Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker

• Directed by Fumihiko Sori
• February 11, 2012

Voice Cast

• Cassandra Pentaghast-Colleen Clinkenbeard
• Regalyan D’Marcall-J. Michael Tatum
• Frenic-Chuck Huber
• Grand Cleric-Brina Palencia
• Byron-John Swasey
• High Seeker-R. Bruce Elliott
• Knight Commander-Christopher Sabat
• Divine-Pam Dougherty
• Lazarro-Mike McFarland
• First Enchanter-Kenny Green
• Alte-Joel McDonald
• Haydi-Ian Sinclair
• Anthony Pentaghast-John Burgmeier
• Avexis-Monica Rial
• Revered Mother-Luci Christian

A young woman must fight off friend and foe alike as she works to unravel a conspiracy and clear her name.

For a 90-minute film Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker is rather ambitious in scale. We have dragons and wizards and knights in a far-off magical land. There are conspiracies and agendas and plots and counter plots. This is not kid friendly in conception but is so in execution.

I cannot say I know too much about the world of Dragon Age. I know the games are popular but beyond that it is all a bit of a mystery to me. Be it minutia or broad strokes, I could not tell you squat about them. As an introduction to that world this film fails a little bit. It relies a bit too much on the viewer’s familiarity with the games and avoids character development too often because those behind the film know that there is source material one can look at.

The characters of Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker themselves are not exceedingly engaging. Relationships are not that well built up. They just are. Individuals are just friend or foe with real understanding of why. Nothing gets developed or expanded upon between anyone really. And that is unfortunate because there is great potential at points. But it is potential that gets wasted.

Apparently the character of Cassandra who is featured here is significant in the mythos (at least at the time). Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker focuses on how she came to be known as the Right Hand of the Divine. In that aspect it’s an origin story where this young and relatively inexperienced individual unravels a vast conspiracy mostly by kicking butt.

The most significant issue is our main character here just is not too interesting. I guess you could call her a Mary Sue. She is young and relatively inexperienced yet manages to successfully take on mages and dispatch the agents of conspirators sent against her who are either more powerful or more seasoned fighters.

The plot that drives the story is essentially to overthrow the religious leader known as the Divine. There are templars conspiring with the current Right Hand to get her into power. There are rogue mages conspiring with them, but they have their own plans and are using the other conspirators to accomplish their goals.

I once again go back to my beef with CGI animation. It generally does not age well. That is especially true here. The characters look stiff and often move with the grace of bad video game graphics-graphics that were bad when this came out. I understand that this was essentially a promo, but it looks like there was not much effort put in. Striving for quality is always important.

There are rare moments though when the visuals in Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker do exceed the standard of the story and they look quite good. The scene in the film’s climax when the dragons are all swooping in to attack the Chantry is a prime example. The shot containing the Square where everyone is gathering and the dragons all in it is rather good looking. But that is one of the few and of those few it is the best.

Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker’s saving grace is its action. It has plenty of scenes with some very good badassery. And the character designs more often than not are interesting even if the characters themselves are not that well animated by modern standards.

In the end Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker is an okay movie but nothing too great. You will get one watch out of this but probably not much more than that. However if you are a fan of the games this might be good viewing.