Dragon Age™: Origins - Ultimate Edition

Dragon Age: Origins was one of my favorite games when it originally released, and returning to it over a decade later after enjoying Veilguard much more than I expected to, I'm happy to say Origins still holds up. It's my favorite western RPG I've ever played--superbly written with a rich and engrossing world, many choices with major narrative and gameplay repercussions, and quite a bit of difficulty to consider (or not, if you drop the difficulty). It's as good as this kind of game can get.

Dragon Age Origins is still a pretty good game even though it's old and it's combat mechanics are outdated. The story is still immersive and the characters are still fun. Also, the possibility to an absolute psychopath is still really nice.

DAO has been reviewed and reviewed again to the Deep Roads and back. I'd like to add a couple of great things that I don't hear about often. One is how flexible, feature-rich and self-contained the DAO is as a game package. It is very mod-friendly. I personally used the Morrigan Restoration, several adult mods, a mabari slot mod, and a fix that restored Sigrun's personal question in Awakening. The game takes automatic screenshots with captions for many achievements and major plot points. If you want more, take your own. You can easily rename and move around the screenshots in Windows while writing your own captions in the game's screenshot viewer. It's a robust system to chronicle your journey through this massive game. There are in-game achievements. Helpful in-game achievements. You can do all of this independent of GOG Galaxy or Steam. It's perfect for the spirit of game ownership. The other great thing is how well DAO embodies the old Bioware spirit of writing your own adventure. Just as one example. You don't have to recruit most companions, including fan favorites like Leliana, and you can drive away or kill off every companion. Your own character can die as part of a legitimate game ending (not a game over/bad end). At the same time, even minor characters can become a lasting part of your journey. I developed a lovely relationship with Queen Anora without marrying her. The writing is so good at being ambiguous and flexible that you can easily imagine various outcomes that the game doesn't spell out explicitly yet hint at strongly enough that you can believe it. This art of writing for the sake of player choice seems to be a lost art these days, even to Bioware itself . There are shortcomings too, of course. The game mechanics cover a bit of everything from crafting to spell combination but don't do any of it exceptionally. The inventory is rudimentary. Just to name a couple. Nevertheless, this is one of the best games for GOG.

Its really good. The graphics are somewhat outdated (who could have imagined) but the gameplay is still nice.

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