Dragon Age: Origins

So, there is a question of who is review is for. If you’re just thinking of getting into this whole “Age of Dragons” thing, don’t read this. And if you’re strapped for time, you probably shouldn’t read this, but you definitely should not play this expansion pack. In Dungeons and Dragons, and in other pen and paper RPG products, there are things called “modules.” A module is essentially a already planned out adventure for a group of players and can be either relatively short, stand alone blueprint for something that can exist in any campaign, or a long sketch of a entire adventure path with all sorts of new characters and sub-plots. Dragon Age: Origins is an adventure path, this bit of DLC is a module. Let’s get into the details of what you get.  
 
Two maps. Basically the story, of what little there is, is that a bunch of dwarves got lost somewhere underground and you have to go see what happened to them. Everyone assumes darkspawn, but who knows. The Grey Warden is the only one who will help the ranger dude and his pet Bronto find his brother who was among their number. You go in there, see that things went tits up, play through two dungeon maps, fight a boss that looks like it was pulled out of Dead Space, and then the credits roll. It is important to note this is a relatively short experience that has nothing to do with the main story. You get a mace to use in the main game that sometimes knocks enemies back as a goodie for buying the DLC. 
 
From the data that is displayed when you start up Dragon Age 2, it appears that nothing in this mission matters to the world at large. To its credit, the description of the DLC does state that this supposed to be a challenge. It is, without a doubt, the hardest bit of content for this game outside some fan created hell map full of arcane horrors and armored ogres. I switched to Hard at about level 10 in the main game, and upped the ante to Nightmare about three levels into Awakening and I seriously thought about knocking it down to normal for this. (That’s not an ePeen sentence, I know that people are out there doing solo Nightmare runs, but I am trying to give perspective for my level of comfort expectations).  
 
So if you want a challenge and are a serious fan of the Dragon Age’s 4 Edition D&D; meets Baldur’s Gate/Kotor style of game play, then check this out. But if you are mainly in it a Bioware game for the story and the combat just sort of happens for you, then give this one a pass.  

(The rest of the review is less Consumer Reports and more my opinion on the details of trhe module. As such, it will contain SPOILERS and is largely aimed for people who like to see if other people agree with their opinions, you know, those who already bought and played the game and therefore do not need a review. There is also a little bit of strategy advice if you couldn’t beat it on Nightmare. Here’s the short version: have at least one respec manual)

 
 
The most interesting thing about this pack is the reality shifting element to it. The Fade, or something, has interacted with all of the Lyrium and dark magic in the area to cause there to be what amounts to parallel dimensions. Everything is color coded, say for example you start off in the normal world, hit the blue switch, and now the party is in the blue dimension and can affect blue things you couldn’t touch before. I might have been playing that part when I was sleepy, but I do not remember any justification for this in the fiction. Bioware basically said, you play video games a lot right? You can see weird colors, so you’ll work this mechanic out. Parallel dimensions does not add a ton to the experience, but it does help to keep it from being just another dungeon. Albeit one with a Grand Canyon full of golems.  
 
Speaking of golems, you get one in your party early on by finding a control rod. But this is just a regular-ass golem, not a yappy one like Shale from The Stone Prisoner DLC (or as I like to call her, “fantasy HK-47”). Some of the Codex entries mention that mages of yore waged battle with golems at their side, so it is sort of neat from a story standpoint to be that guy. And you can find hidden research which will net you an achievement if you get it all and, somehow, instantly upgrade the golem to allow it to cast spells and have marginally better. Which is a good thing because, there is no mage to recruit in this module. So if your imported or created character is not a mage with the ability to heal, you better have a lot of poultices or your party is going to rely on the Runic Golem’s spamming Group Heal whenever he can (which is not often) and die a lot.  
 
That’s all the good things I have to say about this module, here’s the bad: it is not well designed as the only reason it is hard is because the characters they give you suck balls. Which might sound harsh, but seriously, they suck ass and the only reason I ever got party wiped was because of their suckitude. Example, early on you and the double melee stock rogue and aforementioned golem roll into a room of golems, golems activate because it would be a even shorter experience if they didn’t, and you roll initiative. All minion level, so what’s the worst that can happen? Well, your rogue can die in two hits and then the golem takes four smacks and then it’s just your main owning the room. I played a mage as my main and did not come close to dying in the room after the other characters two levels lower than her snuffed it. That’s a problem. And the problem is that the characters they give you in this map suck balls. I did not have this problem in Witch Hunt, or even in the two all stock character DLCs, so it can’t be the case that my main was just so much more demonically rude than any given character Bioware can make. Granted you can shift control and tell people to run away, but that is not really a lot of fun and rarely, once every ten hours or so, ever needed to be done in the main game.  
 
