For the uninitiated, “The 7th Saga” is an infamous SNES RPG. You take the role of one of seven apprentices to a king who are on a mission to find the four runes. Once one of them collects all the runes, they can become “leader of the world”, whatever that means. I suspect mistranslation shenanigans, but the game is bad enough regardless. So, the seven apprentices (why there are seven apprentices when only one could possibly claim the power, I do not know) set off into the world to reclaim the four runes.

That’s about it for plot. I played through about half the game and the only other plot points were “one of the other apprentices hired an assassin to stop you, twice! (same guy)” and “one of the apprentices has gone mad and is holed up in a castle holding onto one of the runes”… isn’t he supposed to be all about getting the runes for himself anyway? Right… anyway, that’s about it.

The rest of it is running around the world map, leveling up, so you can get to new areas, in which you level up, and sometimes get a crystal. Then you get a terrible ending.

Flaws are compounded by a troublesome interface. This is the kind of game where you need to press a button to activate a menu to get to a screen where you can press talk, to talk to somebody, if they have not already moved away.

It gets minor points for a slightly innovative battle transition… you move on a screen with a radar indicating nearby monsters. You can try to dodge them, but it does not work well. They will eventually catch you. No rhyme or reason to it. But when they do, the screen rotates down to show where you are, and a monster on a screen. Sadly, the battle screen does not look convincing.

You get to pick which of the seven apprentices you want to play as, but choose wisely. They are unbalanced. Some are terribly weak compared to the others. You can mitigate their flaws by taking a second apprentice as your companion, but it raises the question as to why not all of you are working together, or why just one of them would randomly decide to work with you. You can also fight the other apprentices, but they are always around your level, with the best equipment for them at that point in the game. If you chose a bad apprentice, good luck! (I’ve heard the one mandatory apprentice fight is impossible if you chose a bad character)

I mentioned a hack. Well, this game has been hacked three times to make it easier because it is just brutal and unbalanced. The original hack, “Easier 7th Saga”, restores the American release to the original Japanese balance, which makes the game better. “7th Saga Redux” changes a few things, again trying to make it easier, but the changes seem small to me. “7th Saga+”, the one I used, completely rebalances the game, so that you level at a decent clip, all of the apprentices learn their abilities in a more logical order, and the monsters have realistic weaknesses. That’s the winner for me. But the game still sucks with it.

It’s just a very boring game. The graphics are not especially pretty; sometimes cool in a weird and creepy way, but often they just look barren, flat, and repetitive. The characters have no personality. The dialogue (what little exists, and there is [i]precious[/i] little – neither you nor your companion, if you take one, speak) is bland. The game’s only redeeming feature is its music, which is lovely, but I’m sure an audiophile could get better use out of the OST while doing something else with their free time. No matter how you hack it, “The 7th Saga” sucks.

When I was a kid, my parents got me Mega Man 2… for the Game Boy. I played it. Liked it. Beat it. Next was Mega Man 4. I don’t know why I skipped, but what the hell, I was a kid – who cares about continuity? (And when I recently learned most of the GB games are just compacted versions of the full-sized games, well, all the less to care). Anyway, I never beat Mega Man 4 (and still haven’t). I would always get to Wily’s castle and then something would go wrong. I used to hook it up to the SNES in my room and would come home from school to find my mom or a house cleaner had unplugged it. I still sometimes think about going back and playing it, but I have better games to play.

Then there was Mega Man 5; still on the GB. This one stood out because it [i]is[/i] different from the earlier games. Oh, the stages do reuse some concepts, but all the bosses are new, the stage layouts are different, and Mega Man fires a rocket arm instead of a Mega Buster. Beside having some cool battles, the game had a neat trick I learned about in my first days of using GameFAQs: if you died repeatedly on a stage, you could get a better rocket arm. You could do this two or three times.

On a whim, I tried the same trick in my copy of Mega Man 4. And it worked! I was ecstatic. I had discovered a secret that wasn’t even on GameFAQs at the time. I was too lazy to actually [i]post[/i] the secret and now somebody else has done it.

Since then, I’d tried one or two of the Mega Man games for the NES, but never really got anywhere. It wasn’t until the Mega Man Anniversary Collection was released that I felt the urge to finally do it; beat all the Mega Man games. And then I got stuck in the second game with the damned turrets that shoot at you and must be destroyed with the Crash Bomb. Believe me when I tell you that this is the most frustrating area in the Mega Man games as a whole. You cannot make [i]any[/i] mistakes, or you won’t have enough energy to beat them. Oh, you can redo the level, and the damage sustained is still there, but good luck finding enough energy along the way and making it there with enough health to feel comfortable finishing the battle without a hurry. Point is, I stopped playing for a while, and then the disc got scratched and wouldn’t play any more. Blah.

A few years later, Mega Man 9 was released. I didn’t play much of it, but it seemed interesting. I promised myself I’d go and beat all those games eventually.

Now, in law school, I am always busy. I like to play short games that don’t take up both of my monitors’ screens because that lets me multitask and get more things done. Enter the Mega Man games. Easy enough to play while watching Doctor Who.

