Editor’s note: This review was written by Josh Holderread, a game design student at Full Sail University.

For those who enjoy playing role-playing games, Dragon Age: Origins is the game for you. Dragon Age: Origins is packed with a massive amount of gameplay. You will spend many hours playing this game. I will confess that I am only 20 hours into the game and have yet to touch all the adventures that await me, but I have put a decent dent in it and enough to share a little.

Like most RPG’s, I had to start by creating my character from head to toe with great detail. I began my journey as a prince in my father’s castle but not the next to take the throne. That was for my older brother. Well, that didn’t last long as my father and brother were killed, and as far as I know, so was my mother. I was left in the hands of a Grey Warden, which was part of a past group of protectors shunned by most because of rumors.

Gameplay in Dragon Age: Origins is deep and complex. Every choice of words and actions you do decide the fate of your party members and you. I end up becoming a Grey Warden at the beginning of the game. The battles you encounter are hack and slash, which can get a little stressful if you get too many enemies around you and your party. I learned to draw the enemy away from the main fight so that I know whom I am fighting. This makes it easier for me to make decisions during the battle. You spend a great deal of time talking to people and doing tasks for people in towns. So, do not expect to always have action every moment of the game. This game will take patience.

The main story is well-written, and the actors — for the most part — are very believable and enjoyable to listen to and watch during each cutscene. Some characters in Dragon Age: Origins do have off-the-wall lines that even have me wondering why they said what they said. I also get a little frustrated when I am walking around and the other two party members decide they want to hold a conversation about worthless issues. I must say that you’ll reach a point in the game when you just ignore the other party members’ conversations.

At one point in Dragon Age: Origins, I found myself in a deep sleep that was cast on me from a higher-ranked demon. This was, so far, the most enjoyable part of the game. It was like a puzzle trying to take the right paths and answer the right questions from others who had been trapped in the same deep sleep. I was given new powers from characters in the dream, making me capable of changing into a mouse or demon — even a stone creature. Each character had a purpose for a specific area in the dream. It was either to walk through fire or knock down a door, find a hidden spirit door, and even crawl in a small mouse hole just to get to a room. You end up finding the demon that placed you under the spell, and with your party — also in the dream — have to defeat the demon to escape the dream.

The details in the graphics in Dragon Age: Origins are decent. I find that they are a little choppy in certain areas, but this may be the doing of the great storyline. I feel that the develop team spent more time working on the story than the graphics. They are not that bad when you have a 1080p HDTV with an HDMI cord running from your Xbox 360. This truly makes a great difference in the details. I myself do not care about a perfect-looking game. Don’t get me wrong: I do enjoy nice-looking graphs, but I’ve been gaming for almost 30 years, and I have learned to enjoy a game based on story just as much as graphics.

Dragon Age: Origins is close to being a perfect game, and you can play it for hundreds of hours and still not get bored or even finish it. I will say to any gamer out there who has not picked up a copy of Dragon Age: Origins that you should do so. It is an easy game to learn with a great story, and it looks pretty good on a normal TV and great on a HDTV.