Dragon Age: Origins has set new standards for quality and opened up new horizons for all RPG creators in the fantasy setting. The revolutionary game won the hearts of many players on both sides of the ocean, everyone was waiting for the second part, but BioWare, looking at the PC market, where "supplements" in the box version are more popular, followed the path paved by consoles - microscopic DLC appeared like mushrooms after rain. They added little cuddles, strong teammates, or short fun episodes to the game. Awakening is the first big DLC for the game. BioWare did not disappoint fans of the epic - the addition will easily give odds to many full-fledged game projects. The Canadians have done a tremendous and respectable job. And to go through a new story is almost the duty of a true RPG fan.
The Canadians were responsible for the development of the add-on. And if many firms see such projects as an easy way of relatively honest selection of money from the population, then BioWare approached the matter quite differently. Over 20 hours of gameplay. a new interesting story that develops and supplements the history of the post-war world, new opponents and new friends. You need more - and you will get more - new armor and weapons, new sprawling skill trees. New classes, after all. And a couple of hefty evil dragons to pacify - what else is needed for happiness?
So, our carefully imported from the previous part or created from scratch, if you didn't bother saving the saves, the hero of level 20 arrives at a new duty station. The Order of the Gray Guards takes control of Amarantine, an area north of Denerim. Previously, the Howe family ruled here, but the wrong choice in the confrontation with the forces of Good, and the local lord supported the traitor Loghain and for treason to the king and fatherland, Rendon Howe went to the blockhouse, and the liberated land and ancestral castle was occupied by the Order of the Gray Guardians.
Let's dwell on the import of saves in more detail. Unfortunately, if you have not saved them, then you will lose a lot of goodies, although there are not so many bundles with the Origin plot, as, for example, in Mass Effect 2, but it is always nice to see familiar faces and feel the results of decisions made. Well, the newly created hero has nothing to do with the plot of the first part. In the story, he is the commander of the Guardians, who is transferred to reinforcement from Orlais, unaffected by the war. This is the only version of the origin of the hero.
The plot of the new addition revolves around the suddenly wiser and twisted creatures of Darkness. The creatures that were blind tools of the Archdemon and his offspring after his death acquired a semblance of reason and learned to speak. And although ordinary henchmen do not shine with intelligence and have not gone far from their unreasonable brothers from Origin, the commanders have become wonderfully talkative and intelligent. So our hero became a logical candidate for the search for an answer - who is behind the new Spawn of Darkness, and led the underground army on a new campaign against humanity. Of course, the scale of what is happening cannot be compared with the investigation from Origin, but the survey of several new areas will take you about 20 hours, which is very, very good by modern standards.
New deadly toys in stock. The richest set of deadly tools from the first part has been carefully expanded and supplemented. New specialties and new skills will allow you, with due diligence, to create an invincible squad that will pass through the ranks of evil spirits like a hot blade through oil. New high-level skills are so effective that it has become quite easy to raise a super hero, and the ability to redistribute skills, for money, but they are not a very big problem, will allow you to experiment and develop your own formula for an ideal fighter.I strongly advise players familiar with the game and past the first part to set the difficulty to Hard - it will become much more interesting to play.
Another nice feature was the creation of runes. Run a little through the forests and fields in search of ingredients, a pumped skill and you can safely go out to the most powerful enemy. Runes can be pumped not only weapons, but also armor. Five minutes of running, and your armor will give you 25% protection from the elements - it's worth running for such a bonus. There is no need to talk about the possibilities of upgrading weapons - there are a lot of possibilities. Try and experiment - it's worth it.
An important part of the game will be the development and construction of the castle. An interesting opportunity to take up farming and get used to the role of a real medieval landlord. Your advisers will definitely give you useful and not very advice, numerous submitted will occupy your attention with their problems and in your hands there will be numerous economic problems of the region. A caring and zealous owner will make life much easier for himself at the end of the game and will significantly reduce the difficulty of the final battle. The decisions we make have a direct impact on the daily life of the region entrusted to us in governance. Find merchants who agree to trade with us and move to the castle, cleaning trade routes from marauders and spawn of darkness. We will have to work as a supply for the blacksmith, and provide funding for the construction and repair of the walls. The real owner has countless things to do, and our decisions will come back to haunt more than once. Moreover, many of the consequences are not as predictable as they seem at first glance.
Our main base is our new cozy castle, and the center of the castle's life is, of course, the throne room. It is there that merchants and craftsmen live, our friendly company gathers there.
Of the good old comrades, only a frantic fighter, a well-known drunkard and a liar, a vulgar self-taught dwarf Ogren, will come to our new duty station. A lot of interesting things can be gleaned from the replicas of this wits-amateur. The other five party members are newcomers. But the new comrades are no less interesting personalities than our former acquaintances. The interest in the process of finding partners is added by the fact that when choosing careless remarks, you can lose the opportunity to add an interlocutor to the company. Who will join the Order of the Gray Guards - one of the first we will meet the renegade magician Anders, the fugitive magician whose only desire will be the opportunity to live his own life. An interesting character and a dubious sense of humor, an unexpected feature of Anders will be his love for animals - in between battles, the magician will enthusiastically nurse the donated kitten.
Another dwarf in the team will be Sigurn - the last survivor from the "Legion of the Dead", a kind of dwarf special forces. She is burned with a thirst for revenge - the spawn of darkness destroyed her squad, and she joins us in an effort to find and destroy the enemy who killed her friends. Thief Nathaniel Howe is a young man with a difficult fate, the son of the previous Lord Amarantine, he also wants revenge and plans to kill our hero. But he was caught and put in the casemates of the castle, it was from there that our hero, believing in the bright beginning of the young thief, calls him into the service of the Gray Guards. Nathaniel will try to find lost relatives and try to understand what prompted his father to stand under the banner of the traitor Loghain. Elves will also be in the squad - Vellana - the Dalish elf. She will join the squad in search of her sister. The last member of our squad is too much of a spoiler, let's not spoil your pleasure in finding out on your own who will join us. The only thing that spoils the impression a little is the short lines of personal quests. Their creators of the add-on frankly leaked, but on the other hand, further expansion of the stories would hardly be possible within the framework of the DLC.
Play! Dragon Age fans will not buy this undoubtedly great add-on is simply a sin.BioWare was able to resist the understandable desire to cut money on the easy and issued a wonderful sequel for fans of the game. Awakening has successfully expanded an already interesting world, made interesting additions to the game mechanics and will no doubt give all fans of a good fantasy RPG a lot of interesting hours.