I started with the second game (having actually already beaten the first) and worked my way through ten. I also played X1-5, ignoring 6-8 because those games are reputedly terrible.

So, here’s what I think, after 16 years, about the Mega Man games.

They started to suck after 2.

Oh, well, some of the later games weren’t terrible. I didn’t mind the addition of the slide. And the Mega Buster charged shot seemed cool at first. But the Rush Adaptors made the game too easy. And later games began using the Charged Shot as if it were the default attack.

Mega Man 4 was inexcusably hard. Several bosses are just immune unless you hit them with certain weapons; run out of energy? Well, guess you better let Wily just kill you.

Five was easy and six was easier than that.

Now, even the earliest Mega Man games aren’t immune from some criticism. Although bosses have weaknesses, 1) it’s not clear who is weak to what – what is Gemini Man’s weakness supposed to be? And, 2) sometimes the “super effective” weapons didn’t do nearly enough damage to be distinct from other weapons. Especially when fighting Wily. But moving on…

The problems got worse when the game left the NES. Seven isn’t [i]too[/i] bad. Mega Man looks stylish and the levels are colorful. But, seriously, I shouldn’t need three Charged Shots to defeat a standard enemy. That is inexcusable. The game was also still pretty easy and got a bit gimmicky with the special items that Mega Man could switch out. The only real challenge is the absurdly difficult fight against Wily at the end.

But 8 is the worst. The graphics are mismatched. Mega Man looks slightly faded. Or maybe it’s just the white-washed backgrounds. The levels are… “inspired”. It’s like they’re trying to play to the X series’ more open level layouts, but they don’t go far enough. They gimmick up things with squares on Clown Man’s stage that respond with penalties if you press the wrong button on them, a flying stage where you attack from Jet Rush’s back, and an ice stage where, of course, you use a sled. The stages are sometimes hard, without being clever, but it’s at least better than the abysmal difficult of the games that preceded it (that’s not really a compliment, mind you). There’s also a Mega Ball, which is just a weapon that Mega Man gets at the start of the game. It’s a soccer ball. He kicks it and it does damage. He can use it to get a bit higher. Weird.

Really, the game’s problem is that it relies too much on its gimmicks. Poorly-implemented ones, like the smoke clouds near the end of Frost man’s stage, which don’t hide anything. With all the weird stages where Mega man doesn’t do normal platforming, the game doesn’t even feel like Mega Man half the time.

The story doesn’t help much either. Capcom added a story to Mega Man. Now, Mega man has always had a story, but it’s always been silly and basic…or, at least it was in the earlier games; putting aside weird things like the time Wily pretended to be Mister X (oh, spoilers, Wily is always the villain). So, what’s the story? Robots from outer space crash land on earth. Or, at least one does. There were two fighting, but I don’t know what happened to the other one. The story never really explains. Anyway, this is somehow tied in with the “evil energy” now on the planet. You see, there is this energy and this energy is evil and now it’s going to go find Wily because Wily is evil and you and this robot have to stop it. It’s somehow even stupider than it sounds, because a lot of the story is told with badly drawn anime clips, and you are fighting robot masters because, um, they’re there.

Oh, but the worst part? The voice acting. I don’t know, maybe they had a fantastic story in the original Japanese; the translation is almost certainly a butcher job, despite there being less than 100 lines of dialogue in the game. And the voice actors…

The voice actors are the [i]worst[/i] VAs I have ever heard. Dr. Light sounds like Elmer Fudd. Mega Man sounds like a little girl. And the robot masters are so embarrassing that I had to turn off the music. Yes, I played this game without any music; that’s how terrible the VAs (and the music) are.

Thankfully, somebody got Mega Man’s head back on straight after eight.

Mega Man & Bass, the easily-overlooked sequel that comes before 9, is a decent platformer game, with none of the major problems of 8. It still feels a little weak overall, but that might just be the limits of the handheld system.

But it’s what comes after that is really impressive. Mega Man 9 and 10 have none of the complaints I have with the later games in the series. I do miss the dash a little bit, but it wasn’t a necessary feature. The Charged Shot is, thankfully, [i]gone[/i]. Mega Man is more fun when he is a run-n-gun platformer. The music is top notch. The controls are tight. I know all of this sounds a little bit odd to describe a game which works and looks like an NES platformer, but that’s the beauty: Mega Man just works best as an 8-bit character. No Mega Ball. No cut scenes. No voice acting. Only the most basic story (with a bit of retro charm to its simplicity). The designers pushed the graphics to the limit; for NES games, they are gorgeous. Heck, for games in general, they look good – everything was well thought-out. And the difficult is back! Nine is a bit more difficult than ten, but I died more than a few times in each of them.

Nine and Ten are the best Mega Man games.

I’ll be a bit briefer on the X series. X works much better on the SNES and the PS than Mega Man ever did. The X series makes good use of cut scenes, voice acting, and the graphics. The setting is darker and levels are much more spread out. Beside the Dash and the Charged Shot, X can wall climb and, later, air dash (in the later games). The games force X to be constantly on the move, dodging and weaving and charging. It’s well-done and different from the Mega Man series, in a good way. But stop at X5 because the series was meant to stop there. Capcom wouldn’t let the series die. Considering some of the problems with X5, many of which were reminiscent of MM8, it probably would have been for the best had it ended there.

