This is a fairly famous Bioware RPG released when I was a Master’s student. My friend showed it to me when he was playing the Elf origin, in which he was getting married but then some prince guy shows up to kidnap and rape his bride. He then infiltrated the prince’s castle, rescued his bride, killed the prince, and became a Grey Warden. I asked whether the same story would occur if the player were a female elf – would the player need to rescue the groom from the prince?
The answer is sort-of: a female elf player gets kidnapped herself and the NPC groom tries to rescue her. He gets killed in the process and the player kills the prince on her own before becoming a Grey Warden.
I didn’t get to play the game again until ~6 years later, when I was looking for cRPGs. I played through the base game and it constantly reminded me of Neverwinter Nights 2, which is a good thing. Besides the over-tuned difficulty (more on that later), DAO is a fun and immersive high fantasy RPG and I definitely felt like I was experiencing a grand tale of how non-descript evil things were about to destroy the world with “the taint” and I was its last line of defense.
I mentioned difficulty. Having played a large variety of these games, I never felt like I was struggling…except with early-game DAO. I was constantly wiping to run-of-the-mill encounters, which was baffling. At one point a group of homeless people showed up trying to kill my party so they could collect a bounty and buy some food – and they won. Some starving, ill-equipped hobos took on battle-hardened warriors backed up by a feared Witch of the Wilds and won. Balance much?
I’m all for challenge but the game’s difficulty has to make some sort of sense. You’re telling me that I studied my whole life to wield magic and got inducted into the legendary ancient order dedicated to stopping the end of the world, but I can’t kill a group of hobos?
I dealt with this by using a staggered difficulty scheme as follows: levels 1-15 on Easy, 16-20 on Normal, 21-25 on Hard, and the rest on Nightmare.
Besides this problem, I think DAO’s best feature is the characterization. Your companions talk to each other and bicker, generally with hilarious results. Here’s the pervert drunk dwarf talking with the sarcastic witch:
OGHREN: You couldn’t hurt me if you wanted to, witch, you know that?
MORRIGAN: ‘Tis so?
OGHREN: Dwarves resist magic, woman. There’s nothing you could do.
MORRIGAN: Nothing? I could not, for instance, kick you in your manhood?
OGHREN: Oof.
MORRIGAN: Do you wish to see?
OGHREN: Not necessary.
MORRIGAN: Well the offer stands.
I didn’t mean to do the romance with Morrigan in my play-through, but I ended up doing it anyway because of stuff like that.
I want to talk about the expansion (Awakening) and the bonus campaigns (Golems of Amgarrak and Witch Hunt). My screenshot below is my final character at the end of Witch Hunt, but I’m going to make this shrine base-game only. Why? Short-answer: with the possible exception of Witch Hunt, these add-ons are buggy, unbalanced piles of ass.
In Awakening, there is a scene where you lose all your equipment and need to take it back by killing an enemy that drops it all. Besides the fact that this sequence serves little-to-no purpose except to be fucking annoying, there is a bug that makes your stolen equipment disappear permanently. Since I played this game without consulting a guide, I didn’t know about this and had already saved my game after I’d lost all my stuff. Besides the fact that games shouldn’t be shipping with major bugs like this, as of this writing the game is SEVEN YEARS old with no patch fix.
Also on Awakening: the story’s presentation is rock-stupid. The exposition that tells you what the hell is going on happens RIGHT BEFORE THE LAST BOSS. You spend most of the campaign meeting talking darkspawn referencing darkspawn named “The Lost” and “The Mother” and “The Architect” and “The First” and “The Children” with no explanation as to what any of this means.
After beating Awakening I went onto Golems of Amgarrak, which is a campaign that has nothing to do with anything. Some random dwarf writes to you and asks you to help him investigate some dwarf city and that’s the backstory. When I got there, a bug struck that triggered the boss fight without the boss actually being there, breaking the entire map since the switches that allowed you to progress had stopped working. This time, I managed to load a save, only to arrive at the last boss and its numerous INVINCIBLE ADDS.
Adds on a boss is fucking lazy game design, but whoever made this campaign one-upped that by making the adds invulnerable. I tested this for about an hour by running around with Elemental Chaos on, watching the damage numbers pop up but the health bars remain full. I eventually beat the Harvester (on Nightmare, as I was level 34 by then), but I’m not confident I could do that again.
