Zen Review: Dragon Age Origins 2nd Run Plot Analysis

We rarely review a game twice but we fell in love with Dragon Age Origins, even more so on our 2nd run, and thought we would break this rule and write another article about it. Be forewarned that the following article will contain spoilers, as a matter of fact it will contain nothing but spoilers. If you are not ready for it (which means you haven’t played the game), read our first relatively spoiler-free review. How do we end up liking a story-based game on our 2nd run more than the first? Because of the insane amount of content the game contains and playing it a 2nd time opens up more doors for us to see the big picture. As in our first review, we first thought that Dragon Age’s story was a little too familiar and simply not innovative, but it was the quality of the writing that overrode the blandness of the subject, and at the end of the day, the characters, locales, legends of the land will all grow on you despite, or perhaps it is because of,  the familiarity of the setting.

If I still have to take a first stab of criticizing it on a whole it is the lack of that moment of clarity, that moment with the twist, that moment when everything is revealed, like that moment when Neo learns he’s in the Matrix, or when Bruce Willis’ character learns that he’s already dead. I admit that not all story needs a twist (though we dig twists), Dragon Age Origins could have used one , desperately — that the arch-villain  Loghain didn’t have a hidden agenda, that maybe he was a good man playing the evil part with an agenda to save the land, or he was ensorcelled by the Darkspawn to carry out their will, there were a million scenarios that could have played it out to make the story much more enchanting (Enchantment?). But at the end he was just another power-hungry fool that didn’t know what he was doing believing what he did was right, was just a little disappointing. I admit that we’ve read too many novels. But lets get to the good parts.

In our first run of the game we started out as a male elf warrior and began the tale at the Alienage. It was the standard oppressed by human save the unimportant fiancee kill a noble and get drafted into the Wardens kind of story. And comparing that to our 2nd run which we picked a female human mage from the Circle Tower, our 2nd run was infinitely more interesting. Ignoring the major differences between the male and female protagonist (I will get to that later), the prejudice against elves seem to be somewhat downplayed after you have become a Warden, as if people can recognize from afar that you are a Gray Warden (not that you have a uniform or anything), and totally forgot that you belong to the slave class. When you get to the Dalish, being an elf did not bring up any interesting dialogue (yes there are some subtle differences), and it feels inferior to being a mage from the tower, which you will begin the game by visiting the Fade and then assisting Jowan’s escape, the bloodmage who later poisons the Earl. And returning to the tower later, and encountering Jowan at the Earl’s opens up a lot more interesting dialogue. Not to mention, our advice to everyone who hasn’t played this game yet, other than that you should not be reading this now,  is that you should never pick the warrior class — it is bland, uninteresting, and all the specialization skills are useless, plus you get so many warrior companions on the way that you are better off relying on them to tank.

In our first run we mostly played the whole game with Allistair, Leliana, and once we got Wynne (relatively early), we switched out Morrigan. The reason was that being relatively unfamiliar with the game, we had to rely on Wynne’s group heal spell, and by no means could we get her to teach us the Spirit Healer specialization, of course we find out later that the book can be purchased at Denirim for 15 sovereigns, and any unlocked specialization will be carried forward when you start a new game, but we played the majority of our first run without the Spirit Healer other than Wynne, and I have to admit that Wynne’s focus on Earth element spells makes her a little uninteresting on the offensive side, as earthquake (it only makes people fall down) is pretty much inferior to Inferno and Blizzard spells, which are much more effective crowd killers. In our 2nd run we learned from our mistake and we let our heroine specialize in Spirit Healer right away and have her focus on fire, while having Morrigan focus on ice instead of lightning, leaving out Wynne all together made us enjoy the game much much more. If you haven’t found out already, Mages rule this game — we specialized in Blood Mage next and have Morrigan become an Arcane Warrior (thank heavens she finally changed out of her skimpy robe). Arcane Warrior are basically Spellswords that kick serious butt.