If you’re interested in playing the Mega Man series, I strongly recommend playing 9 and 10. You might also want to check out 1 and 2, maybe even 3. Mega Man & Bass is all right. Four isn’t [i]terrible[/i], but the flaws of the series begin to show with that entry, and up through 8, they are really bad.

You might also want to check out the X series. Four is the best, and 5 is mediocre. Just don’t expect the games to play like the Mega Man series.

If it’s game length, then again, the original Dragon Quest would no longer be considered an RPG, nor would Arc the Lad 1.

If an RPG is defined by turn-based combat, then Okami is not an RPG, but neither is Vagrant Story or Oblivion.

Confusing, eh?

Origin of the Term RPG
A few terms come to mind when thinking of the term RPG, as applied to video games: RPGs are very long compared to other genres (usually 40-60 hours), use turn-based combat, are set in a fantasy world, involve leveling characters, and have a good story. Many RPGs do share all, or most, of these elements, but an RPG can have some, or none, of them.

The problem: the term RPG comes from an entirely different gaming experience, now known as tabletop roleplaying games. The term was adopted by early video games without qualification. Because video games are necessarily a different playing experience from tabletop RPGs, the term could not mean exactly the same thing. But… nobody defined what the new thing was.

What ISN’T an RPG
Many people latched onto the “roleplaying” part of it, assuming that a video game RPG is a game, where you take on the role of a character, and had a quest focused on that character. Through various obfuscating terms, people tried to make it sound like RPGs are the only genre where you don’t play as an invisible hand moving objects. It’s complete nonsense. Most games at least nominally put the player in the role of a character, and some heap on more personality or choices than many RPGs. Try to tell me with a straight face that the hero of Dragon Quest 1 is more of a character than anybody in Heavy Rain.

The same applies to story. The story in DQ1 is “Defeat the Dragon Lord and save the Princess!” No plot twists, no character development, no cunning plans or clever obstacles in the way. Our silent protagonist from from point A to B to C, etc., looking for the latest doohickey that lets him get into the next place. That’s not a story. That’s busywork. Try “Amnesia”, a horror game where the player slowly unravels the secret behind his character’s amnesia, the mysterious castle in which he is locked, and the people and events which brought him there. It’s scary and disturbing. But we still consider DQ1 to be an RPG, and Amnesia is survival horror.

If anybody suggests the answer is game length, they need to remember that DQ1 can be beaten in less than 20 (10? 5?) hours, easily. I’m fairly sure Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is longer than that.

What IS an RPG
Scratching in vain to find that elusive definition, some people suggest an RPG is about turn-based combat. But is Final Fantasy XII really turn-based combat? You can move anywhere you want; you can even leave a battlefield because there are no defined barriers. What about Vagrant Story? The player doesn’t take turns in that game; any time you tap the attack button, you immediately execute an attack – no waiting.

And yet, this is part of the definition of an RPG. An RPG uses some form of restriction over character action: the characters cannot just attack whenever the player wants them to attack. There is always some type of delay. We have a special term for games like Vagrant Story: “action RPG”. It’s the term we give a video game that plays like a platformer without platforming, and substitutes hit points for heart icons.

Internal character advancement is also present, and important, in all RPGs. Characters gain either levels or stat improvements. DQ1 has it. Vagrant Story has it. Heavy Rain doesn’t. Internal character advancement is different from external character advancement. The latter, which is also present in many RPGs, refers to things like picking up bigger guns, better body armor, or new gadgets. Granted, the difference is somewhat arbitrary: what’s the difference between a game where you do more damage because your strength score went up, and a game where you do m ore damage because you picked up a bigger gun? But there it is.

Most RPGs are relatively lengthy for their time, and consequently have more time to develop a strong narrative with interesting characters. The focus in most RPGs is almost as much on the story as it is on the combat. But these things do not need to be true for a game to be an RPG. They merely are usually true.

What’s It All Mean?
RPG is a nebulous, misleading term. Many people associate it with a strong narrative, but many non-RPGs have narratives as strong as modern RPGs. An RPG has internal character advancement and restricts player input during battle. Many RPGs also have a strong narrative, and are relatively lengthy, but neither is technically necessary for a game to be an RPG. But to be a good RPG? That’s for another discussion.

But there’s more to the atmosphere than the film noir. It’s always a little depressing and creepy. The rain never lets up (appropriately). People are constantly in a foul mood, and it shows on their faces. So much of the atmosphere is contained in those faces: so much pain, weariness, confusion, and sometimes even madness. Even the happy moments are muted. That’s a bit beyond just the graphics, but the graphics do add so much to it.

The cinematic feel is bolstered by the lack of icons on screen. No health bar. No inventory. Just the scene and a camera. The camera, notably, is beyond the player’s control. But that’s not an issue: imagine that, a game where the camera actually works to its advantage, setting up shots like any good movie. I haven’t seen such good camera work since “Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter.” And it surpasses even that.

