Dragon Age: Origins - The RPG of the Decade

• Positive features

Rich fantasy world ■ complex, involving storytelling ■ characters feel alive through dialogues and voice  acting ■ a handful of abilities and spells make the combat enjoyable ■ intricate questing with lots of surprises

• Negative features

Several visual glitches

“The RPG of the Decade” is the description the game received from one of the most famous magazines in UK, PC GAMER. Following “Baldur’s Gate”, “Neverwinter Nights” and “Mass Effect”, BioWare released last November a revolutionary role-playing game, a “dark heroic fantasy” story told on an epic scale.

The game begins in the fictional land of Ferelden where a horde of demonic creatures called The Darkspawn prowls and destroys everything in sight. The player embarks in one of the six origin stories, each of them having their own twists and surprises. But the most interesting fact about Dragon Age is that the player has the ability to directly influence the flow of every story, based on the decisions he or she makes.

Amazing graphics embedded in a rich fantasy world, dialogues and voice acting that bring the characters to life build up one of the most addictive games ever developed.

• Gameplay

The game has three main classes to chose from: warrior, mage and rougue, each of these classes having the ability to be upgraded into a specialized class. Thus, the warrior can later become a Berserker or Templar, the mage can chose between Shapeshifter or Spirit Healer and Assassin or Ranger for the rogue. Also, the game features, along side with the main character, up to three active party members, which can be selected from a large group of NPCs.

If one has played  BioWare RPGs before, Dragon Age: Origins will seem very familiar, especially with the combat system. There are many types of different creatures in the battlefield, from ghosts, giant spiders and scary trees, to demons, darkspawn and, the fiercest ones, dragons. An other interesting feature is the ability to pause the game in full combat, allowing tactical thinking.

• Cheats

Make a desktop shortcut of “daorigins.exe”, right click, properties and under Targed add: -enabledeveloperconsole. Then open the keybindings.ini file found in “My Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age\Settings” and find the line “OpenConsole_0=Keyboard::Button_X” (GRAVE is default, change X to any button that is not already used in the game.)

Save the file and then start the game. While in the game, press the key that you have chosen (example “X”) and type one of the following codes:

1. runscript addxp X - instantly adds XP, X is the amount.
2. runscript zz_money X - X is the amount of copper you wish to add. 1000 copper = 1 gold.
3. runscript killallhostiles - kills all hostile creatures in the area.
4. runscript pc_immortal - God Mode (you never die).
5. runscript zz_addapproval X YY - Add to a party member approval rating.
6. runscript zz_givearmor - gives the Dragonbone Legion armor in the player’s inventory.
7. runscript zz_deathblow - The character animates a random finishing blow based on the weapon.

• System Requirements

- Minimum (XP):

Core 2 Duo  1.4 GHz or Athlon 64 X2 1.8 GHz ■ 1024 MB RAM ■ Geforce 6600 GT or Radeon X850 128 MB ■ 20 GB disk space

- Minimum(Vista/7):

Core 2 Duo 1.6 GHz or Athlon 64 X2 2.2 GHz ■ 1536 MB RAM ■ Geforce 7600 GT or Radeon X1550 256 MB ■ 20 GB disk space

- Recommended:

Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz ■ 2048 MB RAM (XP), 4096 MB RAM (Vista/7) ■ Geforce 8800 GTS or Radeon HD 3850 512 MB ■ 20 GB disk space

Receiving from the most popular gaming websites in the world top ratings: Eurogamer 8.0, GameInformer 9.0, GameSpot 9.5, PC Gamer UK 9.4 and RPGFan 9.5, Dragon Age: Origins indisputably won at the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards the “Best PC Game” and “Best RPG” awards, and, thus, earning a spot in the hall of fame of video gaming.