Dragon Age: Origins

• 1. A Kingdom on the Brink

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  Dragon Age: Origins begins on the eve of the fifth Blight, a moment when the monstrous Darkspawn threaten to swarm the surface world for only the fifth time in all of recorded history. Players step into this crisis not as a predetermined hero, but as one of six distinct characters shaped by race and social class. A City Elf faces discrimination in human settlements. A Dwarf Commoner earns hatred from fellow dwarves. A Human Noble carries the weight of political expectation. The choice of who you are reshapes how every character in the world treats you.

  Development of the game's first demo began in November 2002, meaning BioWare spent the better part of a decade constructing Ferelden and the world of Thedas before releasing it in November 2009. More than 180 people worked on the project. The subtitle Origins was chosen to carry three meanings at once: the six origin storylines, BioWare's return to PC role-playing games, and the launch of an entirely new franchise.

  The game would go on to sell more than 3.2 million copies and win Game of the Year honors from multiple publications. Eurogamer's Richard Cobbett later wrote that Origins established a new baseline for western RPGs in much the same way the original Baldur's Gate had done back in 1998.

• 2. The World of Thedas

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  Thedas is a world where race and class are inseparable from political power. Elves occupy the bottom of human society, treated as second-class citizens. This was a deliberate inversion by BioWare. In most fantasy settings, elves are presented as a race of prestige. Lead writer David Gaider and director Dan Tudge flipped that convention entirely, making the player feel discrimination first-hand if they chose an elven origin.

  Mages occupy a separate category of vulnerability. The Chantry, the world's dominant religious institution, cloister mages because they can access the Fade, a spirit realm. A single lapse in concentration can allow a demon possession. The Chantry maintains a military wing called the Templars specifically to hunt down apostate mages who live outside Chantry control.

  Dwarves dwell in the Deep Roads, an underground highway network their civilization built long before the first Blight. Their society runs on a rigid caste system, and their kingdom has contracted sharply since the Darkspawn first emerged from those same tunnels. Dalish Elves, meanwhile, live nomadically outside most cities, trying to recover an ancient Elven heritage that was largely erased when their empire collapsed under circumstances the game leaves deliberately mysterious.

  Greg Zeschuk, a co-founder of BioWare, described the fantasy register of Dragon Age as falling between the high fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien and the low fantasy of George R.R. Martin. Two prequel novels, Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne and Dragon Age: The Calling, were released in 2009 to deepen the lore and backstories of several characters who appear in Origins.

• 3. Building the Characters

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  Loghain Mac Tir was the first character created for Dragon Age: Origins. He begins the game as a legendary general and trusted friend of the late King Maric, then reveals himself as a paranoid schemer who abandons the battlefield at Ostagar, leaving King Cailan and Duncan's Grey Wardens to die at Darkspawn hands. His arc carries the game's central political crisis: Ferelden's civil war erupts directly from his betrayal.

  Alistair and Morrigan came next in the design process. Gaider found creating them took far longer than any other characters because of how central they are to the game's plot. Morrigan posed the most difficult creative problem. She was originally written to be similar to her mother Flemeth, speaking in a whimsical, indirect style. Gaider scrapped that approach and completely rewrote her personality as blunt and resistant to authority. Finding a suitable voice actor for Morrigan then took longer than for any other character in the game.

  The full companion roster includes Alistair, a sarcastic reluctant hero; Leliana, a lay sister whose virtuous appearance masks espionage skills; Sten, a stoic Qunari warrior; Oghren, a dwarven fighter whose loyalty rivals his love of alcohol; Wynne, a senior mage who functions as the party's healer; Zevran, an elven assassin; and a Mabari War Hound the player can name. The Stone Prisoner DLC adds Shale, a golem with mild ornithophobia who was a female dwarf in a prior life.

  The game's final version contains 68,260 lines of dialogue. Quality assurance testers used a cheat to auto-skip cutscenes and dialogue during test runs. The main protagonist is the only unvoiced major character: BioWare wanted players to project their own inner voice when making choices.

• 4. Design Choices and Development

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  BioWare originally built Dragon Age: Origins on the engine that powered Neverwinter Nights, then switched to the Eclipse Engine midway through development. That engine shift slowed production significantly. Full-scale production began three years after the initial demo work in late 2002.

  In early drafts, the game had no Darkspawn, no Grey Wardens, and mages were restricted from using magic in cities. Twelve origin stories existed at one point, including Human Commoner and a barbarian origin called Avvar. Most were cut for being "ridiculous", according to the team, leaving six finalized stories. Dragons themselves were not part of the game until the title was already generated using a random name generator.

