Dragon Age: Inquisition Finally Made Dragons Scary
The first dragon I fought in Dragon Age: Origins was guarding the Urn of Sacred Ashes. A huge beast, it sleeps overlooking the entrance to the holy dungeon, remarkably placid for such a fearsome creature. After stealing a pinch of the Ashes of Andraste, I rang the bell to summon the dragon. It circled above me for a few seconds before swooping in to land – to land and wreak havoc.
Except, it didn’t. Not really. Yes, it knocked out my party a few times and I had to restart, yes it kicked out with vigour and spouted deadly fire at my friends, but mostly it just had a big health bar. Its attacks didn’t do huge chunks of damage, it was just able to use a lot of them in the time it took me to fell it. Its fire burned and claws rended, but the fight basically amounted to a heal-off. Could my judicious application of healing potions last the fight? Did I have enough of them to stay in the battle for long enough to take it down?
Related: When Cancel Culture Came For Dragon Age 2
Maybe I was just underleveled, but the fight was underwhelming. Dragons are the quintessential mythical beast, their name is literally in the series’ title. And yet the dragon fights in Origins were bland. The Archdemon, while technically not a dragon I don’t think, kept things a little more interesting by throwing waves of Darkspawn at me during our fight, but taking it on amounted to the same thing: getting its health bar down while managing my own.
Perhaps part of this is an indictment of Origins’ combat, my playstyle, or something else, but the biggest boss fights didn’t work for me. The dragons weren’t much better in the sequel, mind.
After Flemeth’s impressive entrance in the introduction to the game, I had high hopes for Dragon Age 2’s dragons.
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