Control Review: Dragon Age: Origins

I, Dalton Lewis, love video games. I love old video games, especially those made between 2000 and 2015. They delight me. Their storytelling delights me — they have brilliant stories, wonderful characters, and story arcs that humble the current slate of games. (I’m assuming this; I don’t actually play new games very much. I tried Persona 5 a bit and the first level of Spider-Man. I don’t play newer games. I’m old.)

Dragon Age: Origins is one of those games. There are six origin stories for you to pick from — and they are some of the best stories in video games. In one you play a dwarf commoner who works for a crime lord. You are given the assignments that no important muscle needs to be used on. You get to try to elevate beyond your station.

The dalish elf is a proud outsider who refuses to join human society because human society fears and mistrusts you. You have to enter a strange cave surrounded by magical creatures and then risk everything for your friend.

The city elf tries to get married. You try to get married, but humans decide that they have the right to rape and murder your betrothed. What are you going to do? What are you prepared to do?

The dwarven noble has a problem: how to be rich and famous and yet still work for the family and represent the dwarven people. Things go more and more wrong for the dwarven noble, and he has to understand: bad things will happen to anyone.

The human noble tries to fight to defend his castle from medium-sized rats and then has conversations with his family about how much he loves them. Then shit goes real, real far south in one of the greatest video game levels in human history.

The mage tries to balance doing the right thing with helping a friend in need. This story shows how badly helping a friend can hurt one’s self. It also shows a rebellious streak — the templars handling the mages may be mistreating them, a theme that continues through the game and the series.

That’s one small part of the game. Once that happens you go to Ostagar to fight a big terrible battle against the darkspawn who are trying to take the planet for themselves. Then you can travel wherever you want and try to fight for the various groups that need your help — elves, dwarves, mages, and humans.

The best part of the game, as with many great games, is the characters. They try to show a group of wonderful and flawed people who bicker, disagree, and fight over what the right thing to do is. I have played the game repeatedly and think that this is one of the better video games out there. I hate reviewing things that I love because that’s a hard thing to do: give a balanced review of something that you really believe in. I just think that the game is tremendous.

Thanks, and take care, friends.