Dragon Age Central

PCGZine, a free online pdf magazine, has an exclusive hands-on preview article that features a few new screenshots. Excerpts follow - the last paragraph contains Origin story plot spoilers.

For the last 15 minutes, the two Elves we’re watching on the screen have been engaging in some proper old-school dungeoneering. Since entering the underground ruins they’ve been ambushed by the walking dead, various vicious traps, spiders the size of bears (not to mention an actual bear covered in spikes known as a ‘Bereskarn’), and these Elves dispatched them all through careful use of skills, tactics and items.

[...]

Those ruins they’re exploring are actually old Elven ruins. [...] when one of them starts reading the Elvish writing off the statue, a conversation option lets you express confusion as to how your friend can even read. [...] in Dragon Age the Elvish civilisation suffered a little setback. [...] the humans of the world [...] managed to enslave the entire Elven race and only recently upgraded their place in society to scrawny servants. The few Elves who’ve fought back [...] have taken refuge in an enormous forest and it’s playing as one of those rebels that makes up one of the game’s six Origins.

Character creation in Dragon Age is as much about you choosing your Origin as your race, class and gender. [...] For example, one of the Origins starts you off as a noble who’s obsessively training against their cosy upbringing to become a great warrior. Or if you choose to be a Mage you have to pick a special Origin that has you battling through the tyrannical schooling that all magic users in the world are forced to undergo. Before Mages can wander the world like free citizens they have to display control over their abilities, with those who can’t (and, horribly, those who are just too gifted) undergoing a kind of magical sterilisation that leaves them slow, emotionless and unable to anything but enchant things.

The general idea is that as well as providing a unique opening to everyone’s game, your chosen Origin keeps popping up, even after the six plots have converged. Your race, upbringing, class, history... all of it changes how people react to you in this prejudiced world.

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nothing in Dragon Age is good or evil, nothing is right or wrong [...], the only consequences of your choices are the physical and emotional consequences in the world and in your chosen party. [...] Every party member gets a percentile bar in their stats that shows their current opinion of you - a bar you can give a boost by giving away special ‘gift’ items to them.

Returning to the Elf origin one more time, it’s one of these choices that kicks everything off once you first pick the origin. On an otherwise calm and safe day, you and your old friend pounce on three humans trespassing through ‘your’ patch of forest. The humans claim they’ve lost their way, but now they’ve found where you live, if they return home the secret could spread. So your options are to let them go, kill one to scare them or slaughter them all. I ended up killing one of them right there in cold blood, and I always play lovely men in RPGs. But letting them go just felt too foolish. Like I’d be betraying my race over squeamishness. So up came the arrow and down went the main, his friends screaming in terror.