After some sixty-five hours of play time, I finally finished Dragon Age this past weekend. The ending fit the game perfectly, which is to say that it was unsurprising, deflating, and bug-ridden. I will account the details in specific to those who feel like going to Spoiler Towne, but for those who do not, I will say the following: the plot twist (if it can even be called that) was something you could see coming from the introductory portion of the game, the execution of the ending itself was fine but not particularly noteworthy, and, most importantly, my ending was wrong. Wrong. Three times the ending of the game directly contradicted what had happened in the game, and even within the ending itself. In pretty flagrant and significant ways, too. Like one major character stating that another had died, when said person was standing right there next to them, alive as fuck.

To be specific: I took Morrigan up on her offer, which is to say I chose to attempt to make the game's ending different than Final Fantasy X's. I went in there with Morrigan, Alistair, and Wynne, and I killed the game boss. Upon surviving, I arrived in Denerim's throne room. The queen correctly pointed me out to the small crowd as her betrothed and the hero of the day, and then asked me what I wanted in reward for being so awesome. I said, shit, I'm going to be a prince here soon, and I have plenty of scratch, so how about a tribute to me (and the rest of the Gray Wardens). She said, fuck, good call, we should build a memorial to Alistair and all of the Wardens who died to defeat the blight. At which point I thought to myself, wait, what? I got no Alistair Dies cinematic. I killed the boss, he was alive, and I took up Morrigan on her offer, and she was alive and present. I finished talking to the queen, thinking that it was hell of lame that a major character died and I found out about it like that, turned around, looked to my right, and there Alistair stood, completely alive.

After that head-scratcher, I went and talked to my party members, including Leliana. Prior to the ending of the game, and after I had agreed to marry the queen, I conversed with Leliana, and she let me know that our relationship, which actually did not exist, had to end because I was betrothed to the queen. I agreed that our nonexistent relationship had to end, and went on my merry way. Upon talking to Leliana after the queen announced me as a hero and her husband-to-be, however, Leliana essentially wanted to know if our non-existent relationship that we ended in spite of it not existing was still going strong. Maybe the whole "saving the world" thing made her want to try and pretend that we hadn't not broken up. I don't know.

To top it all off, I finished the game and got a series of "Where Are They Now?" text boxes as an epilogue. One particularly interesting one mentioned that the queen never remarried, remaining forever single on her throne in Denerim. What. She just announced me as her Dude of Nuptials. I didn't run off or chase Morrigan or anything like that. I stuck around, figuring on living the sweet life in the palace in Denerim. What in the fuck?

As mentioned, the game most assuredly had other flaws, of which I have bitched in past postings. It seemed like every time I got used to dealing with one, however, a new one came to the fore. It had a sort of snowballing effect on my anger, with my ire mounting to great levels near the end of the game as I tried to grit my teeth, ignore the bugs, and make it through to the end of the game. Between Mass Effect and Dragon Age, Bioware now leads the market in developing creative and innovative backwards-steps in video gaming. That aspect of the game, surely, contained plenty of things I could not predict and was not prepared for. Things like:

• Melee characters not being fucking able to attack moving targets. This is first and foremost on my list of complaints. They fucking can't attack them. Movement grants complete immunity from melee damage. I would send my main character, a rogue, up to the front, intent on slaughtering waves of on-comers and leaving my healer and magecannon unharmed in the backfield. I targeted a character, hit attack, and then watched as my character stood there like a slack-jawed idiot, spinning on his heels as he ineffectively watched the wave of enemies run right past him and into my healer and mage. Time and time again this happened, leaving me an incoherent mass of froth and hatred.
  
• Corpses being, for some unfathomable reason, unlootable for a random time between 0 seconds and fifteen minutes. There were plenty of times when I trekked back through areas I'd already cleared dozens of hours of playtime ago and found rotting corpses with loot on them.
  
• Loot overload, just as it was in Neverwinter Nights. Spend 15 minutes picking through 5,000 corpses and grabbing 2,500 useless items in hopes of finding the 1 that is worthwhile.
  
• Being stuck in combat and unable to res your characters due to some enemy that's halfway across the dungeon and separated from you by five vault doors and sixteen tons of rock walls.
  
• The targeting system quickly flipping from that corpse in front of you to that party member not even on the screen, causing you to initiate conversations with Allistair EVERY FIVE FUCKING SECONDS as you try to loot your spoils.
  
• The AI defying me in order to unofficially ramp up the difficulty. Yes, yes, don't follow me down the corridor despite me supposedly controlling your motions because I selected all of my party members and am moving. Wander back into the room that's full of six golems thirsty for blood, a crackling spell of electric death, and maybe a dragon or two just for good measure. I don't need you anyway, mages are overpowered enough to deal with anything solo.
  
• The AI defying me again as soon as I relinquish control, as soon as I let go, choosing to ignore the dangerous mage two feet in front of it that I told it to attack, choosing instead to run after that inconsequential archer halfway across fucking creation. Mages are OP, for fuck's sake, do what I fucking tell you to and kill them. You only have control over whichever character you are in direct command of at any given time. All other illusions of control are lies.
  
• The character I control not attacking the enemy right in front of and in base contact with it because there's another enemy or an ally also in base contact with it, but over to the right. In the way - if I were attacking from the right.
  
• Watching my character, the one I am supposedly directly controlling, walk out of combat and around the room in response to that enemy who's not really blocking my character from reaching the other enemy.
  
• Realizing that I don't even have control over the character I have control over. Control is a lie.

It is very difficult for me to get proper perspective on Dragon Age. There was so much anger toward the end, so much burnout from the length of the game, from the deluge of bugs that absolutely plague the PS3 version like boils and sores and pustules, that I just don't know what I think of the game anymore. I played it for about ten hours a day for the first four days that I had it - aided by jet lag and sickness and the desire to sit on my couch and not do anything active, granted. Still, you don't do that unless you enjoy a game. I don't, anyway.

But as things dragged on, the bugs mounted, my enjoyment trailed off, and my determination to just finish the game took over and replaced most of the joy. I started noticing how bland the setting was. Rotund dwarves who live underground and have braided beards. Elves with pointy ears who live in the forest and are good archers. Yes, they are near-slaves forced into the ghettos in the city, too, but still: elves. A typical medieval Europe aesthetic, made even more drab and boring by the brown and gray color palette. Scale mail, chain mail, plate armor, swords, axes, all of that shit. Save the world from the mindlessly and pointlessly evil hordes with no goal apart from destruction. The entire game is so very by-the-numbers, so typically western fantasy RPG, that it's hard to feel like it was inspired in any fashion. The characters are well written and excellently voice acted, but they move in a boring world and are acting out a boring plot. Hell, if nothing else, Bioware used to be the technical competence that crafted engines that Black Isle used to realize their creative visions. At this point, they've ceded the competence without picking up the vision.


It is always good policy, whether you're a movie, a band playing a concert, a book, or a video game, to go out on a strong note. Leave a lasting impression. Make people remember you. Dragon Age has had that effect on me, but I do not think my final impression is one Bioware was aiming for. I imagine I enjoyed Dragon Age, though surely the early portions more than the latter. When it comes down to it, though, the ending truly drove home that Dragon Age is a run of the mill western fantasy RPG crippled by bugs.