Dragon Age: Origins

Bioware is one of the forerunners of the PC game market enjoying great success from titles such as Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate II, and KotOR, to name a few. With such quality in their library, how can expectations not be high for this title? I have enjoyed all of Bioware's games in the past, so when I heard about this game all I needed to know were two things: that Bioware was developing it and that they were considering it the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate 2. It had been over a year in wait, but when the game finally dropped I went and picked it up.
Soon after creating your character you are thrust into the world of DA: O in the country of Ferelden to engage in your character's Origin story - 6 in total. You cannot choose just any story, either. Each Origin is exclusive to the race and class you choose; Humans have Human Noble; Elves choose from City and Daelish; while Dwarves get Dwarf Noble and Commoner. The sixth one, Magi, is reserved for the mage class and is inherent to the overstory of the world. During your Origin story you are met by a Grey Warden; one who is charged with fighting the fell Darkspawn. Due to some circumstances during your story, this Grey Warden, Duncan by name, recruits you for candidacy into the Grey Wardens. Soon after this you learn of the Blight that threatens the world and your significance in all of this. You must then overcome dark magics, demons, Darkspawn, and people with cruel hearts to bring people and societies together to combat this horde that threatens to devour all. It's a story you've seen before in other Bioware games, and they retell it faithfully. It doesn't feel like the same old story, though. The voice acting makes it believable and not just someone reading a script on a sound stage, with a lot of effort going into making the characters act as real as possible, down to the minute facial expressions on each character. Some would argue that they pulled the story straight from LotR, and while there are similarities it's impossible to have an RPG of a grand scale not have aspects previously seen in Tolken's works. Bioware decided against making this game on an established world, instead creating the world from the ground up, and it shows. There are a lot of codex entries that detail races, religions, histories, conflicts, notable figures, etc, that will keep you reading for a long while. I believe someone said that there was the equivalent of 6 novels wrapped up in text and cutscenes in DA: O, and I don't doubt that estimation. Bioware put a lot of work into the world of Thedas, and I hope they will use it in the future.