Best Video Games

Dragon Age: Origins Awakening: Xbox 360 Features

Platform: Xbox 360

• Experience additional spells, abilities, specializations, and items to further personalize and customize your hero and party ? Import your character from Dragon Age: Origins or start anew as a Grey Warden from Oralais.
• Embark on an epic story that is completely defined and reactive to your play style ? Shape your entire experience based on the choices you make and how your handle complex situations.
• Encounter five all-new party members and an old favorite from Dragon Age: Origins.
• BioWare?s deepest universe to date just got bigger with an all new area of the world to explore, Amaranthine ? Unlock the secrets of the Darkspawn and their true motivations ? Rebuild the Grey Warden order.
• Battle against a new range of horrific and terrifying creatures ? Put your skills to the test against an evolved, intelligent breed of Darkspawn and other menacing creatures including the Inferno Golem, Spectral Dragon and others.

Description of Dragon Age: Origins Awakening: Xbox 360

Platform: Xbox 360

Amazon.com Product Description

Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening for Xbox 360 is the first expansion to the award-winning single player RPG, Dragon Age: Origins. Developed by role-playing game (RPG) specialists, BioWare, Awakenings is a standalone expansion, meaning that ownership of the original game is not necessary, although players of the original game are afforded the choice of utilizing their character from the original game or starting with a fresh character. Additional features include an expanded storyline, new creatures, locations and more.

Story
For centuries, the Grey Wardens

Review by Real Player

Dragon Age: Origins Awakening (Video Game)

Dragon Age: Origins was a real treat for me. I was absolutely absorbed by the lore Bioware created for it, and instantly fell in love with the characters with whom I eventually traveled Ferelden. On the whole, I almost liked it BETTER than even MASS EFFECT 2, because I felt like I was playing out MY story, not Shepard’s story. That’s a feeling I’ve not had since KotOR. But, similarly to KotOR, the production values of DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS felt last generation, which hindered the experience in many ways.

So, I was surprised to hear about this expansion so soon after the main game’s release. I mean…when I first heard about this at the beginning of the year: barely two months after DA:O came out. I was concerned that this was just going to be a moneygrab by Bioware/EA, since…who has ever made an expansion that quickly? (Maybe EVERQUEST). Additionally, though Bioware have proven that they are the best at creating absorbing story/character-driven video games, they absolutely suck at DLC. (Pinnacle Station RAGE!)

Is this expansion worth buying? That’s difficult for me to say. Hopefully my experience will help you make up your mind.

Chances are very good that this expansion will not snugly sync up with your ending from the main game. In my case, I had made it pretty clear to everyone that I was going to leave with Zevran to track down Morrigan. Then, I begin DA:O – AWAKENING to discover that I had apparently changed my mind and decided to become a commander of the Crown’s army. A small scene to show how my character was drawn back into the fray would have solved this, but this is just one of many instances where your decisions from the last game have almost no effect on this storyline. (And to the poor souls who began the game wearing nothing but their underwear: my condolences.)

This was a major downer, and I am very disappointed that Bioware didn’t put a little more time (god knows Bioware fans are used to the long development cycles by now) to make the transition much easier. Don’t even get me started on the import system. It’s not as fine-tuned as that of MASS EFFECT 2; it takes data from your last save point. I had started up an old save at some point on DA:O, so I began AWAKENING with my character at level 17. It was an hour before I had realized what had happened. EDIT: Just so there’s no confusion, I was able to open up an “advanced” menu and select the right save file, but words cannot communicate the frustration involved with immediately replaying that bit again.

But that’s not to say I hated this game; I enjoyed the story in AWAKENING and I REALLY enjoyed the new characters. At times, it felt like the best parts of DA:O. In addition to this, some new talents and specializations, a higher level cap and, finally, someplace to store equipment: I was a happy camper for a while. I also enjoyed having the opportunity to rule Amaranthine, and I wish that Bioware had expanded upon this a bit more. Carrying out prisoner sentencing in a fantasy setting has to be one of the coolest features ever.

On “normal” difficulty, getting all (but one) of the achievements, and completing almost every quest in the game, I enjoyed just over 13 hours of gameplay.

Was it worth $40? No, probably not. I think anyone who has reservations about this expansion should trust their instincts and wait for the price to drop. Bioware really should have taken the price down to justify the content, rather than place it at $40 and keep people like myself wondering why there isn’t more. I don’t exactly feel cheated, since I really did enjoy the expansion, but I paid just as much for the first 4 expansions of FALLOUT 3 and those actually felt like EXPANSIONS. DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS – AWAKENING feels like an episode: almost completely isolated from the last game in terms of both content and story.

There is much that can be loved in this “expansion” for fans of DRAGON AGE, but this should be a very clear example to Bioware of why some gamers insist on buying their video games used.

Tags for this game: Dragon Age: Origins Awakening,Electronic Arts