RPG Analysis: Dragon Age: Origins

For analyzing an RPG interface, I’m going to take a look at the interface for Dragon Age: Origins. Dragon Age is something of a game between an RPG and a real time strategy. The game can be played in real time, but the player is afforded the option to pause the action and have time to make strategic calls.

Much like with many other games, one of the most important stats that merits feedback is player and character health. In an rpg, this is especially important because a lot of strategy can revolve around keeping characters alive/conscious. Depending on the game, a character falling to 0 Hit-points can cause anything from needing to waste a turn to revive a character to the character becoming inaccessible for the duration of battle. In the worst case scenario, a specific character becoming knocked out could result in a game over. In the case of Dragon Age, a game over only occurs when all of the characters on the field are knocked out. However, unlike many other games, there are little to no options afforded to the player to revive team mates, so feedback on player health is vital. In battle, character health appears alongside an avatar of the specific character. The bar is color-coded red and depletes down the side of the curved health bar when a character takes damage. Characters in game tend to give off certain sound cues if they take damage or are near death. However, one of the drawbacks this interface system experiences is that it’s not always readily apparent how near death a character is. This isn’t to say that the health bar isn’t a good indicator of how likely a character is to fall (although my personal experience with the game has shown that there are a fair share of monsters within it that are capable of killing a character when they are at half-full health) but that there are few warnings when a character is at low health. Because of the chaos of battle, it’s difficult to always hear characters give off their sound cues amidst all the noise of fighting. The visual cues for characters near death also leave something to be desired. Character avatars will blink red when taking damage but the effect isn’t always eye-catching and since health indicators are far away from where the talent bar is located, the player needs to be able to divide attention between monitoring health and deciding what talents to use. Perhaps if there were some other form of alert message when a character were near death or if one of the other cues, such as the character audio or the blinking red avatars, were more obvious to the player.

Talents and magic within the game are reliant off of their own point system. The amount of talent/magic points a character has remaining is indicated alongside their health indicator, taking up space on the left side of the character avatar instead of the right. As with the health indicator, this bar will deplete as the points are depleted, though the bar only depletes when talents or magic are used. Some spells and talents within the game require that a certain amount of talent/magic points be sacrificed for the duration of the talent/spell’s activation. When this happens, a corresponding section of the talent/magic points bar fills with a transparent, glowing white indicator beyond which the character’s talent/magic points do not increase until the spell/talent causing the effect is de-activated.

A fair amount of strategy in Dragon Age relies on the placement of a player’s party. Members of the party tend to be denoted not only by a slight aura around them but also by a glowing, round base bellow them. Also, thanks to unique designs, it’s difficult if not impossible to lose a party character amidst the melee within the game, even though the screen tends to become very crowded from time to time with enemy monsters. Mousing over a player to switch play to or a monster to attack will hi-light them with a slight glow, telling the player what he’s about to select. Character control can also be switched by means of selecting the character’s avatar at the upper left side of the screen, alleviating the need to scan the battlefield for characters who might be far away from each other or who the player may have a difficult time selecting thanks to enemies crowding around him.

Much of the gameplay revolves around talents. In addition to simply attacking enemy characters, a player is afforded the option of having a character use a talent, provided that they currently have enough talent/magic points to use it. There is a bar located at the bottom of the screen that houses character talents for quick selection, rather than the much more cumbersome method of opening up the game’s stat book and selecting the talent from there. A player can choose what talents to place in the talent bar, thought the game tends to initially automatically assign talents to the bar as they are made available to the player. The player is also afforded the option of assigning items to the talent bar, allowing them to use stat buffing potions, health items or offensively-used poisons. Mousing over the talents hi-lights them, much like with characters, and the talents can be used either by clicking them or by hitting the number key on the keyboard corresponding with the item’s slot. For example, if the talent or item is situated seventh from the right on the talent bar, hitting the seven key on the keyboard will activate the talent. Many talents tend to have a required cooldown, which is indicated to the player by the given talent turning dark and gradually illuminating in a brief animation. If there aren’t enough talent/magic points for a given talent/spell to be used, the spell/talent will be grayed out.