A moment ago, I said there are no icons. Well, that’s true, and it isn’t true. At any time, the player can press a button to see what the PC is thinking, and select from a list. To make it even cooler, the “thoughts” are words that float around the character’s head, and which rotate at different speeds, sometimes shaking – their appearance is affected by the character’s mood. If the character is freaking out, the words might swirl quickly, almost unreadable. At times, the player must pick a thought, to say something to somebody. Frequently, the player has a time limit, and a limited amount of times to speak, which means that the player must think quickly and make smart decisions. Thus, while the presence of floating words by itself disrupts the atmosphere, the creative implementation makes it cool nonetheless.

Similarly, sometimes the player is required to input button commands. Onscreen representations of buttons and joystick movements tell the player what to press, what direction, how quickly, and so forth… They’re obvious, logically-placed (a motion for opening a door handle will be over a door handle), and quickly disappear if they become irrelevant. These motions are the other source of action in the game. Sometimes the game demands a complicated series of motions, or quick reflexes. Because the game plays out like a movie, these motions (and the dialogues) are done as the action continues. You don’t usually need to do something perfectly, but if you dally, expect the scene to go on without you.

And, yes, you can die in this game. And the game saves frequently, to prevent reloading. Didn’t do a scene right? Missed a clue? Character died? Too bad. But don’t feel too bad. The game goes on. Events might play out differently, and screwing up does mean the situation gets worse, but it’s always worse in an interesting way. In other words, the story is interesting no matter what you do.

One might reasonably ask what’s the point of calling “Heavy Rain” a game if it can carry on without input. But consider: the player still decides how the story will go, and getting the best ending does require a good memory, reflexes, and clever thinking. That makes it a game.

If you’ve seen “Saw”, the plot might feel a bit familiar. Except whereas “Saw” is all about the gross-out, here there is an actual story. I enjoyed following the four protagonists, as they did increasingly desperate things, and their paths interwove. The PCs’ personal struggles are central to the story. Without their struggles, the game would feel like an empty action flick. I liked all of the protagonists; even at their worst, they were interesting people.

Because the plot can play out differently depending on the player’s actions, I want to play through this game again. I might succeed in places where I failed, or intentionally fail in some places, or just choose different options, to see how events play out differently. Unlike “Dragon Age: Origins”, where the player could predict with ease what would happen, it’s harder to predict the exact impact of decisions here. Even when I can imagine generally what would happen, I cannot say what specifically would occur, and the story is good enough that I would like to see how events play out.

Although Heavy Rain passes itself off as a mystery, most of the important revelations don’t come until the end. Don’t expect to be significantly closer to the puzzle’s solution until the story actually gives it to you. Even that would be forgivable, but the revelation of the Origami Killer’s identity is a let-down. It’s not the worst option the game could have gone with, but calling the killer’s identity a “mystery” would be a miscategorization. The player shouldn’t be able to guess it, without making an unwarranted, if easy, logical leap. I will grant this: the killer’s motivation isn’t random and the methods are explained. I still felt both were a little weak, but they don’t kill the game. Yet the killer’s identity still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Heavy Rain is an exemplary cinematic game. The characters’ struggles drive the game through tightly-focused scenes that the player controls. With a creative game mechanic, the game is fun to play without strongly reminding the player that it is a game. It feels like a movie, from the strong atmosphere, to the strong camera control, down to the quickly-pacing plot that the player gets to guide. Because the game accounts for degrees of success and failure, the game continues where other games would give a “Game Over” screen. Furthermore, the branching paths are intriguing because individual scenes are fun and, in a plot driven so much by the characters, it’s amusing to see how the story changes based on what those characters do. The game is more of a suspense thriller than an actual mystery, and the villain’s identity is disappointing, but the story itself is logically presented, with characters making logical leaps of intuition based on evidence gathered. Backed by its moody atmosphere, fun story, and unobtrusive game mechanics, Heavy Rain is a great example of how to make a game feel like a movie while remaining worthy of being called a video game.

SPOILER!

The following spoiler is a more in-depth analysis of the Origami Killer.

Who is the Origami Killer? I bet you won’t guess. I know I didn’t. And I’m upset at the game, not myself, for that. Oh, I didn’t see it coming, but there’s a good reason for that. “The detective cannot be the killer” is a well-established principle. “Heavy Rain” breaks it. Scott Shelby is the Origami Killer. He is also one of the four protagonists. Making him the killer seems clever; the ending even explains how he so effectively led his criminal career, and gives a decent explanation as to why. However, he is treated exactly the same as every other protagonist throughout the rest of the game. That is to say, you control him, and all of his actions, and see everything that he sees. Except for one scene, where he actually kills somebody. The game tricks the player into thinking that the character happens upon a murder, when instead, the game omits showing Shelby kill somebody. This is a betrayal to the player because of the unspoken assumption that the player is the investigator, and is investigating through the eyes of the four protagonists. The game might as well have taken place on a different planet; seems weird, but the same logic applies: “Hey, we never said this was earth. That’s just an assumption you made.” But it’s a reasonable assumption because most stories that appear to take place on earth are actually taking place on earth; it would be nonsense to watch a show like, say, “House”, and be waiting for proof that it took place on Venus in the future, or reading Sherlock Holmes and wondering whether the setting was really England. While I give “Heavy Rain” points for the villain’s credibility, it loses points for the way the mystery is hidden.