The answer is sort-of: a female elf player gets kidnapped herself and the NPC groom tries to rescue her. He gets killed in the process and the player kills the prince on her own before becoming a Grey Warden.
I didn’t get to play the game again until ~6 years later, when I was looking for cRPGs. I played through the base game and it constantly reminded me of Neverwinter Nights 2, which is a good thing. Besides the over-tuned difficulty (more on that later), DAO is a fun and immersive high fantasy RPG and I definitely felt like I was experiencing a grand tale of how non-descript evil things were about to destroy the world with “the taint” and I was its last line of defense.
I mentioned difficulty. Having played a large variety of these games, I never felt like I was struggling…except with early-game DAO. I was constantly wiping to run-of-the-mill encounters, which was baffling. At one point a group of homeless people showed up trying to kill my party so they could collect a bounty and buy some food – and they won. Some starving, ill-equipped hobos took on battle-hardened warriors backed up by a feared Witch of the Wilds and won. Balance much?
I’m all for challenge but the game’s difficulty has to make some sort of sense. You’re telling me that I studied my whole life to wield magic and got inducted into the legendary ancient order dedicated to stopping the end of the world, but I can’t kill a group of hobos?
I dealt with this by using a staggered difficulty scheme as follows: levels 1-15 on Easy, 16-20 on Normal, 21-25 on Hard, and the rest on Nightmare.
Besides this problem, I think DAO’s best feature is the characterization. Your companions talk to each other and bicker, generally with hilarious results. Here’s the pervert drunk dwarf talking with the sarcastic witch:
OGHREN: You couldn’t hurt me if you wanted to, witch, you know that?
MORRIGAN: ‘Tis so?
OGHREN: Dwarves resist magic, woman. There’s nothing you could do.
MORRIGAN: Nothing? I could not, for instance, kick you in your manhood?
OGHREN: Oof.
MORRIGAN: Do you wish to see?
OGHREN: Not necessary.
MORRIGAN: Well the offer stands.
I didn’t mean to do the romance with Morrigan in my play-through, but I ended up doing it anyway because of stuff like that.
I want to talk about the expansion (Awakening) and the bonus campaigns (Golems of Amgarrak and Witch Hunt). My screenshot below is my final character at the end of Witch Hunt, but I’m going to make this shrine base-game only. Why? Short-answer: with the possible exception of Witch Hunt, these add-ons are buggy, unbalanced piles of ass.
In Awakening, there is a scene where you lose all your equipment and need to take it back by killing an enemy that drops it all. Besides the fact that this sequence serves little-to-no purpose except to be fucking annoying, there is a bug that makes your stolen equipment disappear permanently. Since I played this game without consulting a guide, I didn’t know about this and had already saved my game after I’d lost all my stuff. Besides the fact that games shouldn’t be shipping with major bugs like this, as of this writing the game is SEVEN YEARS old with no patch fix.
Also on Awakening: the story’s presentation is rock-stupid. The exposition that tells you what the hell is going on happens RIGHT BEFORE THE LAST BOSS. You spend most of the campaign meeting talking darkspawn referencing darkspawn named “The Lost” and “The Mother” and “The Architect” and “The First” and “The Children” with no explanation as to what any of this means.
After beating Awakening I went onto Golems of Amgarrak, which is a campaign that has nothing to do with anything. Some random dwarf writes to you and asks you to help him investigate some dwarf city and that’s the backstory. When I got there, a bug struck that triggered the boss fight without the boss actually being there, breaking the entire map since the switches that allowed you to progress had stopped working. This time, I managed to load a save, only to arrive at the last boss and its numerous INVINCIBLE ADDS.
Adds on a boss is fucking lazy game design, but whoever made this campaign one-upped that by making the adds invulnerable. I tested this for about an hour by running around with Elemental Chaos on, watching the damage numbers pop up but the health bars remain full. I eventually beat the Harvester (on Nightmare, as I was level 34 by then), but I’m not confident I could do that again.
Witch Hunt was fine – I didn’t encounter any major bugs and the premise actually has relevance to the main story. Morrigan is a central character and it sheds a small bit of light on what she’s up to, which leads into the third game in the series as far as I can tell (I haven’t played Inquisition).
