I finally finished Dragon Age: Origins. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy my time, it was just a much longer game than I remembered. On top of having a decent time playing a game I once loved enough to play all the way through at least six separate times, I got everything in this run to come out the way I wanted it to. I got the girl, became a queen, outlived an archdemon, and sent my bestie off with the child of my political husband (which is what you get out of a political marriage meant to secure yourself a crown). All in all, I had a great time. Except for playing it all on minimum graphics and needing to develop a compulsive quick save habit (which has begun to rear its head in other games I’m playing) so I wouldn’t lose too much when my game inevitably crashed. Because it always crashed. It even crashed as it tried to load the post-final-boss bit of the game where I’d get to have one last chat with my companions. Luckily, it had already autosaved, so I didn’t need to re-do the boss fight, but it was certainly annoying to need to launch the game again for that tiny bit of play time considering how late at night it was by the time I got there. It was annoying and it colored my entire playthrough, though especially so in the later parts of the game when there was a lot going on and my attempts to maintain the tension of the story ran aground every time the game crashed and I needed to repeat my game-launch ritual. Still, it was a decent use of my time and wasn’t so frustrating that I was desperate to move on to Dragon Age 2. If it had gone on much longer, I expect I would have been, but I got out just in time.

Long before this point, I’d dipped a toe into Denerim for some quests, to find a belt that would boost my XP that I vaguely remembered, and to ensure that I could complete the personal quests for Leliana and Alistair as soon as they came up (I needed to harden both the characters’ hearts if I wanted to get my combined accomplishment of being Queen and still being in a relationship with Leliana). What I’d forgotten in all of my playing is that Denerim is actually a huge part of the game once you get there towards the end of it. The Elven alienage, getting captured, political intrigue, and a whole bunch of other quests all happen between calling the Landsmeet and actually deposing the Loghain, plus then there’s all the stuff that happens AFTER you’ve dealt with Loghain, such as the final night in Redcliffe, saving Denerim, and the final fight against the Archdemon (which is part of saving Denerim of course, but it’s a big enough activity that it bears mentioning). The throughline, though, on all of my time spent in Denerim, is that everyone in the capital of Ferelden is absolutely miserable. People living in squalor, nobles sitting cozily in taverns as they plan how to betray each other, political machination at the expense of everyone else, a power-grabbing noble who is just imprisoning and killing people willy-nilly, and a “regent” who has clearly lost his mind to paranoia. It’s a rough place to be and the game does an excellent job of painting that miserable picture. Enough so that it’s kind of rough to work through all at once. That’s a lot of negativity to handle when you’re staying up way too long to keep hurtling through a game. At least I got to kick some guards’ butts in my skivvies when I escaped from prison. That was pretty funny to think about as an in-world fact of existence: my character was powerful enough that she, with bare fists and bare cheeks, could take out a dude in full armor with a sword and shield.

Throughout all that, I felt much more clued into what I’m calling the ABCs of Political Alliances (see the bolded words below). You see, I always just went with Anora alone as queen in previous runs, save my first run where I put Alistair on the throne with Anora. Prior to this playthrough, I’d never actually tried to supplant Anora or place myself on the throne. Since I was watching for the prompts I’d looked up at the beginning of my playthrough, I was much more in-tune with the game during this last segment of it than I was in the Orzammar and Brecilian Forest portions of the game (a casualty of long hours and the heigh of my game crashing issues), which means I noticed a bit of a theme building as I dealt with Anora. First is her ruthless Ambition and the way she so quickly tried to move every powerful person into agreeing with her point of view. She said some things in front of Alistair that she knew he’d agree with, tried to head off the Arl of Redcliffe’s plans to put Alistair on the throne while talking to him, and then lured me into her rooms in order to get me to agree that Alistair would make a much worse king than she’d make queen, altering her argument to counter whatever ideas I put forth. All of this, of course, came after I rescued her and she betrayed me to her father’s guards and retainers, acting as if I was kidnapping her instead of freeing her from her imprisonment. This Betrayal was repeated when we finally got to the throne room and challenged Loghain for the throne as she cast aside all of her promises and came out in support of her father, against Alistair’s claim, showing that she was still willing to do whatever it took to make sure she got power. Finally, once I’d killed her father and said that Alistair and I would rule together, we locked her away in a tower with the promise that she could rule if we died, thereby delivering a final Comeuppance by being too kind to even kill her outright like she likely would have in a similar situation. It was a fun bit of political drama to watch play out.

Other than that, the finale of the game was a bit of a grind. I had all the powers and abilities I needed to work my way through the fight, but it was a close thing, especially with the group fighting at the front gate. I almost lost everyone when I foolishly summoned the mages of the circle to help me since apparently all they do is cast fireball on everyone standing in front of them. I was absolutely wrecking the fight, called in the mages to make some breathing space since I didn’t have a healer in the ground, and then got absolutely wrecked by those same mages fireballing every single darkspawn, no matter how many of their allies it would take out in the process. It was brutal… My Warden faired much better, though. I finally got her first cinematic killing blow, which is fitting that it was the one that really mattered.

Seriously. Alistair got literally every single other cinematic killing blow. Two other dragons and at least a dozen ogres, all despite my character being a boss-slaying dual-wielding blender of a rogue. It was a funny detail at first, with all the ogres, but the first dragon kill stung a bit (it’s such an epic little cinematic moment!) and the second was frustrating enough that I saved in a separate file and reloaded the battle to see if I could let my super dexterous and clever rogue get to do all the cool acrobatic flips and stabs. Alistair got it three times out of three. Humiliating, considering what his damage output was…

Overall, though, I had a decent time with the game, even with being humiliated by Alistair getting every large-creature-kill. I got to put together a build I knew would work well, see it play out, and become a nearly unstoppable killing machine by the end (provided I didn’t get absolutely wrecked by a single powerful attack from one of the bosses since I was squishy as hell). I got to put together my ideal world-state [and didn’t even consider the fact that this probably wouldn’t carry forward into Dragon Age: The Veilguard until after I started Dragon Age 2], actually roleplay my way through a bunch of the decisions and interactions by providing my own background details behind the words my character said (which is a marked difference from later games where you kinda just set the vibe for what your PC will say and then an unexpected (and potentially unrelated, given how loose the game is with the vibes you set) sentence will flow from your character’s mouth), and revisit the game that solidified me as a fan of these kinds of RPGs. Sure, I played and loved the KotOR games years prior which set me on this path, but Dragon Age is what convinced me to spend money on them as an adult and everything follows from that decision.

From here, I’ve got the DLCs and Awakening expansion to play through, which I image I’ll be writing about for “tomorrow” (not tomorrow as of writing this but definitely tomorrow as of you reading this) due to how my posts are structured around the holiday weekend and the short break I’ll be taking. I’m very excited to get into these new bits of Dragon Age media since I’ve never played any of them except The Darkspawn Chronicles and I’m very curious about what goes on in Awakening and Witch Hunt especially. They’re my desert for finishing the meal that was Dragon Age: Origins and I’m looking forward to the new experiences.