Dragon Age - Hands On @ Eurogamer

Jon Blyth writes his impressions on an early dungeon crawl in DA:O, while Ray Muzyka informs on the maturity of the game.

"A lot of fantasy games, traditionally, have been high fantasy - Tolkienesque fantasy, where good battles evil. And there's another end of that spectrum, the low fantasy, which is a lot darker. Dragon Age is right in the middle - dark, heroic fantasy is what we're calling it - and it's the best of both worlds."

So, we can expect a certain amount of heroism, but nothing like a couple of naive wee hobbits chucking rocks at a Nazgul. Certainly, the clip we're shown through, which features a battle between Elves and Werewolves - doesn't play out as Disney fans might expect. The Blight vs. Grey Wardens theme might be High Fantasy, but the decisions you'll make will often seem less than heroic. During the presentation, those decisions were presented to us, as you'd expect, in the traditional dialogue tree. But to its credit, there was very little of the obvious good, evil, and neutral options that plague the genre. It was just options. And because the situation wasn't as morally straightforward as killing or rescuing a wide-eyed child, every side had a fairly valid point.

Muzyka expands on that. "Dragon Age has got that optimistic side, but it's got a dark side. Every choice has a consequence, and you need to feel that there are no safe or perfect choices. No choice feels purely good: you've got to think about what you want, and how your choice might move you towards that. So you're going to get a very different experience, depending on what choices you make."

They've a batch of screens up also.