The character: Benamin, Hero of Ferelden
DAO has the attributes Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Willpower, Magic, and Cunning. First, I’ll define ranges as <9 = F-rank, 10-17 = D-rank, 18-25 = C-rank, 26-33 = B-rank, 34-41 = A-rank, and >42 = S-rank. Next, we can use Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution ranks from the base D&D template, but the other three will be hybrid attributes. Willpower should be a mix of Wisdom and Charisma, Magic sounds like a mix of Intelligence and Wisdom, and Cunning would be a mix of Intelligence and Charisma.
Strength: 18-25 (C-rank) to 26-33 (B-rank)
Dexterity: 18-25 (C-rank) to 26-33 (B-rank)
Constitution: 10-17 (D-rank) to 18-25 (C-rank)
Willpower: 18-25 (C-rank) to 42+ (S-rank)
Magic: 26-33 (B-rank) to 42+ (S-rank)
Cunning: 22-29 (between C-rank and B-rank) to 30-37 (between B-rank and A-rank)
And here we go. I still ensured I had items to bolster my constitution, but see below for more details.
The character: Benamin, Hero of Ferelden
DAO has the attributes Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Willpower, Magic, and Cunning. First, I’ll define ranges as <9 = F-rank, 10-17 = D-rank, 18-25 = C-rank, 26-33 = B-rank, 34-41 = A-rank, and >42 = S-rank. Next, we can use Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution ranks from the base D&D template, but the other three will be hybrid attributes. Willpower should be a mix of Wisdom and Charisma, Magic sounds like a mix of Intelligence and Wisdom, and Cunning would be a mix of Intelligence and Charisma.
Strength: 18-25 (C-rank) to 26-33 (B-rank)
Dexterity: 18-25 (C-rank) to 26-33 (B-rank)
Constitution: 10-17 (D-rank) to 18-25 (C-rank)
Willpower: 18-25 (C-rank) to 42+ (S-rank)
Magic: 26-33 (B-rank) to 42+ (S-rank)
Cunning: 22-29 (between C-rank and B-rank) to 30-37 (between B-rank and A-rank)
And here we go. I still ensured I had items to bolster my constitution, but see below for more details.
Here's the equipment list:
I began as a Mage and later specialized in Arcane Warrior and Spirit Healer, which fit well with the general template I wanted to play as. I enjoyed the buff system in this game – they’re toggles, which means you turn them on and they stay on indefinitely given you have enough mana. It’s much better than having to recast buffs all the time.
Fully buffed (including Shimmering Shield), my character was extremely difficult to kill. It was still possible – I know from experience – but I definitely felt like my character abilities were actually bolstering my fighting capability rather than relying on items that boosted my stats. I will say, though, that +10 constitution was nice.
At any rate, I essentially turned on every buff possible, leaving only some mana for emergency Heal usage, and smacked enemies with my sword until they died. It’s not the most exciting or glorious setup, but I still had a lot of fun with it.
Major decisions
There are a number of major decisions in this game revolving around how to secure support from different factions against the darkspawn.
Mage v. Templar
Upon returning to the mage tower I discovered that some dick named Uldred had caused demons to run rampant possessing mages. The Templars’ plan was to purge the entire tower of life. I instead chose to go into the tower and root out the demons, thereby sparing the mages. Besides being in-character (I played as a mage), I thought the Templars were seriously being stupid. Don’t they have the ability to detect demonic possession and combat magic? Why can’t they decide to fight the demons while rescuing the mages? Why was their first solution to “some dickhead is summoning demons” to kill the entire tower?
Branka v. Caridin
To make a long (and somewhat interesting) story short, I had to choose between Branka, a dwarf who had betrayed her retinue to being violated by darkspawn in order to obtain an anvil that produces war machines powered by living souls; or Caridin, a dwarf who originally built that anvil, decided it should never be used again, was forcibly turned into a golem as a result, and now stood guard over the anvil.
This was a no-brainer. Branka’s actions were horrifying. I’m not going to go in-depth here to stay on-topic, but suffice it to say this is where I decided this game was intended for a mature audience. I sided with Caridin and destroyed the anvil, killing Branka in the process.
