Tag Archives: dragon age origins

Insert a Quarter to Continue: DLC and Broken Storylines

Downloadable Content? I love it! It’s like printing free money! It’s a trick we learned from heroin dealers: give people a little bit, but not enough to tide them over, and then charge them exorbitant fees to continue with the taste of heroin that they’ve come to love. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go eat bacon-covered diamonds. Because I’m that fucking rich.

-Unnamed Microsoft Executive

The most obvious complaints against Downloadable Content, or DLC, have been made many times, so I’ll rehash them quickly before I get to my point. Basically, companies sell incomplete games, and then make you pay to complete them. Or, they charge too much for content that adds very little to the game. (“For only $10, you can get the Modern Warfare 2: Hat Editor! Change your character’s hat to a cowboy hat, fedora, or bowler! And if you like the Hat Editor, make sure to get the $5 Hat Editor expansion, which allows you to purchase a baseball hat in one of 4 awesome colors!”) Those are valid points, and reason enough to hate the policy of charging for DLC.

I’d like to add another problem with a lot of DLC: it breaks storylines.

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Dragon Age: Origins. Pretty [Now Loading.........] Great.

The Blood Dragon. Look, we all know what "The Blood Dragon" is a euphemism for, right? If not, ask your Aunt Flo. She knows all about it.

BioWare described Dragon Age: Origins as an “epic tale of violence, lust, and betrayal,” which makes it sound like it’s a game about the Bible. I hereby offer a better description of Dragon Age: Origins: it is a tale of blood and loading screens.

From the first second of the game, BioWare lets you know that they’re not fucking around. A sword cuts some invisible sap, letting blood spew forth. The blood turns into a dragon, which then falls onto a piece of paper. The splash of blood makes a big dragon-shaped bloody mess. You have already seen 3 pints of the Mountain Dew of Vampires spilled, and you haven’t even started the game. That was the intro.

Before we talk too much about blood, however, let’s talk about being born. You start DA:O in the usual Sim-like way, designing a character’s face, body type, et cetera. Then you pick his or her race (human, elf, dwarf), background (noble, commoner), and class (warrior, rogue, mage). I created an Elven mage who is a dead ringer for Spock. Why limit your nerdiness to the nerdiness provided? You shouldn’t. That’s how I keep it real. Who is to say this universe isn’t also the universe of Star Trek, thousands of years before? No one. I can be Spock in any game I want. Continue reading