Dragon Age’s Most Defining Moments From Four Games Across 15 Years

BioWare’s closure last month shifted attention to the Mass Effect series and the cancellation of its fifth installment, but the studio’s fantasy franchise deserves equal reflection. Dragon Age spans four games across 15 years, each substantially different in structure, mechanics, and fantasy setting. The series shifted between RPG frameworks and subgenres, exploring different regions of Thedas with distinct storytelling approaches. Dragon Age: The Veilguard appeared designed to provide narrative closure, as if anticipating it might be the final entry. With BioWare now gone, looking back at the series’ most impactful moments reveals what made the franchise resonate.

Dragon Age: Origins—The Foundation

Six Beginnings, Six Stories

Dragon Age: Origins began with six different opening chapters, each tied to a player’s character choice of race and class. A human noble might face familial tragedy and political intrigue. A castless dwarf struggled within the rigid hierarchy of Orzamar. A mage confronted expulsion from the Circle of Magi. These were not cosmetic variations; they fundamentally shaped how the rest of the world viewed the protagonist across dozens of hours of gameplay. Origins was singular in how thoroughly it wove this origin selection into the player’s entire experience, making it feel less like a tutorial and more like a lived history. Subsequent Dragon Age games, including Inquisition and The Veilguard, adopted the concept of varied backgrounds, but Origins remained the only instance where players watched this history unfold in real-time within the game world.

The Witch and the Betrayal

Morrigan, the Witch of the Wilds, stood apart from Origins’ ensemble. An apostate mage carrying contempt for both her companions and Thedas itself, Morrigan projected mystery through Claudia Black’s commanding voice performance. Her presence signaled players that this character inhabited knowledge beyond their immediate understanding. Years later, when examining the series’ full scope, Morrigan’s early scenes take on chilling weight—she would witness nearly every major moment in Thedas’ history across multiple games, yet here she appeared young and naive in comparison.

The game’s opening battle revealed how thoroughly it mistrusted player expectations. King Cailan approached the darkspawn conflict with enthusiasm, while his father-in-law Loghain Mac Tir radiated reluctance. When reinforcements were signaled, Loghain ordered retreat instead, abandoning everyone to the horde. This betrayal followed closely on origin stories already steeped in personal trauma. Origins doubled down on distrust, reminding players they understood nothing of this world’s true stakes.

The Quiet Horror of Flemeth

The Flemeth encounter crystallized Origins’ willingness to leave questions unanswered. Morrigan begged the player to kill her mother, who allegedly intended to steal her daughter’s body as a vessel for extended life. Sparing Flemeth meant gaining her grimoire; slaying her required a fight against her dragon form. Defeating her delivered no revelatory cutscene, no exposition dump. Instead, an unsettling quiet descended. The player stood over a corpse, uncertain what had actually been killed, haunted by the possibility that something far beyond their comprehension had just been destroyed. BioWare would later retcon Flemeth’s death in subsequent games because her place in the universe was too central to end so ambiguously, but in that moment, the game had created genuine uncertainty about whether death itself could constrain her.

Dragon Age: Origins—Choice and Consequence

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The Landsmeet and Political Theater

Fifty or more hours into the game, The Landsmeet—a political assembly—became the culmination of every previous choice. Relationships forged with allies, secrets uncovered about enemies, and the weight of earlier decisions all converged in a single location. Players could unmask Loghain’s crimes and reshape Ferelden’s future through a combination of wit and combat. The brilliance lay in how differently players experienced the outcome despite most reaching a similar endpoint. Those unaware of hidden secrets saw a dramatically different conclusion than veterans exploiting the game’s systems. It remains one of BioWare’s most effective demonstrations of how hours of choice-making could be sewn into meaningful final consequences.