Harrowmont v. Bhelen
The reason I was trying to find Branka in the first place was that Branka happened to be a dwarf Paragon, meaning she had political power to influence the matter of who should be king. Caridin is also a Paragon. Regardless of whom I sided with, I then had a Paragon’s word on who should be king – and Caridin told me to make that choice myself.
I could choose Bhelen, who was in line for the throne and is a scheming murderer. Or, I could choose Harrowmont, whom the former king wanted on the throne precisely so Bhelen would not be king. I chose Harrowmont. That was easy.
The Urn of Sacred Ashes
This Urn contains the ashes of Andraste, who was a prophet that founded this game’s equivalent of The Church. She was burned at the stake at the end of her life. To make a long story short, a cult had formed that was supposed to be protecting the Urn but instead devolved to worshipping some random dragon instead. You’ll hear more about this dragon later, but suffice it to say I was faced with the choice of defiling the Urn or killing the cult and preserving it.
I chose the latter because I really found no reason to defile the Urn. I’m not a big fan of the religion in the game, but why would I go out of my way to defile their founder’s remains?
Arl Eamon’s son
The reason I was looking for that Urn was to cure Arl Eamon, the Wardens’ biggest ally in the country. This is important because a douchecock known as Loghain began the game by betraying the kingdom and seizing power – and he’s not a fan of Grey Wardens because we know of his treachery. I brought some Sacred Ash back to cure Eamon, but found his castle and town FUBAR. His son Connor got himself possessed by a desire demon, who in turn summoned undead to attack the town. To deal with this, I could allow the remorseful rogue mage who poisoned Eamon in the first place to use blood magic to send someone into the Fade (a complicated topic, but it’s basically where we’d need to go to confront the demon), which would involve some human sacrifice. Connor’s mother volunteered.
I decided instead to ask the mages back in the tower for help. They agreed, performed a ritual that didn’t require human sacrifice, and sent me into the Fade. There, I bargained with the desire demon: I let her live, and she GTFO. She agreed, wisely I might add.
Again, this wasn’t really that hard a choice – solve the problem with human sacrifice, or solve the problem without human sacrifice. Come on.
Werewolves v. Elves
The final quest before the game’s concluding chapter was to call upon the elves. The elves were having issues with werewolves when I found them. In particular, someone named Zathrian informed me that if I killed the leader of the werewolves, named Witherfang, and cut out its heart, he could use that to concoct a cure.
Upon finding Witherfang, it turned into a greenish humanoid female who identified herself as the Lady of the Forest. She told me that years ago, some humans kidnapped Zathrian’s family and did horrible things to them. To seek vengeance, Zathrian summoned her and she used his blood to put a curse on the humans. The curse turned them into werewolves and then they died somehow, but then the curse persisted and now afflicts innocent people. The Lady gathered some werewolves and took a wolf form herself to attack the elves in an effort to get Zathrian to come lift the curse.
Again, this wasn’t entirely difficult. If the original humans had still been around, the choice might have been more difficult, but we’re talking about random innocent people being cursed. I told Zathrian to lift the curse and he tried to kill me, but then Morrigan summoned an icicle that she telekinetically shoved into his crotch (author’s imagining) and he relented.
The final chapter
At this point I had an army composed of mages, dwarves, elves, and the human forces under Eamon. It was time to deal with Loghain and his treason.
Eamon called the Landsmeet, a meeting of nobles to decide the next ruler. It wasn’t entirely difficult to gather evidence that Loghain and his ally Howe were up to no good, including kidnapping, torture, and slave-trading. As such, I won the Landsmeet and Loghain peacefully surrendered.
Just kidding – he attacked me and I ended up in another “trial by combat” routine. One-on-one. A veteran of battle versus a FULLY BUFFED ARCANE WARRIOR SPIRIT HEALER WEARING SUPERIOR DRAGONBONE PLATE ARMOR.
…Yeah, he stood no chance and then I had Alistair behead him for high treason. He deserved to avenge Duncan’s death more than I did.
Next, I had to choose who would be the next ruler of Ferelden. Alistair had some right to the throne, but I talked to Alistair and he really didn’t want to have anything to do with the throne; moreover, he didn’t want to marry the queen for numerous reasons. On the other hand, Queen Anora would have no trouble ruling the country on her own, so I backed her and she became the sole ruler of the king- no, queendom.
