Take me back to Ferelden!
Once in a while... or not very often... you find a game that shakes the world in some way, and when it is all over, there are still ripples on the water that don´t fade. At least not for some time.
I am sitting here and I can hardly understand that it is over, a little over 143 hour after I set out on this enourmous journey. And some journey it has been.
I don´t want to spoil this fantastic game, so I´m not gonna go in on details. But Dragon Age has a really epic storyline with a set of wonderful characters with their own personalities and opinions. Just the way we are used to see these kind of games from Bioware. Similar to the Mass Effect games you get choices when in dialogues, but unlike those games you don´t get a feedback with paragon or renegade points. The game doesn´t state if your choice is good or bad, and I loved that. You can make this adventure your own without having to feel that you are destroying your chances of getting certain skills or objects. Of course it affects the storyline, and also the ending of the game, but still I like the fact that you don´t see any points in the screen or that the top right alternative is the good one. The world is huge, and there are many side-missions. I made most of them. Only a couple of missions I dind´t complete. They were all rewarding and interesting, which made me want to do them all. The game is divided in, say 5 parts. One introducing part, 3 parts which the game builds on, and then ending part. The 3 parts which makes most of the game are so different from each other and have their own seperate stories. They would all individually make for interesting movies.
The game has it´s ups and downs when it comes to the difficulty. I myself couldn´t just play it through the way I would have prefered by completing on of these parts at a time. It got waaaay too hard. I had to go back and forth between these three storylines and choosing the one that was least hard for the moment. I´ve definately had my share of game overs.
You have a large list of skills, attributes, spells and such to level up your characters, which lasts the whole adventure. I probably should have made other choices if I had started over, but hey, I survived anyway even though it was really hard at times.
You get to make big, and sometimes not so easy choices in the story which of course affects the game. Especially towards the end of the game.
I am pretty satisfied with my ending actually. Not all happy, but a good game or movie should have it´s sadness too.
Dragon Age Origins really has everything, and therefore it gets top score from me. I love good stories, and this game has a terrific story. I really admire Bioware for their work with this game. It really feels like they have given their all, their whole heart into this game too make it perfect. It is a very generous gift to the gamers.
And now I sit here.. with an emptiness. Waiting for a chance to come back to this world I have been living in for over 140 hours.
We will see how long it takes until I let Bioware take me back to Ferelden.