Our fate is to join the Grey Wardens, via a ritual that sees the recruits drinking Darkspawn blood. Now, the Grey Wardens, a group of warriors who belong to no nation, are charged with defeating Darkspawn and preventing Blights, and as such they are always looking for new recruits. I would normally give a spoiler alert at this point, but we’re talking about a game originally from 2009 – over ten whole years ago – so if you haven’t played it by now, well… why not? Now, with the mention of the Grey Wardens, I feel the time has come to discuss the narrative in depth. I really enjoyed this aspect of the game, creating multiple characters in order to see what backgrounds they came from. Each race and class combination had, uniquely I think at the time, its own backstory and “tutorial” that lead to us joining the Grey Wardens.
The character creation part of Origins was particularly good, giving a range of races (Human, Elf or Dwarf) and a variety of classes to choose from (Warrior, Mage or Rogue). I suspect that this is why so many people invest so much time in this genre in particular when you have created a character, and invested in their backstory, the urge to see what happens next is strong, dragging us forward, almost against our will. The real draw, the hook, for me with any RPG is the story.
