Dragon Age: Orgins: I Hate You…

The last time I played a game through twice back to back, I had fallen in love with all the options given to me. I needed to how differently things would play out if I played a “bad guy” as opposed to the paragon of good that I had become. This was around two years ago actually. This game wasn’t one of my favourite’s but the developers had come up with a very engrossing tale, one that begged for deeper exploration that a single playthrough couldn’t do for me.

Then along comes Bioware’s “Dragon Age: Origins“.

Last year, at Fan Expo here in Toronto, Bioware had a booth up and was showing off their soon to be released beauty. It’s Bioware so OF COURSE I had to check it out. This is a company that had NEVER (did I say NEVER? I think I said NEVER) let me down. The caliber of games they released had yet to disappoint me. Then I picked up a controller for DA:O and put it down 5 minutes later heartbroken. The controls weren’t intuitive, I had no idea how to control my party, and got immediately slaughter. I put a note down in my head proclaiming it “LAME” and reluctantly moved on. Months passed and the reviews were pouring in all full-tilt-texas-boogie on how amazing the game was. I gave myself a little pinch and decided to take a leap of faith. I reckoned that perhaps I just needed to spend a little time with the game is all. Based on all the glowing reviews I picked it up.

It is now almost a month later and after over 120 hours I completed my first playthrough of this epic tale. 120 hours. For a devoted husband and loving father let me spell that out for you. That’s one HELL of a lot of lost sleep. You know why? I succumbed to the old “just one more mission” syndrome. Also known as the “Let me just do this one thing”. Anyone has ever played games knows exactly of the condition that i speak of.

If I was a wiser man, I would let that go and prepare myself for the next wave of awesome that is due on store shelves in mere weeks which includes “Mass Effect 2” and “Bioshock 2“. Much to the disappointment of BWE, I am not that wise and picked up the controller right afterwards and did I start up a second character?

Well, yes and no.

I started a second character.

Then a third.

Then a fourth. I created a character for each and every origin possible. I wanted to see what I could have done and then I decided I would run them all through right up to that point where I am introduced to the Grey Warden camp. From there I reckoned I would choose which character I would run with for my second playthrough. Mostly I wanted to build a character so I could purchase and use the Blood Dragon armour I was able to download. I did that by choosing a human noble warrior and have built him up to Level 7 so far.

It is difficult to stop at just that character though as by playing through all these other origins, I am seeing the causes of certain things happening in the world. On a personal note I am anxious to play through the Human Warrior just fine, but now that I have played some of the Dwarven Noble it is killing me to not know how that plays out and having to wait to see. I am loving that I can now go through all the different characters and work to discover their backstories and try to pick up all the party members I missed the first time around.

I am concerned that I may suffer from Awesomegameitis over the next few months. In a perfect world I would be wrapping up a second playthrough already, and prepare to finish Dragon Age: Origins just in time for Mass Effect 2 (also from Bioware). I would then pick up Bioshock 2 and finish THAT just in time for the expansion of Dragon Age due out by the end of March. This would take me through the first half of 2010. Thank God for the age we live in with the rise of DLC. Even the expansion will be available in digital format. This can extend the life of a game indefinitely (you hear that Half-Life Episode 3?). DLC is what kept me in the world of Fallout last year and it looks like this will be the year of Dragon Age: Origins.

So for that, DA:O I hate you. Now I won’t be able to play anything else this year.

Oh and that game that holds the title of my first back-to-back playthrough ever?
BioWare’s “Mass Effect“.