The answer: animated shows.

Yes, over the past few weeks, I watched…
“The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”, Season 1
“Avatar: the Last Airbender”, All Seasons
“Batman: the Animated Series”, All Seasons

I also started my second semester of law school, so my schedule filled up again.

Plus, manga, more anime, tabletop gaming… in other words, I have been very distracted lately.

But it feels like too long sin ce I last did an update. Therefore, I will update tonight. And, if I have time, I will queue up several more posts for the coming days.

I have been talking about an Amnesia vlog for a while. Good news! I completed the vlog. Doing an actual vlog is a creative exercise: sometimes it’s hard to find things I want to say, and other times I get to capture my exact feelings during a scene. Because it’s a blind playthrough, lots of time is spent figuring out where to go . I might edit out some of that dead time, and I know I need to edit together the breaks between the individual clips. All told, it would be about a ten hour video once everything is uploaded.

But in addition to editing, I need to get it to work. For whatever reason, I cannot get the audio to properly compress. Until I figure out how to do that, I cannot upload the Amnesia vlog. And because I might have made some silly mistake with that, I want to hold off on making another vlog until I figure out what went wrong with this one. Hopefully, I can get the Amnesia vlog to work. Either way, I will at least upload a review of it.

Speaking of reviews, I also need to review both “Alundra” and “Castlevania: Circle of the Moon.” I just beat both games in the past couple weeks. Here’s an extremely short teaser review for each.

Amnesia starts out really strong: very scary, interesting plot. But by the end, it is no longer scary and the plot is never properly explained. Still, points for atmosphere.

Alundra is awesome. Great music, fun battles, mind-bending puzzles. However, its puzzles are sometimes ridiculously unforgiving.

Circle of the Moon is relatively pretty for a game on its system, but I don’t really care for the music. The plot’s as basic as always, but at least it isn’t silly. The combat and exploration are both really fun, but sometimes bosses are a bit too tough and require either grinding or finding special equipment drops.

Next on my list: Beyond Good & Evil. I thought about waiting for the HD remake, but 1) I don’t know when it’ll be, and 2) It’ll be for the X-Box Live Arcade, which I don’t have. I’ve also heard about plans to release it for the Playstation network, but apparently little is known about that at this stage. So I’ll put up with the compressed music and the outdated graphics. I survived Baldur’s Gate 1; I can do this.

After that, it’s probably on to Valkyrie Profile 2, unless something bumps it from its spot on the chart.

My gaming time might be a bit limited soon because my second semester at law school is starting next week. However, I am happy to report that I did very well in my first semester, so some of the pressure is off. Yet, the second semester has more credit hours than the first, and the classes will in general be a bit harder, so I need to stay on my toes. That said, if the first semester is any indication, I will still have plenty of time to devote to my blog.

I might do a few articles about TF2, but I don’t expect to play it constantly. I know it’s a fantastic game, but it’s not a game with an “ending”. As I often say, there are too many games with endings for me to beat. I can’t also play the ones that have no ending. But it’s a cool game, and I do want to play it. If for no other reason than people keep bothering me to play it, and it’s a gift.

Amnesia isn’t at the top of my blog, but it’s a really short game (less than 20 hours) and I need a change of pace from playing Bioware games, have been in the mood for horror, and it was a gift. I might play Dragon Quest V after that, but I’ll need to determine how I’ll be doing screenshots of that game.

I might also be doing actual videos of Amnesia. I don’t think screenshots will properly capture the atmosphere. If anyone knows something about video editing, including basic compression, let me know. Without compression, this 20 hour game would consume about 1200 GB of space, and I only really have about 700 GB free at the moment.

I also intend to play Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Knights of the Old Republic 2. Again, I’ll probably break these up with more non-Bioware related games, like Dragon Quest V, and Beyond Good and Evil.

I could use a little break from Dragon Age and Bioware in general. I want to get both Dragon Age: Awakening and Dragon Age 2. I’m a bit hesitant to pick up DA2 because I haven’t heard anything good at it…

Mind you that I jumped from Icewind Dale 2 to Dragon Age: Origins. the game is made in the spirit of the Infinity Engine games of old, and it at least carries on that tradition superbly.

Like in Baldur’s Gate 2, an array of colorful characters join the party. Colorful, but not all enthusing. I am a bit biased, and I am certain everybody has their own favorites. I greatly disliked about half of the cast which can join the party. I don’t mean that they lacked depth, but I suspect some characters are universally unpopular with players because of their personalities. To the contrary, even the characters I dislike have interesting backstories. Their tales are interesting, if not the people themselves. Thus I can’t bring myself to be too harsh on the companions overall. Beside, every companion has dialogue with almost every other companion, and often many dialogues. It’s practically impossible to see all the dialogue on a single playthrough, which can make subsequent playthroughs more interesting.

