A few weeks ago I received a mysterious package in the mail; all I knew was that it was a press kit of sorts. Like a cautious child on Christmas I slowly cut the packaging tape and opened the box, curious to see what its contents may hold. Upon opening I found a wide array of little goodies like a t-shirt, Dragon’s blood and a blu-ray/dvd combo pack for FUNimation’s new title Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker, a feature length anime directed by Fumihiko Sori that’s based off of the popular video game franchise.
In the land of Orlais, a brash young Seeker – Cassandra – fights to stop a blood-soaked conspiracy. Hidden hands seek to tear apart the realm’s most powerful religious order, and as the sinister plot unfolds, Cassandra is accused of treason and murder. Hunted by friend and foe alike, the impulsive beauty must clear her name while clashing with corrupt Templars and rogue Blood Mages. Should she fail, the executioner’s blade awaits. Should she overcome her rage and expose the unseen forces threatening the rule of the Divine, Cassandra will take her place in legend.
Dragon Age is one of those games I’ve always wanted to play but never got around to it, that being said, this film focuses on one of the minor characters from the game itself and expands on their story line, something the game didn’t have time to do. Anyways, since I can’t comment on game/movie continuity let me get down to my thoughts on the feature.
Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker is a very easy film to read and follow once you understand the different types of characters that exist in the land of Orlais. The writers make sure to spell everything out for those of us who aren’t already engulfed in the franchise and do so with ease. The problem though is that you can clearly see where the story is going which leaves very little room for surprises and cool twists.
Simple story aside, the film’s main problems lie in its half-ass CG and cheesy dialogue. Halo 2 cut-scenes look much better than anything in this entire film and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When you watch the film it feels like you’re watching a video game cut-scene from 10 years ago, you know, when the background was still, everything in the foreground was choppy, the mouths were off from the dialogue and nothing seemed to come together well at all. Everything you hated about those scenes was brought back for this film and made it disappointing to watch. I won’t even talk about how annoying the characters and voice acting was but I’ll say that the only upside to the feature was that the blood was rather gratuitous which made watching kills somewhat enjoyable.
There was only one scene that was actually fun to watch and that was the epic climax where a group of dragons descended upon a city to wreak havoc. It is at this point when Cassandra goes into beast mode as she tries to bring them all down one by one.
As for the disc, since the movie is completely animated and is a straight to home video featu
re it looks terrific in the Blu-ray format. The film is 90 minutes long and comes with a regular DVD, a Japanese DVD and the Blu-ray. In addition to a slip for a free Dragon Age digital comic, the film comes with a few bonus features. The first is an eight minute long Bioware Studio Tour where we explore the campus of where Dragon Age and Mass Effect are made and learn about all the steps that are involved in creating a complex game. The other big feature is a 21 minute long Dawn of the Seeker Backstage Pass segment which is really just interviews with the creative team behind the feature; i.e. the Creative Director Mike Laidlaw, the Art Director Matthew Goldman and the Executive Producer, Mark Darrah. These guys explain how the film came about, the purpose it serves as an expansion to the Dragon Age world and some of its minor characters and what it was like to create an animated feature. The rest of the features include a nine minute video showing us the production art for the film and then a few previews for upcoming titles.
Overall, Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker isn’t an anime that I would recommend as I think it would frustrate people more than they would enjoy it. I may not have seen many animes in my time but this is clearly a case of a company choosing the wrong studio to create the animation, hopefully for their next film FUNimation and BioWare will go a different route and invest a little bit more so that we get something presentable and fun to watch.
Movie Rating: A disappointing anime that had everything going for it…until I pressed play (3.5/10)
Disc Rating: 5.5/10
Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker is now available on Blu-ray/DVD combo pack from FUNimation
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