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I recently had a little break from work and finally had a chance to sit down and play Dragon Age: Oranges Origins and am really torn about it. First off I generally like the game, but mainly because there is just so much there and I'm particularly drawn to things with a lot of hidden depth that you can really sink your teeth into. Since i'm rather late to the party on this one, I've had the opportunity to go around the internet and see what others thought of this game, and the general feeling I get is that the combat system worked for certain people, but the story elements are almost universally loved. In my mind the problem with the combat mechanics is that they seem to be indifferent to the fact the game takes place in a 3D world (magic spells go through walls, characters must be at a very precise distance away to melee attack, etc), but the system I believe is competent enough for it to be fun. My big problem with the game so far isn't necessarily in the action of the story, but in the way thematic elements are presented. Bioware seems to have this desire to have some meaningful allegory to the real world in its story, but since virtually everything is also folded into the combat system and world I can't see it as anything other than a dishonest or perhaps juvenile representation of the real world. Take the mages for example. For those that don't know, in this world certain people are born with some kind of magical ability, and are generally feared or outright loathed. This seems to be where the writers at Bioware want to talk about Racism/homophobia/other horrible things, but they have an extreme divergence from the real world. First off, homosexuals (at least to my knowledge) cannot launch fireballs from their hands. Neither can african, asian, native american or any other people. In the real world this discrimination is based on irrational fear, but in the game it is based on an entirely rational one, and the conflation of the two really irks me. Another example is the game allowing the player to make atheistic or agnostic statements about the in world religion. However throughout a few points in this game you come across the physical manifestation of these religious elements. You actually speak to the equivalent of Jesus' disciples, artifacts of this religion actually, explicitly, cure disease. Imagine if the shroud of turin was able to consistently cure cancer, or if we had hard evidence that the holy grail imbues everlasting life. To be an atheist in this world is more akin to being a holocaust denier than a principled thinker. I've noticed this kind of thing in games before (mostly Bioware games, to be honest) but it has never bothered me until playing through DA:O. I like the idea of games tackling some of these more difficult subjects, but I can't help but feel like we've always gone about it the wrong way. I also came across a quest last night where one character is facing old age, but rather than simply present an old woman dealing with the approaching end of her life they felt the need to make it the result of some spirit's meddling. Is it just me, or is the explicit systemization of thematic elements in games just a bad idea?