A key element in any rpg is character customization and “leveling up”. Dragon Age has players customize their main character from the start, jumping off to a customization menu when the new game option is selected. There, the player can select their character’s gender, race, combat class (magician, warrior or rogue) and back story. All of this is illustrated with buttons with designs that fit well within the universe, typically made out to look like stained glass window designs. In addition to the feedback in the form of highlighted buttons, a character model appears off to the side to show the player what their character currently looks like due to their customization. The player is afforded the option of controlling a character’s physical appearance as well by the way of various toggles and sliding bars, though there isn’t much allowance for customizing the character’s clothes as much of this is reliant on in-game selection of armor and equipment.

Advancement is handled via a level up screen. When a character is ready to level up, a particle effect and shine animates over the character, followed by a quick music cue. After this, an icon appears on the character’s avatar where the player can click to enter into a screen to level the character up. The player puts a given number of points into different attributes by way of an arrow toggle that allows them to increase or decrease an attribute, though not past the current number of points (For example, if a character’s Defense score was 6 and the player added 2 of his available points to the attribute, the player would be afforded the option to take back 1 or 2 of those points before moving on, but wouldn’t be allowed to reduce the character’s defense score back to 5 in order to gain an extra point for spending on other skills). Mousing over an attribute will tell the player what the attribute controls. At a certain point in the game, the player is allowed to choose an extra specialization, providing the player has met the right people in order to unlock the specialization. The screen will transition over to a page where a player can select what talent or spell they want to learn. Mousing over the talent or skill reveals what is needed for the player to learn it, since a character might need to have a certain attribute score or a certain skill level. On certain occasions, the menu will navigate over to a page housing skill progression. The player can choose which skill to upgrade provided he meets the criteria. Once again, mousing over reveals what is needed for the skill.

Navigation is typically handled via an in-game map. There are two varieties in Dragon Age; a large scale map contained within the larger menu where most other player information is displayed and the smaller in-game map situated at a corner of the screen. Different icons on the map help to denote landmarks and areas of interest. Typically, if someone is a trigger for a quest, they will appear within the game world with an icon floating above their head.

The bulk of the rest of the interface is situated on an unobtrusive bar at the top of the screen. This menu set mostly consists of feedback information in the form of player stats. Unique icons are situated in this bar corresponding to character stats, skills, talents, inventory/equipment and AI behavior, along with a section detailing collected parts of the world’s fiction, written documents and quest findings and objectives. Sections such as the skill lists can’t much be interacted out of outside of looking at the stat or mousing-over to see what the skill/spell/talent does or what a given stat controls.

The inventory/equipment screen allows players to interact with their character’s equipment. The character is displayed as they currently are in a window on the left, with equipment slots situated around the character in corresponding positions (for example, a chest armor slot will be near the character’s chest, foot armor slot near the feet, etc.). The player is able to interact with the character’s equipment by way of clicking on the equipment and selecting from a small drop down menu whether to equip, examine or throw away the equipment in question (or sell/purchase if the player is in a shop window) or dragging the equipment over to the corresponding slot. The player can also use the arrows above the picture of the charcter to scroll through different character’s equipment, in addition to choosing from a drop down menu that provides the names of all in the party.

The AI customization screen, called Tactics, allows the player to set individual character behavior by way of drop-down menus and key phrases. For example, a player can assign a behavior to a character to automatically use a healing item once they fall bellow a certain percentage of health or to always attack enemy characters with a certain talent/spell while under a certain condition. The system is pretty intuitive if a bit overwhelming at first thanks to the extensive language. The player can also cycle through some pre-set behavior by way of another drop down menu. This menu seems to control general behavior, such as if a character will run off to chase an enemy or stick back near the player during a battle.

The party selection screen is only accessible when the character is outside of a building and not in battle. Clicking on the corresponding button brings the player to a scene in which the entire available party is gathered, with a grouping of round character slots situated on a menu element beneath them. Mousing over individual characters will hi-light them and clicking on them will add them to your party. Characters in a player’s party will not only display in one of the slots bellow the scene but also strike an action pose. Taking a player off the selected team triggers an animation wherein the selected character typically sounds disappointed/angry whereas clicking a character to put them in the party triggers an animation wherein the character sounds excited, happy or ready to fight.

The codex screen sorts different kinds of information into different groups and allows the player to open folders to view different records. It’s light on extra bells and whistles but still follows the games aesthetic.

Lastly, there’s the typical pause menu where the player can save or load their game, adjust settings or exit. This interface isn’t as detailed as the in-game interface but there are little flourishes that show that it belongs within the game.

All in all, I would rate this interface as very good, aside from some feedback complaints addressed earlier and an occasional tendency for the interface to look a bit too polished for the environment in which the game takes place.