Wildlife and flora play a more important role than simply providing random enemy spawns an crafting sources, too; you can drive species to extinction, resulting in the aforementioned ecosystem disruption, and defeating sentient enemies like dragons and bandits can have profound knock-on effects.
dragon age inquisition origin 40
Although players will customise their character, as in Dragon Age: Origins, all character will experience the same origin story in the prologue: the Inquisitor is the sole survivor of an event that results in Fade tears opening throughout the world. Appearance, dialogue and class choices made during this section will build out the character's background, but one skill - the ability to close Fade tears - will be universal.
Your story begins anew in the exotic southern kingdom of Amn amidst the opulence of the sinister capital city of Athkatla. Journey through Amn's unforgiving wilderness, forge through the Underdark's treacherous caverns in your quest for artifacts of awesome power and for treasure of inestimable wealth, and challenge dragons... if you dare. Such is the life of a legend.
Dragon Age: Origins is a role-playing game played from a third-person perspective. The player is a Grey Warden, part of an order of elite fighters, whose task is to defeat the Archdemon and save the world from a disastrous event called the Blight. Players create their own Grey Warden character, customizing gender and appearance as well as choosing a race and class.[3] The available classes are warriors, who perform strong physical attacks; rogues, who carry out stealth attacks and steal items from other characters; and mages, who cast spells on enemies, create combo spells,[4] and support other party members.[5] The three choices of race are human, elf, and dwarf. The combination of class and race determines which of six different origin stories the player experiences: Dalish Elf, Dwarf Commoner, City Elf, Mage, Human Noble, or Dwarf Noble.[6] This affects the way other in-game characters perceive the player's character; for instance, a Dwarven Commoner would receive hatred and discrimination from other dwarves.[6] However, all classes follow the same plot after the completion of the origin story.[7]
During gameplay, the player encounters a variety of enemies, including giant spiders, Darkspawn, ghosts, walking trees, and dragons.[8] They also recruit companions, who accompany them and provide assistance in battle. These companions are normally controlled by artificial intelligence, with behaviour that the player can adjust through the "Tactics" menu, but the player also has the option to switch between characters and is able to issue orders to them in real-time or pause the game to queue up actions.[8][9] The player and any companions in their party engage in combat with the weapons they have equipped when the player targets or is noticed by a hostile enemy. Players can swap weapons and perform special attacks during combat, but most of these attacks have a recharge time.[5] The point of view can be shifted from the third-person view to a top-down view, where friendly and hostile units are labelled with different colours to distinguish them.[10] At the end of a battle the characters' health and stamina, which powers a character's skills, are automatically refilled.[11] When an enemy is defeated, the player collects any items or loot from its corpse.[8] Companions who are not in the player's active party stay in the base camp, a hub where the player can talk to their party members as well as purchase new weapons, armour, and gear.[12] In addition to the main story, the player can learn more about the world of Thedas by collecting the codexes scattered throughout the game.
The rampaging Darkspawn horde is led by the Archdemon Urthemiel, supposedly one of the Old Gods of the Tevinter Imperium incarnated in the form of a powerful and corrupted dragon with total control over the Darkspawn. The game's other main antagonists are Loghain Mac Tir, Teyrn of Gwaren and father of Queen Anora, a once-respected war hero gone mad with ambition and paranoia; and Rendon Howe, the amoral and corrupt Arl of Amaranthine who allies with Loghain to further his own ambitions.
One of six predetermined origin stories begins the game, depending on the player character's race and class. Each story ends with the player leaving with Duncan, the commander of Ferelden's Grey Wardens who is seeking new recruits and selects the player as a candidate. The two journey to Ferelden's southern fortress, Ostagar, to join Cailan, the King of Ferelden, and his father-in-law Loghain, a legendary general and close friend of Cailan's late father, King Maric. The three leaders plan to attack the encroaching Darkspawn to stop a new Blight from overwhelming Ferelden. Duncan senses the influence of an Archdemon, a god-like Dragon that commands the Darkspawn, and emphasizes the importance of defeating the Blight before it can threaten the rest of Thedas.