  BioWare outsourced the console versions to Edge of Reality. The PC and console interfaces required significant rethinking. Lead designer Mike Laidlaw described the conversion of the PC's complex quickbar into a console-friendly interface as a genuine challenge. The team settled on mapping six actions together and letting players customize the arrangement. The Mac version, developed by TransGaming, launched on the 21st of December 2009.

  The team deliberately avoided a karma system. BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka explained that choices were designed to be morally ambiguous, with no built-in judgment of good or bad. The game includes sex scenes but no nudity. Muzyka stated that this was an artistic decision made by the development team, not a directive from publisher Electronic Arts.

• 5. Sound and Voice

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  Inon Zur composed the soundtrack for Dragon Age: Origins, and he made a specific creative decision: most of the music should feel dark. He combined low brass and bass string instruments with ancient drums to produce a sound he described as simultaneously heroic and demonic. The orchestral recording was performed by the 44-piece Northwest Sinfonia, then recorded twice and merged to produce the effect of an 88-piece ensemble.

  The soundtrack reached outside the game in 2009. It was presented at a panel during the Hollywood Music in Media Interactive Conference and performed live at the September 26 "A Night in Fantasia 2009" concert in Sydney, Australia, by the Eminence Symphony Orchestra. The song "I Am the One", written by Zur and vocalist Aubrey Ashburn and performed by Ashburn, won Best Original Song - Video Game at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards held on the 19th of November 2009. BioWare Audio Director Simon Pressey won the 2009 Hollywood Music in Media Award for Outstanding Music Supervision - Video Game.

  Voice recordings were captured in both the US and the UK. Named cast members include Tim Russ, Steve Valentine, Kate Mulgrew, Simon Templeman, Mark Rolston, Tim Curry, Adam Howden, Nicola Bertram, and Claudia Black. Claudia Black voiced Morrigan. Reviewers at Giant Bomb singled out her performance as one of the strongest in the game. Executive producer Mark Darrah called the cast the largest BioWare had assembled for any game up to that point.

• 6. Release and Reception

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  Dragon Age: Origins launched for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in November 2009. It topped Steam's sales chart on the 10th of November 2009, with the Digital Deluxe version ranking first and the standard edition ranking second. The Xbox 360 version sold approximately 362,100 copies in the US alone according to NPD Group data. Before the end of 2009, more than one million DLC packs had been sold.

  Metacritic scores differentiated the versions by platform: 91 for PC, 87 for PlayStation 3, and 86 for Xbox 360. Critics attributed the gap to differences in user interface and graphical performance rather than content, with the game considered virtually identical across platforms.

  GamesRadar estimated the game contained more than 80 hours of playable content. Critics praised the story, companions, and the approval system that governs companion relationships. Reviewers noted that companions in Origins do not follow the Warden out of blind loyalty, creating a tension absent from many RPGs. Wesley Yin-Poole of VideoGamer.com wrote that the story "leaves an itch in your mind" and has drawn players back repeatedly.

  Graphics received more mixed notices. Several critics found the visual quality unimpressive relative to the six-year development period. The sex scenes drew specific criticism from multiple outlets as poorly executed. Origins' combat, however, was widely praised for demanding patience and tactical management. Giant Bomb's reviewer called it "a real throwback to the good old days of PC role-playing epics."

• 7. Legacy and Sequels

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  BioWare did not expect Dragon Age: Origins to become a franchise. The team had made no plans for sequels. Yet Origins launched a series spanning video games, comics, and novels. Dragon Age II arrived in 2011 with a new protagonist set in the city of Kirkwall. Players who carried save data from Origins into Dragon Age II found that their earlier decisions shaped the sequel's narrative.

  Dragon Age: Inquisition followed in November 2014. Players could revisit their Origins choices through the Dragon Age Keep application's Tapestry feature, which let them set plot outcomes even without an original save file. Dragon Age: The Veilguard released in 2024, bringing the total franchise to four main entries.

  In 2010, Origins was included in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. At the AIAS 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, it was named Role-Playing/Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year. The 2009 Spike Video Game Awards gave it Best PC Game and Best RPG. The Ultimate Edition, bundling the base game, the Awakening expansion, and all nine DLC packs, was released on the 26th of October 2010.

  Eurogamer's Richard Cobbett concluded that Origins proved a hardcore, older-fashioned game could still find a devoted audience. His assessment pointed to one specific precedent: Baldur's Gate in 1998, the game Origins was consciously built to succeed.