Dragon Age: Origins Preview

Kotaku brings us their hands-on impressions of the Xbox 360 version of BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins, courtesy of the game’s showing at the San Diego Comic-Con.

BioWare should be commended for its ability to get a complicated title like Dragon Age: Origins, with a rather complex menu system, to work with a standard controller. After a few minutes of fiddling, we quickly became accustomed to navigating Dragon Age’s deep set of options. A color-coded inventory system and auto-leveling option makes exploring its depth that much easier, particularly for some of us who shy away from the more complex BioWare titles.

Based on our hands-on time with the Xbox 360 version and discussing the classes and races we didn’t play with other members of the press Dragon Age: Origins’ story line looks to feature the depth and breadth that will ensure multiple playthroughs of the RPG.

What didn’t impress, were some of the visuals in the Xbox 360 version. Up close, Dragon Age: Origins can look extremely rough, particularly when interacting with non-player characters while traversing the game’s dialog trees. Some of the presentation looked like a step back from BioWare’s Mass Effect for the Xbox 360, with low quality textures and distracting geometry problems in character models. When the camera is pulled back, however, things look fine.