Cruise Elroy

In most RPGs, I either fall in love with the narrative elements (the story, the characters, the plot) or the mechanical elements (the classes, the combat, the strategizing). Even in games where the two are particularly well-integrated, the dichotomy still exists in my head and I invariably like one better. I then alter my playing style to maximize my experience with one at the expense of the other.

Dragon Age: Origins fell squarely in the first camp for me. I enjoyed the combat, and eventually even got pretty good at it, but the lengthy dungeons and tactical tweaking took a lot of time and effort. By the fifteen-hour mark I had dropped the difficulty to Easy so I could get through the dungeons faster and spend more time with my favorite part of the game: chatting up my companions.

Handling interpersonal relationships in Dragon Age is an odd chore, but an enjoyable one. Each of your party members has a number that represents their disposition towards you, which number can be affected in three ways: dialogue, plot decisions, and gifts. (A high disposition gives a stat bonus, so you must weigh the satisfaction of telling Morrigan she’s a selfish bitch with the desire to boost her spellpower.)

Of the three, dialogue is by far the most engaging option. While it’s not too hard to avoid pissing off your companions, it’s much more difficult to make them like you; Alistair, for example, will respond well to teasing up to a point but will eventually get offended. It’s possible to play it safe, slowly improving disposition with reasonable choices, but earning more significant boosts requires a nuanced understanding of the characters.

My one complaint is that it’s far too easy to exhaust the dialogue options. New topics become available as a character’s approval increases, which is great, but I’d burn through those immediately. Obviously there can only be so many recorded lines, but I would have liked to see more conversation topics unlocked by plot events; that way, even a character who already loves you will have something new to say sometimes.

Plot decisions are perhaps the best way to alter disposition from a role-playing perspective. Though it’s possible to be a sycophant and butter up your companions in camp, actions can speak louder than words. I particularly appreciated that some decisions are offensive enough to make a companion desert or attack you, and that particularly heinous actions engender a response in camp if the offended party member was not present at the time.

Gifts are the most potent way to improve disposition, and the one I found least convincing. Though I know that the game translates my conversations and plot decisions into numerical bonuses and penalties under the hood, I accept that abstraction because of the narrative framework laid over it. The gift system largely undercuts the narrative framework, though, turning approval into a literal numbers game.

Here’s what I’m getting at: When I gave Leliana an ox bone that “still had some tendon attached to it” — a gift she did not particularly like, as it’s intended for a dog — it still pushed her approval high enough to confess her romantic interest for me. My suspension of disbelief is strong, but that’s pretty difficult to reconcile.