Dungeons & Dragons is old and Lord of the Rings is played out. For fantasy fans, it's slim pickings across the board. The closest thing to swords and sorcery currently hot in entertainment is vampires and, even then, that market has been hijacked by teen angst, missing the grit that made it popular to begin with. Needless to say, the genre has seen better days. Luckily, BioWare has a plan to bring fantasy back to the forefront. This isn't the first time the Neverwinter Nights creator has tried to reinvent a genre for gaming. Actually, it isn’t the first time this generation. While the developer has been known for their work on Star Wars games, they eventually decided to drop the license in favor of creating their own IP with Mass Effect, crafting an interesting, involved science fiction universe to call their own. Hoping to do the same for fantasy, they've released Dragon Age: Origins, and while EA didn't put nearly as much marketing behind Origins as they will Mass Effect 2, it's obvious that BioWare treats it as a release just as large. It also has the benefit of being released across three systems simultaneously, a first for the RPG maker. While it's not a perfect game, the tale is absolutely worth hearing, and the experience makes up for the bumps in the road.

Legend tells of the Old Gods, who lived thousands of years ago and gave the gift of magic to mankind. The hubris of man, however, proved as difficult to manage as ever, and in their attempts at attaining power, man destroyed the Old Gods, and turned themselves into twisted, demonic creatures called Darkspawn. Whether or not the legends are true means nothing, because one thing is certain: the Darkspawn exist, and wage a constant battle against the world. Their typical attacks aren't an uncommon occurrence in the history of Dragon Age. In fact, the Dwarves need to deal with them on a frequent basis after the roads that connected the old Dwarven Empire became flooded with the creatures. There are times, though, when the Darkspawn invasion is more than a minor pillage. At four instances throughout history, the Darkspawn have attempted to overtake the land of Ferelden when led by an Archdemon, and if the legends are true, the Archdemon is a reincarnation of one of the Old Gods. These instances are referred to as a Blight, and serve as the backdrop for the epic story of Dragon Age: Origins.