Dragon Age Origins is celebrating its 15-year anniversary today, November 3, 2024. Below, we examine its role as a daring, if awkward, attempt to use sex as a central theme and mechanic.

Sex and video games have always had an uneasy relationship. Playing smut on the Atari 2600 feels like looking at middle-school scrawlings. Much of the pornography peddled on Steam is embarrassing and unattractive. Even more mainstream games in the modern era have had a fraught relationship with sex. The tame scenes in Mass Effect infamously got a paranoid Fox News report. Recent years have seen recording romantic scenes in Baldur's Gate 3 net players temporary Xbox bans. In such an environment, it is hard to imagine a mainstream game having a bold depiction of sex. But 20 years ago, Dragon Age: Origins took a daring, if flawed, swing at it.

Dragon Age: Origins is still a weird mix. The basic plot is downright Tolkien-esque: a fellowship of warriors from across the land are driven together to stop "the blight," a horde of demon creatures dedicated to destroying all free life. In practice, however, the game takes most of its dramatic cues from A Song of Ice and Fire (the books, not Game of Thrones). Nobleman Loghan leaves boy king Cailan to die, triggering a violent succession crisis. Magic, while more commonplace than in Westeros, is marginalized, feared, and policed. Even the blight itself resembles the white walkers, i.e. a fundamental existential threat from the natural world.