Narm / Dragon Age: Origins

BEHOLD THE ARCHDEMON'S UPPER TEETH OF DOOM!

• The narm is not contained to the game itself, as one cannot help but find this trailer incredibly narmariffic.
  • BioWare's choice of music may be... questionable to some players. Particularly "This Is War" by Thirty Seconds to Mars in the end credits of a fantasy game and the airy LOTR-esque soprano in the sex scenes.
• Leliana is supposed to be a bard, so she must sing at some point. However, both the buildup to the scene and the execution can leave a lot to be desired.
  • When she uses any of her song abilities in battle, she appears to lean her head back and howl.
    • She doesn't mysteriously change voice actress, either.
    • She's not singing — it's her old elven nanny's voice.
  • If you make the other rogue characters into bards, you'll learn to appreciate how good Leliana's battle cries sound. Nathaniel's bard cry is akin to him stubbing his toe. Zevran, meanwhile, holds his scream for way too long.
• One of Soris's battle cries in the City Elf intro is "you'll pay for what Vaughan did, human." Which is fine, except when the only enemies are mabari. It's funny enough that he's swearing vengeance on a dog, but the sheer emphasis on the word "human" makes it downright ridiculous.
• In one area, you're asked to help stop a group of werewolves who have recently attacked a group of elves. When you talk to the elves, you are asked by one man if you would look for his wife, whom he believes has become a werewolf. When you find her, she is, in fact, a werewolf, and is obviously in a great deal of pain and doing her best to fend off the savage nature of the werewolf. She asks you to kill her to make the pain stop. The voice acting and storytelling are both handled in such a way that this is actually quite a moving moment... until a moment after she is dead, at which point you realize you can loot the corpse. FOR A WEREWOLF PELT.
• Whenever you are given an option to kill a character in a cutscene (with the notable exception of Loghain), your character will pull out a dagger (called the Murder Knife by the fandom) and stab them. Even if you're playing a mage and have never even carried a dagger, you'll bring it out for the cutscene executions. Plus, it happens so fast that it often looks like you hit the victim with a rock.
  • Similarly, at the end of the game and if your Warden survives to slay the Archdemon, they pull out a sword to deal the killing blow, despite their class. Just imagine seeing your petite elven mage doling out some BFS justice and try not to go, "Huh?" And if someone in melee gets in a dramatic slow-motion finishing move, it resets in the cutscene so the Warden can do it over.
  • One particularly narmy kill is if you decide not to let Genitivi spread word of the Sacred Ashes. He just gives you a sad look, shakes his head, and walks off without a word, so your character pulls out the Murder Knife and throws it at him. Then he turns around, knife sticking out of the back of his head, gives you another sad look, and then falls over dead.
• Alter a character's armor, and cutscenes — the best and/or most stirring ones included — involving that character will change their appearance accordingly. This includes if you remove their armor altogether, which players are often encouraged to do before Guest Star Party Members are lost. Cue Daveth flailing at Duncan's feet choking to death from the Taint in his underwear.
  • If you are playing a Dwarf Noble, you have to pretty much put equipment together from what you can find. But suppose you skip it and walk into the next stage of the story with no pants or shoes on... and nobody finds this weird at all.
  • This also happens with Mhairi in Awakening.
  • It's also especially hard to take Alistair's What the Hell, Hero? and departure seriously if you strip him down beforehand (which you'll almost certainly want to do, since otherwise you will likely lose powerful, rare, and valuable equipment).
  • Speaking of Duncan, the part during the Joining where he talks about mastering your taint is incredibly funny if you're immature.
  • Even if you don't loot a character's armor, some dramatic scenes require your character to strip down. For example, in the Sacred Ashes quest, you go through several scenes of emotional character development, talking with the guardian and a specter of a loved one. And then, you and your entire party have to take everything off to approach the urn in your painted-on barbie underwear.
• The scene at the Landsmeet if you choose to execute Loghain is a touching farewell between father and daughter, with suitably moving music, right up to the point where Anora gets a patented ''Dragon Age'' blood bath.
  • She is also the only one that actually gets any blood on her, making it somewhat more ridiculous.
• The death of Teyrn Cousland has a similar problem, where he should look like he is mortally wounded but instead looks like someone sprayed blood all over him with a hose.
  • Not helped by the fact he is briefly shown going from not bleeding at all to suddenly bleeding out a massive puddle when you find him. Said puddle vanishes and the bleeding entirely subsides as soon as you start talking to him, and when you get up to flee with Duncan, he bleeds an entirely new puddle on the spot.
  • Add in the fact that his brown-colored teeth are on constant display, and you've got a perfect recipe for Narm during a very dramatic scene.
