While old crone Wynne from the Circle of Magi seems to think her life ain’t worth living, she still has her uses in the game. Specifically as the de facto healer and buffer for my party containing Shale, Alistair, and moi. I do switch to Morrigan from time to time, but only to pull off using the Force Field onto enemies. For some reason, whenever I cast it on any enemy, they just stand there doing nothing while immobilized. Generally I would just cast it on one of the orange-named enemies (usually high-powered than the rest of the mob) and just clean up the rest of the horde while the “boss” just stands there as he/she watches in horror.

If you feel uncomfortable having a cleric/priest-like character like Wynne around, just go the potion-mixing route. Dragon Age: Origins lets you have the option to make every party member have the potion-brewing skill (up to four levels, from basic to expert potion-brewing). Actually, just having your main character or just one other party member would suffice, but the point is that potion-brewing (or poultice-brewing as it’s called, since you’ll be making poultices; yes, that’s a real word) before a battle or before a dungeon-crawl can make or break your party if you don’t fancy having a cleric/healer around.

The problem (if you can call it that) is that finding money, getting all the ingredients, buying recipes, and making room for your 70/80 room backpack will take up an hour or so of your time. Also, poultices can only be used by the individual using it. You can’t have person A using a poultice on person B (unless I missed something in the in-game manual).

Right, so the first of the four factions I decide to bring up the Grey Warden treaty to is the Arle of Redcliffe. Unfortunately, he’s a little bed-ridden and somehow needs the ashes of some dead priestess poured over his writhing body to cure him. I tried to just force my way to see him, but somehow his aide-de-camp Bann Teagan said that I need to help rid the Redcliffe village of its zombie epidemic if I were to go anywhere close to the Arle.

First things first: I need to convince the blacksmith of the town to get back off his lazy ass to work. Of course, he needs me to promise him so that I find his daughter in the infested-by-zombies-and-bad-juju Redcliffe castle, which I did so that he gets the townsguard’s equipment fixed. Good thing my persuasion skills are high, otherwise I would have to kill the blacksmith. As you can tell by my easy-way-out demeanor, I’m surprised Duncan nominated a sociopath like me to be a Grey Warden. I also have to ask some nun in the sanctuary to give some form of blessing to the senior guard Ser Perth. After some persuading, I came back with cheap-looking trinkets that somehow gave Ser Perth the impression that it’ll bless him and his guards with courage and invincibility. Good thing he’s not fighting against my crew.

Night falls, as we’re ready to battle the zombie horde. Sure enough, they came endlessly with their grey skin, static and wide-mouthed expressions, and stupid-looking helmets. What they lack in brains, they make it up with sheer numbers. It took me about 15 minutes until I had to advance to the next part of the village to clear off the next wave of zombie hordes. “Night Of The Living Dragon Age” sums up the experience in the Redcliffe village. I also found a weird glitch; unless you kill the very last zombie in the second attack wave, the zombie horde that appeared on the first spot will keep respawning. It took me about another 15 to 20 minutes until I figured this out and found a lone zombie stuck in a corner near the blacksmith’s shop.

Anything else after that would be a cakewake, and sure enough it was. As daybreak arrived, I was given the opportunity to open the gates of the Redcliffe castle by entering through the secret passage in the windmill. Basically the secret passage is a hollow and narrow route where zombies can just appear through trapdoors and ambush you. Nothing my group can’t take out. I also helped release a sorcerer who was involved with the whole mess. Apparently, he was tasked to tutor the Arle’s kid to hone his magical skills in secret thanks to the Arle’s wife. It didn’t go so well: the kid somehow got possessed and now wrecks havoc in the castle animating the dead. To add further complications, the sorcerer was ordered by douchelord Loghain to poison the Arle.

After reaching the inner sanctum of the castle and fighting off the possessed Bann Teagan (who miraculously survived my hard-hitting backstab critical attacks), I was in a dilemma: either go to the Circle of Magi and get the help of the templars and magicians, or just let the mom sacrifice herself to a ritual of blood magic that would send me to the Fade to confront the demon in the kid’s mind. Or just save time and kill the kid. However, the latter might pose a risk of the Arle getting killed, so I went for the more convenient-but-bloody route instead of heading down to the Circle and probably do more sidequests for those chumps. That’s what I assume anyway; I have not looked at any FAQs to help me out ever since I’ve started (except for a bit later on).

I entered the Fade and, boy, it looks like Bioware ripped off their own version of a Planescape world. There’s a lot of filters on-screen, it’s got a lot of brown, and the chunk of rock I’m standing on is floating. Hell, I feel like I’m in outer space in a different game. I had to chase down the little rich kid through the dreamscape in hopes of finding the demon possessing him. Sure enough, it’s a pale-skinned tart of a demon that summons illusions of herself when she fights. Oh, did I mention that I had to send in a mage to do all this? One melee-impaired mage? Fortunately, Morrigan was well-equipped at the time with spells to mess up the demon’s game, making it a one-sided catfight. So, dreamscape comes to an end and the kid is saved. Still, I now am charged to find the Sacred Urn that would help the Arle, meaning I have to find the guy in charge of the search: Brother Genitals. I mean Genitivi.

