It’s been less than a week since I finished up the last fight in Dragon Age: Origins. I decided to do another run through Mass Effect in anticipation of the sequel, but that didn’t last long, as Dragon Age practically begged for me to return.

My first character was a Dalish Elf, a noble and heroic warrior who always did the right thing. My new character is a degenerate Human noble, a sociopath I’ve modeled after Dexter Morgan. What’s amazing about Dragon Age is that you can have a very different experience with two separate characters. Not just in regards to the unique origin stories, but in how the world reacts to your decisions. This is how they used to make games — it really is a throwback to the old pen and paper RPG’s I used to love as a teenager. Unlike the Bethesda games where your character is a cipher in a big open word, Dragon Age makes you feel like you’re the center of an incredible story, and the world reacts to your decisions in surprisingly complex ways.

The game’s developer, Bioware, has called Dragon Age a “massively single player game” — and in regards to playability, they have hit the perfect balance between single player story and MMO-influenced combat that streamlines the real-time strategy plus pausing approach they took ten years ago with the excellent Baldur’s Gate series. Just like how World of Warcraft’s players tend to replay the game to see how it changes depending on their race, class or faction, Dragon Age provides a similar platform in the single player realm.  The addition of DLC — quite prolific for a console game — applies a World of Warcraft or even Rock Band-style model of longevity to Dragon Age.  Other single player RPG’s have provided additional content, particularly Bethesda’s Oblivion and Fallout 3, but the Dragon Age content is so robust and so well-integrated, it really is like a single player WoW.

Right now there are only two games I want to play — Dragon Age and Modern Warfare 2.  I can see this status quo lasting for quite awhile.