What an age it has been, with the autumn season coming to a conclusion and marking ten years since the release of Dragon Age: Origins and all its glorious storytelling, lore, world-building, and contributions that it has made to the fantasy RPG genre. November 3rd marked the ten year anniversary, and yesterday, December 4th, was officially Dragon 4ge Day, a grand celebration by fans wishing to commend the Dragon Age's setting and world, Thedas.
In many ways, the first game, Dragon Age: Origins, opened up the doors for the American and European flavor of darker medieval-fantasy RPGs to take hold in the console market and attract mass appeal. Before its release, the genre was mostly exclusive to the PC gaming market, with games such as Diablo, Warcraft and Icewind Dale as the main attractions.
Meanwhile, in the console market, it was Japanese developers and their anime-inspired JRPG titles which vastly dominated the fantasy RPG market. When the first trailers arrived for Dragon Age: Origins, it very much caught the attention of gamers with its darker and grittier shade of fantasy in a fully fleshed out 3D world. The start of the trailer clearly resonated characteristics of dark fantasy literature such as A Song of Ice and Fire, with its bleak world and hopelessness.
In medieval-fantasy literature, this darker sub-genre within traditional fantasy has earned the title "grimdark fantasy" in recent times, and often emphasizes a more cynical take on fantasy world-building and character development, with plenty of cut-throat politics. The flavor that Dragon Age: Origins presented was a much more foreign element in the console market, in comparison to the fantasy presented by JRPGs.
Dragon Age: Origins very much resembled fantasy more akin to literary fantasy trends at the time. It arguably brought the grimmer and darker tones to mainstream video game fantasy in similar fashion to the way in which Game of Thrones and its literary counterpart, A Song of Ice and Fire, did the same for literature and film. Dragon Age: Origins offered something uniquely more reminiscent of real-world politics and conflicts, with all its grey areas, in contradiction to J.R.R. Tolkiens' idealism, which emphasized themes of hope and more clearly etched characteristics along the lines of good and evil in his fantasy.
In fact, many people considered Dragon Age: Origins to be a modern spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, due to a strategically deep combat system brought to fruition in beautifully rendered 3D environments and real-time. Additionally, Dragon Age's world drew heavily on graphics with a more dreary-brown color pallet to set the tone of its bitter landscape and setting. It was visually reminiscent of Baldur's Gate darkly lit world and more dystopian take on medieval-fantasy RPGs.
Dragon Age: Origins was able to bring darker fantasy to the console market without compromising or watering down the depth of its combat, customization and narrative choices, while remaining accessible for both invested and casual game players. In other words, it more closely resembled darker fantasy literature and PC fantasy, but created a franchise capable of mass appeal, which some may argue was a risky endeavor.
Dragon Age: Origins shook up the status quo of fantasy RPG's on consoles normally dominated by Japanese developers such as Squaresoft. For the first time, it appeared that fantasy RPGs created by western developers could finally compete with Japanese RPG's in the console market, and fit into the mass-appeal of the mainstream. While fans could also argue that Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion beat Dragon Age to the punch, it is important to take notice of the nuances.
While the Elder Scrolls games may have been extremely influential in the console and PC gaming worlds, they may have played a stronger role in the development of open world and sandbox games, rather than paving the way for strong narrative-driven dark fantasy in the console market. In other words, Elder Scrolls paved the way for vastly expansive open worlds that transcend different genres and themes including science fiction, but Dragon Age: Orgins opened up the doors for darker fantasy themes and storytelling that more closely resembled fantasy literature trends. Dragon Age: Origins changed the type of stories that were told in fantasy RPGs.
Elder Scrolls similarly offered a dark and grim fantasy world for players to immerse themselves in, but it was not nearly as accessible to casual players or the mass market at the time. Many of which would not have been invested in Elder Scrolls' swaths of lore and heavy dialogue, all of which lacked an immersive story-driven journey to traverse through. Dragon Age: Origins captured a rich story-driven RPG in giving both casual and hardcore players choices with real outcomes, while guiding them on a roller-coaster journey to a pivotal climax.
Dragon Age: Origins may not be the open world sandbox that the earlier Elder Scrolls games offered invested players, but it was by no means linear or shallow in the least. Furthermore, it would not have been able to take players through such an immersive journey in an open-world sandbox settings. While there is much debate among players regarding preferences for more linear or open-world designs, it is safe to say that there are always trade-offs between the two, especially in terms of storytelling.
Take the first Witcher, for instance, which was geared for a PC exclusive market originally. Two years after Dragon Age: Origins hit the market, Witcher 2 was released on consoles as well. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim also followed, and was also designed with more streamlined gameplay than its predecessors, arguably to make it more accessible to to the mass market. Dragon Age: Origins demonstrated that the mass market was ripe for its style and theme if developed in the right ways.
While there are many inspiring RPGs that have been released since, Dragon Age: Origins was a game changer for the genre, especially for bringing the PC aspects to the console market and normalizing the trend for the years that would follow. When the sequel arrived in 2011, many critics felt Dragon Age 2's combat was too streamlined and lacked the depth of the first game. In other words, it went too far to appeal to the mass market. While much can be debated about its combat and level-design, it is very clear that its storytelling and world-setting remained intact, without any compromises.
Dragon Age 2 delved into deepening political rifts and multi-party relations between warring populaces, much of which draws parallels to real world conflicts, and can feel hopeless or depressing at times. The way in which governing bodies of characters dealt with difficult issues and tribulations within societies clearly drew inspiration from real-world events, demonstrating Dragon Age's maturity and layers of depth.
Dragon Age: Inquisition arrived in late 2014, and was the most ambitious title yet. It revived much of the strategic depth of the original game's combat mechanics, while offering enhanced animation fluidity normally observed in more action-oriented games. It offered players accessibility and mass appeal which Dragon Age 2 set out to establish originally, while drawing from the inspiration that set the strategic bar for the first game, Origins. Whether or not Inquisition reached the bar of the first game in that regard, many avid Dragon Age fans still consider Origins to be the best the series has to offer. However, that by no means undermines the games that followed. After all, Dragon Age: Origins is simply a classic among the great RPGs in modern history.
Many fans will zealously argue that there has yet to be any game to rival Dragon Age: Origins' combat in terms of its overall strategic depth and mass appeal to casual and invested players alike. There is a case to be made for the strategic gameplay choices in titles such as Divinity: Original Sin II, and other turn-based or real-time overhead camera RPGs. However, they have yet to demonstrate the sweet spot between mass appeal and maintaining strategic depth, while encapsulating it within a fully fleshed out 3D world to explore.
The current trend in fantasy RPGs is a complete paradigm shift to the status quo that was present a decade ago, and much of it is owed to Dragon Age: Origins as it offered a fresh take on the game genre. While many great RPGs will be released in the coming years, the roots of their inspiration can certainly be traced to the flavor of fantasy RPGs which Dragon Age: Origins planted the seeds for.
One could make the argument that Tolkien lay the foundation for fantasy literature, but A Song of Ice and Fire modernized the genre and brought upon the paradigm shift which has set the current trajectory in literary fantasy trends. In similar fashion, Dragon Age: Origins arguably established the current paradigm shift which has changed the fantasy RPG genre more than any single game in the past decade, and established the mass market appeal for other titles to to take root, such as The Witcher 3, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and much more.
Dragon Age 4 is in development.