No, i am NOT giving you anymore money.

It’s great coming back from an adventure just to hear another of Leliana’s stories, to chat up the always sharp Zevran asking about his homeland, or just to get my share of direct answers out of Sten, debriefing him on the last quest. I wasn’t doing it because i wanted to get their approval up or because i wanted to open up their sidequests. I was doing it because i was genuinely interested in their characters and wanted to know. Out of my 115 hours of game time, i very much think at least 15 of those hours were spent in-camp talking to the characters. I could tell you about the time Zevran tried to kill someone but fell in love with her, i could tell you what Wynne’s greatest regret is, i could tell you about the ‘frat-parties’ that went on in the Wardens and Alistair’s eating habbits.. or i could leave you to enjoy those fine stories on your own, since they’re worth every second.

I’d like to add that the great writing and voice-acting also carries over to non-player-characters, most of them being distinct enough to remember them at a glance. Mentioning here that chick from Orlais in the market in Denerim which had a pretty heart-breaking story to tell, and which was happy to hear her out. She didn’t serve a purpose in the game, like a vital quest NPC, or a shopkeeper, she was just there to tell her story.

Who needs companions? I got two swords!

So what do these companions do besides engaging in conversation with you? They fight alongside you of course, and this brings us up to a system that its spiritual predecessors did not share.

While the Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinters Nights series used the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons system, Dragon Age goes a bit on the same road as Mass Effect, featuring an action-based combat system, but it’s a lot more tactical than its Science-Fiction counterpart. As said, you have your main character and the ability to choose between ten characters of varying classes to fill up your three companion slots, forming your squad or your party. This is the team which you will use in combat. The game can be played in total real time and in a sort of real-time-tactics mode.

To make combat as stream-lined as possible, the game offers you some tools to help you out. If you’ve ever played Neverwinter Nights, you are familiar with the tactics system in it’s raw form. Dragon Age takes it up a few notches and makes creating a character react exactly how’d you want, even though you are not in control of him, easy as pie. Each character has a tactics menu with the ability to be set a general rule of engagement and individual rules.

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