Come for the bisexual French nuns, stay for the dialogue trees. Let's Play Dragon Age

[greed]

Welcome to my Let’s Play of Dragon Age: Origins, where I will hopefully entertain people with a play through of the game, with additional commentary and some in character monologuing. Probably more the former to differentiate from Thadius’ Baldur’s Gate LP and the various in character Pokemon LPs drifting around and because I’m less confident of my creative writing skills. This might change once I get some momentum up. This LP will also have a LOT of audience participation, there are many, many choices to vote on in DAO, I may not make every option open, but there are still gonna be quite a few votes.
What is Dragon Age: Origins you ask? Story and setting wise it’s basically a mashup of The Witcher and The Lord of The Rings that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Or basically it’s the expected Bioware writing and general atmosphere, just with more sex and violence and placed in a somewhat skewed but otherwise normal European fantasy setting when the orcs Darkspawn are about to attack.
Unlike Mass Effect(Bioware’s other big modern series) it plays very much like a traditional RPG, and should have a familiar feel to any veterans of Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter Nights. It’s main differences from these three is that it’s more “mature”(not mature in a Planescape Torment, Mask of the Betrayer or KotoR2 way, more "mature" in a Fallout 2 or Saints Row kind of way) and that it uses its own combat engine rather than some variation of the D20 system. It also does a pretty good job of developing all the NPCs as well as the setting in general and it has a lot of funny or interesting dialogue which is the main reason I like the game.
Anyway onto the important stuff.

Before I can start we need to make a character. In Dragon Age you create characters by selecting a sex, a race, a class and an origin.

All of these will have effects on the content of the game, with some setups enabling different quests, different endings, different romances and all setups enabling at least some change in dialogue (some have less to recommend than others, but I’ll get to that later). Sex, race and class everyone should be familiar with and I’ll outline each choice later, but origins as you can probably tell are Dragon Age Origins' gimmick. To put it simply they're your character's history before they became the hero/anti hero/giant gallavanting prick who saves Ferelden. There are several different Origins that each have their own unique starting level and each one leads to slightly different content and dialogue throughout the rest of the game. I’ll explain each later. Anyway here's a outline of the various different options and what they mean for character creation.

Sexes: Male and Female, pretty simple, no changes to combat as far as I can tell, but considerable changes to dialogue and there are several quests and endings that require a specific gender, not to mention the two straight romances require you to be the opposite sex from them. To summarise women get a snarky good guy knight, men get a snarky and generally evil witch, both get a supportive French nun and a supportive but somewhat evil Spanish assassin elf. Sex doesn’t preclude any Origin in game, but I will recommend against male City Elf and male Human Noble as I think the female paths for these Origins are considerably better, so if one of those Origins win, I’ll play a girl unless people really object or male has an overwhelming lead. The Dwarf Noble is better as a guy due to an extra quest, but there’s less in it due to the female dwarven noble having better dialogue during her Origin quest. The others are largely the same regardless of sex.

Race: There are three races available for players in Origins; humans, elves and dwarves.
Humans are good offensive warriors, bowmen and rogues. They’ve got two origins, Noble and Mage, and can be all three classes.

Elves are the best mages, though thematically they make the best rogues. Like humans they can be all three classes, and they’re the only race with three Origins Mage, Dalish and City (the Mage one is shared with the humans and the Dalish one is pretty tacked on however). Also in this game elves are less ethereal and immortal and more either slum dwelling second class citizens, or standoffish (quite rightfully) travelling folk. Both of which are completely mortal.

Dwarves are the best tanks and make decent close combat oriented rogues. They’ve got two origins (Noble and Commoner) and cannot be mages. They also get innate magical resistance.Dwarves cannot be mages, don't vote for a dwarven mage.


Class: There are three classes in game, each with its own skill tree and sub specialisations, which I’ll bring up in more detail when that choice comes up.

Warriors are, well, warriors, they can be specialised to hit really goddamn hard and still take some damage, they can use bows to a degree but I probably won’t use that build, or they can be turned into undying walls of meat and steel.

Rogues do two things really, dual wield (and deal ridiculous amount of damage while being really fragile) or they can be a bow using support unit with the ability to control the battlefield with a variety of abilities. Their specialisations are really cut along these lines too.

Mages are well, really diverse. There is pretty much no job a mage can’t be set up to do. They can be damage dealers, they can be healers, they can be supporters and they can be tanks. The only problem with mages is the temptation to stretch yourself thin and try to do everything, it’s much better to specialise.
Once a class is picked I’ll give some more information and ask for people to pick a build for whatever we go with. Not all builds will be available (NO SHAPESHIFTERS) but each class will have at least two options for people to vote on.

Origins
This pick has no effect on combat, but potentially a big effect on dialogue and content, so I’ll list each origin and give small no spoilers outlines of their relative strengths and weaknesses.

Human Noble: One of the Origins the developers obviously had a lot of fun with, it’s basically set up as a big homage to traditional fantasy openings. You are the younger child of Teryn Bryce Cousland of Highever, who is pretty much second only to the king in power. He and your older brother are going off to war and leaving you in charge of the castle. Then things go wrong. This Origin is good cause there is a lot of content throughout the game and the Origin level itself is strong and it gets a really good call back near the end. This is the only “normal” origin for humans, there was a human commoner planned but it was scrapped for some reason.

City Elf: Another one where it looks like they really worked at it. You’re just another slum elf and it’s your wedding day. Then things go REALLY wrong.
Good cause of it’s Origin level and because elves get a lot of dialogue due to bigoted humans and other elves being less standoffish with them

Dalish Elf: You’re a hunter for one of the nomadic Dalish clans. You stumble into something bad. And things… actually compared to the most of the other Origins, things don’t go that wrong. It still sucks to be you, but you get off light compared to these other guys. However there is pretty much nothing extra throughout the rest of the game for Dalish elves that City or Magi elves don’t get. It sadly seems kind of last minute and rushed.

Human/Elven Mage: You’re a student in the Circle of Magi about to undergo your final test before graduating to full Circle Mage. Then things go wrong.
Mages get a lot of extra content, some cool sidequests and if you’re an elven mage you also deal with all the dialogue the other elves deal with. Mages can only have this Origin BTW, can’t be a City Elf Mage or a Human Noble Mage. I always found it disappointing there wasn’t a renegade mage origin. But it's still one of the better Origins

Dwarven Noble: You’re the middle child of the Dwarven King, and about to lead your first battle. Then things go wrong. I'm not being quiet cause it's a bad Origin, it's just better to go in blind.

Dwarven Commoner: You’re one of the Dwarven Casteless (think Untouchables in India or Burakumin in Japan). You work for the local crime boss and one of your jobs goes wro… well really it just goes stupid. But funny. This is less generic dark fantasy like the other Origins, more like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels with Dwarves.
Dwarves don’t get a lot of specific dialogue except when you go back to the Dwarven Capital. Then you get a lot. And Dwarven Male Nobles can set up a short sidequest in their Origin for when they come back later.
In my opinion I think all but the Dalish Elf Origin are pretty good and even that one's not bad really. So pick freely.

Alright so basically people pick your preferred Sex, Race, Class and Origin once that’s done we can move onto the finishing touches of character creation (morality, personality, what direction we’re going with the class) then start.