Dragon Age: Origins Preview
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In Dragon Age, notions like character class, backgrounds, attributes, and traits are rolled into a concept called "origins." Tudge wouldn't go into much detail as to how they'd play out, but he assured us that they'll be much more involved than the typical introductory sequences that comprise the first few hours of most RPGs. According to Tudge, the decisions you make during your origin sequences will determine a great deal about how the NPCs in the world react to your character. The question is, will these outcomes be determined solely by decisions you make at character creation -- like choosing your race, which evidently factors largely into the game's world -- or will decisions you make throughout the course of the origin story have just as much of a bearing?
As Tudge pointed out on numerous occasions, elves in Dragon Age are essentially second-class citizens, contrary to the tenets of the fantasy archetype. They're servants at best, apparently, and suspected thieves at worst. To illustrate how differently player-character elves and humans would be treated by NPCs in the game, Tudge played out a few identical scenarios with characters of both races.
The setting was Ostagar, the same besieged town in which the E3 demo took place. Amongst the townspeople preparing for an assault by Dragon Age's resident boogeymen was a harried quartermaster. When approached by the human character (whose origin Tudge referred to as "Noble Human Warrior"), the quartermaster responded immediately in a respectful tone, complaining to him about an out-of-pocket elf who's yet to return from an errand with a suit of armor. But when spoken to by Tudge's elf character (a female mage whose origin wasn't specified), his reaction was markedly different -- he mistook the player character for the missing elf, and only changed his tune after learning she was part of an exalted military order there to aid Ostagar against the imminent assault.