Picking up Shale from the DLC was the first thing we did on our 2nd run, which we missed on our first.  Shale is the best tank character and has a lot of interesting dialogues which we ended up using him the whole 2nd run. Now not all the side character stories are interesting, the ones that rank at the top are Morrigan and Shale. Allistair, while uninteresting, is integral to the plot, so you can’t really fully get rid of him altogether. Leliana will always have something interesting to say and as the only rogue with decent mechanics skill, we ended up using her on both runs until we decided to leave the pillaging alone (but you will regret this) and swapped Zevran in. Wynne’s back story is also quite interesting if you have the patience to hear it out, Oghren and Sten are the least interesting, who usually don’t have a lot of opinions on your actions unless it is tightly integrated to the plot.

We tried to do things that is drastically different from our first run obviously just to see different dialogue choices and their consequences. We tried to act more on the “evil” side but still keeping up the good masquerade, as opposed to being purely good on our first run. It is impossible to get much out of the game being purely evil (though you can), because you have too many goody-two-shoes characters like Leliana, Wynne, and Allistar and these lawful good characters will leave you if you choose to act without remorse. Morrigan is the only character that leans more on the evil side so she complains when you do the stupid help people errands but that is interesting to see but she is never disappointed enough about your good deeds to leave your party. On our visit to the Dwarven city, we supported both political parties on both our runs. Supporting the general appears to be the more moral choice, at-a-glance, but if you go with the prince you will find out that he becomes a strong ruler later. And being unsure which side you should be on is exactly how you should be experiencing this game. Visiting the Anvil of the Void at the end of the Deeproads, we brought Shale with us, which totally enhanced our experience because that is his birthplace. We were given another choice whether to side with  Oghren’s lunatic wife or Shale’s creator, while the results are the same, Shale would leave your party permanently if you pick the wrong choice. This is one of those times when we reloaded the game to see what happens. Of course Oghren will be disappointed once you slay his wife but he does get over it quickly (much so) and that’s the choice we ended up with on both of our runs with the game. At the end, no matter which political party and which dwarven god you sided with, the Anvil is destroyed and you get a strong dwarven army at your back.

Where we headed next on our 2nd run was trying to save the Earl’s possessed son. Now there are 2 drastically different ways to solve this quest, and both will nape Allistair a big chunk of disappointments. You can either enter the Fade with the blood sacrifice of the Earl’s wife, which we did since we played a mage on our 2nd run, to confront the demon directly, and we even learned Blood Magic from the demon promising it that we would let him have the boy years later (Now there are more than 3 different ways to learn blood magic). Yes I told you we are only evil when nobody else bears witness against us.  On our first run we first went with the 3rd option, to save the Circle of mages before saving the Earl’s son, but since we ended up not saving the circle, we let the mother slay the possessed son. Now we are quite unsure how the event would turn out if we were to let the circle help, that is something we may have to experiment with on our 3rd run.

Another morally ambiguous decision awaited us at temple where the Urn is housed. In our first run of the game I brought all the lawful good characters with me (Wynne, Allistair, Leliana), so I was stuck with slaying all the cult members and preserving the ashes. To do any other action some of your party members may turn on you (this also depends on their approval ratings). On our 2nd run, we brought the morally gray characters — Shale, Morrigan, and Zevran and they even approved with me siding with the cultist. Of course at the last moment you have a choice to betray the cultist but I ended up destroying the ashes thinking that it is the right thing to do, after all who is to say it isn’t right, something that powerful should not be fallen into anyone’s hands. I had a much easier time siding with the cultist because I didn’t have to massacre my way in and out (and the dragon didn’t attack me on both my runs), and that felt right in a real-life scenario. Leliana confronted me at camp asking me what I did with the Urn, I lied to her and said the Urn was intact. You may only be able to do this if you art of persuasion is accomplished enough, otherwise she might get really disappointed.

