14 DAY TRIAL // Dragon Age: Origins can be a bit grating for those who do not like to read. Almost all of the old school role playing experiences on the PC or on gaming consoles are like that, mostly because their roots are in tabletop games that required hefty rule books, complex manuals and sometimes huge backstories written by the players themselves for their characters.
The BioWare RPG does not allow the player to actually write the backstories of anyone other than the main character but players should really get ready to spend a few hours of their game time reading the various entries in the Codex, the database about the game universe that opens up as the player progresses in Dragon Age.
The Codex is helpfully divided into categories and most of the entries can be read in less than three minutes. So, it's not like committing to reading a novel. There are some entries divided into several parts (I seem to have missed the first piece on the history of the first Blight when I went through the game) and all of them manage to actually offer a surprising amount of information related to Ferelden and to the nature of the various groups important to the story.
You can find out all about the prophet Andraste and about how she was betrayed and turned into a martyr, see how the Chantry is controlling mages and how it has split in a situation not dissimilar to that of the two popes era of the Catholic Church or check out the background of the various royal figures in Denerim and Orzzamar. It might seem a bit tedious at times but it's well put together, with some of the entries bordering on the absurd, like the Mass Load piece that is representative of the poetry of the Dwarves.
The game has nicely integrated the Codex entries, allowing you to read one directly from the exploration interface when it is discovered, and players should really make sure that they do not get through Dragon Age: Origins without reading all up on the universe.