Dragon Age: Origins was created by the Edmonton studio of BioWare, the developer of Neverwinter Nights and Jade Empire.[23][24] Development of the game's first demo began in November 2002.[25] It was officially revealed at E3 2004 as simply Dragon Age[25] and was re-revealed as Dragon Age: Origins in July 2008, alongside a new trailer for the game.[26] According to BioWare, they kept any information about the game hidden from the public, to further the game's design and technology.[27] More than 180 people worked on the game, and full-scale production began three years after the game's initial development.[28] The subtitle "Origins" was chosen to represent the six origins storyline, BioWare's return to PC role-playing games, and the beginning of a new franchise.[29] Origins is a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, as an attempt to build a similar fantasy RPG without any licensing restrictions or issues.[30] The similarities are mostly present in gameplay elements, such as real-time tactical combat;[23] the game does not share the Dungeons and Dragons setting of the Baldur's Gate series and is instead set in a period where dragons are prevalent.[25] While the game was initially built with the engine that powered Neverwinter Nights, the team switched to use the Eclipse Engine midway during the game's development. The shift in engine slowed down the game's development significantly.[31][32]
David Gaider, the lead writer for Origins, built the game's world first before writing the plot. The team chose a "fantasy" setting because Dan Tudge, the game's director, thought that BioWare was at its best in the fantasy genre.[33] In the first draft, there were no Darkspawn or Grey Wardens, and mages were not allowed to use magic in cities. There were twelve different origin stories, including Human Commoner and Avvar, a barbarian origin. However, most of them were scrapped for being "ridiculous", leading to six stories being finalized.[34] Loghain was the first character to be created, while an Ogre, nicknamed "Fluffy", and a human with medium armour were the first enemies designed.[35] The concepts of Alistair and Morrigan were the next to be created, as they play the largest role in the game's plot. Their creation also took far longer than other characters.[36] Morrigan was originally conceived to be similar to Flemeth, speaking whimsically. However, Gaider was not satisfied and decided to completely rewrite her personality. As a result, she was designed as a "blunt" person who always resists her mother. Finding a suitable voice actor for Morrigan took the most time of any character.[37] The game's final version features 68,260 lines of dialogue; the quality assurance testers for the game enabled a cheat to automatically skip these cutscenes and dialogues during test runs.[35] Dragons were added into the game after its title was created using a random name generator.[38]
While the game was originally intended for PC, a console version was announced in 2008 by gaming magazine Game Informer.[55] Prior to the announcement, Zeschuk suggested that the entire franchise has a "console future".[56] The decision was made to bring the game to consoles to introduce it to a wider audience.[29] Mike Laidlaw, the game's lead designer, considered creating the console versions' interface a challenge, as they had to convert the long and complex quickbar from the PC version to a more streamlined interface that could use the same actions with only few button presses. To that end, the team decided to map six different actions together, and allow players to customize the arrangement.[28] Also, the console version does not allow the top-down view possible in the PC version.[57]
The game was originally set to be released in early 2009 for Microsoft Windows, and later for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The team partnered with Edge of Reality to develop the console versions of the game.[58] However, its release date was pushed to the latter half of that year in order to have a simultaneous launch.[59] BioWare announced that the game would be released on October 20, 2009, but pushed it back again to November 6, 2009, as the team wanted additional time to finalize some last-minute decisions.[60] The PlayStation 3 version was at one point delayed to November 17 but did end up launching alongside the other versions.[61] A Mac version of the game, developed by TransGaming, was released on December 21, 2009.[62]
In addition to the standard version, other editions of Origins were made available for purchase. The Collector's Edition came in a SteelBook with different artwork. Like the standard edition, the Collector's Edition included a redemption code to obtain the Stone Prisoner and Blood Dragon Armor downloadable content (DLC) for free, but also featured three additional exclusive in-game items, a bonus disc containing a making-of documentary, concept art, trailers, the game's original soundtrack, and a cloth map of Ferelden.[68] Dragon Age: Origins supports released several DLC packs for the game. The content ranged from single in-game item packs to entirely new plot-related campaigns, which include The Stone Prisoner, Warden's Keep, Return to Ostagar, The Darkspawn Chronicles, Leliana's Song, The Golems of Amgarrak, and Witch Hunt. An expansion, titled Awakening, which is set in a new area called Amaranthine and introduces five new party members, was released on March 16, 2010.[69] The "Ultimate Edition", which includes the base game, the Awakening expansion pack, and all 9 DLC packs, was released on October 26, 2010.[70] 2ff7e9595c
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