Dragon Age Origins Wasn’t Just Horny–It Was About Sex

Dragon Age Origins is celebrating its 15-year anniversary in the present day, November 3, 2024. Under, we study its position as a daring, if awkward, try to make use of intercourse as a central theme and mechanic.

Intercourse and video video games have all the time had an uneasy relationship. Taking part in smut on the Atari 2600 appears like middle-school scrawlings. A lot of the pornography peddled on Steam is embarrassing and unattractive. Much more mainstream video games within the trendy period have had a fraught relationship with intercourse. The tame scenes in Mass Impact infamously bought a paranoid Fox Information report. Current years have seen recording romantic scenes in Baldur’s Gate 3 web gamers non permanent Xbox bans. In such an atmosphere, it’s onerous to think about a mainstream sport having a daring depiction of intercourse. However 20 years in the past, Dragon Age: Origins took a daring, if flawed, swing at it.

Dragon Age: Origins continues to be a bizarre combine. The essential plot is downright Tolkien-esque: a fellowship of warriors from throughout the land are pushed collectively to cease “the blight,” a horde of demon creatures devoted to destroying all free life. In observe, nonetheless, the sport takes most of its dramatic cues from A Music of Ice and Fireplace (the books, not Sport of Thrones). Nobleman Loghan leaves boy king Cailan to die, triggering a violent succession disaster. Magic, whereas extra commonplace than in Westeros, is marginalized, feared, and policed. Even the blight itself resembles the white walkers, i.e. a basic existential risk from the pure world.

In different phrases, Dragon Age: Origins, even because it holds on to high-fantasy concepts like historical elves and underground dwarven metropolises, has a robust dark-fantasy bent. This extends considerably to its remedy of intercourse and romance. Like its influences, DA:O’s strategy is basically heterosexual, excited about bloodlines, parentage, and, properly, impregnation. This manifests in pretty tame methods, like companion Templar Alistair’s declare to the throne, and in absurd ones, just like the witch Morrigan begging the participant to impregnate her with the spirit of the archdemon, chief of the blight. In the event you play as a person, she propositions you straight, however if you’re a girl you will need to, much more comically, discover another person for her to sleep with.

On this second, intercourse is transactional. It serves a goal however just isn’t essentially about romance or love. Morrigan propositions a male participant character even when she’s left the occasion. She’ll sleep with characters she finds despicable and unattractive. It is a means to an finish. In some sense, this isn’t precisely exceptional. Most sexual encounters in video video games are handled as rewards for kindness and play out in endgame cutscenes. The romance is a reward for enjoying appropriately.

Dragon Age: Origins isn’t any exception to this. In reality, it is maybe an egregious instance of how shallow this sort of narrative design will be. Regardless of how a lot you antagonize or bully occasion members, you possibly can win their affection with a set of items. There’s even paid DLC which fills your stock with trinkets that max out your occasion’s affections. You may fairly actually purchase your approach into their hearts.

Nonetheless, Dragon Age: Origins is nice at grounding its characters in politics and a tradition that exists outdoors them. Morrigan’s utilization of intercourse to get energy comes from her background as a mage compelled to cover from the oppressive church. Mages are discouraged from having kids; the prevailing perception is that the extra mages there are, the extra pressure should be expended to police them. Morrigan’s ritual to lure the archdemon is a large defiance of that restriction. In different phrases, the selection to undergo with Morrigan’s ritual is one which has implications past simply intercourse. However the coronary heart of it’s the push and pull of consent and vulnerability.

Morrigan is probably the most profitable instance of this sort of characterization, however not the exception. Each of the attainable queer romances–the bard Leliana and the murderer Zevron will be romanced by a warden of both gender–are foreigners, hailing from locations the place the sexual tradition is freer and simpler. Although non secular, Leliana rejects the celibacy of the church. Zevron was raised by intercourse staff. Alistair’s standing as a virgin is overtly commented on and mocked. All that is to say, Dragon Age: Origin’s companions every have a sexual historical past (or conspicuous lack thereof). This historical past informs how they deal with you and their general angle towards intercourse. Zevran is easygoing and flirtatious, for instance, whereas Alistair is insecure, deflecting, and sarcastic. None of those characters are outlined by their sexual orientation or expertise, however each inform their characterization all through the sport’s whole runtime.

This isn’t to say that Dragon Age: Origins handles all this properly. To place it evenly, DA:O is immature. In its lighter moments, it has a frankly juvenile humorousness. It makes use of intercourse and violence as an inexpensive and principally ineffective technique of shock worth. Characters stroll out of standard fight encounters soaked in blood, which is so comical that any precise gore has no impression. Within the Metropolis Elf origin, DA:O handles sexual assault and racist violence callously, as trauma backdrop for the participant character’s clean slate. Jokes about intercourse are plentiful, however principally quantity to high-school health-class fodder.

The encounter with the pirate Isabella is most emblematic of each the sport’s successes and shortcomings. In the event you go a persuasion verify, you possibly can sleep with Isabella to earn a subclass (sure, it is all transactional). Different occasion members can be part of you. It is not as if there aren’t just a few large video games that function group sex–you can have a foursome with drow twins in Baldur’s Gate 3 after all–but there are fewer the place the precise configuration of the encounter relies upon not simply on whether or not the participant character and their companion are sport, however on a series response of character psychology and selections. For instance, If Alistair and Leliana have been “hardened” by the outcomes of their private quests, they’re going to take part. If not, they will not. Isabella will all the time ask Zevran to take part, no matter his romantic standing with the participant. He’ll fortunately oblige… except Alistair is there, like a bitter bisexual rejecting the advances of a pair at a bar. This second is best conceptually than in observe, funnier and stranger to examine than to expertise. But it surely additionally displays a deeper serious about every character’s sexual ethics and the way it pertains to each different character.

There’s a additional downside, nonetheless: Dragon Age: Origins is visually ugly. It’s simply as dust brown as a Gears of Warfare sport, however with out the brutal, comic-book starkness that franchise has. It is going for a sort of grounded grimness however finally ends up simply feeling soiled. Intercourse scenes are stitled and awkward past even the common woes of the uncanny valley. Characters posing in underwear does not really feel romantic or erotic as a lot because it resembles the intimates part of a Sears catalog–albeit with a country, medieval theme. Mods might help with this, although they’ll additionally yassify the characters past all recognition or render DA:O aesthetic far afield from its creators’ unique intentions.

Nonetheless, regardless of these shortcomings, DA:O engages with intercourse in a approach that’s uncommon for video games of its dimension and funds. Outdoors of a pair moments, Baldur Gate’s 3 is excited about intercourse and romance as a vector for character arcs (good!) and as plain want achievement (unhealthy! Josh Sawyer shares my evaluation). Regardless of some standout moments in Cyberpunk 2077 (Judy Alveraz’s set of aspect quests are maybe the most effective romance of their type in video video games, interval), it’s also largely juvenile. The streets of Evening Metropolis are plastered with annoying and tasteless adverts, not provocative as a lot as foolish.

To make certain, there are vivid spots. Video games like Disco Elysium and Pentiment do not function the normal mode of online game romance, however are plugged into their respective worlds’ sexual mores and practices. However, even in its crassness, its ugliness, Dragon Age: Origins took steps in direction of a extra grownup panorama. I am unable to assist however really feel that AAA video games have regressed since.