Review - Dragon Age: Awakening

Much like the initial release of Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins Awakening snuck up on me. I came home after picking up dinner to find a little box from Amazon on my doorstep. Only at that moment did I remember that I even ordered it. Regardless of my awareness, I was pleased. So now that it's out, how does it stack up? Well, it's a lot more of the same. If you're like me  and you think Dragon Age: Origins was one of the best western-RPGs released in years, getting more of the same is not exactly a bad thing.

What's really interesting is that in this age of DLC, the number of legitimate expansions for games have sharply decreased. I'm sure many people out there are asking "Is this an expansion, is it a sequel, or is it simply overpriced DLC." I will say it is more than DLC and less than a sequel, so I think it falls squarely in the expansion range. I am over nine hours into the game and it seems there is still quite a deal of game left.  It has been reported that the expansion sports over twenty hours of gameplay.  If that is the case, this is way more than DLC.

One thing to note though, none of the items you collected in previous DLCs seem to work in Awakening. In the case of my character, I spawned into the expansion wearing only my underwear. You quickly find some decent items to replace them and by a few hours in you'll likely have even better items, but it just seems strange that Bioware's additional content wouldn't be compatible with... Biowares additional content...

The gameplay is more or less completely intact from the first game. Honestly, with the exception of the added skill lines I haven't seen much of anything change. The dialog seems to work the same, the combat is the same and all the menus are the same. This means that the flaws from the original are ever present and the same as well.

Maybe I am now spoiled by Mass Effect 2, Bioware's big release since DA:O, but some aspects of the game seem to go beyond depth and land in the realm of overly complicated. I never really had a problem with Dragon Age's inventory systems before, but maybe it's because I didn't know better. Even though you can easily expand your backpack, you will quickly find that even a capacity in the hundreds will have you getting the dreaded "inventory full" message. Team this up with a less than amazing way of organizing your inventory and an over abundence of junk you'll no doubt collect and you're looking at a digital episode of Hoarders. These are problems that have been present since day one with the series, so lets move on to some things that are unique to this expansion.

Some of the added skill lines are a lot of fun. As you progress, you will find some of the top tier powers are kill buttons. One of the mid tier warrior powers called "Peon's Plight" will give you a guaranteed kill of any non-colored enemy. While skills like this could completely break the game, Bioware is careful to make skills like this balance out by giving them longer cool downs and less damage on bosses and elite enemies. Of course, as always some of the skills aren't as good as others, but that is nothing new to RPG games and more often than not the skills are a lot of fun.

Now lets face it, many of you will play this game for the same reason you'll play any Bioware game... The Story. So how does this one stack up? Pretty good. As you go on, there are forces at work that you don't quite understand. The darkspawn haven't retreated after the archdemeon was killed and have continued to wreak havoc on the poor common folk. As the story goes on, you start to realize that you may not know as much about the darkspawn as you thought. The story as a whole seems to be a lot darker, if that is possible. No one in your party seems to be happy and are almost all brought to you due to misfortune. Also, for some reason, it seems that everyone in the land is committing suicide. Everywhere I turned, I found some poor asshole's remains and a note outlining that he killed himself over a woman or three. I am actually starting to worry about the mental well being of the Bioware writers...

You will be getting more or less a completely new party to adventure with as well. Some of these new comers, Nathaniel and Justice, have really unique and fun stories. Others... well... others seem to be a mash up of previous companions and are pretty typical RPG fodder. All the voice acting seems great and the characters are well written, but some of them are pretty unspectacular and lacking the dynamic story of other characters.

So in the end, Awakening provides the same core gameplay, same graphics and a story by the same developers. As logic stands, it would seem if you liked the Origins, you'll like Awakening. That is the case for me. There is enough content to keep you playing for a few days, new characters to meet and more phat lewt to collect. It doesn't really change a whole lot, but frankly, expansions rarely do. Is it a good expansion? I think so. Is it worth $40? Maybe if it lives up to it's reported 20 hour or more of playing. If it was in the $25-30 range, I think it would be perfect, but the pricing doesn't take away from the quality of the product. If you're a fan of Dragon Age, you will have to pick up the expansion eventually.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5