video game spaces

I’ve started playing Dragon Age Origins, which is fun and interesting. First, here are some pictures. And then some thoughts after that.

For some reason the game doesn’t like to really take a picture when I press “printscreen,” so these pictures are either from the automatic pictures it takes during story scenes, or else not very interesting because I took them at times when I could afford to stop and press “printscreen” a bunch of times. But that’s what the game looks like so far.

The game starts off with interesting character background options. You can choose a privileged or a non-privileged background for Human, Dwarf, or Elf. I chose a City Elf without being exactly aware of what that involved. Anyway, the City Elves live in ghettos, and they’re sort of free, but they’re very poor and the humans own everything. I couldn’t figure out a way out of the sequence that was heroic but didn’t involve killing a lot of people. In fact, that’s how the whole game is. But anyway. One thing I found interesting is that even after I got out of the Alienage, as a City Elf, I could take offense at people saying rude things about Elves, or ask about my character’s ethnic heritage. For example, there was one scene where I could accuse the Arlessa of being prejudiced against Elves, but there was another, even more audacious reply (to accuse her of lying), so I picked that one instead. I’m not sure if the other races have comparable dialogue options or if that is just a City Elf thing. But I like that my character’s origin sort of follows him out of the Alienage like that.

Another thing I find interesting is Shale’s voice. Shale is a golem you can recruit. To me, her voice sounds distinctly female, even though it’s very deep and gravelly. So I looked it up, and it seems the voice actor is female. They could have lowered her pitch with software, or her voice could be that low naturally, either way it’s an interesting voice and perfect for a golem. But the part that I was wondering about is why the voice sounds so female when it’s very low. Is there a difference between men’s and women’s voices other than pitch?

There have been a few other interesting things about this game, but I’ll think I’ll leave it at these two for now.