With a little imagination, it is easy to predict how the game turns out if the player makes different choices. The main body of the quests remain the same and little gets unlocked for subsequent playthroughs. Some things change based on which origin story was used, but these are minor differences. Playing the game differently can result in an accumulation of minor differences, but they won’t add up to anything significant if the player is looking for a completely different story. In many cases, the differences are just different plugs for the same slots. I cannot imagine the game’s alternate material being so exciting that it deserves a second playthrough; the most exciting events are basically the same.

Speaking of which, the enemies are uninspired. Most opponents are either generic soldiers and mages, humdrum forest animals, or goblin and ogre rip-offs. Even the game’s supposedly most fascinating enemies, the dragons, all look the same and appear to be ripped-off from the a certain chaos dragon of Warhammer Fantasy lore. Expect to fight the exact same handful of enemy types throughout the entire game; it is almost as bad as Ar Tonelico.

At least they are pretty rip-offs, played against some beautiful, if not creative, backdrops. The game is set in a Late Medieval Fantasy world, played to the hilt. People aren’t pretty: most people have bad teeth. The monsters are hideous. Most things are neither shiny nor clean. A hereditary system of human nobility oppresses a race of elves. Also, blood. Lots of it. If you don’t like blood, stay away from this game or turn off the gore. No knights in shining armor and riding white horses present here. It’s a depressing world. And most people look the same (seriously, many of the character models are too similar to each other.

The fantasy races, the elves and the dwarves, aren’t very different from their stereotypical counterparts in other settings. The dwarves are fine, stout craftsmen; most of the men are bearded, they venerate their ancestors, and live deep in the earth, mining. The forest elves, called the Dalish, are xenophobic, but I will grant the setting this: it makes more sense in a setting where the elves have been oppressed by the local dominant race. They’re the classic woodsy elves, but they are trying to rebuild a forgotten culture that was destroyed by humans. The city elves are different, but only in that they don’t have a real identity: they are just oppressed people with no better definition than that. I’ll give DA a couple points for not having a classic dwarf/elf warfare, but subtract another for the classic race apportionment: humans have the most land and people; dwarves and elves have relatively few people and little land, and the dwarves in particular are on the decline.

I really like the music. The battle music never feels intrusive; a considerable improvement over the Infinity Engine games, where the environment music seemed better for battle than the battle music. I can’t call any tracks to mind, but there isn’t anything wrong with a game where you can’t remember the music; better to not recall it than to recall it as being poor.

Combat is sort of fun. Something is missing. It was challenging. I died plenty of times. But I didn’t really enjoy the battles; often times, I didn’t try terribly hard and I didn’t really want to fight. The problem is diversity. I mentioned before that most of the enemies are the same. I didn’t really notice a difference in enemy tactics for most of the game. Nothing was so exciting that I ever took control of my other party members (which would have made battles significantly easier). I wanted diversity. I wanted every battle to be something creative. A few battles actually are creative, involving games of dodging, or careful movement, or some other quirk. I wanted more of those. I think we have advanced AI, graphics, and scripting enough that games like this can afford to make most battles very different from each other. Really, the game could have just cu tout most of its battles and left us with the boss fights. The lack of combat creativity is what really bothers me in a game in the Infinity Engine tradition. The IE games were heading in a direction of increasing complexity in battles, or so I thought, but I did not see that followed through in DA. Disappointing.

I can at least give the designers credit for the combat system. The three classes; warrior, mage, rogue; get a variety of cool abilities. Mages are probably the best of the three, but warriors and rogues can do more than just swing a sword and stab with a dagger. They are still geared toward combat, but they have a lot of options in combat, including various stances and interesting martial techniques. Because techniques and spells are bought in trees, characters won’t run out of abilities to pick by end game. If there is some replayability in the game, it’s in how players can build their parties. By the way, there isn’t much difference between characters based on their race, or even between party members of the same class. Party members have their own inclinations, and some things are preset, but different characters of the same class can be built the same way, so party members are relatively interchangeable.

The story isn’t very complex. Players expecting complex political drama will get some of that, but it boils down to “Monsters are invading and only you can unite a kingdom against the threat.” Some of the individual scenarios are really interesting, and the personas dramatica are often entertaining and rarely head-scratching, but as I suggested above, the game plays out basically the same from start to finish. Some people laud DA for the complex moral decisions, but I didn’t find many. Oh, there are decision points, but there is usually one right answer: even though I was playing a selfishly evil character, most of my decisions were the same that a good and noble character would make. Often, things I said out of selfishness did not have an actual effect: saying, “I expect to be paid for this” would elicit a “Oh, yes, you’ll be paid” – it just turns out the same way. Worse, in at least one situation, I tried to be quite evil, hoping for a really dark twist in a certain area, but nothing came of it. I wasn’t allowed to pursue the path I wanted. At certain points, if the player is using meta-thinking, dark paths can be pursued. They don’t change much about the game, and they would be out of character to choose no matter what archetype the player chooses, so they feel awkwardly placed. I won’t deny that a couple situations made me sit back and think for a while, but ironically those situations did not have much impact on the outcome of the game, or the game hand-waved the consequences.