Finally, it was up to me who killed the Archdemon. I chose to do so with Morrigan’s ritual – I’d done the romance with her, so it seemed fitting. Oh, and by the way, during Morrigan’s ritual my character seemed terrified of her. He kept backing away on the bed. I'd slept with Morrigan before…why was I scared? Also I had Fade Shroud both times, so I hope Morrigan liked sleeping with a translucent man.
Random things to note
Like NWN2, there’s an optional (high) dragon boss. Here she is:
- Maric’s Blade (with Paragon Lightning, Frost, and Flame ENCHANTMENTS!)
- Cailan’s Shield (with Legion of the Dead Heraldry, +20 all)
- Helm of Honnleath (+2 all)
- Wade’s Superior Dragonbone Plate Gloves
- Wade’s Superior Dragonbone Plate Armor
- Wade’s Superior Dragonbone Plate Boots
- Anduril’s Blessing (+2 all)
- The Spellward (+5 WIL)
- Lifegiver (+10 CON)
- Morrigan’s ring (+2 WIL)
I began as a Mage and later specialized in Arcane Warrior and Spirit Healer, which fit well with the general template I wanted to play as. I enjoyed the buff system in this game – they’re toggles, which means you turn them on and they stay on indefinitely given you have enough mana. It’s much better than having to recast buffs all the time.
Fully buffed (including Shimmering Shield), my character was extremely difficult to kill. It was still possible – I know from experience – but I definitely felt like my character abilities were actually bolstering my fighting capability rather than relying on items that boosted my stats. I will say, though, that +10 constitution was nice.
At any rate, I essentially turned on every buff possible, leaving only some mana for emergency Heal usage, and smacked enemies with my sword until they died. It’s not the most exciting or glorious setup, but I still had a lot of fun with it.
Major decisions
There are a number of major decisions in this game revolving around how to secure support from different factions against the darkspawn.
Mage v. Templar
Upon returning to the mage tower I discovered that some dick named Uldred had caused demons to run rampant possessing mages. The Templars’ plan was to purge the entire tower of life. I instead chose to go into the tower and root out the demons, thereby sparing the mages. Besides being in-character (I played as a mage), I thought the Templars were seriously being stupid. Don’t they have the ability to detect demonic possession and combat magic? Why can’t they decide to fight the demons while rescuing the mages? Why was their first solution to “some dickhead is summoning demons” to kill the entire tower?
Branka v. Caridin
To make a long (and somewhat interesting) story short, I had to choose between Branka, a dwarf who had betrayed her retinue to being violated by darkspawn in order to obtain an anvil that produces war machines powered by living souls; or Caridin, a dwarf who originally built that anvil, decided it should never be used again, was forcibly turned into a golem as a result, and now stood guard over the anvil.
This was a no-brainer. Branka’s actions were horrifying. I’m not going to go in-depth here to stay on-topic, but suffice it to say this is where I decided this game was intended for a mature audience. I sided with Caridin and destroyed the anvil, killing Branka in the process.
Harrowmont v. Bhelen
The reason I was trying to find Branka in the first place was that Branka happened to be a dwarf Paragon, meaning she had political power to influence the matter of who should be king. Caridin is also a Paragon. Regardless of whom I sided with, I then had a Paragon’s word on who should be king – and Caridin told me to make that choice myself.
I could choose Bhelen, who was in line for the throne and is a scheming murderer. Or, I could choose Harrowmont, whom the former king wanted on the throne precisely so Bhelen would not be king. I chose Harrowmont. That was easy.
The Urn of Sacred Ashes
This Urn contains the ashes of Andraste, who was a prophet that founded this game’s equivalent of The Church. She was burned at the stake at the end of her life. To make a long story short, a cult had formed that was supposed to be protecting the Urn but instead devolved to worshipping some random dragon instead. You’ll hear more about this dragon later, but suffice it to say I was faced with the choice of defiling the Urn or killing the cult and preserving it.
I chose the latter because I really found no reason to defile the Urn. I’m not a big fan of the religion in the game, but why would I go out of my way to defile their founder’s remains?
