We’re entering a time now with all Dragon Age: Origins DLC. Before I played the massive amount of games that I’ve been playing over the past few years, I seriously only owned about 10-15 games and the amount of DLC that I bought was limited. My love for Dragon Age: Origins pushed me to buy the complete edition once it came out which meant that I had every single piece of DLC for this game along with the huge expansion that was added on. First on my list of DLC that was completed was Warden’s Keep.
Played in the main game, Warden’s Keep, goes deeper into the reason of why the Grey Wardens were expelled from Ferelden in the first place. While in camp, you’ll be approached by Levi Dryden. His ancestor was the Sophia Dryden, commander of the Grey Wardens at Soldier’s Peak, and it was her that started the events at Soldier’s Peak leading to the expulsion of the Grey Wardens. Levi wants you to prove that this wasn’t Sophia’s fault, and in order to do that you’ll have to head over to Soldier’s Peak and witness the events that took place centuries ago.
If you’re into the whole Dragon Age lore thing, like I am, then this DLC is pretty damn cool as you experience firsthand what actually happened to lead to the Grey Wardens being expelled from Ferelden. The story isn’t as cut and dry as you think and if you’ve played Inquisition and imported a game over from The Keep, then you know that the decision you make at the end of the DLC is pretty important. It’s not important in Inquisition, but it might be important later on. While it’s a short little quest in the main scheme of the game, it’s still pretty significant and is always a must for me to play in each and every one of my games.
Since it’s part of the main game itself, everything from the main game carries over and is basically the same. The playability is the same, and there no bugs or game breaking glitches when playing this DLC. As a precaution for just about every BioWare game though, you never really know when the game could crash, I had no problems, but I always keep a backup save just in case.
The graphics are the same exact graphics as the main game. Yes, they aren’t that great, but this is one of the times when I really didn’t care about the graphics. They in no way hold up to today’s standards or the standards for PS3, but this game is basically about the story.
There are a total of 2 trophies for this DLC. Two whole trophies! One of them is story related and the other is decision related. Depending on how you play, you can probably get both trophies at the first go around, but beware that depending on how you play some of your followers might not be so pleased with you.
This was a time when Dragon Age was multiplayer free and it was awesome.
Overall I give this DLC a 3.5 out of 5.
What’s Great:
+ Awesome Dragon Age lore.
+ A big decision at the end that might come back and bite you in the ass in later games.
+ A nice break from the main game to take some time and explore the Grey Warden past.
What’s Not So Great:
– Extremely short DLC that doesn’t really feel like a DLC since it’s based off a quest.
– Not really necessary for the main game.
While this DLC isn’t exactly a necessity, especially since all your decisions are now put into The Keep and imported into your games instead of the actual save itself, I would say that if you’re a Dragon Age fan you’ll want to play this DLC. I can’t stress this enough this is really just a lore DLC, you’ll get some advantages at the end, but other than that it’s a Grey Warden history lesson. I thought it was great, you might not and if you don’t have the Dragon Age complete edition spending $6.99 on this quest might not be worth it.
I think I warned you before that the next couple of weeks are going to be Dragon Age: Origins weeks, so you had your fair chance. Anyway, for next week’s Throwback Thursday Review – DLC Remix, I’ll be reviewing the character based DLC for this game, The Stone Prisoner. I’ll let you know what I thought of the DLC as a whole as well as what I thought about the Warden’s new travelling companion.
1 Broke Gamer Girl 