As I’ve previously mentioned, my book club will be playing through the Dragon Age video game franchise as we collectively prepare for the release of Veilguard (I refuse to call it The Veilguard). Since I’ll be away from my computer for a week, I decided to set aside my Switch and Unicorn Overlord for a weekend and dive into Dragon Age: Origins. It took a while longer than I thought it would to settle back into the game, since I’d forgotten what most of the stats did and what my preferred builds were, but I mostly got that out of the way in the first day by reading build guides and remembering what parts I used to enjoy about the game. I’m still settling in after about fifteen hours of game run time (an unknown amount of which is me getting restless, walking away from my PC to fold laundry, do dishes, make food, and so on), but I’m mostly comfortable with the game again. Despite how much I played it on my old Xbox 360, coming back to it has me feeling out-of-synch with the way the game works. Maybe it’s because of the almost two hundred hours I put into Inquisition, which has a very distinct and different feel to it. Maybe it’s because it has been over a decade since I last played it. Maybe both. Regardless, trying to get back into this game has me feeling like I found an old beloved shirt that I’m trying to get to sit comfortably on my frame despite how different my frame is even from when I was in college (my shoulders are the broadest they’ve ever been). It’s fine, mostly, but it just feels a little weird and the comfort I remember is largely gone.

Despite all that, I’m having a fine time. I’ve managed to make my female human noble look constantly concerned, which I feel is the only appropriate expression for what happens in the life of your character. After all, one minute you’re being given the mixed messages of “get hitched and make me some babies” from mom and “I trust your ability to be a wise ruler, [authority-undermining pet name unbefitting of a grown-ass woman]” from dad, and then the next minute everything is on fire, your mother decides to die beside her husband despite the fact that having numerous witnesses survive is of paramount importance, and your keep falls almost instantly despite it supposedly being designed to withstand a siege. I mean, sure, they tricked their way in, but it happens so quickly and silently that my character and her lover (the elven handmaiden of a visiting noblewoman), don’t know what’s going on despite the constant screaming and din of battle that erupts the instant the door opens. It’s all a little jarring and everything that happens after that isn’t any better! Looking concerned is only natural! Any other constant expression would be weirder.

She’s having a rough go of things, poor Wren. From a life of relaxed pursuit of incredible martial prowess, wealth, luxury, and casual sex to tromping through the mud with a bunch of people who are either incredibly fun to be around or just incredibly rude and mean (but still fun to be around). Or they’re Sten who is neither of those things. Which is a little hard on the guy since he’s the main vehicle through which players encounter the Qun (and notably the only person of color in your companions, which really doesn’t reflect well on BioWare in a whole lot of different ways) and much more interesting of a conversationalist nowadays than I ever found him when I interacted with him in the past. Unfortunately, I rarely have him around, instead opting for companions whose company I actually enjoy (Alistair and Leliana) and then Morrigan because I don’t have any other mages yet. Once I get Wynne and have access to some really good healing, I will be saying goodbye to Morrigan until its time to do her personal quest. I’m generally just not a fan of having so many bitter and angry people in my party. Or how weirdly petulant and childish Morrigan seems to me these days. I mean, sure, she is barely an adult and entirely unfamiliar with the world outside her home, but I remember thinking she was fairly worldly by the end of the game in my earlier playthroughs and I’m just not sure how I could possibly think that as I work my way through the game nowadays. I mean, I know I should give other characters a try sometime, to see what it’s like to run around with them in my party rather than the same group of less bitter characters that I always use, but so many of them are just constantly mean, rude, and angry about everything. I do not have it in me to put up with that during what is going to be my in-depth playthrough of the game.

Once I clear this file (and then all the DLC, of course), I’ll be replaying it at least twice to cover additional backgrounds. My goal is to buzz through everything but the character origins pretty quickly, just to get a sense of what might be different from one perspective to the next (including making different choices on major plot points) and probably skip all the DLC for those runs since most of it isn’t super character dependent. This time, though, I’m taking the time to talk to all of my companions, to roleplay through the game according to the character I’ve made, and to set up what I’ll be using in the later games as my “canonical” world state. I’ll be able to tweak that as needed, thanks to Dragon Age Keep, but my book club and I are hoping to set up our histories since we’re already playing through the game. It’ll be fun to see all of this stuff play out over the next five or six months as we race through the games so we’re prepared for Veilguard. I’ve never really done a full franchise playthrough of Dragon Age, so it promises to be an interesting experience, if nothing else. Time to really see if Dragon Age 2 is actually my favorite or if it just stood out as that because it was the last game I played before Dragon Age: Inquisition started getting too open-worldy for me to properly enjoy (the Hinterlands are just TOO BIG). Plus, since I haven’t played the games in a decade, I’m interested to see what they look like to me nowadays, being the person I am today. Who knows what I’ll think of it then. I mean, I’ve only played about a dozen actual hours of Dragon Age: Origins and I already feel much differently about most of the characters than I did before.