Hot take incoming: Dragon Age: Origins was a solid B- that benefited from having pretty much zero competition when it was released. I played it a fair bit as it was literally the only game in town, but I find it extremely difficult to return to.
Why?
Ugh, I was writing a long post, accidentally reloaded the page, and lost it all.
To keep it brief, for a game whose primary focus is supposed to be story and characters, I found both of these facets to be underdeveloped. Loghain is a great example of this. His betrayal of the king demonstrates no internal logic. It’s just a crazy-stupid plan that predictably blows up in his face. I can still remember the first time I played this and Loghain sounds the retreat and thinking “why?” and never getting a satisfying answer.
Story and character issues, alongside terrible art direction and sound design; truly uninspired class, leveling, and combat mechanics; and a painfully formulaic gameplay structure of go to place, fix their problem, move on; all leave me quite ambivalent about Origins. I like that it helped revitalize a genre of western fantasy RPGs and introduce so many new players to the genre, but I still personally find it to be overrated.
