was to Dragon Age’s advantage that it didn’t conform. It had no amnesiac hero, no fated encounters, no powerful fragments of relics that must be reunited; it had a cast, and a script.”
Players bought it in quantity. EA reported in February 2010 that it had shipped more than 3.2 million copies. BioWare kept the promise Greig had made in 2007 to give players a “more powerful” toolset than Neverwinter Nights’, releasing its own editor for the PC version, and the Awakening expansion followed in March 2010.
The series
Dragon Age II (2011) gave the player a more defined hero, Hawke, in a framed story spanning a decade. Dragon Age: Inquisition followed in 2014. After a long gap, Dragon Age: The Veilguard came out in October 2024; the BioWare entry tells how EA judged that it had not met expectations and cut the studio back to a core team.
Sources
- Edge issue 172, February 2007, pp. 43–47: preview and interview with Scott Greig (the E3 2004 announcement; “the spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate”; the digital actors; the 5,000-year history; “dark heroic fantasy”; origin stories and the dwarf noble; nemeses; Neverwinter Nights as a prototype; the toolset; Greig as BioWare’s first full-time employee).
- Edge issue 209, Christmas 2009, pp. 96–97: review (EA, BioWare; 360, PC, PS3; E3 2004; Ferelden; six opening storylines; four-strong party and pausing; PC against 360; Morrigan and Claudia Black, Oghren; five out of ten). p. 26: Dragon Age Journeys, a browser game made to advertise it.
- Edge issue 211, February 2010, p. 155: letters page, Dragon Age: Origins (Edge 5/10; 6,165 user votes, 9.1; 35 critic reviews, 9.0).
- Edge issue 222, Christmas 2010, p. 30: Dragon Age II preview (release in March 2011; the decade-long framed story; “It was to Dragon Age’s advantage that it didn’t conform”).
- Edge issue 225, March 2011, p. 34: Dragon Age 2 preview (Hawke; Origins’ Grey Warden).
- Wikipedia, “Dragon Age: Origins” (web, secondary): release dates; the six origin names (citing IGN, 12 February 2009); the Grey Wardens and the darkspawn; the Tactics menu (citing GameSpot’s review); companion approval; Awakening on 16 March 2010; 3.2 million copies shipped by February 2010 (citing Electronic Arts); the toolset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Age:_Origins
- See the BioWare entry for EA’s purchase of the studio, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Dragon Age: The Veilguard.