Dragon Age Origins is one of the most highly anticipated RPGs to come out in quite some time. BioWare, creators of Mass Effect and the upcoming Star Wars the Old Republic, has created an enchanting piece of art with this new smash hit. With the every elite gaming publication giving Dragon Age stellar ratings, AbleGamers decided it was far past time to examine the accessibility of the game and creating more buzz than we have seen all year.

Gameplay

Dragon Age is your typical role-playing game with story driven content and interactive characters that you must level up and gear out. Moreover, Dragon Age follows the examples of Fable, Oblivion, and Mass Effect allowing the player's decisions throughout the entire game to have a meaningful impact on the story.

NPCs will react differently to you depending upon the answers you choose in each interactive cut scene. You are normally presented with 1 to 6 options of which to respond, and rarely given the opportunity to exit the conversation for a save before answering. In order to take that one-step further, Dragon Age has a type of reputation system called “approval” that can be seen on the inventory screen of every party member.

The approval rating controls how the characters will interact with your character in every way. Not only will a given party member leave your camp if there rating drops too low, but bonuses are given in the form of auras for getting the approval rating far enough into the positive range. On top of that, some of your decisions will cause the approval to take larger weeks in one direction or the other, usually negatively, and not be apparent until later on in the game.

For example, some storylines can be completed in two different ways, and when choosing one particular direction certain NPCs will yell at, leave, or attack you once the storyline is over. Saving often is highly advised.

You may choose between three different races, three different classes, and multiple backgrounds when creating your character. Each of the backgrounds has their own independent storyline, which of course intertwines with the main theme of the game, and all of the party members overlap into each of the characters you can create.

The details of the leveling system, gear choices, talents or attribute points can all be summed up by pointing to any RPG launched in recent memory. The gear gets progressively better, you gain levels as you get experience, and the talents, as you gain levels. The one notable difference is specializations, which every character can delve into after certain levels in a similar fashion to “elite classes.”

As with most RPGs, there is as much if not more storyline then there is actual killing. However, the storyline moves along quickly and the exploring of the consequences from everything you do is where most of the fun lies.

Game Accessibility
The game accessibility in Dragon Age can only be stated as incredible. BioWare has been progressively adding more accessibility to each title they release, and this one is by far the most advanced.

Deaf gamers can rest assured that the ability to hear the game gives no advantage whatsoever. Not only are subtitles in option, but something rarely seen is the addition of a second subtitle option that allows for ambient noises to also be captured.

You are given the option of no subtitles, only subtitles, or subtitles plus ambient noise subtitles. In addition, even when selecting no subtitles as your option, the game places subtitles in the interactive cut scenes at the top of your screen. This serves as both an accessibility feature for the Deaf gamer and cognitively impaired.

The voice acting is incredible and very believable, but it is mainly fueled by top notch storyline scripting. Therefore, hearing the game adds more immersion but is not necessary in any way.

One-handed gamers and the mobility impaired will have no problems playing at all. If you can only play with one hand or have difficulty playing many mainstream games, such as only being able to play with a mouse or a keyboard, this is a game for you. If you can play titles such as World of Warcraft, Aion, and Guild Wars then you will be able to play Dragon Age.

First, there are multiple camera angles, and two camera modes. You can play in the top down style typical of RTS games, which follows the character from above and features tapping the side of the screen with your mouse to move the camera around. Alternatively, you can play in the over the shoulder camera mode, which is reminiscent of most MMO RPGs. In both modes, you can right-click on the ground to move, but while zoomed in for the over the shoulder camera mode you can operate your character with the right and left mouse buttons held down at the same time, just like World of Warcraft.

You can do everything except for pausing the game with only the mouse. Conversely, there are shortcuts for every action with completely remappable keys for those who wish to use only the keyboard or a game pad.

The mouse sensitivity is set to the same speed as your desktop with additional speed settings for the camera movement. You will not need to edit any configuration files for more precise or increased control as many games here lately have required.

Switching between party members is as easy as clicking a mouse or a keyboard shortcut. However, the computer AI is relatively intelligent when controlling your party members for you. In addition, there are numerous presets and customizable options known as “tactics” that you may set to define what you want each character to do in what order and with what given parameters.

One feature that must be mentioned on its own is the ability to pause the action quickly and easily as many times as you need. While the game is paused, you can continue to issue orders to all of your party members. This is important for a couple of reasons. First, although the game is 3-D action, gamers with slow reaction time or difficulty reaching keys quickly will be in love with this feature. Second, cognitive accessibility is not given much attention in mainstream videogames, and with the ability to pause fast paced action those who do have cognitive impairments will have a much more fulfilling gaming experience thanks to this feature.

Although the intent of the feature was to allow increasingly complex and creative tactics to be used by the player, BioWare also added flexibility for those with slow reaction time by introducing the pause feature.

Finally, visually speaking the accessibility is not perfect but it comes very close. Colorblind gamers should have no problems, as they are no notable areas that require the ability to see particular colors. As usual, those who can see red and green will have an easier time but those with colorblindness should be able to workaround any potential issues. Enemies are highlighted in red but they are always visible on the mini map as circles. Therefore, even if you cannot see the color, you would be able to see the circles.

In addition, your characters automatically draw their weapons when entering combat. This allows for Deaf gamers to be warned just as easily as those who can hear the audio cue, and for colorblind gamers to be alerted to look for the circles unique you cannot see red.

All of the text is written in relatively large fonts and most are in orangeish brown colored font on a black background, which is easy to see. Unfortunately, the one drawback for the visually impaired gamers will be the health bars. The health and mana bars are small red, yellow, and blue bars that curved around the picture of the party member.

Even with perfect 20/20 vision, the depletion of the red bars can be very difficult to see. Our best advice is to drink health potions often while under attack.

Mesmerizing Videogame

Dragon age is the one of the rare breeds of videogame. An enchanting title with a strong storyline, enthralling characters, and impressive accessibility. There are well over 100 hours of gameplay according to BioWare, which is relatively impressive. The replayability will vary depending on the gamer, but for a $50 game, 100 hours of gaming is better than most titles offer.

This is the first game to be launched all year that most of our staff not only wants to play, but wants to continue playing. Many videogames with an incredibly high buzz rating simply can't hold up to the expectations. And unfortunately, living up to gamer expectations after the hype is becoming increasingly rare in videogames today. But in this case, the game leaves you wanting to come back for more.