The Problem with Morrigan

Morrigan’s final offer presented an impossible choice. Defeating the Archdemon would cost the player character’s life, unless blood magic transferred the Archdemon’s soul into an unborn child. Morrigan would leave regardless of the player’s answer, raising a fundamental question: had any connection with her been genuine, or solely instrumental? The player faced contradictory information. Everything they had been taught about blood magic and natural order suggested refusal. Yet Morrigan offered certainty of escape in exchange for unknowable consequences. Would the child be a normal infant or a darkspawn demon that could cause equal devastation?

At the time, Origins provided no satisfying answer. Later Dragon Age games would provide one, but those sequels’ retcons robbed the original moment of its power. The choice hinged entirely on whether a player trusted Morrigan—a woman who had given them no reason to, yet whose competence throughout the game was undeniable.

Dragon Age II—Evolution and Relationships

The Return and the Amulet

Dragon Age II shifted tone and mechanics substantially. It introduced import functionality, pulling choices from Origins into the new game through cameos and references. The most effective of these involved Flemeth, who could have been killed by the player in the first game. In the sequel, the new protagonist Hawke unknowingly carried her to safety within an enchanted amulet even as she fought for survival against the previous game’s hero. As she rose from the ashes, players watched one protagonist’s actions be completely undone by another’s ignorance. This moment worked precisely because it subverted the expected satisfaction of permanence; consequences could echo across games, but they could also be inverted by new perspectives.

Friendship Versus Rivalry

Dragon Age II replaced simple approval bars with a Friendship/Rivalry system that fundamentally changed how relationships functioned. Party members like Anders—a radical mage fighting for mage liberation at any cost—or Fenris—an elf slave who rejected magic—possessed fixed ideological positions. Uncritically supporting them earned Friendship points. Challenging their beliefs, even harshly, generated Rivalry points. This meant romantic relationships could carry tension. According to Kotaku’s experience, romancing Fenris as a mage while maintaining high Rivalry created one of BioWare’s most complex relationships, filled with conflict that actually mattered because the characters remained opposed even while emotionally bonded.

This system never returned in later Dragon Age titles, representing a lost opportunity for nuanced companion dynamics.

The Arishok and the Champion

Isabela caused the Qunari’s extended occupation of Kirkwall and stole an artifact they sought, fleeing with it. When given the chance to retrieve it, she took the opportunity. Depending on the player’s established bond, she either vanished forever or returned for a climactic confrontation. Her return was not framed as redemption but as growth she had spent the game avoiding. The Qunari leader still demanded she answer for her crimes. The player could betray her or defend her. Choosing to fight resulted in facing the Arishok in single combat—the giant Qunari leader in a one-on-one duel that represented one of Dragon Age II’s most satisfying combat encounters. Victory crowned the player Champion of Kirkwall, a title earned through combat spectacle.

Merrill’s Blood Magic Tragedy

The game’s final act wavered in quality, but Merrill’s conclusion delivered emotional weight. The blood mage pursued restoring her clan’s history through demon-binding, opposing everyone around her in the process. Her clan leader Marethari sacrificed herself by allowing Merrill’s demon to possess her instead. The player could validate Merrill’s choices or condemn her, but the real test came when facing the clan’s remaining members. Supporting or abandoning her determined whether combat followed. Merrill carried more emotional range than perhaps any other party member in the franchise, and her story ended in brutal ambiguity tied to consequences that mattered.

Four Games, One Fractured Legacy

Dragon Age’s four entries created something unusual: a franchise where later installments could fundamentally alter earlier ones through narrative retconning. BioWare built flexibility into the universe precisely because it wanted to revisit characters and moments across games, but this meant no choice ever possessed the permanence players initially felt. The series spanned different mechanics, different focal points, and different subgenres of fantasy, making it difficult to point to a single identity. Yet across all four games, moments of player agency and consequence—whether ultimately overturned by sequels or not—defined what the series became. With BioWare’s closure, the franchise now rests with the choices already made, no longer subject to retcon or revision.

Source: Kotaku