If you play Dragon Age, play it for the story and the atmosphere. It’s a cool setting, and the designers put some thought into it. Enough choices are presented that any two given players will probably have significantly different experiences, and the game’s cinematics and pacing are impressive. Combat is smooth and battles can be tough unless players are being attentive. Just don’t expect a second playthrough to feel significantly different; things can change, but the core game remains the same, and some stretches are particularly boring. Beside that, the combat situations themselves are usually not very clever and most enemies look and fight the same. Dragon Age: Origins isn’t a complex or highly innovative game, but its quick-paced storyline and interesting characters, backed by a solid game mechanic, are enough to please most gamers.

In the back of the local church, I found Brother Genitivi, the last knight who came searching for the Urn of Sacred Ashes. He has discovered its location and leads the party onward.

According to Brother Genitivi, the temple should be deserted. He stays near the entrance to examine some runes while I go in deeper. I immediately learn that Brother Genitivi is incorrect. There are cultists all over this place. I’m not sur ehow all of them got in here, unless they are sealed in here. The scenario made it sound like only the town’s leader had the ring which enabled people to get into here. Also, Genitivi stays behind saying that he’ll be safe near the entrance. However, at one ponit the party needs to return to the entrance to do something, and there they find a bunch of cultists. Strangely, they are not attacking Genitivi.

Meet the craziest of the crazy cultists. He obsesses over Andraste, who he insists has resurrected as a dragon.

This dragon. Yeah, I killed him.

The Temple Spirit guards the entrance to the temple. If you haven’t figured out, yes, this is basically the Quest for the Holy Grail. Anyway, he searches the party’s hearts, which gives the party some insight into each other.

Then he sends them off on some minor puzzles, none of which are particularly difficult. Except maybe the last. The final puzzle involves stepping on pressure plates the form a bridge. However, the party advises that you want to make the tiles solid, and it sounds like you need to make all of them solid. I kept at that for a long time, until I gave up and looked at an FAQ. No, it’s much simpler than I thought. You just need to make one tile solid at a time, then have a party member step on it. For whatever reason, having one person cross it enables the entire party to cross. Well, whatever.

Behold the Urn of Sacred Ashes/”1st Place in Speech & Debate” Trophy.
I took a pinch of the ashes, but I wished I could have taken the entire thing for myself.

Brother Genitivi wanted to share it with the world. I thought about killing him, but he did good work and is a prominent scholar, so I let him live. Never know when a man like that might again come in handy.

If you’re wondering, I didn’t fight the High Dragon. I thoguht about it, but I can’t imagine the fight being any more interesting than the Flemeth fight, and I doubt it’llb e as fun as the final boss… so I skipped it.

The ashes from the urn revive the arl of Redcliffe. He’s quick to give his support. We return to Denerim to confront Loghain.

I sought to persuade more people over to my side by helping the local nobles. I visited Arl Howe’s place to rescue the queen, who might have been killed if left to his devices. To free her, I needed to eliminate Arl Howe’s mage. I visited the basement, which Howe had turned into a dungeon. Creepy. I killed Arl Howe, rescued the queen, and had to fight my way past a bunch of powerful guards to escape. Got the nifty Summer Sword for my trouble. I thought about just surrendering; I actually ran with that scenario for a few minutes, but then reconsidered. It’s more fun to fight them and seems somehow fitting.

After helping out some other nobles (several of who were imprisoned in Arl Howe’s dungeon; he had a lo~t of people in there), I visited the Elven Alienage to check on another of Loghain’s schemes.

A slaver has been kidnapping elves. He tried to cut a deal with me. I thoguht about it, but decided it was more productive to take everything he had and kill him while I was at it. But then he bought me off befor ehe died. He offered to kill the last few elves to give my character more power. Personal power, AND this guy leaves? Sounds good to this selfishly evil mage.

Power! YAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
… I’m a monster.
A monster with +1 constitution!

The Landsmeet – my opportunity to shine and show off how easily I got most of the nobles in my pocket. Didn’t even have to play off any of them.

Loghain is boisterous in his arguments, which doesn’t help him. Somehow, he still gets one person to support him. I have heard that it is possible to get everybody onto your side, but that nobody has discovered what method will execute that.

Either way, once Loghain loses, he refuses to go down without a fight. I agreed to duel him personally. I wanted to see whether my mage could handle Loghain solo.

Answer: Yes. He’s challenging. I had to stop using my blood magic casting to deal with him. I couldn’t keep him paralyzed long enough to keep him out of the fight and I couldn’t rely on blood sacrifice to keep my character going. But just using normal magic was enough to take him out of the fight. He didn’t do too much damage.

Loghain graciously surrender. I was impressed by how well he took all of this. So impressed that I let him become a Grey Warden. Alistair objected and said he’d refuse to marry the queen like I’d gotten him to agree to do. *sigh* I reloaded, and I tried to give him enough gifts so I could get the hardened dialogue that would neable him to go through with the plan. However, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get him to go along with my plans.

