38 hours now. I've got Shale, done some extreme lizard removal, and completed the "gather an army" quests. I'm now headed to the big city to have a polite chat with Mr Usurper.

Has anyone figured out where the game's title comes from? Dragon Age being the time period, and Origins being ...? The fact you can choose between 6 different character backgrounds? That would be dumb; might as well call it Dragon Age: Stat Distribution.

Does anyone else think that this game's going to be quite limiting on replay. I mean, the mage tower main quest offers such good rewards it's plainly best to do that first every time. Shale is such a good tank he makes the others a bit obsolete. If you're not the right class yourself and you want a healer you're practically forced to take Wynne, and if you want locks opening and traps disarming then it's Lelianna. Those characters then lock you out of certain plot choices. If you don't pick up the characters you want to use ASAP then the game will auto-level them and distribute their points in ways which might not fit in with your plans. I can see my 2 replays being spent going through in much the same order and with minor variations on the base party depending on my own class. The game's difficulty level makes it harder to take a sub-par group in order to hear the conversations.

In reply to Monk's Shale spoiler:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
Didn't you talk to Shale much? I've found lots of conversational lines which pretty much give her gender away. "Do these crysals make me look wide?" and similar. Then there's the voice. It was a choice between female and extremely metrosexual.

I did love the girl talk after the discover in Orzamar. "Let's do girly things like crush heads so they fountain blood! Isn't female bonding wonderful? Rah!" (Paraphrased because I don't remember the full line). It was the "Rah!" which sent me into helpless laughter.