Starting a Bioware game is deadly to your free time. To mine, anyway.

I played through Dragon Age: Origins for the first time last November, didn’t eat, drink, sleep, just kept playing until I was done. I got to the end out of breath and exhausted, but with the blood of the archdemon on my twin blades and the taint of the darkspawn simmering in my veins.

All those saved games were lost. But playing a rogue through the first time was only one story, and to get ready to play the expansion pack, Dragon Age: Awakenings (and to anticipate Dragon Age 2), I decided to replay the game and make some different choices.

Each different race/class combination has its own, semi-unique, origin story. Human and elf mages share an origin in the insular Circle of Magi, where all budding mages are sent to find their place as either the tools or the prey of the Templars. Your dwarf can either be from the underclass or of the nobility; your human can be from the slums or the castle; your elf can be from the ghetto or the forest. All stories do converge once your are pulled from your old life by Duncan, the Warden-Commander of the Gray Wardens. The Wardens are a mystically bound order tasked with defending the surface world from the depredations of the Darkspawn, twisted creatures formed, says legend, from the mortals who invaded and tainted the Golden City of the Maker. With the Maker departed, his prophet and bride Andraste long ago dead, murdered, and the land on the edge of civil war, an Arch Demon has arisen to lead the Darkspawn on a Blight — an invasion of the surface world.

Through the choices you make along the way, your adventure will bring you along roughly three different paths, once through the origin. Being helpful, kind, upholding the law and never making deals with the evil spirits of the Fade, you will follow the good path. Be self-serving and make deals to your benefit, and you follow the path of evil. Chart a middle course and nobody will really be that happy with you, but on the other hand, their expectations will be low. No matter what path you choose, your overall goal remains the same — defeat the archdemon and prevent the Blight — but your reasons may change.

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Another week, another truckload of gaming press releases.

Bioware announces their new downloadable content for their Dragon Age RPG, “The Darkspawn Chronicles“. Meant as an alternate story — one where your character from Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening dies during the Grey Warden initiation — here you command the forces of the Darkspawn against the remnants of the forces of Light, led by the man who wouldn’t be king, Alistair.

Complete the module, unlock an item in the main games. And hey, you can buy some replica swords with which to terrorize your friends, family and co-workers. THAT won’t get you arrested. Perfect for slaying any stray Darkspawn you happen to meet on the bus.

Jolt Online announces a new toolbar for their Legends of Zork browser game. The toolbar will let you keep track of your character when you aren’t playing the game, but are in your browser (IE and FF only, folks. Sorry, Safari and Chrome users) where… you could just load the game up if you wanted to see this information. I wondered idly on Twitter if this apparently useless add-on had some nefarious purpose. And I got a reply!

@JoltOnline went on to explain:

We get happier players, and happier players are more likely to keep playing our game (and buying stuff). It’s that simple :P

If you’re a Legends of Zork player, and want to install this toolbar, well, Jolt will give you 60 extra action points per character on your account. My gameplay these days is pretty much limited to seeing how my Accountant sidekick is doing with my stash.

I found out that there was ALSO a toolbar for XFire that can detect you playing browser games, but it only works in IE, so sorry everyone who prefers another browser. It also optionally loads plugins, like music players and stuff, which you likely don’t need. I use Chrome, so toolbar authors hate me. Or something.

Swords and ships MMO Florensia wants us to know about all their new and fancy outfits. Outfits are nice, but I always liked the sea game better than the rather standard land game.

I doubt I need to mention EverQuest II’s new $25 mounts. The uproar has been amazing, especially since Blizzard’s own quarter Benjamin horsey of last month was hailed by millions as manna from heaven. Fools and their money are soon parted and all that. Can’t use the cash cats in most dungeons and on most raids. I wonder if they can be used in the battlegrounds? Anyway, if you have a fin and a couple sawbucks to spare, here’s a place to spend it.

I think everyone should only refer to money with slang. I’ll go first.

KingsIsle uncovers another shadowy figure from their forthcoming Wizard101 expansion, Celestia. The huge crab, dressed in shell armor and carrying a wicked polearm, looks menacing enough. If Celestia continues the trend of new Wizard101 worlds, we’ll have to kill approximately a million of these critters at half an hour per fight.

Dragonspyre is SO TEDIOUS.

Anyway, that’s all the barely relevant stuff from this last week. If you’re a game developer and want to send me press releases, please do! I love getting mail!

My character getting the kill shot on the Archdemon. Not a spoiler — no matter what you do, it’s gonna be you vs the Archdemon at some point, and you will kill it. Well, not 100% sure if it’s going to be you that does it all the time.

That’s the take-away lesson about Dragon Age: Origins. No matter what twists and turns your story has, you’re going to end in the same place. Was it worth the trip? It definitely was. Would I do it a second time? I don’t know.

After you finish the game and click through the stories of what happened to all the main characters once the main plot ends, your timeline is set to just before you confront the Archdemon, and your entire crew is waiting for you once again at the campsite, ready to take on some DLC.

But why? Why do I need to buy Warden’s Keep to get some armor and stuff when the Archdemon is already defeated? Why do I need to return to Ostagar to get the old king’s armor when the Archdemon is already defeated?

The country of Ferelden is a country caught in a bind of its own making. The various factions — the humans, the mages, the dwarfs and the elves — are all paralyzed by the all-consuming Blight, and without your help, they are powerless to set aside their own differences and unite to cleanse the surface world of darkspawn. In every case, you will find some solution that will allow them to move on. How that’s done is more or less up to you. You can use the force of your own personality to bring people together, or root out the cause of their problems and settle them. You can become as dangerous to Ferelden as the darkspawn, if you like.

