DragonAge: Origins First Look

BioWare Official Website

Thursday morning, we had a chance to sit behind closed doors to take a look at Bioware’s latest title with EA – DragonAge: Origins.  If you haven’t see the video trailers yet for this game, I suggest you watch the below, especially if you’re a fan of BioWare‘s previous titles, however, I’ll warn you that the content of this game, is not for all ages.

During our time with EA this morning we saw some in-game play, and even had some hands-on time with the Xbox 360 version of the game. Besides the beautiful graphics, BioWare has managed to bring a great new original story to this game. When you play, you get a chance to create your own character, and play through the game using each choice as a way to further customize your part in the story, and how the characters around you interact. One of the things I’m most interested in finding out they still aren’t ready to release, which is the level of storyline that’ll be present in the game from the prequel novel that was released a few months ago. It’s obvious with just a few moments of game play that the story takes place long after the book, but there’s nothing much more that I can reveal at this point.

It’s especially interesting to see how the game has been translated from a PC feel since it’s also being released on the Xbox 360 and PS3. There will be a level of adjustment for PC gamers if they choose to play on one of the next-gen consoles since there’s not a simple point and click factor. Actually, for me, even though I play a lot of games on the PC, I’m not a fan of point-and-click movement, so the move to either a mouse controlled or joystick type movement was very appealing to me. It did take me a few minutes to adjust to the attack methods and selection screens for different abilities, but I think that it’s something that could be picked up fairly quickly for most regular gamers, although new players may have a tougher time.

Of course, one of the most exciting parts of this game is the world and the story that takes place. Only at E3, behind closed doors was anyone able to see the new in game play of a dragon battle, which looked like a lot of fun, but without the hands-on experience I can’t tell you much more than that it looked like something I’d be excited to play. I’m excited for the October 20th release date, and I think you should be to because it looks like a great game and an interesting story.