Origins came out in a period where I was playing and re-playing everything in Bioware's catalogue sometimes dozens of times; I've seen things in KOTOR even the deep dives don't know about. Origins is where the cracks really started to show for me with regard to actual -role playing- though. On repeat plays it's -very- evident Origins leans hard into the trend of dialogue choices maybe omitting a line of response, or adding one, and changing nothing else. It still has choices that do matter... but nothing branches like it did in the earlier titles. That said, there's a lot of good here too... and the Mabari taught me to appreciate my intelligent, stubborn ass muttweiler a lot more. So I love it anyway.
It's funny, I played the absolute hell out of this on release, and had nothing but fond memories going into it, but on actually playing through now I found it to be a far lesser experience compared to Bioware's earlier titles. I still liked it, but it just doesn't have that same super deep quality of their earlier titles.
Finally a new video! Like always, all your observations are spot on. I'm almost tempted to call the first Dragon Age a flawed masterpiece, but the problems with pacing and the crashes were too much of an issue, despite how good of a story it had. It's just a really good game. But to be honest I did not complete it on my first playthrough, I went for the circle tower and the fade was just to much for me... I replayed it a couple of months later, I was determined this time, soldiered through and I am glad I did.
It's definitely a worthwhile game, but it just has so many points that are such significant slowdowns to the gameplay, the fade is what made me take so long to get to it this time I just kept dreading having to do it. Still, it was nice to play through it again for the first time in years and I generally had a good time with it.
@@PadanFain836 it's funny, I never noticed it when the game first came out, but on this playthrough literally by the end of his first sentence I knew it was Kain. Such an iconic voice.
I always steered clear of this game for unknown reasons. It just seemed unappealing to me. I'm glad I got to watch you play it and tell the story so I never have to 😂 I don't think I would have been able to get over the flaws of this game to enjoy what it had to offer. Another great video, treats to the editors on my behalf. They had me laughing
It's not terrible by any means, it just has a lot of hard to overlook problems. I'm glad I played it, but I also have no desire to play it again anytime soon. Though the game I'm playing for my next video is probably the worst game I've ever played in my life so it's making me long for this one. I guess everything is relative lol.
Damn this bringed back some memories! I played the game as a young adolescent, discovering ROMANCE and stuff. I played a Human with the noble background (you get the doggo). I do remember being a goodie two shoes and skipping Sven because MAN IS IN A CAGE SO HE WILL ROT THERE (Hey, if you don't recruit him fast enough he just, doesn't exist!) I was still oblivious as nuance in storytelling back in the day, I do remember making the decision to put Bhelen in the true because you know, rightfull heir, it's a fantasy world GADDAMIT. After finishing the game I decided to do all the starting background for lore reasons. Turns out, when I did the Dwarf one, well, I was flabbergasted discovering that Bhelen betrays you in that beginning. I was like, did, did I help that backstabby MF?! Thank you Dragon age, I love you. PS : Definitely took on Morrigan offer because not of self preservation but uh, horny teenager a bit, meguess !
I played the absolute hell out of this back in the day. All the origin stories from start to finish. Morrigan was always my romance of choice. I might have had a crush on Claudia Black haha.
@@cobalt968 it's a shame they couldn't quite get their feet under them with this series. Like they're each good, but every title has some pretty glaring issues that bring them down and keep them from reaching the heights of truly legendary RPG series. Such a shame.
I first played Dragon age origins on a original xbox 360. The controls on joystick at the time were... well lets say frustrating. I remember liking DA 2 a little more, but i think at the time i was a little tired of the "end of the world" plot so the more "personal" plot was more interesting, it reminded me of baldurs gate 2 at the time. One of those days i should replay those 2.
@@Ziklawz the 360 was my original way to play as well! Funnily enough this particular playthrough was my first time doing it on a PC. It's definitely better on PC, but the technical issues had me missing the stability of the Xbox. Oddly enough I remember enjoying DA2, but I remember very little of the actual plot. I mostly just remember visiting the same strip of road like 50 times for different quests haha.
Interesting. Dragon Age is one of the rare RPGs I have not played, since when it came out in 2009 it seemed a bit too generic-fantasy to me, and the infamous Marilyn Manson trailer made me cringe very hard. Now that I heard the gist of the plot it sounds like there is some similarity to the plot of the Myth series of strategy games. I wonder if it was inspired by The Black Company books like Myth.
@@warcheef I just tried to look out of curiosity, and can't seem to find if the series is drawing inspiration from something else, it's a bit foggy, but apparently there is a Dragon Age book written specifically to set the tone for this game. It's about the occupation of Ferelden before the events of the game, seems like it's centered on Logain's character. I might have to try and track it down.