So I did the only thing I could do.
I agreed with the queen that Alistair needed to be executed, and told Alistair that it was for the good of the kingdom that I betray him and let our most hated enemy join our ranks.

Damn, this character is evil.

Honestly, I think I was guided a lot by meta motivations. I really wanted to have Loghain in my party. I saw my chance and I took it. Also, I didn’t like Alistair. He constantly whines and is a little naive. I can’t admire him. On the other hand, Loghain is very practical. He takes the Warden’s Oath and survives; he knows this is the only way he’s getting out of this alive. He knows his life is limited, but he doesn’t really mind. He doesn’t even mind so much later on when we discuss that a Warden must sacrifice his life to kill the archdemon. He knows he has lost his title, everything, but that doesn’t bother him so much. He takes it in stride. He’s open to speaking about his motivations and freely admits he probably would have been screwed against the Darkspawn with his plan.

By the way, I did guess that a warden must die for the archdemon to die. It explained why all the wardens were dead at the end of the first fight, and I knew people kept talking about the importance of one final decision at the end of the game. To be fair, I also remember reading something about “if the Warden makes the ultimate sacrifice…”.

By the way, Zevran and Loghain have a hilarious conversation.
Quoting from the transcript on the DA Wiki (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Zevran/Dialogue#Zevran_and_the_Secret_Companion )
* Zevran: So, err….is it Lord Loghain?
* Loghain: I am no longer a teyrn, nor even a knight. Address me without a title, as you would any other Grey Warden.
* Zevran: So just Loghain, then?
* Loghain: Correct. What’s on your mind?
* Zevran: You know who I am, yes? I was one of the Crows you hired to kill the Grey Wardens.
* Loghain: I thought you looked familiar.
* Zevran: Well, I just wanted to report that I failed my mission, Loghain.
* Loghain: You don’t say.
* Zevran: I’m terribly broken up over it.
* Loghain: Hmm. Well thank you kindly for informing me.

That convo by itself is reason enough to take him in the party.

Alistair’s dead. Loghain is in. And it’s time for the end game. The party goes to Redcliffe, only to learn that the Darkspawn are a step ahead of them and are going to Denerim instead. The party must now hasten to Denerim to defeat the Darkspawn.

Before that, we’re told about the sacrifice that a Grey Warden must make. My character, of course, was all too happy to let Loghain sacrifice himself. Loghain was happy to sacrifice himself. See, everybody wins!

But Morrigan had a counter-offer! Have sex with her and her nascent child would absorb the death effect. She’d give birth to it, and raise it as a god in a human body. I thought about it, but settled on “no”. She then suggested I convince Loghain to do ti. Again I said no. She was so angry that she fled.

Well, why’d I make that decision? A few reasons
1) My character’s gay.
2) My character doesn’t really care whether Loghain lives or dies
3) My character does value honor, and Loghain nobly sacrificing himself seems like an excellent way of redeeming his honor.
4) Flemeth lied to us. Morrigan hid something from us. I’m not trusting what she says.
5) I dislike Morrigan on a personal level. She’s Chaotic Evil in the worst way. She whines whenever I make a good or noble decision, regardless of their utility. She wants to do evil for the sake of evil. It’s bizarrely inhuman.
6) Even if she’s telling the truth… an old god? Chaotic Evil Morrigan controlling an old god? Haha, no.
7) If Loghain agrees to sacrifice his life, I’ll assume we can make it to the final battle without him dying otherwise.

So no, I didn’t accept her offer. That’s right. She leaves with nothing. Everything she worked for; fail. Loghain will die. And despite what she thinks, the Warden will live and be honored for his accomplishments.

We attacked Denerim. It was all very inspiring. No, not really. I guess the intro was neat, and a Grey Warden tries defeating an archdemon solo (which seems silly). But at this point, I’m almost done with the game, and I’m just not feeling as awed as I’d like. We fight a bunch of powerful Darkspawn, see lots of corpses, and encounter this.

Oh no… Archdemon… scary…
You know what would be scary? if the archdemon didn’t look exactly like every other dragon I had fought. If the archdemon had some kind of personality. If I hadn’t seen the archdemon at least three times before now. I see it now and it’s just underwhelming. It’s a big monster. So what?

The dragon doesn’t have many moves. He swipes with his claws, breathes flames, and likes to jump around now and then. Sometimes he creates a zone of spirit flame. At one point, he sends out hordes of Darkspawn to harass the party.

The highlight of the battle is the ballista. At some point, the dragon hops onto an inaccessible landing. You can shoot it with the ballista for massive damage.

In a noble display, Loghain draws his sword and tears apart the archdemon. His body is engulfed in effulgent light, then the entirety of the tower follows suit. Such a pretty end.

The Warden has saved Fereldan! The Queen asks whether I want a reward. I asked for a title and riches. Then I spoke with all the other party members. It was a nice send-off, and a relatively long ending. At last, the story came to ints conclusion.

Next up: the review.