You can even use the threat of the Blight to take control of the entire country.

Most of the time, though, you’ll be grouped with three characters of your choosing, chosen from the holy triumvirate of Tank, Healer and DPS. Each character has a dizzying number of abilities learned from the talent tree of their own class, plus up to two specialties that add a unique flavor to the mix.

You’ll soon find a magic combination of characters that work best with your style. This is the best part of the game — figuring out the key combination of abilities that end fights fast. My main, for instance, was a rogue. She would pull mobs with arrows from afar, and as they drew within range, the mage would insta-sleep them, then follow that up with a continuing AE damage/paralysis spell. DPS would take them down, and that was it for normal fights. Boss fights required different strats, but it’s nearly certain that the strategy you eventually settle on will be uniquely yours.

You won’t always have your friends by your side, though. Some events and certain puzzles separate you from your companions, and you’ll need a whole new strategy for those.

Puzzles! Dragon Age: Origins has dozens of puzzles, from sliding blocks to mazes. I don’t recall finding a mirror puzzle anywhere, but I may have just missed it. One puzzle put my character naked in a locked cell with no gear or help. That puzzle seemed uniquely made for a rogue. I almost got through the entire thing before I found out that I could have gotten my gear and weapons back early on if I’d been more observant. Rushing an officer with nothing but underwear and a borrowed long sword — and winning — was worth the embarrassment :)

So. the DA:O verdict: It swallowed my gaming time for the couple of weeks I needed to finish it. It’s challenging, but not so challenging that you will need cheats or spoilers to finish it. Great story, good graphics. Well, the blood spatters all over everything were comically over the top. I turned them off for awhile, but decided to leave them on eventually because it looked so ridiculous.

While the story is a big win, the combat gets tedious and repetitive. Aside from those times when you cannot bring your go-to guys to a battle, the constant encounters offer nothing new from one to the next. Toward the end, the game even ramps DOWN the difficulty of the mobs so you can heroically wade through crowds of mobs without taking more than a scratch.

Each character has a tactics screen, determining their default actions if you choose not to control their every move. Despite spending a lot of time fiddling with the tactics screens, I’d often find my tanks refusing to fight, or my mages running in to melee. The tactics worked well enough for MY character, so most of the time MY character would be running on autopilot while I controlled the other three characters by hand. Left to themselves, my mages would blow all their mana as soon as they possibly could. That wasn’t cool.

Beyond combat, your characters all like or dislike you to varying amounts. They’ll do what you say as long as they are in the party, but they may disapprove of your actions and eventually choose to leave if you don’t take care of their needs. Their needs for gifts, mainly. You can find or purchase gifts appropriate for every character to improve your standings with them. If they like you enough, they can unlock subclasses for you, give you additional side quests, or even want to get with you. I admit it, I had a fling with elf assassin Zevran. And I even took flack about it from the other characters, who would complain we were keeping them awake at night, and did I really want to build my life around that of a hired killer?

Bioware has already released two bits of Downloadable Content (DLC) — the Stone Warrior quest which gets you a golem for your party (and came with the game box), and the Warden’s Keep quest, which apparently gets some new armor and maybe some custom abilities. Though with the Blight defeated, why? Clearly what I had without it was good enough. The Stone Warrior quest DID have that cool sliding block puzzle, and I’m always gonna raise my hand for one of those.

So to recap, here are the lessons DA:O taught me:

1) Naked or mostly-naked women are probably evil.
2) No matter what path you take, you cannot avoid your destiny
3) Sex is probably a bad idea, all things considered.
4) All idols have feet of clay.
5) Nobody can solve your nation’s problems better than a young, untrained stranger.
6) Even if you never talk, people know what you meant.
7) Dog loves you more than anyone.
8) All the good looking armor is massive plate.
9) Enchantment? Enchantment!
10) Nothing says “Whoa! Slow down!” like a Cone of Cold.

I have about 27 hours into Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins, and have explored about a third of the world. Having enlisted the aid of Arl Eoman, the Circle of Magi and the Dalish Elves to my cause, I am now exploring the depths of Ozrammar, hoping the dwarfs will honor their ancient treaty.

My party is in the vicinity of levels 13-15; it’s really nice that characters you don’t include in your party still level up along with the main character, always a level behind. My main character, Tipa the City Elf Rogue, has both of her subclasses now — bard and duellist. I haven’t trained any of the bard powers, but I am well down the track for duellist, a really excellent choice for how I play.

Morrigan has left behind her shapeshifter roots and taken on the role of the arcane warrior, a melee mage. She is responsible for crowd control and nukage. She was the healer before we acquired Wynne, and has so many things to do that in fights, normally I control Morrigan’s every move. Arcane Warrior is amazing; if I play through again, I’ll likely make it my main.

Having toyed with Alistair and DLC golem Shale as tanks, I’ve largely settled in with Sten. Leilana was a mainstay of the party until we got Wynne; we needed a dedicated healer more than another bard, and the party stats exposed her for the poor dps she was. Since I’m handling all the roguish duties, Zevran has never had a party slot, though he did finally teach me the assassin ways. Barkspawn helps out now and again.

After the jump, some pictures from my journeys. May (or may not) contain spoilers.
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