Written by: Rik
Date posted: March 2, 2025

My review of Dragon Age: Origins began with some fumbling attempts to place it in time, and at the risk of repeating myself, my main initial thoughts about this expansion pack, Awakening, were a solid memory that it was released in a physical box, which seemed like a slightly outdated concept in a post-00s land of DLC and DLC-related controversies. And while an idle internet search suggests that the Xbox 360 release was playable as a standalone game, the PC edition required the installation of DA:O, like the expansion packs and data disks of old.

I’m generalising slightly, but in the 90s, expansion packs were often viewed with some suspicion by the press and public as stopgap releases, and likely to be covered in brief at the back of review sections while earning middling scores, on the basis that fans hungry for more of Game X would lap it up, while the rest of us would be better off waiting for Game X 2 to bring the true technological and gameplay advancement that would take the series forward.

As for exactly how hungry I was for more Dragon Age: Origins, I’m not entirely sure. People’s appetites obviously vary, but after 80-odd hours of it – containing many enjoyable moments, it must be said – I did feel rather stuffed. At the same time, the longer I left it to follow up with Awakening, the greater were my chances of forgetting a) what happened in the game and b) how to play it.

The good news is that, after a few months’ break, it was relatively easy to pick up the rudiments of the interface and combat (admittedly after getting smoked a bit too often in the early stages due to incompetence). My wrinkly and white haired Grey Warden from Origins was back, at the same beefy level and with the nice equipment he had on him at the end of the main game. Unfortunately, though, I couldn’t quite recall much detail about his previous antics and accomplishments, other than that, after much questing, the enemy Darkspawn were defeated, and a political solution for the society that remained had been negotiated.

In Awakening, the Darkspawn are, of course, back, and your Grey Warden is, due to various plot developments and the requirements of the genre, called upon to recruit a whole new set of companions to tackle this new threat. It’s your classic ‘telling a new story in the same world after the big battle’ affair: the baddies are still a danger, and the peace previously established is shaky and must be vigorously defended. There are a sprinkling of appearances, mainly cameos, from Origins, although ginger dwarven warrior Oghren returns and is an option as one of your companions.

In terms of what’s new, there are of course additional skills and talents to unlock and use, alongside the opportunity to further explore those not fully utilised in the first game. While there are undoubtedly some pretty cool new options (I particularly enjoyed Massacre when unlocked by my Warrior, which appears to be the ability to kill off a group of nearby enemies by just going ‘Raar!’) there’s also a risk of overload, particularly at normal difficulty, where there is a temptation to overlook the new abilities and fall back on what worked previously.

The skill of runecrafting and enchanting weapons has also been developed here, although I had never been much into herbalism or making poison in Origins, and so I rather neglected runecrafting as well, until the end appeared nigh and I belatedly decided to try things out. I’m sure the additional points came in handy during the final battles, but, again, I’m not sure that I’d have struggled without them either.

The major city locations in this part of Ferelden are Vigil’s Keep and Amarinthine, which act as areas of general activity rather than just locations for fighting. The rest of the questing otherwise takes place in sparsely populated, combat heavy locations, which pad out their combat with slightly tedious fetch quests during which you have to scour the map for x number of items that will test the patience of those less dedicated side-quest completionists. Then you have a couple of one-off ‘people in a field’ type locations vaguely reminiscent of the generic warehouse missions in the first Mass Effect, as well as the random attacks en route to each location which can occasionally be unexpectedly rock hard.

Story wise, the big news – at the risk of being reductive – is that some of the Darkspawn now speak, with major and supporting antagonists offering a new take on the historic Blight, the phenomenon whereby new hordes arrive in Ferelden on a periodic basis, only to be temporarily beaten back until their next return. Quite whether you want to listen to what they have to say is probably the main dilemma of the game: on the positive side, as with Origins, decisions are more nuanced than binary good or bad options, and I was slightly startled when a companion turned on me after one marginal call, a first in my own personal Bioware experience.

On the other hand, the fact that I neglected to invest sufficient time in my relationship with that companion to protect against such an outcome may also speak for itself. As before, their opinion of you changes as you navigate various story based conversations, and after a certain point they may approach you with a personal quest of their own, completion of which also earns you favour. And there’s also the option to ply them with gifts as a further shortcut to friendship, although some are more suitable than others. It all seems rather compressed this time around, with events naturally abbreviated due to the shorter length of the experience (around 18 hours or so) and as a result your attachment to your companions feels fairly temporary.

As for the talking Darkspawn, while it is a bit more interesting to have these big baddies communicate with you directly, and there is some brief comedy mileage to be derived from a vague resemblance to Skeletor from He-Man, this doesn’t add much in battle, and the majority of your enemies will be of the generic growling variety previously vanquished in Origins. Boss battles rehash old ground, too: fighting a big dragon and a bloated tentacled blob thingy weren’t things I particularly wanted to do all over again, and while the ‘city under siege’ set piece is fairly exciting, it’s also another repeat.

One new experience Awakening did provide me with was the opportunity to try out, and build, a Rogue character as part of my party, and I was provided with glimpses of their cooler skills and abilities that showed why it might be the preferred choice of some players for their Grey Warden. The great strength of Origins was in the depth of its RPG-ness rather than its story, and potentially these elements might be more thoroughly explored at higher difficulty levels rather than medium-wimp standard difficulty.

Awakening chugs along nicely enough at times, and its comparatively brisk pace means that it doesn’t outstay its welcome. At the same time, it also feels fairly inessential as an experience. What this is, at its heart, is more Dragon Age: Origins. And, like those reviews of old, I’m finding it hard not to say that while it’ll be satisfying for people who enjoyed the original, the rest of us need to wait for Dragon Age 2 [which came out in 2011, you prick – Ed.]