As I promised myself I would, I’ve been working my way through all theDragon Agegames for the first time so that I can be adequately prepared forDragon Age: The Veilguard’s release. Progress has been slow so far, as I’ve had to squeeze it in between games I’m reviewing and trying to leave my house at least a couple times a week, but I’m finally nearing the end ofDragon Age: Origins.
Specifically, I’m at the final battle at Denerim, at the city gates. Riordan has just told me I need to pick my party and given me the option to kill two generals. From what I’ve gathered, I’ve still got a little bit to go, but I’m pretty close. I have a question, though: why didn’t anybody tell me how damnbleakthe last bit of this game is?
I wasn’t expecting a lovefest from this game or anything – I know that the series is generally pretty tonally dark and that some really awful things can happen if you make certain decisions. But in a broader sense, I was not expecting the last hours of this game to get as dark as it did. I suspect Denerim’s elven alienage will stay with me for a very long time.
Because I played an Elven Circle Mage, I only saw the alienage for the first time when gathering intel on Loghain before the Landsmeet. I didn’t really know what an alienage was, so I was horrified to find that it was a slum full of suffering and poverty, a way to segregate elves from the rest of Denerim. Beggars asked me for money, over and over, and even when I knew they were taking advantage of my kindness, I opted to keep opening my wallet – just looking at the state of the alienage, there was no question that they needed the money more than I did.
The plague stuff was already depressing – it’s hard to see depictions of mass illness and not draw parallels to the very real pandemic that killed so many just years ago. To see people suffering in the street knowing no aid was coming was painful. The slavery storyline was worse – following the clues and discovering that Loghain had been kidnapping elves and selling them to fund his war effort made me feel physically repulsed by the sheer evil of it all. I knew from hearsay that Dragon Age was explicit about the cruelty of discrimination, but I never expected it to feel quite so visceral.
But the worst part was the orphanage. A blind Templar named Ser Otto asked me to look for signs of an evil presence in the orphanage, which led me to an old, haunted orphanage full of shades and demons. There are burnt bodies everywhere, signs of a horrible and ruthless act of violence. Ghosts run through the halls, chanting creepy verses and laughing. The screams of women and children reverberate through the compound. This is where a massacre happened during an elven riot, and countless innocents were killed. Evil leaves its mark.
Then at the Landsmeet, I made Alistair execute Loghain in front of his daughter, and watching her weep by his dead body filled me with a creeping sense of dread that I’d done something very wrong. And still, there was more. Before the battle, I had to convince Alistair to sleep with Morrigan, which he clearly did not want to do at all, another bit of darkness in itself.
After that, it’s more violence, more blood. It feels like the moment I stepped into the alienage, the game suddenly took a turn into horror, bombarding me with cruelty after cruelty, making the last hours of the game feel like a deep dive into just how much evil can happen to people trying to do their best.
The game is extremely effective at what it’s trying to do, but I wish I’d known going in that it was going to roil my stomach this much. Can someone at least tell me if all the games are going to make me this sad?
Dragon Age: Origins (dupe)
WHERE TO PLAY
In BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins, the kingdom of Ferelden is deep in the midst of an onslaught by the violent Darkspawn. You must join the Grey Wardens, an ancient order, and help put an end to the invasion.