The most fun we had with decisions was at the Dalish Elven forest. In the first game as lawfully good as we were we saved both the elves and removed the curse of the werewolves, but on our 2nd run we sided with the werewolves and performed genocide on the Dalish Elves (Zethren was disappointed but he was quickly persuaded otherwise). At the end we even got werewolves and the Lady of the Forest to side with us against the Darkspawn at the last battle. I have to admit, they are a lot stronger than an elven army. The end justifies the means.

We ended up doing the same thing at the Tower Circle on both our runs. There’s an option to kill Wynne and everyone else right away when you bring Morrigan into the fold and if you let her speak, but we ended up not doing that. In the first game we tried but didn’t get to save the circle, since our party was weak at the time. On our 2nd run the tower was our last destination and we breezed through it and saved all the mages at the end so the circle was intact, and we ended up having actual mages at our side against the Darkspawn instead of Templars.

Now before I get to the end I must mention the character sidequest with Morrigan, which is the most interesting one. If you proceeded as you should you will get to confront Flemeth, and she won’t be an easy opponent. But letting her off the hook is also a valid option, which we picked on our 2nd run. Morrigan never even directly questions whether you slayed her mother, and you should know that not mentioning the truth isn’t exactly lying, and lying to save lives aren’t exactly evil. But even if you slayed Flemeth, during the epilogue you will still find out that she won’t truly be dead. How does one slay a thousand-year old witch after all? Not easily it would seem.

The Landsmeet called by the Earl is the first event that unfolds the sequence which leads to the ending of the game, and the choices are plenty here. And these events you can test out by reloading multiple saves since you can easily experience more of the story without restarting from the beginning again. Now on the political front you can either side with the queen or Allistair or you can get them to agree to wed each other, now of course depending you are male or female you may have already claimed Allistair for your own, but in our first game no matter which different option we tried we couldn’t get them to get along peacefully. Depending on whether you can get the nobles to turn against Loghain in the Landsmeet, you can select a champion to meet Loghain in 1-to-1 combat.  Then you are given the choice for redeeming Loghain and making him your last companion, and this can only be done with Allistair leaving, and then the queen will have to claim the throne, the possibilities of different combination of choices are endless here and they are all  worth exploring. And on the eve of the last battle, if you were male you would be approached by Morrigan with an offer you shouldn’t refuse (but you can). Now I don’t know whether approval ratings affect this but on our first run we already romanced Lelianna and dialogues choices will reflect this as you are given the choice to sleep with Morrigan and never have to tell Lelianna, or you can convince Allistair to do so in your stead (but we haven’t tried that yet). Now if you turn her down Morrigan will forever leave your party, and you know what one of you will have to perish, but if you take it up you will just know that a dark god will soon be descending over the world. There just isn’t a right decision in there, is there? We can’t help but draw parallels with the Sword of Truth series, when male Confessors are born into the world they become monsters. Now this is really the part when playing a male character gets you more story than being a female, but we really do recommend trying both just to see how differently your companions treat you.

Now the endgame will play out differently depending on what you have done before and what you choose to do now. If you were male and taken up on Morrigan’s offer to cheat fate, then both of the Gray Wardens including yourself would be saved. Now if you didn’t have the chance to take up the offer, then one of you would have to end your life with the Archdemon. You could sacrifice yourself, or Allistair, or Logain if you recruited him just for that purpose, and you can let the ending play out multiple times, and any one of the endings will be quite satisfying, with an epilogue displaying what goes on in the land years later, as you bear witness to the chain reaction rippling from your earlier in-game decision.

We said from our first review that this wasn’t Bioware’s best story, but after playing it a 2nd time through right away we admit that this is the most polished cRPG ever, crafted with so much love and care you can feel them overflowing like infinitely branching dialogues, and anyone who ends up spending time with this gargantuan RPG should take their time and explore every option given to them in the game, and cherish those moments when your companions challenge you on your imperfect deeds, and reflect upon those either wrong or right decisions as they affect the lives of every other being in the world. If you only had time to play one game this holiday season, this is the game that should not be missed.

Tweet This Post