So I'm not 100% sure if you can play Dragon age Inquisition at least on certain consoles for some reason when I tried playing it recently certain time missions would not timeout so I was stuck in an infinite loop waiting for stuff to finish
@@orcwarchiefreviews I played it on the 360 originally, and remember similarly having some performance issues with it. The games all seem cursed with poor optimization.
@@aquawalrustotally but now it looks like it won't even be able to play it now at all and they always want you to sign into these damn freaking servers that I don't think exist now
@@orcwarchiefreviews yeah it's so obnoxious when a single player game requires a login. This one even forces you to use a stupid EA launcher, the worst I've seen was when I bought the original DOOM for my switch and it wanted me to both make an account, and be connected to WiFi. Like the whole reason I bought the thing on my switch was so I could play mobile. Sad gaming is going that direction.
For me Anders in DA2 just made it impossible for me to continue playing. And he's really relevant to the plot and also then only healer. But what he does just makes me loathe him so much that I can't enjoy the game. I wish he was just an optional recruit in the game.
@@BillyTheBigKid82 I find DA has a bad habit of doing that in general, adding a really unlikable character that you can't avoid to ruin an otherwise good plot. It's a shame.
hearing that steam review comparing DAO to diablo and that guy that compared shadowgate 64 to doom and turok reminded me of a friend i had who completely dismissed Dark souls as a cheap knock off of skyrim. LMAO.
Origins came out in a period where I was playing and re-playing everything in Bioware's catalogue sometimes dozens of times; I've seen things in KOTOR even the deep dives don't know about. Origins is where the cracks really started to show for me with regard to actual -role playing- though. On repeat plays it's -very- evident Origins leans hard into the trend of dialogue choices maybe omitting a line of response, or adding one, and changing nothing else. It still has choices that do matter... but nothing branches like it did in the earlier titles.
That said, there's a lot of good here too... and the Mabari taught me to appreciate my intelligent, stubborn ass muttweiler a lot more. So I love it anyway.
It's funny, I played the absolute hell out of this on release, and had nothing but fond memories going into it, but on actually playing through now I found it to be a far lesser experience compared to Bioware's earlier titles.
I still liked it, but it just doesn't have that same super deep quality of their earlier titles.
What kind of things have you seen in KOTOR?
Finally a new video! Like always, all your observations are spot on. I'm almost tempted to call the first Dragon Age a flawed masterpiece, but the problems with pacing and the crashes were too much of an issue, despite how good of a story it had. It's just a really good game. But to be honest I did not complete it on my first playthrough, I went for the circle tower and the fade was just to much for me... I replayed it a couple of months later, I was determined this time, soldiered through and I am glad I did.
It's definitely a worthwhile game, but it just has so many points that are such significant slowdowns to the gameplay, the fade is what made me take so long to get to it this time I just kept dreading having to do it.
Still, it was nice to play through it again for the first time in years and I generally had a good time with it.
Awesome that you recognised the Kain voice actor here
@@PadanFain836 it's funny, I never noticed it when the game first came out, but on this playthrough literally by the end of his first sentence I knew it was Kain.
Such an iconic voice.
I always steered clear of this game for unknown reasons. It just seemed unappealing to me. I'm glad I got to watch you play it and tell the story so I never have to 😂 I don't think I would have been able to get over the flaws of this game to enjoy what it had to offer. Another great video, treats to the editors on my behalf. They had me laughing
It's not terrible by any means, it just has a lot of hard to overlook problems. I'm glad I played it, but I also have no desire to play it again anytime soon.
Though the game I'm playing for my next video is probably the worst game I've ever played in my life so it's making me long for this one. I guess everything is relative lol.
Damn this bringed back some memories!
I played the game as a young adolescent, discovering ROMANCE and stuff. I played a Human with the noble background (you get the doggo). I do remember being a goodie two shoes and skipping Sven because MAN IS IN A CAGE SO HE WILL ROT THERE (Hey, if you don't recruit him fast enough he just, doesn't exist!)
I was still oblivious as nuance in storytelling back in the day, I do remember making the decision to put Bhelen in the true because you know, rightfull heir, it's a fantasy world GADDAMIT. After finishing the game I decided to do all the starting background for lore reasons. Turns out, when I did the Dwarf one, well, I was flabbergasted discovering that Bhelen betrays you in that beginning. I was like, did, did I help that backstabby MF?!
Thank you Dragon age, I love you.
PS : Definitely took on Morrigan offer because not of self preservation but uh, horny teenager a bit, meguess !
I played the absolute hell out of this back in the day. All the origin stories from start to finish.
Morrigan was always my romance of choice. I might have had a crush on Claudia Black haha.
