For years, all anyone really knew about Dragon Age was that nobody really knew much about it. Was it an MMO? Were there any dragons in it? Was it set in China? Albuquerque? The moon? This month, BioWare finally began lifting the veil of secrecy that has come to define the game, and reactions to their attempts have been interesting to observe. Information gleaned from the official BioWare forum seemed promising, but a shoddy twenty second teaser trailer set off a brief backlash against the game as soon as it finished airing at 1 AM EDT on a cable channel.



The new Origins subtitle? Obviously a sign that BioWare is presumptuous and pushing out a generic product.* A cinematic teaser trailer that shows off nothing about the game? Unheard of. It just shows that it's going to be shallow, flashy, and bereft of solid mechanics or a decent story. In fact, the teaser trailer apparently showed enough of said story for many to deem it hackneyed and cliche.

A few days later, of course, the official website launched with a more fleshed-out trailer, a few screenshots were released showing nifty isometric and third-person views, and more details about the game actually began to trickle out. This caused some of the people who had previously overreacted to realize that, hey, maybe it's NOT a lost cause just yet.

If there's one thing BioWare's enigmatic RPG has already done, it's provide yet another example of the echo chamber that can cause people to go bonkers at the tiniest tidbit of information. And while I'm not going to pull a Dyack and claim that this is a sign of the downfall of modern society or anything, it is a morbidly fascinating phenomenon.

*The game's emphasis on "origins," it turns out, has actually been traced back as far as previews from 2006. The same person who discovered this, Something Awful poster 'ST, also found a possible connection between the big, nasty spittle beast in the teaser and an interesting quote from an old preview:

"Remember the cave troll fight in The Fellowship of the Ring? That’s what our large creature combat is going to be like. You’ve got the party guys running out, one guy jumping up on the back and stabbing, the other guy ducking between the legs."

Neat.