Morrigan isn't just my favourite Dragon Age character, she's the greatest fantasy RPG companion of all time
As the dust settles on PC Gamer's Dragon Age: The Veilguard review, which describes a Marvel-i-fied action RPG let down by its new lacklustre, sanitised companion characters and clumsy storytelling, I feel the time has now come where we can finally step back, breathe and calmly recognise what should have been obvious to BioWare all along—in Morrigan, the Witch of the Wilds, Dragon Age has always boasted the fantasy RPG genre's greatest of all time companion character. Because, 15 years after the series debuted with the peerless Dragon Age: Origins, not only has BioWare seemingly forgotten this (if it ever knew it to begin with), but has never even gotten close to replicating a character like her again.
From the moment a fresh-faced Morrigan steps out of the forest in Dragon Age: Origins, voiced by the peerless Claudia Black, sarcastically and cynically teasing and probing the player’s Warden while expounding her own distinctive beliefs and motivations, the fantasy RPG genre was never going to be the same again. Here was a character that deftly, beautifully, elevated fantasy RPG companions to a previously unseen, complex and real level. Here we had a transcendent character that leapt out of the screen physically and mentally, challenging the Warden, testing them, philosophising with them and, yes, even potentially loving and betraying them.
Morrigan was a wonderfully real and morally grey character that didn't succumb to tired stereotypes or boringly two-dimensional motivations. There was no, 'I have a tragic backstory where I was wronged by a super duper bad guy and now I'm on a quest for revenge' guff (instead, we get a far messier tale involving her ‘mother’ Flemeth, told in fragments), or a 'well, she can often appear bad, but deep down she has a heart of gold and will help us do the right thing at a clutch moment' nonsense. Instead, right from the off, Morrigan is very open about her world views, while also carefully pursuing her aims, both openly and covertly.
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