After that little adventure and with a new task of finding the sacred urn with a dead prietess’ charred remains, Alistair gave me some lip about letting the Arle’s wife sacrificing herself to blood magic. Thanks to my persuasion skills (via high Charisma; always a must in Bioware games) he just calmed down and goes back to his corner to sulk. I lost about 10 or so approval points from that little bickering, but nothing a few beers and Andraste-themed relics cannot fix. Though I do sense that this will bite me in the arse in the near future.

I gotta ask: are there any stores in Denerim or in Ferelden as a whole that sells nothing but Andraste-themed novelty items? I smell potential nonsensical free DLC in the works!

Anyway, after getting the location of where the Sacred Urn might be from Genitivi’s ward (actually, a guy pretending to be his ward who tried to stop my team of well-armed fighters and a hot mage who’s packing; not really a smart move in hindsight for the guy), I made my way to Dragon Age’s very own Village of the Damned: Haven. Located just near the snowy mountains of Western Ferelden, this place is filled with suspicious and oblivious villagers led by one Father Eirik. After poking my nose in the resident provisions seller’s room, he suddenly attacked me. Alas, after committing justifiable manslaughter, his corpse contained only a piffly ring, not the stuff he was initially selling. The back of the store housed a dead Redcliffe knight, which I brought up to Father Eirik. He wasn’t too pleased with this, as he and his army of cultist attack. After reloading once and finally killing him off without too much of a scratch on us, my party found Brother Gentile at the back. He had his leg injured by the cultists, but he was fine in leading me to the secret ruined temple housing the Sacred Urn.

Upon sieging the ruined temple filled with cultist mages, goddamn archers and melee-heavy reavers, I found out the usefulness of Morrigan’s Winter’s Grasp and Cone of Cold attacks when used near bottlenecks and doorways upon unsuspecting goons. However, my aiming of the cone gets a bit off and sometimes ended up freezing my party members. Still, the freezing abilities these two attacks have help in the long run, especially when I have a lot of Ash Wraiths (usually summoned by the mages), Dragonlings (in the later part of the dungeon, and has the annoying Overrun attack), and an Overseer (comes equipped with a fireball) to deal with.

After much trekking from the ruined temple into the cold hollow chills of a wide and winding cave, I eventually met the head honcho of the cultists called Kolgrim. He presented me with two options. Either I go ahead and defile the Urn with a vial of Dragon’s Blood and he’ll let me pass. Or I could just test myself to see if my group can handle an all-front assault from a cult leader and his cronies, as they clearly have the advantage of surrounding us.

Yeah, as tempting as it is to save myself a fight with a deranged cult leader and pissing off party members who follow the religion Andraste created, I decide to beat off his stupid goatee-wearing head with my two swords. Upon an arduous battle which surprisingly cost me a save, I acquired Kolgrim’s Horn, which I have no idea of when and where to use until I read the description. Apparently using it outside the temple will let me call down an awesome dragon. What it will do, I don’t know.

So I decided to take it for a test run. After all, I am required to at least face one dragon in a game that’s aptly named after these mythical reptiles. Four dead party members and five reloads later with delusions of tackling a huge dragon with my low-powered team, I decided to head back to Dragon Age reality and just head straight to the nice-looking temple to complete my quest. Inside, my one big obstacle appears in front of me. No, it’s not some funky-looking boss and his horde of cultists/dragonlings and whatnot.

It’s a goddamn panel-activating bridge puzzle.You have to make three of your party members activate certain parts of the magic bridge so that the one other party member can cross from point A to point B. This is where it’s safe to say that Bioware has won. They succeeded in making me head down to GameFaqs.com and pull up a solution to their goddamn puzzle. I felt so dirty, but it had to be done. The restrictive camera angles (no free look ala RTS camera-style) and inability to make the camera static just gave me too much of a headache to bear, just so I can keep track of who is stepping on which pad (not sure how the console versions of the game pan out in terms of fixed-on-controlled-character-top-view camera action). I hope you’re proud of yourself, you sick bastards. To those who saw the video above this paragraph, you’re welcome.

It could have been worse. The segment could have been a mosaic puzzle. I fucking hate mosaic puzzles. Anyway, the worse was over. I was told to strip to my skivvies to pass through the “cleansing fire” that blocked my party from the Sacred Ashes. I’m surprise there wasn’t any way for my party to catch hypothermia or have their health degrade from the cold when almost down to their birthday suits. I took a pinch of the ashes, trekked back to Redcliffe castle, and brought it back to the Arle. Confetti rained, a party was held, and the kingdom rejoices.

Except for the fact that I indirectly murdered his wife to a forbidden ritual, the Arle was keen enough to hold a Landsmeet in order for him to settle things with douchelord Loghain and win the trust of the human survivors and noblemen of Ferelden. Well, it’s now down to the Circle of Magi, the midgets of Orzammar, and the last vestiges of my elven brethren.