(In case you missed out, here’s Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)

For all the praise Dragon Age: Origins got, I do have to wonder if some reviews actually talk about the game’s graphics. As much as it’s a well-written and rewarding game, I have to confess that Bioware has yet to create human faces that don’t creep the bejesus out of me. This was amplified further by completing the “Nature of The Beast” quest.

But let’s backtrack to that quest, as it’s probably one of the shorter main quests in the entire game. All you have to do is:

i) talk to a bunch of elves about killing a head werewolf “thing” deep in a forest to cure the “werewolf” curse inflicting these Dalish elves. Oh, and choose to boink a virgin elf just to mess up his delusional courtship with his crush. Because I’m just a jerk like that.

ii) navigate the maze of a forest and figuring out how to break through the barrier (answer: retrieve an acorn from a deranged hermit and give it back to a talking tree)

iii) kill a bunch of werewolves while making your way to a deserted temple in need of a good scrubbing and moss-cleaning, and…

iv) decide at the end of the werewolf ruin dungeon which race you wish to commit genocide against.

Let’s see: should I have a bunch of ranged pointy-eared pansies in my army, or a bunch of bloodthirsty badass lycanthropes led by a voluptuous spirit of the forest ?

Werewolves for the win. I’ve also heard that a lot of people who played this game the second time partake this quest first not because of its length, but because they can acquire the means to upgrade a spellcaster into an Arcane Warrior. This let you equip your mage with badass armor, shields and weapons that only can be used with those with high Strength (being an Arcane Warrior lets you use your Magic stats as a modifier instead), and just use buffs to make your mage a possibly better tank than Alistair or Sten combined. Goes well with Spirit Healer, if you ask me.

Oh right, where was I? Oh yes, right after that bit with the werewolves, Leliani somehow burst into song, which proves without a shout of a doubt that it’s not the Uruk Hais darkspawn, goblins and dragons in the game that are the scariest-looking things in Dragon Age: Origin. It’s the humans.

Notice her lack of pupils, the way her face looks a little “pinched-in”, and her small lips, amplified even worse when the camera decides to zoom in to her face. The way she tries her best to flail her arms realistically while singing her sad ballad is the icing to the weirdling cake. And I thought Mass Effect 1’s dive into the valley of the uncanny was bad.

I shouldn’t single her out though. Every other person, be it an NPC, party member, or human antagonist does the same thing and have the same facial problems. Morrigan’s probably the most prettiest human in the entire game, and still her eyes seem a bit too “squintey”, and the less said about her expressing sorrow and suddenly switch to her “default” face during a conversation, the better. I should be thankful that the writing’s decent enough for me to push on through these faces of death.

So what to do in such a disgusting revelation? Well….

A not-so-hot Lady Godiva somehow dry-humps Leliani to the tune of an Enya stand-in after a few Andraste-themed trinkets, a white flower, and some sweet talking. Oh, the irony of it all.

While we’re on the subject of the weird, I continued on to the royal underground palaces and castle walls of Orzammar. Two clans are feuding over who gets to be the king: House Harrowmont and House Bhelen. As a Grey Warden, I get to choose who becomes king, but not before doing a few things like gladiatorial combat in Orzammar’s royal version of pitfighting, or cleaning the streets and killing some midget lord of the bandits. The latter resulted in one of the tougher fights I’ve been in: enclosed room, backstabbing rogues in each corner of said room that wouldn’t hesitate spamming Dirty Fighting and Scattershot (that one archer skill where someone shoots an arrow that explodes into a scattershot of other smaller arrows that stun those around its blast radius; f***ing annoying), the midget lord Jarvis disappearing and reappearing while hiding behind the safety of her arrows and laid-out traps. Good thing I was at least a high-powered rogue in all this.

To top it all off, the House which I supported will send me down on a task to find the sacred Anvil hidden deep within the padding-heavy cut-and-paste long and epic corridors of the Deep Road. Guess Bioware needed to take a break from script-writing and just put in a bunch of battles to extend time. I will admit, though, that killing two Uruk Hai ogres and an army of Henlocks, Genlocks, and spirit midgets at the same time with my party of level 15 characters is satisfying. Oh, and that “boss” fight with the Quintesson stone head was a fun puzzle fight that was sorely needed to ease the creeping boredom of traipsing through the Deep Road.

Of course, one would expect a climactic battle of sorts at the end of this journey. You’d be right on all counts: turns out that I came across the ex-girlfriend of my new midget party member who turns out to be a revered figure for the dwarves at Orzammar. She asked me to push through and find the hidden Anvil of the Void (not your regular Acme-created anvil of Road Runner fame) that houses the power to forge golems out of midget souls. Unfortunately, I was barred by a lone golem named Caridin. Apparently, he put me on a guilt trip, stating that the sacrifice of dwarven souls was too great to build another golem army using the anvil.

Of course, not one to piss off Shale who feels for Caridin beyond her stone-cold genocidal heart, I supported Caridin. Lo and behold, Branka somehow conveniently shuts down Caridin for a short few moments and I was faced against two elite golems, two normal golems, and a pissed-off Branka. She was pretty tough due to her high defense and awesome shield, and the fact that four 10-feet tall beings are pounding me to death simultaneously as the one lone supposedly badass Caridin is just standing there stunned. Fortunately it wasn’t much of a threat after remembering how golems are supsecible to magic, particularly one particular Cone of Cold spell which freezes a majority of the enemies in their tracks.

All hail King Bhelen. I mean Harrowmont.

For being supportive of my stoned female companion, I was rewarded with seeing Caradin throw himself into the lava and destroying the anvil, but not without Caradin forging me a final piece of metal to settle the war between the two midget houses: a crown fit for a worthy king. So much for recruiting an army of stone beings. Still, I manage to convince the midget suicide squad to join me instead. Actually, they’re called the Legion of The Dead, and they offered their services after the new king was crowned. I figured I’d pick Harrowmont to be king, since he seems like the lesser of two evils when compared to a twit like Prince Bhelen. Funny, since I can’t tell them apart until I glanced at their faces longer.

Stick around for one final entry where I stick it to Simon Templeman/douchebag Loghain, take down a Uruk Hai Darkspawn dragon hybrid thing with werewolves and conveniently-placed ballistas, and see what the hell happens at the end. When will it come? It depends on how fast I can cure my New Year’s hangover.