The backdrop is standard mad lib fantasy stuff, where the blanks of “The kingdom of (a), once beset by the great and terrible evil of (b), is once again beset by the very same great and terrible evil due to some almost certainly insignificant and wildly unlikely oversight” are substituted with “Ferelden” and “Darkspawn”. The Origins bit of the game comes in six flavours – that is, you’ll start the game off as one of six different characters, each hauling their very own narrative baggage through a few hours of introductory play as you make your way over to (c), where (c) is the headquarters of Grey Wardens, an organisation selflessly dedicated to ridding (a) of (b). As a Dalish (woodland) Elf, for example, you’ll be representing the finest of the final remaining elfish elite, the rest of your kind having suffered ignominious subjugation and segregation in the ghettoes of Ferelden’s urban politics. Elves are second-rate citizens? That grinding sound must be three decades’ worth of paradigms shifting. Other available origins include a city elf, human or elf mage, human noble, dwarf commoner, or dwarf noble. Once you’ve got yourself signed up at the recruitment centre in Ostagar, it’s inevitably going to be up to you and your chums to save the planet from total annihilation. Nothing too hardcore for your first assignment or anything.
Origins will feature a dialogue and interaction suite whose implications may well take subsequent effect in the world. While freed from the good/bad/neutral constraints of the traditional morality alignment tracking system seen in Mass Effect, for example, there will be an emphasis on managing and maintaining personal relationships within the adventuring group. Your comrades will have motivations and opinions of their own, and your decisions and contextual responses to these may determine whether or not any particular companion remains at your side. Or lives or dies. Or jumps your face and gouges out your eyeballs. Hey, nobody said tagging around the continent with a bunch of career killers was going to be a tea party, and what with this inexorable Blight and everything, tempers are probably somewhat frayed.
The developers have also invested heaps of cash and coffee into creating an innovative spell casting system that uses synergies to produce, well, spell combos. You might lob a grease spell across a floor, for example, then set it all ablaze with a well-placed fireball. Once you’re tired of all the shrieking and that intoxicating stench of not-quite-fillet, you can choose to end it all with a casual blizzard. Or not. As a mage character, you’ll also have access to all sorts of really impressive tricks like freezing water and shapeshifting.
Elsewhere, Origins won’t be wandering too far from established canon fundamentals – players will choose from three lead character classes including fighter, rogue, and mage types, further branching off into their own various specialisation packages and maths paradigms, and we can probably confidently assume the titular dragon will make at least a cameo appearance.