• The Archdemon's design (pictured above) can come off as rather silly, with his oversized upper teeth. Seriously, he looks like a mutant rodent.
• It really would've been better if BioWare had opted for a Sexy Discretion Shot when it came to the romance scenes, instead of showing snippets of the whole thing. The One-Woman Wail, the characters still wearing their underwear, the wacky facial expressions, the fact that they're (in Leliana's case at least) doing it right in the middle of camp... All these things can potentially turn a potentially romantic or sweet scene into something either So Bad, It's Good or just completely cringeworthy.
  • Or, in Alistair's case, doing it right in Morrigan's tent!
• As you head into Denerim for the final battle, there are soldiers lined up to cheer you on. A couple of these cries are appropriately inspiring, but the last shout of "KILL THOSE GODLESS BASTARDS" is gut-bustingly hilarious.
  • The doomsayer at Lothering is also unintentionally amusing as he shouts at the crowd to slit their children's throats before they suffer at darkspawn hands. The scene can turn somewhat somber, though.
• If the Warden kills the Archdemon, they utter a furious scream that sounds the same no matter what voice/persona the player designed for them. If you were playing a more subtle and soft-spoken Warden the whole game, it can be jarring enough to take you out of the otherwise awesome moment. (Or possibly add to it.) There's also the fact that you hardly ever hear the Warden's voice throughout the story.
• Due to unfortunate notification timing after a cutscene, it appears that Oghren approves of Branka plummeting to her death. You know, his wife, whom he's been trying to find for the last few years.
• Anora's speech at the gates of Denerim definitely isn't as inspiring as Alistair's, despite being word-for-word the same. This is thanks to her stilted delivery and the color dissonance from the now red sky making her armor look pink.
• On the other hand, even though fans generally agreed that Alistair's speech is definitely inspiring, there's still a moment of awkwardness if you have Alistair equipped in a Massive armor (which is most likely given that many fans tend to dress Alistair in his late half-brother Cailan's golden armor. The armor's shoulder guards are structured in a way that they will block half of Alistair's face in the final shot, leaving only his left eye visible. For some, in could be Narm Charm, though.
• The heartfelt line Alistair delivers to grieving widows is so cheesy, it's painful: "I hope you like heroes, my lady, because your husband died like one."
• Much like in some of Bioware's previous games, you can speak to your companions and have conversations with them on the field, not just in camp. While some topics only appear during camp, it becomes outright hilarious if you have the character have important plot-related conversations in the middle of a dungeon. Bonus points for them having blood all over their body and they solicit you for romance or sex. This can also happen if you accidentally click on them when they stand in front of a door.
  • This becomes somewhat Narm Charm when it comes to Zevran hitting on a Warden. It can come off as Skewed Priorities, but it also comes off as somewhat in-character for him too.
• Play a mage Warden and make them a blood mage. Or make Morrigan a blood mage. Then put them in the party with Wynne, who hates blood magic, yet doesn't care if you're using blood magic right in front of her. Even better, make WYNNE a blood mage. It becomes quite hilarious if she says "That sounds like blood magic!" despite having used blood magic with no problem before!
• Speaking of blood magic, the ending to the mage origin can be hilarious for the wrong reasons when Jowan launches a wave of blood from his hands to make his escape from the tower. This came after destroying his phylactery, which contains a sample of his blood so that the Templars can track him if he ever does try to escape. So naturally the Templars are mad at you for destroying it since they no longer have any blood to track him with.
  • Notably this seems to have been such a common joke/point of contention that Dragon Age: Inquisition later clarified/retconned this.
• The Mother's dialogue in Awakening dials the ham up to eleven and knocks the knob off. The lack of verbal fluency one would perhaps expect from a darkspawn trying to speak also makes for some interesting lines.
  "The Lost is lost!"
• During the initial main quest in Awakening, you are clearing Vigil's Keep of darkspawn when you happen upon a dying knight named Rowland. When he dies after a couple lines of dialogue, he makes a goofy gurgling noise that kills the drama of the scene.
• During the Circle of Magi, poor Cullen is having a complete breakdown after being tortured in a magical prison. He mutters about how was seeing visions of the female Mage Warden, and using his love for her to break him. If Zevran is in the party, he jokingly says she must've been quite the heart breaker. Cullen's immediate response (which he says anyways as part of the scene) is "I AM SO TIRED OF THESE CRUEL JOKES!" It's just so hilariously appropriate and inappropriate at the same time.
• Once Alistair's approval is high enough, there's an option to ask him if he's still a virgin. If the dialog didn't happen yet, it's possible to go through this discussion during the battle of Denerim, in the middle of a battle which will decide the fate of the realm.