Dragon Age: Origins - Development

Development

System requirements
Minimum Recommended
Microsoft Windows
Operating system Windows XP with Service Pack 3, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 or Windows 7
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6 GHz, (XP) or 1.8 GHz (Vista/Win 7), AMD Athlon 64 X2 (or equivalent) running at 1.8 GHz, (XP) or 2.2 GHz, (Vista/Win 7) processor Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz processor or equivalent, AMD Phenom II X2 Dual-Core 2.7 GHz or greater
Memory 1 GB (XP), 1.5 GB (Vista/Win 7) 2 GB (XP), 3 GB (Vista/Win 7)
Hard drive space 20 GB
Graphics hardware ATI Radeon X850 128MB or greater, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB or greater (XP), ATI Radeon X1550 256MB or greater, NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB or greater, Intel x4500HD or greater (Vista/Win 7) ATI Radeon HD 3850 512 MB or greater, NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater.
MacOS
Operating system Mac OS X 10.6.2 Leopard or higher
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo processor
Memory 2 GB
Hard drive space 17 GB
Graphics hardware ATI X1600 or NVIDIA 7300 or greater

Dragon Age: Origins was first announced during E3 2004 as Dragon Age. On July 10, 2008, the title was changed to Dragon Age: Origins. The PlayStation 3 version of the game was originally delayed. However, BioWare later retracted that statement and announced that, in North America, it would be released on the same day as the other versions.

The Dragon Age Character Creator was released on October 13, 2009, allowing players to create a character in advance and to import it into the full game upon release. BioWare also released a "developer-grade" toolset to allow extensive modification and customization of the game exclusive to the PC version.

The retail PC version of Dragon Age: Origins does not use the SecuROM copy protection software used by other EA games, opting instead for a standard disc check.

The developers have cited "realistic" fantasy fiction such as George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and fantasy paintings by artists such as Frank Frazetta as inspiration for the game. The soundtrack for the video game contains the song "This Is War" by 30 Seconds to Mars, while the original score itself was composed by Inon Zur. In the development of the lighting of the game BioWare used Turtle, a rendering and baking plugin for Autodesk Maya used for lighting and content creation, made by Illuminate Labs.

BioWare has stated that the game runs "very well" on Windows 7, and a Mac OS X version of the game was released on December 21, 2009, as a download, using TransGaming's Cider Portability Engine.

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