Dragon Age Origins Blog awakeningreview Review: Dragon Age Awakening

I came into Awakening with the highest of expectations after months of expectancy. I left it waiting for more and planning my next replay of both Origins and its expansion.

If you loved the gameplay and narrative style of Origins, there is no reason not to also love Awakening. You will find codices of history and other lore as you travel the world slicing up darkspawn. Combat will still be tactical and exciting. Dialogue will still be touching and moral decisions enlightening. Little has changed in that regard. Rather than innovating on what Origins did right, Bioware chose to simply add on to what it already had going. A fine choice, I think, as I’m not sure I would have been pleased with too much difference between Origins and Awakening.

Being the longtime RPG nerd that I am, new abilities and skills were the first thing I was dying to see. And yes, there are new shiny squares to click on next time that little flashing plus-sign appears by your character portrait. I cannot be the only one who agonizes over spell choices when spending skill points, and now there are even more options to consider. Not only are there more spells and talents, there are new specializations! Particularly pleasing to me was the option to spec my mage as a Keeper. Yay, elves! And if you are not the green-tree-magic kind of mage, there’s also a Battlemage option for you. Rogues and warriors also have new skills and specs, don’t worry, you melee-hearted lions out there. Further, the level cap has been raised and a third specialization slot unlocked (at 22) so you can spend all the time you wish dreaming up new builds for your various characters.

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Aside from your spells and talents, there are new skills. Characters can now learn how to runecraft (so they can run around spewing their own version of Enchantment? Enchantment!), as well as Vitality and Clarity, “skills” which increase base health or mana/stamina. The last two are quite nice I find, but runecrafting feels somewhat lackluster. This may be simply because the entire crafting system in the game is rather weak. As someone who typically crafts like nobody’s business, I was at first excited to see runecrafting but it ended up not making a huge difference to me personally.

When you first begin the campaign, you will have the choice of either importing your character from Origins or starting a new one. If you choose the latter, he or she will automatically be level 18 (as will an imported character if they were not that high yet). I recommend importing a character from Origins. There is very little backstory to a character you roll just for Awakening and it is much more difficult to immerse one’s self in the character’s story than it was in Origins, what with a long introductory sequence acclimating the character to his avatar.

There are new companions along the way and cameos of original plot characters from Origins. Although this campaign is shorter and you have few reasons to work on relationships with your party members, some of them will still capture your heart. I particularly enjoy one of the first members you meet, a rogue. He may be no Alistair, but if you have a thing for troubled bad boys, this one may just send you soaring.

One of the biggest complaints one can bring to Awakening is that is just isn’t long enough, but only because it is as fun as Origins. Of course, we want more. There would be something wrong with a campaign in this franchise that completely satisfied us.  The expansion is not the same value in that there are fewer hours of playtime for the equivalent monetary amount, but the quality of that playtime will be just as good. If you spend time on all the side quests, you will reap useful benefits and also extend your possible playtime by quite a bit. Further, there are still many different dialogue options and a huge variation of possible epilogues depending on what you choose to do throughout the campaign. Although it may not be as long as the Origins campaign was, there is still a great deal of depth in the story to offer you replay value.

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Sadly, there are very few new achievements you can earn. Sure, a couple shiny badges will add on to your player profile, but not many. Along the same lines, there are no new romance options either. What, you mean no new steamy sex scenes? Sadly, no. There is still gifting and the little personality quirks you learn about your party members as you discover which gifts they prefer, but a high approval rating isn’t going to land any time in the sack or make your heart flutter at declaration of love.

The biggest disappointment I have with the expansion is the fact that your earlier decisions which were made in Origins do not matter that much. The NPCs will still respond to the fact you are an elf or a mage, but even most game-ending choices will not change how you experience this new campaign. Perhaps, this is a necessary evil when branching off from a narrative that had so many variations, but it makes this new experience feel somewhat less immersive and meaningful at the start.

Although the narrative leaps may initially hamper immersion to an extent, the voiceover work is still absolutely superb and the world itself stunning. After a bit of playtime, you’ll find yourself living the life of the Warden Commander/Arl and loving every minute of it.

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