Xbox 360 Game Review - Dragon Age Awakening

Chewbacca takes a look at Bioware's Dragon Age Origins: Awakening.

Story: 75-100

Its about six months after the end of Origins, where the Archdemon were defeated by The Grey Wardens. Now there should be peace from the darkspawn in Ferelden, but it is not so. Darkspawn is still a pain coursing problem for most inhabitants in Ferelden and has not fled underground, when they were supposed to. As the new commander of The Grey Wardens, you arrive at Vigils Keep, which is under siege by darkspawn. But these darkspawn are different. They seems to be more intelligent and one of them talks. Now it is up to The Warden Commander to set out on a new journey to bolster the ranks of the wardens and discover the truth about these new, talking darkspawn.

 Gameplay: 70-100   

 Before you return to Ferelden in this expansion pack, you must either import your main character from Origins or create a new warden which hails from the neighboring country Orlais. People in Awakening will show more respect to an imported character from Ferelden because of a dispute, that happened between Orlais and Ferelden years prior to Origins. If you haven't already played Origins, the reviewer would strongly recommend playing it first, because it would benefit the player more. Once imported, all your progress; mainly choices, gear and main character build, will be arrived over in the expansion. 

 As the commander of The Grey Wardens, you have several assignments which you must attend to. You must deal with political problems, rebuilt Vigils Keep and the Grey Warden Order after its nearly extermination in Origins. You must also, not to forget, handle the delicate darkspawn-situation who makes peoples life in Amaranthine a miserable hell. Your travels to find out more about the new darkspawn don’t take you to familiar locations like Orzammar or Denerim from Origins. In Awakening, the game takes place in a corner of Ferelden called Amaranthine, which were not visited in the main game. You will travel to varies locations; haunted marshes, bandit and darkspawn infested woods and a huge underground dwarven fortress, just to mention a few.

 At the end of Origins, all of your party member parted ways. The only old remaining party member is the hilarious and ale drunken dwarf Oghren. As you visit new places; you will encounter new characters. These can be recruited and be made Grey Wardens. Like in Origins, these characters respect different moral standings you make in conversation. Some like you be cynical, ruthless or a real do-gooder. What has changed is you only can talk with them at Vigils Keep and at certain locations. This is not a huge minus, but it is a little bit strange, since you nearly at all points in Origins could talk with your traveling companions at nearly all given places. You can still change their opinion about you with giving them gifts, but you cannot pursue a romantic relationship. This detail found the reviewer a little disappointing. 

Along with your party members, you will spend a lot of time around Vigils Keep as it is your base of operations in Amaranthine. Here the Laurel and Hardy-duo Wade and Harren (a genius armourer and his assistant) temporally have set up shop. Here, and also in the city of Amaranthine, you can buy new gear, upgrade the keep, upgrade your weapons and amour and take quests. Awakenings quests are very much like the quests in Origins, but the pay is worth to complete if you are low on cash.  

The combat part from Origins haven't changed a bit in Awakening; it is still strategic thinking, but Awakening seems a little bit more easy, which both can be a good or bad thing, all depending about the difficulty was a walk in the park or a living nightmare for players in Origins. Besides darkspawn, crazy trees, wolfs,  humans, you will fight some new foes, mostly new types of darkspawn, who all want to drive a weapon through your spine.    

New editions have been implemented into Awakening. The main character or other playable characters now can chose new skills, spells, abilities, specializations and so on. One of the very good editions is the option to re-distribute attribute points, skills and specializations in case they want to change something about the build. One new crafting mechanic, rune crafting, gives the player the opportunity to enchant weapons or amour. But on the normal difficulty, which the reviewer played it on, it wasn’t that important to use. But it can make a difference on the higher difficulties.         

Dragon Age Awakening can be completed around 20 hours (with most quest solved) and at an price of 2400 Microsoft points on Xbox live.

Graphics: 72-100

Like Origins, Awakening is powered by the Elicpse engine, and the graphics hasn’t changed at all. But that is not a bad thing. The corner of Ferelden, in which the Awakening adventure takes place, still create a believable and convincing world. The depth of detail in the environment, the amour and cloths, characters are wearing and buildings are not at all theater scenery.  

Sound: 80-100

While in combat and during cut scenes, the composed music can very draw the player into game and create great atmosphere. Inon Zur, who was behind the music to Lineage II: Chronicle V: Oath of Blood and Dragon Age Origins, do not compose the music for Awakening.

Voice Acting: 80-100 

Like in Dragon Age Origins, the voice acting in Awakening is great, and Bioware have chosen a lot of famous candidates to fill the shoes of the characters. Several actors like Greg Ellis, who played the virus broker Michael Amador in season 3 of 24 hours, is voicing the loveable human mage Anders. One other are Grey Delisle, who is voicing the rather cynical and ill tempered dalish elf Velenna. Star Wars - Knights of the old republic fans will recognizes her as the voice behind The Handmaiden. Among other actors there are Natalia Cigliuti, Alix Wilton Regan, Simon Chadwick and Adam Leadbeater. They will from time to time exchange serious, witty and hilarious party banter, which is quiet useful to give them more depth and to make them unique in their own ways.   

Conclusion

Dragon Age Awakening is a solid expansion pack with all the ingredients from Origins, that made it a great game. You will still talk a lot with varies characters and be the one making the hard decisions, travel to different locations, buy new gear and combat enemies tactically. But you are given a lot of new good stuff in the form of new abilities, specializations and new gear. If you are not tired of the elements from Dragon Age Origins, you should not miss Awakening, which contains all the good parts from Origins, and more. 

Game information

Developers: Bioware
Publishers: EA
Age Rating: 18+
Genre: RPG
Release: March 2010
Players: 1
Multiplayer: No