DA: Good and Evil

There's a reason why I find Dragon Age to be the next step in video games. Let's first look back at some of the older games - Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate (and the earlier Fallout and Fallout 2 series) were RPGs where you had a lot of freedom in your choices. The problem however of these games was the stories were pretty black and white. You could be good or you could be evil. Baldur's Gate, as it was following the Dungeon's and Dragons system, had a very specific way of creating a character class - you had to pick your alignment. So you could be Lawful Good, chaotic good, true neutral or chaotic evil and all that. This technically means that you are bound to act and roleplay as your created character however this was never the case in the game.

Situations in Baldur's gate was always good versus evil. An evil lich, an oppressive noble or a slaver had a power an you could either go against this or help them. In general, these situations would lead you to play the good guy for two reasons. One, being good had huge advantages of having lower merchant prices and two, you usually had better rewards. Playing evil was only a choice you'd take for trying to experience the game differently. Though the best characters of their class were evil - Edwin - Mage, Vicona - Cleric and Korgan - Warrior, you'd still probably use them in a good way but avoid reaching a high reputation to make them stay in your party.

Knights of the Old Republic is similar. Being bad is now at par with good in terms of rewards but again the story is still evil or good. You'd be an evil character for the sake of having evil sith powers not because you feel like taking one side for another.

Dragon Age pushes the story differently. This is the best aspect of the game. Situations are more ambiguous. For now, (and SPOILER alert) I'll talk about the situation with the elves. The dalish elves are over at the forest and you need their help to combat the darkspawn horde. However, there are werewolves in the forrest and attacking the elves so the elvish leader won't help till you kill their leader - the white wolf. So I agree, thinking that werewolf = evil and I need the help of the elves. The werewolves also oppose me and so I decide to fight them. However, the closer I push towards the white wolf, I start to have doubts. The werewolves keep shouting to guard the lady...who is this lady? Are the elves actually attacking the wolves and not the other way around? So I push further in to these ruins, taking out dozens of werewolves and other forest beasts. Finally, their top werewolf asks to parley and speak with their leader - the lady. Parley? Weren't I told that these wolves were bloodthirsty beasts? I decided to agree. Here I learn that the lady tells the story that the elf leader - created the white wolf to punish the humans who killed his daughter. Lycanthropy was the punishment to humans now affected his own elves. She asked me to take the leader to them and I agreed - I hated being lied to. So just outside the wolves lair, the elvish leader was there waiting. After much questioning, he claims the lady is the white wolf and this was a trick so I didn't know who to side with.

The 2 leaders confront - the elvish leader and the lady / white wolf. The lady asks to lift the curse but the elf leader refuses to unsummon and stop the lycanthropy curse, this time I sided with the wolves and beat this elvish leader up. He decides to release the curse after he's all bloody from my attack. This removal of the curse would take both the lives of him and the white wolf. The werewolves return to human forms and all is well.

So who's the evil one? The elvish leader who cursed the humans (centuries ago) or the werewolves who just wanted peace and now attacked the humans? Since this is a discussion of good and evil and my character was pretty annoyed by the hassle of this quest he decides to kill the former werewolves now human. This time, the humans proved to be no challenge and were massacred by my character. Thus, I am really the true evil, squishing their heads - as Shale, my lovely golem companion agrees with me. This is what makes Dragon Age a step further in storytelling.

Loading screens also tell my story, amazing!