There’s two encounters that stick out in my mind. These are the hardest things in the entire first Dragon Age game. The first one was actually kind of fun as it requires some lateral thinking, the second one, not fun at all due to ball suckage.  
 
The first is that in order to get all the research notes you have to go into a room kind of hidden in the map. You have to do a lot a back tracking to even find the right door, let alone get shifted to the right colored dimension to open said door. So obviously the designers wanted only the most obsessive and hardest-of-core RPG-nerds to find it. (Which makes me that guy. Great. Have to let that sink in for a few. Ok, back to it.) So when the door is opened you see two switches and a bunch of treasure chests and two switches in a small room with say six pillars in it. Can’t touch anything, wrong color, hit the switch. When about a dozen high powered golems materialize and attack. It’s like the end of the first episode in Doom 1, you teleported into the center of a slaughter house and you are the cow. Even if you did not have the characters they stick you with, you’d likely die as every golem special attack either stuns or knockdown opponents so it is vey difficult to do anything. It looks like fantasy characters in a pinball machine. The trick is that there are two dimension switches in the room. Shift into one room, concentrate on the weakest enemies first as they can stun too, hope to kill one or two, then shift back when things look dire. This will make all the golems disappear, but regenerate all of the remaining ones’ health, but any fallen comrades get back up as there is no longer combat going on. War of attrition one or two golems at a time and you should be able to get it. I do not know if it was intentional or not, but the two switches make it possible to finish this room and is pretty clever (although maybe a warrior with the best gear wouldn’t even feel what the golems throw around, beats me as I had a mage).  
 
The other encounter that sticks out is the confrontation with the Harvester. This is the hardest boss in the game. Unfortunately, one of the reasons he is so hard is a certain rogue’s proclivity for sucking balls. The problem is that he can not take a lot of damage before dying, but he is a melee character and the Harvester usually hits multiple opponents next to him. As the Harvester is a massive bruiser that randomly spawns corpse/skeletons of random level (some are Elite/boss level, and can kill any character in half a dozen hits). So essentially he is out of the fight very quickly and useless if you play on Nightmare. Even if he takes a break and sucks down a poultice every chance he gets and gets external healing from a mage and the golem, he’ll die fairly quickly. It is impossible to make him effective in his stock state.  
 
So the solution is to make him better. There is only one way to do that as there is not a lot of great gear in the dungeon, have an imported character who had an item that allows a character to be totally respeced. Use that to make him a ranged rogue, and as long as you can manage agro (just have any targeted character run from the harvester while everyone else piles on the pain) and as long as more than one or two red corpses/skeletons do not spawn, you should be fine. The Harvester seems to be able to maintain a foothold in all dimensions, but his minions do not, so there is a switch that will shift dimensions and instantly kill – for some reason – all spawned enemies when thrown. The switch seems to spawn every thirty seconds or so. At some point the NPCs will call out “Weapons have no effect! Try using magic!”, but I didn’t notice any difference in what the Harvester took for damage. If ranged rogue with high dex, he can do a good amount of damage and not die provided red skeletons do not attack him.  
 
That’s my biggest problem with this DLC, it should never be the case that it is impossible to defeat an enemy unless you totally respect an NPC. That either shows a lack of play testing, or an expectation that no one plays at the highest setting. I must have tried a dozen times with stock rogue NPC, got to the second boss stage three or four times, but once I stopped pounding my head against the wall and made him what he needed to be, beat the module boss the second or third try (skeleton level is random, you could be the best DA player on earth, highest level, have best theoretical gear with class, but if you get three reds, your dead, just reload your save as victory will be impossible). But I would not have been able to do it without the ability to reorganize all his stats and abilities, which stinks because the only other option is to either take down the difficulty, or go back into Awakening and finish it again, but this time with an extra manual. The only reason I had one is because I never used the free one they give you at the beginning of Awakening, I weep for parallel dimension me that actually used that thing. The Achievement for beating this on Hard or Nightmare will feel like an actual achievement. The ending is a lame throwaway, it has zero impact and is predictable, but maybe will have significance in DA2. I doubt it.  
 
Now, perhaps a week after my triumph, I do not know what beating The Harvester on Nightmare means. It was next to, if not dead on, impossible with the characters they give you, I respec one module only character, and while still very challenging, not an impossible fight. Is that what the designers wanted? For people to get creative in their problem solving? Does that mean that I am better at the game than the people who made it? Does this just show that melee rogues not properly speced are no good in the first Dragon Age game? I don’t know the answers to these questions.  
  

But I do know I did it. I beat it. And that felt pretty good for an hour or so. So, perhaps, in the final analysis, it was worth the money.  To me anyway.