Exactly what it looks like depends on your choices, but regardless, it all culminates in the Landsmeet, where the nations gather in Denerim, capital city of Ferelden, to determine how to defeat the Blight. Naturally, these nations aren’t particularly swayed by the ancient treaties that should bind them together, but with some cajoling from the Wardens and their diverse group of ragtag companions - the Chantry sister Leliana, the Qunari warrior Sten, the dwarf Oghren, the elven assassin Zevran, the enchanter Wynne, and a trusty pooch - some semblance of an alliance is formed. When most of the other Grey Wardens are wiped out thanks to the betrayal of the sinister Teyrn Loghain, Morrigan joins Alistair and the other remaining Warden - our hero - on a quest to unite the nations of Thedas against the darkspawn and the Blight. It’s on a quest with fellow Grey Warden Alistair to recover vials of darkspawn blood - required for a ritual that Joins the one who drinks it magically to the Wardens… or kills them - that you meet Morrigan, a talented witch living under her mother’s thumb in the woods. Once you got that out of the way, your hero was quickly recruited into the Grey Wardens, and the fight against the darkspawn began. That’s not to say that the core plot isn’t interesting - it’s more testament to how great BioWare’s world-building in Origins was, even with the half-dozen possible origin stories for the protagonist. That means side stories, background details, detours, distractions, and all kinds of other stuffing that you might even remember more vividly than the main story. Like most good RPGs, Dragon Age: Origins is absolutely rife with narrative content.
Thus begins the first game in the series, Dragon Age: Origins.
An ancient warrior order known as the Grey Wardens stands against it, but defeating the Blight is not as simple as walking up and sticking their swords in it. In the Dragon Age - present day in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II - a fifth Blight presents the greatest threat Thedas has yet seen. When darkspawn - denizens of the underworld - are led by an Archdemon, the Blight threatens to overwhelm the realms of man and woman. The kingdoms of Thedas have warred against one another off and on for nearly a thousand years, but throughout it all one threat pops up again and again: the Blight. There exists between these three groups - Chantry, Templars, and Mages - a tense relationship, and that tension drives much of the conflict in Inquisition. The Templars are themselves the military body of the Chantry, the most powerful religious organization in Thedas. Unaffiliated magic-users, known as Apostates, are branded as outlaws and hunted by the Templar Order. Magic exists in this world, with its legally sanctioned power concentrated in the Circle of Magi, an order of mages charged with identifying and training the magically gifted. Guess what age the games begin in? Now you know where the title comes from. Their various kingdoms and countries have emerged over Thedas’s nine centuries of recorded history, each of which is referred to as a separate age. Thedas is inhabited by multiple humanoid peoples, from familiar beings like dwarves and elves to the more imaginative horned Qunari. But Thedas is the one we know about, and it’s where all the games take place. That’s not to say there aren’t others the world is a big place. There is one known continent in the world of Dragon Age, and that continent is known as Thedas.
And lucky for you, we’ve prepped this primer to get things started. You can certainly try, of course, but failing that, you can at least catch up on what happened in the first two games and get a sense of the wider world before embarking on the third adventure. And like any good, fully fleshed-out fantasy world - the kind BioWare excels at creating - it’s practically impossible to know everything about it. It spans books and comics, Wikis, fan theories, and easter eggs, a film, a web series, and more. Naturally, there’s also much more to the series’ lore than what’s contained in those two games. With Dragon Age: Inquisition right around the corner, it probably seems like an intimidating world to just jump into - even if you played the heck out of Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II. The world of Thedas is a complex and lively place.
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