Dragon Age

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About

Dragon Age is a fantasy action role-playing video game series developed by Bioware and published by EA Games. The series has garnered a devoted following and a strong online presence.

Premise

The world of Dragon Age is known as Thedas. In the three main games, the player controls the Grey Warden, Hawke, and the Inquisitor respectively. Each character's background as well as their names are chosen by the player. Each of these characters face their own unique political problem that they must solve with peculiar individuals who become party members along the way.

History

On November 3rd, 2009, Dragon Age: Origins was released for the Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms. On March 16th, 2010, the expansion pack Awakening was released. On March 8th, 2011, Dragon Age II was released for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Mac OSX systems (shown below, right).^[1]

On November 18th, 2014, Dragon Age: Inquisition was released, in which the character can assume the role of a human, dwarf, elf or Qunari.

Reception

Each game in the series has been released to critical acclaim. Dragon Age Origins received a metascore of 91/100 from Metacritic^[8] and a 9.5/10 from gamespot^[9]. Dragon Age II received a score of 8/10 from gamespot,^[10] an 8.5/10 from IGN^[11] and a metascore of 82/100 from Metacritic^[12]. Dragon Age Inquisition received a metascore of 85/100 from Metacritic^[13] and a 9/10 from gamespot^[14]. The series is mostly praised for having intricately-woven lore and endearing characters.

Impact

The video game series is considered unique in that apart from performing well as a role-playing game with a remarkable world and memorable characters, the series has a feature in which the player can choose to use one save file throughout the main games and spin-offs in order for the game to remember the player's actions and deliver the appropriate consequences and rewards. Furthermore, the games allow the player to delve into highly intricate dialogue trees and romance systems with their companions. These distinct features are also present in Mass Effect, another game by Bioware, and is arguably the series mostly associated into crossovers with Dragon Age.

Online Relevance

There are multiple official sites for the games such as Dragon Age Keep^[16], Dragon Age Inquisition^[17], Dragon Age Origins^[18] Dragon Age Journeys^[19], and a Twitter account with roughly 225,000 followers.^[15]

Fandom

The devoted following of Dragon Age are well represented throughout the internet. The Dragon Age Wiki currently has a staggering number of 11,525 pages.^[1] A sub-reddit dedicated to the series has 52,366 subscribers.^[2] Dragon Age holds the sixth place of Fanfiction.net's Video Game category with approximately 17,000 fanfictions.^[3] Fans of the series on tumblr are also well-represented^[4] with multiple blogs dedicated to the games such as confession blogs^[5] and news blogs.^[6] DeviantArt's search bar yields a large 202,009 results for 'dragon age'.^[7]

Various Fan-Art

Cosplays

Maker No

Maker No is a memorable quote by Sebastian Vael, a potential companion in Dragon Age 2's DLC titled The Exiled Prince.

Swooping is Bad

Similar to "Maker No", "Swooping is Bad" is a memorable quote by Alistair, one of the companions the Grey Warden, the player, travels with in Dragon Age: Origins.

X Approves

X Approves is a remark often stated by the game after the player has made a decision in several of the choices presented in the game. It shows if the party members are approving or disapproving of the player's actions, which can make or break their relationship with them. It most commonly appears in the form "Morrigan Disapproves", as in Origins, significant recruitable character Morrigan was notoriously hard to earn approval with unless the player went out of his or her way to choose morally unscrupulous actions.

Disgusted Noise/Ugh

(Disgusted noise) is a reactionary statement taken from the subtitles in the series' third installment, Inquisition. Supporting character from Dragon Age II Cassandra Pentaghast was promoted to a recruitable character in Inquisition. Already known for her blunt reactions, Cassandra frequently expresses disgruntlement with fellow party member, the dwarven bard Varric Tethras, because of his laid-back attitude and general trolling of the other characters. This sound is consistently subtitled "disgusted noise" on the in-game subititles. This amused fans and searching on Youtube shows several results for compilation videos featuring the reactions.