BioWare have taken the complexities, bottomless depth and sheer epic nature of their early RPGs and mixed in the wit, pace and mind-bogglingly threaded and context-sensitive dialogue of their later Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect to astounding effect. In other games you hammer the keyboard to cycle through the chit-chat to get back into the action, in Dragon Age when you strike up a conversation you settle back in your chair and turn up the volume. These nascent psychological stirrings can only have been prompted by the fact that Dragon Age: Origins has some of the best realised characters, greatest storylines and most natural free-flowing dialogue ever ladled onto a PC's hard drive. When this business with the darkspawn is over, why don't we buy a cottage in the Ferelden countryside and hang out all the time? I often don't equip him with a helmet just so I can see his face. Say me and my gang are wandering through the Blight-ravaged wilderness and Alistair is cracking a joke with my other pals - good-girl paladin-type Leliana, and vampish side-boob witch Morrigan - even though we're in the middle of nowhere I just turn around to watch him. I equip him with all the best weaponry, I make sure he's satisfactorily buffed at all times. I haven't told him, as dialogue hasn't opened that up as an option, but he's probably worked it out as I take him everywhere I go. I've developed a total boycrush on a friend called Alistair.

Something Strange Is happening to me, and I hope you don't feel it rude if I share a little.

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