DA:O was a great start to what could’ve been an earlier resurgence of CRPGs and similar games. Ah, what could have been…
@@cobalt968 it's a shame they couldn't quite get their feet under them with this series. Like they're each good, but every title has some pretty glaring issues that bring them down and keep them from reaching the heights of truly legendary RPG series.
Such a shame.
I first played Dragon age origins on a original xbox 360. The controls on joystick at the time were... well lets say frustrating.
I remember liking DA 2 a little more, but i think at the time i was a little tired of the "end of the world" plot so the more "personal" plot was more interesting, it reminded me of baldurs gate 2 at the time. One of those days i should replay those 2.
@@Ziklawz the 360 was my original way to play as well! Funnily enough this particular playthrough was my first time doing it on a PC. It's definitely better on PC, but the technical issues had me missing the stability of the Xbox.
Oddly enough I remember enjoying DA2, but I remember very little of the actual plot. I mostly just remember visiting the same strip of road like 50 times for different quests haha.
2:42 that sound effect messed with me!
The darkspawn are a noisy bunch.
@aquawalrus at first I was hearing the 'new quest received" sound from Witcher lol
Interesting. Dragon Age is one of the rare RPGs I have not played, since when it came out in 2009 it seemed a bit too generic-fantasy to me, and the infamous Marilyn Manson trailer made me cringe very hard. Now that I heard the gist of the plot it sounds like there is some similarity to the plot of the Myth series of strategy games. I wonder if it was inspired by The Black Company books like Myth.
@@warcheef I just tried to look out of curiosity, and can't seem to find if the series is drawing inspiration from something else, it's a bit foggy, but apparently there is a Dragon Age book written specifically to set the tone for this game. It's about the occupation of Ferelden before the events of the game, seems like it's centered on Logain's character.
I might have to try and track it down.
So I'm not 100% sure if you can play Dragon age Inquisition at least on certain consoles for some reason when I tried playing it recently certain time missions would not timeout so I was stuck in an infinite loop waiting for stuff to finish
@@orcwarchiefreviews I played it on the 360 originally, and remember similarly having some performance issues with it. The games all seem cursed with poor optimization.
@@aquawalrustotally but now it looks like it won't even be able to play it now at all and they always want you to sign into these damn freaking servers that I don't think exist now
@@orcwarchiefreviews yeah it's so obnoxious when a single player game requires a login.
This one even forces you to use a stupid EA launcher, the worst I've seen was when I bought the original DOOM for my switch and it wanted me to both make an account, and be connected to WiFi. Like the whole reason I bought the thing on my switch was so I could play mobile. Sad gaming is going that direction.
You know I've been trying to get my hands on a copy of Jade Empire for a while now I wish you would end up on switch
I still have my original copy for the XBOX. I haven't touched it in years though, I would love if I could get it on switch as well.
@@aquawalrus it on gog for sale I'm still debating about getting it for the computer I just don't know if she's capable of running it it is a potato
I'm interested to see how you feel about boulders gate dark Alliance
I actually love it... As a co-op hack and slash. It's a terrible BG game though.
@@aquawalrusdid you ever play The fallout version of it yes that's real it's on the PlayStation 2
Have you tried the fallout game that was on the PS2 that's based off the dark Alliance engine
@@orcwarchiefreviews somehow I didn't realize that even existed... Now I really want to play it, would be an interesting mashup of genres.
@@aquawalrus I have played it but it wasn't exactly the greatest dark Alliance 2 and the champions of norrath 2 we're the best of that genre
really enjoy ur content. but i need more plushie walrus !!!!!!!!
@@whinegummi6329 I'll make sure he's in the next video just for you 😸
@aquawalrus no joke : thank you so much!
Algorithm for now, be back after I get a chance to watch it!
For me Anders in DA2 just made it impossible for me to continue playing. And he's really relevant to the plot and also then only healer. But what he does just makes me loathe him so much that I can't enjoy the game. I wish he was just an optional recruit in the game.
@@BillyTheBigKid82 I find DA has a bad habit of doing that in general, adding a really unlikable character that you can't avoid to ruin an otherwise good plot. It's a shame.
@@aquawalrus Yeah, I enjoyed DA2 otherwise but Anders just ruins it for me completely.
hearing that steam review comparing DAO to diablo and that guy that compared shadowgate 64 to doom and turok reminded me of a friend i had who completely dismissed Dark souls as a cheap knock off of skyrim. LMAO.
@@alephnole7009 hahaha that one is pretty wild.
It's even funnier because if I'm not mistaken Dark Souls released slightly before Skyrim.
@aquawalrus yeah about a month and a half.
I hate the subtitles in this game, they are so small
They are way too small for sure.
bruh i played this on a gtx 660
My original playthrough was XBOX, it's very different gameplay wise. Story is untouched though.