Dragon Age Origins is celebrating its 15-year anniversary today, November 3, 2024. Below, we examine its role as a daring, if awkward, attempt to use sex as a central theme and mechanic.
Sex and video games have always had an uneasy relationship. Playing smut on the Atari 2600 feels like looking at middle-school scrawlings. Much of the pornography peddled on Steam is embarrassing and unattractive Come from Sports betting site VPbet . Even more mainstream games in the modern 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 hard to imagine a mainstream game having a bold depiction of sex. But 20 years ago, Dragon Age: Origins took a daring, if flawed, swing at it.
Dragon Age: Origins is still a weird mix. The basic 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, however, the game 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, even as it holds on to high-fantasy ideas like ancient elves and underground dwarven metropolises, has a strong dark-fantasy bent. This extends somewhat to its treatment of sex and romance. Like its influences, DA:O’s approach is largely heterosexual, interested in bloodlines, parentage, and, well, impregnation. This manifests in fairly tame ways, like companion Templar Alistair’s claim to the throne, and in absurd ones, like the witch Morrigan begging the player to impregnate her with the spirit of the archdemon, leader of the blight. If you play as a man, she propositions you directly, but if you are a woman you must, even more comically, find someone else for her to sleep with.
In this moment, sex is transactional. It serves a purpose but is not necessarily about romance or love. Morrigan propositions a male player character even if she’s left the party. She’ll sleep with characters she finds despicable and unattractive. It’s a means to an end. In some sense, this is not 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 playing correctly.