When a game truly resonates with you, it's like magic. The world around suddenly falls away, and everything clicks into place to keep you transfixed. You lose yourself to it, and find yourself at the same time. Maybe it makes you feel seen because of its exploration of a particular topic or theme, or perhaps it does something that grips you in an unexpected way, but for one reason or another, it begins to claim a corner of your heart. And for a while, it consumes you: you can't stop thinking about it, even when you're not playing it. When you reach the end, you're left with that singular bittersweet sting of knowing you can never experience it again for the first time, and if you're anything like me, you wonder if you'll ever feel this strongly about a game again. But what you are absolutely certain of is that you'll never forget it.
I can still remember the first time I properly fell in love with a game. It was in 2010, the year before I went off to university, and after spending the better part of my summer with Ezio in Assassin's Creed 2, I was looking for something else to play. After digging through my family's collection of games, I spied a copy of Dragon Age: Origins on Xbox 360.
