There are a number of options if you explore (like finding oil for the weapons in the warehouse), and variations within those options. But you can also kill him, loot his shop and distribute the goods to the defenders. Sure, you can convince the blacksmith to come out of his shop and make the defenders weapons. Should you choose to stay and defend, you have a number of options for organising the defense of the village, some of which aren't obvious. You can choose to leave the town, returning later when the undead have killed all the villagers, which lets you skip the village defense sequence and go right to the castle. Now, this wouldn't be the first time we've encountered villages in need of aid against marauding undead in an RPG, but Dragon Age does a good job in providing you with real options. When you arrive you find the villagers cowering in their homes, the castle is barred, no one knows what is going on and every night legions of the undead march out of the castle, killing all they find.
You know that Arl Eamon is a good bet for seeking support against Loghain, so off you go. Dragon Age does a better job of providing these options than any previous Bioware game, in fact any RPG since Arcanum, and rarely misses a chance to present you with an interesting choice to consider.īold claims need proof, so let's take a moment to analyze these elements in a specific example: the Redcliffe-Urn questline.Īs with all the other hubs, you go to Redcliffe in search of allies in your effort to repel the Blight. The second aspect of good quest design is, as we all know, player’s choice, the ability to make decisions that affect both the player and the world around him. Rather than simply being told about the setting's conflicts, you get to witness them and participate in them.Īnd you definitely get to play an active role. The setting is a familiar mix of Tolkienesque fantasy races, Elves, Dwarves, Ogres and suchlike, but the quests bring the conflicts that shape these groups to life, whether it is the tension between the Circle of Magi and the Chantry, who is tasked with keeping their dangerous powers in check, the treacherous arena of Dwarven politics or the struggle for the Elves to survive and thrive. Not only are the quests well integrated with the main plot, they do a great job of introducing and illustrating the core themes and conflicts of the world of Dragon Age.
You have to get involved with each group's particular issues in order to convince them, but overall it weaves seamlessly into the main plot, instead of seeming tacked on, artificial. The focus of each location is securing the aid of a set of allies, whether they be Elves, Dwarves or Humans. In Dragon Age, you are trying to rally an army. The Starmap that your Jedi avatar was looking for wasn't strongly tied to the theme of the locations it was apart, a reward at the end.
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In Knights of the Old Republic, for example, you may have found yourself wondering why you were stopping to help free enslaved wookies when the galaxy needed saving. However, it stands above the previous efforts in how well these hubs and their quests are tied into the main plotline. Dragon Age follows the trademarked Bioware pattern of sending you to 4 different hubs with 4 different goals to achieve in those locations. The first aspect of a good quest is the motivation behind it, the context, the reason why the player is doing it. For those who have, or are simply interested in analyzing Bioware's design more than playing the game itself, this article is for you. In other words, if you haven’t yet completed the game (but are planning to do so in the near future), stop reading now.
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While a full review is currently in the works, I'd like to take a moment to discuss the quest design separately, since it is hard to analyze the quests without revealing how they play out. Though the game follows the familiar Bioware structure, they have managed to improve and evolve that design significantly, keeping the strong story-focus they are known for, while loading in a wide range of player choices and paths. Dragon Age is definitely one of the best, if not the best, Bioware game to-date, and certainly one of the best role-playing games in years.