Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker – A Jaded and Biased Review

“Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker” (or “Dragon Age: Crusade of the Blood Mages” in some international markets) is a direct to DVD CG animated movie from Bioware and FUNimation. It tells the origin story of Cassandra Pentaghast, a pivotal character from the game Dragon Age II. Just to pull back the curtain a bit and get it out of the way quickly, I have stated before on the Geek-Life podcast that I am a big fan of Bioware and its games so I am familiar with the character Cassandra. I watched the movie with two friends who are also Dragon Age II fans.

The plot revolves around a little elven girl named Avexis, a mage with a rare and unique ability to control animals, who was kidnapped by blood mages.  The opening scene of the movie, in which the seekers rescue Avexis from some blood mages, portrays Cassandra as an angry and over-the-top badass who is a rash (but extremely skilled) swordswoman with a serious prejudice against mages. When Cassandra sees her mentor Byron kidnap Avexis she follows and confronts him and finds out that there is a conspiracy that involves the Chantry. While he doesn’t know what their plan is, or who is involved, he knows that it’s someone high up and Avexis is the key to all of it. Sadly, before Cassandra gets all the details of who Byron is working with he is killed by blood mages who take Avexis. Cassandra is blamed for the death of Byron and the loss of Avexis. She is branded a traitor and goes on the run with a mage named Regalyan to find Avexis and stop the conspiracy plot.

I have to say that the movie does a good job explaining everything you need to know about the Dragon Age universe so that those who have never played a Dragon Age game can understand what’s going on. The action scenes are well animated and enjoyable for the most part, though at times they felt a little more like Dragon’s Dogma than Dragon Age. I found myself thinking more than once while watching a fight scene “Oh come on! If she keeps doing something like that her opponents ought to be able to…” and then it would happen, which left me pleasantly surprised.

Sadly, story wise it has a pretty cliché “wrongfully accused and stuck with someone whose kind I hate while trying to clear my name” plot. It’s pretty easy to tell from the start who the bad guys are, and what they are up to.  As for the animation itself the character models look great especially with the cell shading (memo to Greg Zeschuk: if you truly want to give the art design of “Dragon Age” a unique feel, cell shade it). That being said however, the dragons and another large monster were not cell shaded for some reason.  Plus, most scenes of the large monster had very slow and unnatural movements which kind of pull you out of the experience. By the end of this movie my friends and I were all in agreement that the movie was merely “okay”.

 Rating: Netflix

Fun factor: 65%

I can’t really recommend this to anyone outside of dragon fans or fans of Syfy original fantasy movies, but even for them don’t waste your money on buying it, just rent it.

On a side note, just because it came up in conversation, Cassandra who has short hair in the game has long hair in the movie because she was based on her first character model which had long hair.

Sincerely, THE Brian