Bugs (Origins)

XBox 360
Dragon Age: Origins, like many new games, has a few glitches. The following contains information regarding glitches in the Xbox 360 version:

Rogue: Strength vs Dexterity Issue
When playing as a rogue, or with rogue characters such as Zevran and Leliana, Dexterity is meant to represent the Rogue's attack power and in fact high dexterity is required to equip the best daggers. Unfortunately, according to the official Bioware Forums, there is a problem with this. At the moment, the rogues attack power is being represented in strength alone, meaning that increasing dexterity to use better quality daggers, will not increase attack power as it is supposed to.

Romance Sub-Plot Completion with Zevran and Male Character
If you complete the romance sub-plot with Zevran as a male character and choose to travel, the end quotes will refer to your male character as 'her' and 'woman'. It's not known if this will be fixed by any patches or if this is just developer oversight.

Leliana Romance Glitch
It is rumoured that there is a glitch involving Leliana which allows you to romance both herself and Morrigan at the same time as a male playable character. There has not been any suggestion from Bioware that this will be corrected as it does not interrupt gameplay.

When The Romance Dies...
If you are romancing Alistair and choose to recruit the secret companion, Alistair will leave the party (which we're all aware of at this point I think), but because the two of you never officially ended things, you will be prevented from romancing anyone else in your party. Despite high approval ratings even up to love, you do not have an option to invite anyone to your tent or partake in flirtatious banter with them once this has happened because you are still 'officially' seeing Alistair.

Game Save Errors/Corrupted Save Files
According to posters on the official Bioware Site, many players have stated that the Xbox 360 version of this game has save game corruption issues. Based on the posts, these seem to begin to happen after 40+ hours of gameplay. The saved game becomes corrupted, forcing the player to start a new game. There have also been cases where a corrupted save file will corrupt the saves around it. In one case, a player had 10 different saves for their character and 5 of the files became corrupted. Though another had 8 separate saves and all became corrupted. (Bioware Forum link) There has been no official word from Bioware, nor any non-official word as to the release of a patch, but a patch has been released for the PC already. It can be assumed that until further notice, there will be no patch on the Xbox 360.

Graphic Glitches
Experienced Graphical Glitches:
 * Disappearing people
 * Vibrating head movements
 * Playable character becoming 'stuck' in a certain physical position that will not change despite drawing of weapon, changing of armour or entering/leaving a loading screen area, such as wandering around Redcliffe with arms outstretched and continuing to hold this position even when in battle or having the playable character or other characters in the group getting stuck in 'combat position'.
 * Failure to show changed shape.
 * Shaded box surrounding character.

Movement / Game appearance Glitches
In some cases of a character becoming stuck in certain physical positions that can't change, save the game and reload it. This should change the playable characters posture. Unfortunately this does not work in all instances.

In my personal experience, this frozen character syndrome has been severe enough to force me to have to start a new game, so make sure you save often until a patch is released to correct this problem. Although it has been suggested to use another character and move them to correct your frozen character, at a certain point in the game, this is not possible as you lose access to your created character. I will investigate this error further as it has only occurred when my created character was a mage and was imprisoned with Alistair. No amount of waiting around or leaving the area with the rescuers would prompt the player character to activate despite the fact that all armour and weapons had been returned and the jail cell was opened. My created character remained in kneeling position despite all of my attempts to change her position.

For vibrating head movements and disappearing people, there is no solution for this and although they look odd, the game is of course still playable!

Sound Errors
Missing voice on NPC's during one on one conversations. Again there does not seem to be a solution for this. The vocals will eventually come back when the camera angle changes or the NPC moves onto another point of conversation.

Triggering of Plot Relative Conversations
At the end of a battle or the completion of a task, it is sometimes difficult to actually start that end conversation. Though they are usually triggered automatically by completion of the quest. During the Circle of Magi quest, despite wandering around and nearly leaving an area, it is difficult to complete the quest. When this happens, the only solution is waiting for the trigger to happen. Although some say to install the game to your hard drive corrects this problem, I have had the game installed to my hard drive from day one and this problem still occurs.

Plot dialogue following an important fight, in which the main character was in a changed shape sometimes resulted in the combat "mode" not ending, requiring the fight to be done all over again ending with the player in regular shape.

Achievement Glitch
For anyone who purchased and played the game in the first 4 days may not have properly received their DLC achievements. It would show that the Achievements were unlocked and when they looked at their achievements it may or may not have shown them. If it did show them they were not reflecting points wise in your Gamerscore. MS said try recovering your Gamertag and if you did this they disappeared. They would show through your Dragon Age Community Website but not on your Xbox 360 or xbox.com. All attempts to redo the achievements have also failed. Testing included, deleting the DLC, recovering your gamertag, clearing the cache, downloading the DLC again, disconnecting from live (also ea servers), and replaying. This still didn't unlock the achievements which means something is being stored in the gamertag itself. There is still no official word other than they are aware of the problem and an EA forum admin said if and when they know if you can receive your achievements they will post about it. Here is a link to the EA forum post: EA Forum

Action Circle
If you bring up the action circle (Left Trigger) when entering a new area but prior to your view fully loading then the game will not pause while you have it up. After you select an action or close the circle the game will pause. This is the inverse of what SHOULD be happening. To fix this pause the game using the start button and then unpause it.

Pathfinding Glitches
During the Attack at Nightfall in Redcliffe it is possible that the corpses attacking the city will become stuck on the docks or refuse to come down the hill at the windmill. The only way to correct this is to have the Warden and group find the trapped corpse at the docks or attack the corpses up the hill with arrows or go to them up the hill and attack them with melee.

Rise of the Vanquished
It is possible for an already vanquished foe to rise from the dead and become an unkillable menace to your party. The newly risen vanquished will have no HP so all damage you to do it will be zero, but they will still be able to do normal/critical damage to your party. The only way to correct this is to revert to a previous save as once in combat mode, you will be unable to leave an area, meaning you will be fighting an unkillable foe for eternity.

This instance happened to me in Lothering with the 'Bandit Leader' on the bridge. He rose from the dead, I went to investigate and he was an undead/unkillable machine who chased me around Lothering. I was forced to revert to an autosave.
 * I've had this happen to me before, and was able to "re-kill" the un-killable by using some form of knockdown ability. Stone Fist/Shield Pummel/Pommel Attack/etc....  If you get them down again they usually die.