THE EVENT – Dragon Age: Origins, The Warden’s Quest
Last week our very own Tom Wallis was lucky enough to have been selected to represent the UK for an epic 24-hour team marathon playing Dragon Age: Origins. Ten teams from around the world flocked to London’s County Hall to battle it out for a prize of $50,000… and a big shiny engraved shield thing. Having just got back from the big event; he’s sat down at the first keyboard he can find to give you the inside scoop from Team UK.
Tuesday: 27th October, 10am; a 7-seater people carrier pulled up outside my humble abode, my carriage to whisk me away to join a team of guys I’ve never met, to compete for a share of a huge prize. A mere two hours later and I was standing in the lobby of the hotel having joined my team and ‘mentor’ (he didn’t like the term ‘handler’), the man from EA that would be looking after us over the event.
“Who was on the team?” I hear you ask. Well, our rag-tag bunch of miscreants consisted of myself (soon to be nicknamed Tom ‘Hell-for-leather’ Wallis), Richard ‘Potions? What Potions?’ Burley, Chris ‘The Strategist’ Collins and Jack ‘Fade Master’ Payne.
Zoom forward another hour or so and we were all huddled together in the main chamber of London’s County Hall listening intently to instructions from the Dragon Age: Origins Senior Product Manager, David Silverman: the guy from all the promo videos I’m sure you will have seen.
The Great Chamber
So, instruction over; we’d been given the rules and had a rough idea of how we were going to play as a team. Our decision to choose a human noble warrior stemmed from the fact that every demo video we’d seen had used this character as their main party member. Later, we found that 7 of the 10 teams had made exactly the same decision; Hungary, Bioware Community and Slovakia/Czech Rep. differed; choosing a dwarf warrior, human rogue and elf mage respectively. We then had a mere three hours for each player to get to grips with the game and tackle the “Origins” part of the game. A feat, we’re told, should take roughly 2-3 hours to complete… No time to stop and smell the roses then!
The game can be broadly split into two parts; the “Origins” section outlines the beginnings of the character you have chosen and leads up to your selection as a Grey Warden. The beginning is somewhat linear. However, once completed, the world opens up and your hero is free to explore the game world as you see fit.
Our Origin took us through a tale of treachery and betrayal as the castle where the hero lived is invaded. It ends with our escape, aided by a Grey Warden; an ancient band of warriors charged with fighting against ‘the Blight’; an uprising of Dark Spawn who leave death and destruction in their wake.
Having only just tasted the succulent fruit that is ‘Dragon Age: Origins’, the teams were ushered out of the Great Chamber to prepare for the 24-hour marathon the following morning.
The Grey Warden’s rehearse for the opening ceremony
I’ll skip the complexities of breakfast choices (when doing a games marathon: stick to plain foods, you don’t want to mess up your digestion), and move right into the event. The cameras rolled, the Grey Warden stood and announced to the audience at home; watching intently over the internet, the format for this challenge. And so it begins: having selected our play order, Rich carried us through the opening hour with blistering pace.
By hour two (played by yours truly), I was negotiating a particularly difficult Ogre: during an epic battle against the Dark Spawn, the hero is sent off to the signal tower to light a distress beacon (see promo videos). Upon reaching the top, a huge Ogre and several minions waits in defence of the signal fire. Our strategy consisted of taking down the minions as quickly as possible, then throwing everything in our arsenal at the Ogre in the hope that he wouldn’t be standing afterwards.
Just as I began fighting the Ogre, what can only be described as a cacophony of competing perfumes filled my nostrils. The ‘models’ had arrived to add to the challenge by distracting the gamers. Politely, I suggested that the girls disrupt some other team if they really wanted to show their patriotism. I’d like to say they obliged; but after it was clear I wasn’t going to be sucked in, they moved on… our neighbours, Team Spain weren’t so lucky!
Team Spain’s José tries desperately to keep his eyes on the screen
As the hours passed and the changeovers occurred, it was clear Team UK had got into the swing of things. Before we knew it, it was time for the first elimination. I can’t quite speak for the other teams, but having seen several other teams getting wiped time after time on the same Ogre I obliterated first time (in my pants I might add! We forgot to equip our party with the best armour we had), we were quietly confident that we wouldn’t feature in the elimination.
The Grey Warden stood once again for the live stream, the lights dimmed and the room was bathed in a green light. To our surprise we really had hit the ground running; second place after four hours! Safe in the knowledge that we had some breathing space between us and the other competitors we set about our challenge with renewed vigour. Having decided to head for Wynne first, the only available natural healer in the game, we headed over to the Magi Tower where we believed she could be found. This choice, it seems, would be our undoing…
Upon reaching the Magi Tower, the hero is locked in. The party is then tasked with traversing the tower until reaching the top, where an Arch Demon throws the protagonist into a particularly difficult section known as ‘The Fade’. Not wanting to spoil anything for any readers, suffice to say that in terms of this competition, ‘The Fade’ is scant in terms of points. It’s a dream-like puzzle-based section with relatively little to kill and thus, little opportunity to level your character.
Thus over the next four hours we saw our standing fall from second to fifth place. With nine teams left in the competition however, fifth was enough to keep us safe from elimination as the bottom four battled it out against the Sloth Demon; the boss of ‘the Fade’. This is particularly challenging as he has several different elemental forms, so each time you bash him down to minimal health he switches form to present an entirely new challenge. The developers decided to make this elimination even more gruelling by giving the teams an underpowered party consisting of a mage, a rogue and two warriors. Perhaps because they are, by now, used to playing with very low-level characters, whilst most other teams have zoomed ahead, the only all girl team; USA, dominate, sending Slovakia/Czech Republic for an early departure.
