Dragon Age Origins and II actually made me consider reading a book

Note that this post is about Origins and II, so no spoilers for Inquisition please.

I only recently started taking an interest in Dragon Age after hearing mixed reviews about the most recent game. The lore always seemed pretty fascinating and I honestly liked some of the character designs I saw for it, so I thought I would play through Origins (my sibling has it in our shared library and it's unfortunately the only Dragon Age game that allows family sharing) so I could start in chronological order with the games and have some context. I wasn't expecting to have much love for it and just saw it as a starting point for my DA journey, but mother of balls it is incredible.

All of the companions in Origins were fun and bounced off of each other really well. Sten is my favorite — I really appreciate characters that don't change their opinions or viewpoints despite being best friends with the MC, and Sten is the perfect example of that. The cutscene you get if you're playing a female character where he's confused "why a woman would want to be a man" due to the Qunari patriarchal society actually made me pause. It is genuinely impressive work to write characters that hold the opinions Morrigan and Sten do and still make them likeable. As a result this also meant that these characters would often be benchwarming at camp while I strolled around Ferelden earning approval points with the characters that did not find enjoyment from killing innocents and defiling World Heritage Sites.

Probably the biggest factor in my enjoyment was the impeccable writing for the different outcomes each main quest and side quest can have. Many of the decisions do not have an objectively right or wrong choice (the dwarven elections being the most difficult since it felt like whichever one I chose would still flop in the epilogue) and they expect the player to be able to determine which choice would have the best long term benefits. Of course there's cartoonishly evil options they give you too, but it always felt like there was a sufficient amount of choices to go through for every main quest that when I inevitably replay this game I could have an infinite number of unique playthroughs. Having Dragon Age Keep open while playing also helped to see the different outcomes I could have for each quest without specifically telling me what to do to get to them.

Dragon Age II sort of took the amazing things about that decision system and beat it with a bat. The two ending choices felt like they had an extremely clear good choice and bad choice, but once they realized that the good choice was a little too sympathetic they decided to throw in a stupid last minute plot twist with Orsino. It did not make me reconsider my decision to side with the mages, it made me reconsider the sanity of the people who thought having a story about a group of people literally taken at childhood to be raised in a prison because of powers they were born with also needed moments where you have to point at them and go, "See, they're just as dangerous as the templars!"

Other than my nitpicking with the plot towards the end of the game Dragon Age II was a fantastic sequel. I loved the companion characters, Anders in particular as it felt like I was watching my beautiful sweet son from Awakening slowly turn Anakin Skywalker. I didn't mind the friendship/rivalry system as much as some people as it felt better and made more sense than just the baseline approval system in Origins, although I ended up maxing out friendship for every character and never went full rivalry. The only character I really couldn't stand was the temporary companion from the Mark of the Assassin DLC since it felt like they had to remind you how badass she was every 10 minutes, and not in the natural way that Isabela and Leliana carried confidence.

Sidenote, the Qunari designs in II are peak. I would sell my firstborn to Bioware just to see what Sten looks like as the new Arishok. Please, bring back my man Sten.

Anyways, I am now completely devoted to Dragon Age but I'm going to wait for Inquisition to go on sale on Steam before I move on. And I'm actually going to read the lore books for once instead of skimming the Wikipedia synopsis. A true miracle of gaming.