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Dragon Age: Origins (PC)

The PC game Dragon Age: Origins is more or less the continue of the Baldur's Gate row, at least the gameplay is like it, but it has it's own continent named Thedas with it's own new creatures and characters. It is a roleplaying game like Baldur's Gate and Bioware made the rules system complete new, so Dragon Age is not based on the D&D (or AD&D) rules.

The game Dragon Age: Origins was released on 3. November 2009 in USA and on 6. November 2009 here in Germany. The Toolset that comes with the game is one of the best toolsets I have ever seen. Bioware promised that the toolset should be very easy to use even for beginners, but in the end it is not really true.

The Stolen Throne:
The book "The stolen Throne" by David Gaider is the first prequel to the game.
The young prince Maric and his mother have become rebels, because Orlesians have pushed them off the throne. Maric's mother is being killed and Maric flees. On this escape he stumbles about Loghain Mac Tyr whose family was hunted off their farmhold by the Orlesians.
Further the book describes how Loghain and Maric get friends, how it happens that Loghain found himself as an important leader of the rebel army without ever wanting this and how they managed to get back the throne.

The Calling:
The second book that is also a prequel for the game and the sequel to the Stolen Throne is called "The Calling".
In this book Maric, who sits on his throne again meanwhile, is leading the Grey Wardens down into the Deep Roads. Here our heroes learn to know the Darkspawn and several greater horrors.
Both books are worth reading, at least the english originals. ;)

The Story of the Game:
The story of the game Dragon Age: Origins begins with six different origins. You can play the game as a Human Noble, Human Mage, Dalish Elf, City Elf, Dwarf Noble or Dwarf Commoner. Every origin story differs from the others, the only matching thing is that you'll be recruited by Duncan and become a Grey Warden. After this the main story begins.

Important Characters

Player Characters:
Like (nearly) every other roleplaying game Dragon Age: Origins is coming with two sorts of characters.
First there are the normal player characters of which you can choose one and slip into his skin to become a big hero in Thedas.
You can begin the game with six different characters, each one has another origin story. You can choose a Human Noble, a Human Mage, a Dalish Elf, a City Elf, a Dwarf Noble or a Dwarf Commoner.
The 6 possible player characters are described more detailed here:     Player Characters

NPC's:
Next there are the NPC's, all characters of the game that are controlled by computer and with which you can interact during your adventure.
The most important NPC's are listed here:     Important NPC's

Special Places

Important Cities:
There are some important cities in the kingdom of Ferelden. Most are human cities and only two dwarven cities are known to the people. Long ago the Darkspawn conquered the Deep Roads and eliminated many dwarves and their cities crumbled. Also the elves are living as outsiders in the human cities these days. Only the Dalish Elves are living in small camps, far away from their ancient places, always trying to keep their ancient knowledge alive for their descendants.
A description of the most important cities in the game Dragon Age: Origins you can find here:     Important Cities

Other important places:
Several interesting places are designed by Bioware to keep your character busy. There are ruins in the Brecilian Forest as well as the Circle Tower in Lake Calenhad. The most interesting place seems to be the underground, the Deep Roads.
Here you can read short descriptions of the most interesting places:     Interesting Places

Creatures

Bossmonsters:
There are many different monsters in Dragon Age, some of them are more dangerous than the normal monsters, the so called bossmonsters.
Bossmonsters are strong creatures, they are bigger than normal monsters and in Dragon Age they have special abilities for killing your poor player character.
Some of the most important bossmonsters you'll encounter in the game are listed here:     Dangerous Monsters

Normal Monsters:
Surely there are normal monsters in Dragon Age too but some of them, like spiders for example, are not behaving very normal during fights. They are able to crunch your character while standing over him and pushing his body on the ground. You have to be careful with such monsters too.
Here are also some of the most important normal monsters listed you'll encounter in the game Dragon Age:     Normal Monsters

Miscellaneous

Walkthrough:
Dragon Age: Origins is a very complex game, that's the reason why there will never be a real complete walkthrough, at least not here on my site. (There's a very complex walkthrough book for Dragon Age available, this contains not only solutions for each quest, it also provides lots of information about many parts of the game. You can buy it at several online shops.)
I offer here on my site only one (complete) walkthrough with my maincharacter:     Walkthrough

Screenshots:
As in any other game I have taken several screenshots of Dragon Age during my whole playing time and you'll find the best of them here (loading this site may take a bit longer than normal):     Screenshots

Dragon Age Toolset:
Dragon Age: Origins offers a real good toolset, which is relatively easy to use once you have managed to install the stupid Microsoft SQL-server in a way that it'll proberly work. The Dragon Age Toolset is based on a database, that means you'll have to be absolutely careful with several things.
How you can create an easy adventure with this toolset is described here:     Toolset

RavenTeam Mod-diary:
Once an employee of the german PC-Games magazin asked us if we could write something like a diary for our Dragon Age module every 2 weeks for their online site. The RavenTeam refused to do so, because our small 3-headed team was not able to create enough content within so short time to fill it. Instead we decided that we write something like a diary on my sites every now and then.

Fortunately, I have to say today, because meanwhile the RavenTeam is only myself again and I have not the time (nor the fun) to mod several hours a day under such a pressure only to fill those diary pages. If there will be something real important about the progress of the mod I will write a report or so and attach it to those diary pages.
The old (only german!) mod-diary can still be read here on my site:     Mod-diary (german only!)

Making of Ferelden Map
Before I did know anything of the Dragon Age story I read the books by David Gaider and decided to make a map based on the map in the book. Here you can see how such a map is created within my cartographer program:     Making of Ferelden Map

The Bioware Site:
You have to make an account at Bioware's Dragon Age registering site to see all screenshots, trailers and to get knowledge of the toolset coming with the game. Make sure you are 18 (USA 17) or above and log in here:     Bioware - Dragon Age: Origins