While this rightfully makes “Dragon Age” sound like boilerplate, Tolkien-inspired fantasy fare, Ferelden and its denizens are infused with a profound depth and personality.įor most of the game, you’ll travel with three companions, selected from a pool of nearly a dozen. Near the end of the first act, Ferelden is riven by civil war, and your military mission becomes a diplomatic one, as you seek to unite the kingdom against the common threat. (For those unfamiliar with medieval RPGs, mages are spell casters, whereas rogues excel at sneaking, stealing, assassinating and talking their way out of trouble.) Once you finish the origin story, your character is recruited to join the Grey Wardens, whose members are tasked with ridding the world of darkspawn, an evil subterranean race currently operating under the direction of an archdemon, or fallen god. Upon creating your character, you’ll play through one of six different origin stories, determined by which combination of race (human, elf or dwarf) and class (warrior, mage or rogue) you select. I’m looking forward to replaying “Dragon Age” as an elf, in part to see how being the subject of persistent racism affects my attitude toward Ferelden and its people. The treatment of elves by the game’s humans casts a light on the ugliness of racism without being preachy or controversial. The customizable script extends to the game’s racial dynamics, as well.

Though its swords-and-sorcery setting won’t win points for originality, differing scripts for male and female characters make it the first game in which I’ve experienced a “sisters are doing it for themselves” camaraderie with another female character. It’s set in the kingdom of Ferelden, in the larger game world of Thedas, a setting Electronic Arts-owned BioWare clearly intends to revisit. Like past BioWare efforts, such as “Mass Effect,” “Dragon Age: Origins” (rated M, $60 on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, $50 on PC) is a single-player role-playing game that takes dozens of hours to complete. As I progressed, it became a common thread: characters in the game world reacting to the seemingly inconsequential choices I’d made back in the character creation menu.

The first hint that BioWare’s “Dragon Age: Origins” would be my favorite game of 2009 came just a couple of hours in, when one of the world’s inhabitants refused to believe that my character, a woman, could possibly belong to the Grey Wardens, a group of legendary warriors devoted to ridding the world of evil.

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