The second elimination was an entirely different kettle of fish. This time, rather than fighting a boss, the teams had to battle waves of Dark Spawn. Spain were first up, employing an extremely effective tactic, using Area of Effect spells to damage a large number of enemies at once. Poland and Canada seemingly benefited from seeing this tactic, as both adopt something very similar when it was their turn to take on the challenge. With USA eliminated, they rushed out to play on the Green Room XBoxes as they sought to experience what the romance aspect of the game has to offer; several hours later, managing to sleep with a bisexual assassin they picked up along the way… Those crazy sex-starved Americans.
As it was clear our team could well be in the next elimination, Chris and I once again head off to the Green Room to develop a strategy to deal some serious damage to the High Dragon. The High Dragon is an impressive beast, taking up most of the screen and with powerful swipes and bites that can wipe out a team member in just a couple of hits. After a fair bit of practice; timing Chris’ attempts on my phone, we were confident we could survive the challenge and trudged back into the chamber for the announcements. To our surprise, we had climbed from fifth to fourth and once again avoided the challenge! With renewed vitality we got our heads down and set about the task of fighting back against Team Hungary and Bioware Community; who had dominated the first part of this competition.
The Green Room. Far right: Chris and Tom practice for elimination
2am rolled around. That’s a full 16 hours of solid gaming and it was elimination time once more. This time, third or above would mean safety. The lights dimmed; the room bathed in green light. The Grey Warden came out with the by now familiar spiel. Seemingly just to add to my torture, he switched directions and so Team UK found out if we had to play after everyone else. As soon as Team Netherlands/Belgium were told they were safe however, I was all but certain I would be fighting for our survival.
And so, for the first time in the competition, your beloved Team UK was handed the cursed skull and stood with baited breath, awaiting the judgement trial. This time we were transported into the Dead Mines, where a mechanical spinning head spawns yellow dwarf warriors in an attempt to decimate your party. I had something of an ace up my sleeve; during practice we had uncovered a strategy to inflict massive damage on the spinning head using the environment. I won’t spoil it for you, but needless to say the other teams hadn’t made the same discovery, each inflicting less than 6,000 damage. I glanced over to my team, who uniformly began nodding like the Churchill dog. We knew we were safe.
Stepping up to the plate, I took controller in hand and set about getting the job done. Implementing our strategy, it was clear that the practice in the Green Room has paid dividends as Team UK scored over 1,000 points more than the next competitor. I then, ever coolly, gave a gentle nod to the camera as David Silverman and Mike Laidlaw announced that I’d trounced the competition. France were ejected from the chamber.
The penultimate Xbox challenge was taken from an optional sidequest within the main game. Gax Kang can be found in his little wooden hut at the end of a long quest. For this elimination, players were given a mage, two warriors and the dog. Sounds tough? My advice when you play is not to underestimate the power of the dog; he has some real power and can deal a helluva lot of damage, taking enemies down quickly. Also his howl causes enemies to freeze for some time and has a massive area of effect.
As a team we had decided that we had this penultimate challenge handled and, as I had a six hour gap before I was back on, I nipped off for a nap; secure in the knowledge that I would be playing the final hours of the competition. A mere 40 minutes later I was awoken by a text from our mentor. I feared the worst… My fears were then confirmed when I rushed into the chamber to see the Team UK desk empty and our light changed from green to red.
Catching up with the team in the Green Room, they let me know how it went down: a somewhat unlucky encounter against Gax Kang whereby we were the only team to be frozen for a good ten seconds of the battle. The dog and mage were also swiftly felled, leaving just the main and secondary warriors to deal the damage. Ultimately it wasn’t enough. We placed third out of the four up for this double elimination, and thus we fell out of the competition.
It’s clear in our minds that the rest of the competition was a foregone conclusion. The crew members we spoke to let it slip that Hungary were well ahead of 2nd place. Thus it came as no surprise to see that the dying hours were a head to head; Hungary against the Bioware Community. Hungary then went on to win out.
Team Hungary rock out with their Axe
With event some 48 hours behind me now, sure, I have some regrets – ‘what if we hadn’t have done this’ and ‘if only I’d have finished this part quicker’. But what’s done is done, and I hope that history will state that four guys came into a competition as underdogs and rose to the challenge. We were the first team to beat the Ogre, and the only ones to accomplish this without dying once. We scored third highest, beating two teams who ultimately had two hours more game time than we did. And most importantly, we came closest to sleeping with Leliana…
Team UK! From left to right: Jack Payne, Tom Wallis, Dan Sheridan (from EA), Richard Burley and Chris Collins
I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone at EA and Bioware for organising a fantastic event, the crew for running it (almost) like clockwork, the actors for putting on a sterling performance for the online audience, my fellow compatriots who joined me on this crazy journey, and of course, Gamespot UK for selecting a fantastic team that so nearly took it all the way!
Keep it locked to The Newb Review this week for a complete review of Dragon Age: Origins.
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That looked like such a great experience. I wish they’d do this sort of thing more often. If they did one for Mass Effect 2 I’d be all over that!
Great write up. I was felt real suspense as I read! Wanted you to win. Well done mate.
wow sounds like a fun time, cant wait for the game.
Brilliant article Tom. Can’t wait for the game to drop..you have just peaked my interest. So jealous you’ve played it already…looking forward to your review.
Thanks for the sex starved American comment, Tom. *gives you the eye* But what we actually did after getting eliminated was hit the very nice Italian restaurant across the street.
This is how I originally found out about this event. Unfortunately, it did not get much play in the states.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKGJwjXQy0A