Arl Eamon’s son
The reason I was looking for that Urn was to cure Arl Eamon, the Wardens’ biggest ally in the country. This is important because a douchecock known as Loghain began the game by betraying the kingdom and seizing power – and he’s not a fan of Grey Wardens because we know of his treachery. I brought some Sacred Ash back to cure Eamon, but found his castle and town FUBAR. His son Connor got himself possessed by a desire demon, who in turn summoned undead to attack the town. To deal with this, I could allow the remorseful rogue mage who poisoned Eamon in the first place to use blood magic to send someone into the Fade (a complicated topic, but it’s basically where we’d need to go to confront the demon), which would involve some human sacrifice. Connor’s mother volunteered.
I decided instead to ask the mages back in the tower for help. They agreed, performed a ritual that didn’t require human sacrifice, and sent me into the Fade. There, I bargained with the desire demon: I let her live, and she GTFO. She agreed, wisely I might add.
Again, this wasn’t really that hard a choice – solve the problem with human sacrifice, or solve the problem without human sacrifice. Come on.
Werewolves v. Elves
The final quest before the game’s concluding chapter was to call upon the elves. The elves were having issues with werewolves when I found them. In particular, someone named Zathrian informed me that if I killed the leader of the werewolves, named Witherfang, and cut out its heart, he could use that to concoct a cure.
Upon finding Witherfang, it turned into a greenish humanoid female who identified herself as the Lady of the Forest. She told me that years ago, some humans kidnapped Zathrian’s family and did horrible things to them. To seek vengeance, Zathrian summoned her and she used his blood to put a curse on the humans. The curse turned them into werewolves and then they died somehow, but then the curse persisted and now afflicts innocent people. The Lady gathered some werewolves and took a wolf form herself to attack the elves in an effort to get Zathrian to come lift the curse.
Again, this wasn’t entirely difficult. If the original humans had still been around, the choice might have been more difficult, but we’re talking about random innocent people being cursed. I told Zathrian to lift the curse and he tried to kill me, but then Morrigan summoned an icicle that she telekinetically shoved into his crotch (author’s imagining) and he relented.
The final chapter
At this point I had an army composed of mages, dwarves, elves, and the human forces under Eamon. It was time to deal with Loghain and his treason.
Eamon called the Landsmeet, a meeting of nobles to decide the next ruler. It wasn’t entirely difficult to gather evidence that Loghain and his ally Howe were up to no good, including kidnapping, torture, and slave-trading. As such, I won the Landsmeet and Loghain peacefully surrendered.
Just kidding – he attacked me and I ended up in another “trial by combat” routine. One-on-one. A veteran of battle versus a FULLY BUFFED ARCANE WARRIOR SPIRIT HEALER WEARING SUPERIOR DRAGONBONE PLATE ARMOR.
…Yeah, he stood no chance and then I had Alistair behead him for high treason. He deserved to avenge Duncan’s death more than I did.
Next, I had to choose who would be the next ruler of Ferelden. Alistair had some right to the throne, but I talked to Alistair and he really didn’t want to have anything to do with the throne; moreover, he didn’t want to marry the queen for numerous reasons. On the other hand, Queen Anora would have no trouble ruling the country on her own, so I backed her and she became the sole ruler of the king- no, queendom.
Finally, it was up to me who killed the Archdemon. I chose to do so with Morrigan’s ritual – I’d done the romance with her, so it seemed fitting. Oh, and by the way, during Morrigan’s ritual my character seemed terrified of her. He kept backing away on the bed. I'd slept with Morrigan before…why was I scared? Also I had Fade Shroud both times, so I hope Morrigan liked sleeping with a translucent man.
Random things to note
Like NWN2, there’s an optional (high) dragon boss. Here she is:
The other super-hard boss I fought was Cauthrien’s first encounter – and I won narrowly. The key is to run the hell away from the lobby, since she will chase you but her army of archers won’t. Even then I was lucky since she mostly tried to kill me and, well, killing a fully buffed Arcane Warrior takes a long time. Had she gone after Wynne instead, I would’ve been screwed. A dedicated safe healer is pretty essential on account of that chick hitting like a truck on steroids.
…You know, truck-steroids. As opposed to…normal…you know what, I’m done.
…You know, truck-steroids. As opposed to…normal…you know what, I’m done.