Dragon Age Origins is celebrating its 15-year anniversary today, November 3, 2024.

Sex and video games have always had an uneasy relationship.

Playing smut on the Atari 2600 feels like looking at middle-school scrawlings.

Much of the pornography peddled on Steam is embarrassing and unattractive.

Even more mainstream games in the modern era have had a fraught relationship with sex.

The tame scenes in Mass Effect infamously got a paranoid Fox News report.

Recent years have seen recording romantic scenes inBaldur’s Gate 3 net players temporary Xbox bans.

In such an environment, it is hard to imagine a mainstream game having a bold depiction of sex.

But 20 years ago, Dragon Age: Origins took a daring, if flawed, swing at it.

Dragon Age: Origins is still a weird mix.

Nobleman Loghan leaves boy king Cailan to die, triggering a violent succession crisis.

Magic, while more commonplace than in Westeros, is marginalized, feared, and policed.

Even the blight itself resembles the white walkers, i.e.

a fundamental existential threat from the natural world.

This extends somewhat to its treatment of sex and romance.

In this moment, sex is transactional.

It serves a purpose but is not necessarily about romance or love.

Morrigan propositions a male player character even if she’s left the party.

She’ll sleep with characters she finds despicable and unattractive.

It’s a means to an end.

In some sense, this is not exactly remarkable.

Most sexual encounters in video games are treated as rewards for kindness and play out in endgame cutscenes.

The romance is a reward for playing correctly.

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In fact, it’s perhaps an egregious example of how shallow this kind of narrative design can be.

There’s even paid DLC which fills your inventory with trinkets that max out your party’s affections.

it’s possible for you to quite literally buy your way into their hearts.

Morrigan’s ritual to trap the archdemon is a massive defiance of that restriction.

But the heart of it is the push and pull of consent and vulnerability.

Morrigan is the most successful example of this kind of characterization, but not the exception.

Though religious, Leliana rejects the celibacy of the church.

Zevron was raised by sex workers.

Alistair’s status as a virgin is openly commented on and mocked.

This history informs how they treat you and their overall attitude toward sex.

Zevran is easygoing and flirtatious, for example, while Alistair is insecure, deflecting, and sarcastic.

This is not to say that Dragon Age: Origins handles all this well.

To put it lightly, DA:O is immature.

In its lighter moments, it has a frankly juvenile sense of humor.

It uses sex and violence as a cheap and mostly ineffective means of shock value.

Jokes about sex are plentiful, but mostly amount to high-school health-class fodder.

The encounter with the pirate Isabella is most emblematic of both the game’s successes and shortcomings.

Other party members can join you.

If not, they won’t.

Isabella will always ask Zevran to participate, regardless of his romantic status with the player.

This moment is better conceptually than in practice, funnier and stranger to read about than to experience.

There is a further problem, however: Dragon Age: Origins is visually ugly.

It’s going for a kind of grounded grimness but ends up just feeling dirty.

Sex scenes are stitled and awkward beyond even the regular woes of the uncanny valley.

and as plain wish fulfillment (bad!Josh Sawyer shares my assessment).

The streets of Night City are plastered with annoying and tasteless ads, not provocative as much as silly.

To be sure, there are bright spots.

I can’t help but feel that AAA games have regressed since.

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