Dragon Age: Origins (PC)

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In the heat of battle Dragon Age is quite complex

As I have stated before, previewing an RPG on the basis of a 30 minute demo is a bit like previewing a restaurant by licking a plate of entrées. Dragon Age: Origins is going to be a massive game, and a half-hour play test could never hope to convey what the full experience will be like. What it can do, however, is give you a sense of how a specific aspect or feature may work. In the case of EA's latest exhibition, during the developer's European showcase, it was just enough time to sample a meaty boss battle from halfway through the story.

The villain in question was Aldred, a warped magician who has sold his soul to a demon in exchange for some form of evil power. I'll never understand why bad guys insist on making these occult pacts, since they always seem to end badly. In any case, Aldred seemed pretty pleased with himself by the time my party of warriors had caught up with him, gloating and posing in the usual manner of tyrannical bald-headed magicians. A BioWare representative warned me that Mr Aldred was not to be taken lightly, since he's one of the hardest bosses in the game, but luckily I was rather in the mood for a scrap.

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The confrontation with Aldred took place on the top floor of the Tower of Magi - home to a faction of important magi(cians). Aldred had been turning the local wizards into grotesque mutants known as abominations, and our heroes were hoping to rescue the pointy-hatted peeps from this predicament in order to secure a bit of future support. As is often the case with BioWare's RPGs, the conflict began with a good bit of chatter, offering the chance to express righteous indignation, a bit of cutting sarcasm or perhaps just a bit of cowardly mewling. Gone is the innovative dialogue wheel from Mass Effect, back is the pure-n-simple list of potential questions and responses. It feels rather old-school, recalling memories of Knights of the Old Republic.

This is definitely not Mass Effect in a fantasy skin

Once the actual fight broke out properly, combat proved to be equally reminiscent of KOTOR. You can flit between each of your four fighters as you wish, moving them manually with the WASD keys (this was on PC, obviously) or by ordering them to a certain spot with a simple mouse click. While you're assuming control of one fighter you can leave the rest to be handled by the AI, or you can pause the game and jump back and forth assigning commands to each member of the party; given the chaos and complexity of the battle, I found this second method to be pretty much essential.

Unlike KOTOR, each character has 20 action slots at the bottom of the screen that can be filled with attacks or items. When you times that by four, that gives you up to 80 tools to use in battle - quite a lot to keep track of. My first attempt at taking on Aldred was fairly disastrous: after transforming himself into some kind of walking monstrosity, he and his mutant companions made short work of my party - largely because I panicked and didn't have a clue what I was doing. My demo party consisted of two melee fighters (the player character and a chap named Alistair), a rogue (Leliana) and a mage (Wynne). Clearly the best strategy was to use the latter two characters as support while using the warriors for the main attack, but unfortunately things didn't quite go to plan: my sword-wavers rushed in and promptly got crushed under a large area-effect spell. Not good.

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