I arrived at BioWare in March of 2005 with my wife and a four-month-old baby. A game called Jade Empire was a couple months away, and the team was deep in last-minute crunch. A game codenamed SFX, later to be named Mass Effect, was in very early development.

And I was living the dream working on Dragon Age (later to become Dragon Age: Origins).

I was only on for about five months. I wrote a training module about a search for a kidnapped war hound that Dave Gaider said he thought he could imagine seeing in the game, and then I wrote a pair of origin stories. Both were cut after I left -- one that wasn't very good, and one that everyone liked but which no longer connected with the rest of the overall world.

In July or August, I got moved to another project that needed a newb, and while I've been transferred up and down the length of the studio, I never got back to Dragon Age. When the Damsel joined BioWare, she came onto Dragon Age as well and did a bunch of editing for about a year before, like me, getting moved to someplace she was needed more.

The game came out today. Above 90 on Metacritic, great sales if the pre-orders are anything to judge by, and a whole lot of really excited fans. It was a game made with love, a deliberately old-school CRPG with cutting-edge technology. It's got a ton of content, from humorous Easter Eggs to epic magic to all-too-human intrigue. It's unapologetically hard, even on Normal. People are already comparing notes and realizing just how different their stories are based on decisions they made.

I'm going to play the hell out of this game, and I'm going to marvel at the amazing game the team put together and be grateful for getting the chance to have been a tiny part of it, even for a few months.