Dragon Age Origins is celebrating its 15-year anniversary today, November 3, 2024. Below, we examine its role as a daring, if awkward, try and use sex as a central theme and mechanic.
Sex and video games have all the time had an uneasy relationship. Playing smut on the Atari 2600 appears like middle-school scrawlings. Much of the pornography peddled on Steam is embarrassing and unattractive. Much more mainstream games in the fashionable era have had a fraught relationship with sex. The tame scenes in Mass Effect infamously got a paranoid Fox News report. Recent years have seen recording romantic scenes in Baldur’s Gate 3 net players temporary Xbox bans. In such an environment, it is tough to assume a mainstream game having a daring depiction of sex. But 20 years ago, Dragon Age: Origins took a daring, if flawed, swing at it.
Dragon Age: Origins continues to be a weird mix. The fundamental plot is downright Tolkien-esque: a fellowship of warriors from across the land are driven together to stop “the blight,” a horde of demon creatures dedicated to destroying all free life. In practice, nevertheless, the sport takes most of its dramatic cues from A Song of Ice and Fire (the books, not Game of Thrones). Nobleman Loghan leaves boy king Cailan to die, triggering a violent succession crisis. Magic, while more commonplace than in Westeros, is marginalized, feared, and policed. Even the blight itself resembles the white walkers, i.e. a fundamental existential threat from the natural world.
In other words, Dragon Age: Origins, whilst it holds on to high-fantasy ideas like ancient elves and underground dwarven metropolises, has a powerful dark-fantasy bent. This extends somewhat to its treatment of sex and romance. Like its influences, DA:O’s approach is basically heterosexual, taken with bloodlines, parentage, and, well, impregnation. This manifests in fairly tame ways, like companion Templar Alistair’s claim to the throne, and in absurd ones, just like the witch Morrigan begging the player to impregnate her with the spirit of the archdemon, leader of the blight. When you play as a person, she propositions you directly, but in the event you are a girl you should, much more comically, find another person for her to sleep with.
On this moment, sex is transactional. It serves a purpose but isn’t necessarily about romance or love. Morrigan propositions a male player character even when she’s left the party. She’ll sleep with characters she finds despicable and unattractive. It’s a way to an end. In some sense, this isn’t exactly remarkable. Most sexual encounters in video games are treated as rewards for kindness and play out in endgame cutscenes. The romance is a reward for taking part in accurately.
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