Cannot do any quests

Hi,

I've just gotten Dragon Age: Origins and wanted to play some of it after a long day at work. Well, at this point, I'm really fed up, after going through any internet forum, search engines, EA Answer HQ, no mention of my problem, it seems.

Namely, I can speak to NPCs who approach me (tried playing as a human noble), I went to the larder to find my character's dog, did all that. Now, I was surprised that there was some mention of rats. I saw no rats. So I went straight to the room where my character's supposed to see his brother - oh guess what?

The same NPC from before is now talking to me, and I'm now teleported to another room. Right, maybe I'm a bit behind with games these days? So I got curious and looked up people's gameplay videos on Youtube - oh wait, rats just appear. Nope, not with me. Also, every time I speak to an NPC, the whole conversation restarts, and I can't finish it, so I went through about 20 already, but no quests.

Now, before I start going bonkers, can someone tell me how to fix this?

Thanks,

vvikers