Game Review: Dragon Age 2 - Part 2

Part One can be found HERE. Or two posts down.

The Gameplay: "Lightspeed too slow?!"

Thinking back to games like Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Origins, I don't ever remember putting the controller down and saying to myself, "You know, this game would be a metric shit-ton better if every time you pressed a button, something awesome happened." In fact, out of all the criticism I saw leveled at DA:O, and in between the dozens of "Game of the Year" awards KotOR received, I don't recall there being an overwhelming outcry for frantic, can-hardly-keep-track-of-it action.

Does that mean I don't want it now that BioWare have given it to me? Not necessarily. I don't want to be the one to complain about an improvement, but that's what I'm here for. There was a long list of things that I wanted to see improved in a sequel to DA:O. Better environments, better armor, more weapons, a better inventory system, a continuation of the veritable carpet of loose threads that the story left open for a sequel. Not to mention how a third of the game is spent in loading screens. It's like BioWare saw the list of things that I wanted to see improved and picked the one at the bottom of the list.

But let me take a step back and take a look at the combat from a positive perspective. Accounting for the fact that the auto-attack option was (and still is) intended to be integrated into DA2, I'll say that I really found myself enjoying the combat for the most part. If I had to describe this production in one word, it would be "zazz," because BioWare really wanted to draw in a gaming demographic who like to do cool things and look cool while doing it (i.e. God of War, Dante's Inferno, CoD). The combat in DA2 has a lot of zazz.

"Jumped by penniless thieves? CHOP 'EM IN HALF!"

As a rogue, smashing on the attack button (you have to smash it) will send you flying across the battlefield, plunging your blades into your enemy's chest, and drawing a fountain of blood from him in the process. If you've played the demo, you've seen this in action. It looks bloody magnificent, and things only get better when you start growing your talent tree. When BioWare said, "Fight like a Spartan!" they didn't mean in any historically accurate sense, because, you know, they really didn't fight like Hawke tends to. No, BioWare meant, "Fight like those kickass Spartans from fucking 300!" and this is closer to the truth, though I don't remember seeing a phalanx in there anywhere...

So, the combat certainly looks great and feels great. I remember groaning aloud when I tried it out for the first time, but it grew on me. Not to say I prefer it over the "old way" though. With so much happening, with the difficulty curve on the easy side for the most part, it's easy to find yourself disregarding your talents in favor of just smashing the attack button. As a mage, I certainly find myself doing this constantly. The thing about the Old Way: it was manageable. It required you to get tactical, and that's what I enjoyed about it.

This New Way is enjoyable. I personally loved seeing Hawke disappear into the shadows and reappearing behind an enemy for a backstab (it's pretty much "shadowstep" from WoW). But you lose a lot of the depth that the Old Way had. Hawke kicks ass from Day One, with all the zazz that can be pumped into a character without making him seem like the Maker Himself. The Warden had to earn his skills, moving from boring, old, and basic auto-attack to skill after devastating skill, and had to deal with the agonizing feeling of being rewarded for his efforts with talents that only rival those of Hawke's Day One adventure out of Lothering.

In the cloud of chaos and zazz, Hawke's New Way lost a lot of the depth and that rewarding feeling that the Warden's progression had. After a while, I wasn't even looking at which skills and talents I was picking, and much to my surprise: it had almost no effect on how I played. I still beat the game and looked damn cool while doing it. Stick that in your well-earned pipe and shove it, Warden.

The Characters: "The Enemy of my Enemy has boobs."

If there was a saving grace for Dragon Age: Origins, it would be the characters and how you interacted with them. Like 'em or not, each character had a good reason for being who they were and, more importantly, where they were. Buch and I have been talking a lot about KotOR lately, and if there was one thing I noticed, it was: it was so easy to believe how each of those characters ended up on the Ebon Hawk. It was a friendship between many, formed by necessity, cemented by a common goal. DA:O had something very similar going on. It gave me the same "dysfunctional family" feeling, which I loved.

The story of DA2 is a cluttered mess. Most of the quests have as much meaning as your typical World of Warcraft grind. The combat is fun, but a tad more shallow than I would've liked. The characters were why I wanted to get through the game. That's not so much the case anymore.

The party members that you pick up throughout the game have nowhere near the depth that DA:O's line up had. This is probably because you can only truly interact with them a handful of times throughout the game. If I had to pick a number, I'd say somewhere around five or six at the very most (maybe a little more with your romance option). I was truly sad when I went to go talk to Fenris at his mansion and discovered he was just a blank slate. There was no dialogue option whatsoever. I would've been happy with a "I'm in the middle of some calibrations" response!

There was no party camp. There was no Leliana's song moment. Heck, Varric is supposed to be this self-proclaimed storyteller and I don't remember him telling one story. Mass Effect 2 had better character interactions, let's put it that way. Each of the characters tell you enough about themselves to avoid being marked as cliches. Fenris, I think, is the only exception, though this is probably just because he was acted so brilliantly. His backstory boiled down to: "I was a slave, I want revenge, and I also hate mages," but his voice told you everything you wanted to know.

I think the mabari hound in DA:O had better characterization than any of the party members in DA2. Might be taking that a bit far, but I'm on my second playthrough and no one's given me any reason to think otherwise.

"Wait! Alistair! Don't leave me with these people!"

Hawke: "Someone's Champion."

I like Mass Effect, but not for the same reasons why I like DA:O and KotOR. In DA:O, you had a name, but no one used it. Your name and your past only defined your character as much as you allowed them to. Everything else required, dare I say, imagination. Watching my Warden disappear into that Eluvian with Morrigan was a very emotional moment for me. It was clearly an end of some sort, and one that I welcomed - a "and they lived happily ever after(?)" kind of thing. It made me realize just how much I had invested into him during his time as a Grey Warden. It was a nice send off.

Hawke, on the other hand... I don't know.

Having a voiced main character, to me, can never offer the involvement than a mute would. It feels like I'm playing a pre-made character instead of properly assuming a role, as the genre would dictate. Just like Mass Effect feels more like a Shepard Simulator than an RPG, DA2 feels like a Hawke Sim, with the caveat that you have much more control over what Hawke says and does. Not that it matters much in the end.

A few hours into the game, I was really warming up to Hawke. Being able to inquire on a wide array of different things during a conversation was a nice touch. If there was something I wanted to ask or say, there was usually an option for it. Most of all, the divide between what I wanted to say and what actually came out of Hawke's mouth was much less drastic than in Mass Effect. Like in Alpha Protocol, the conversation usually proceeded how I'd envisioned it to.

Hawke isn't better than the Warden to me. They're not even in the same goddamn ball park, but I definitely got used to him as my backup character, I guess. But I do wish he'd stop saying things out of line, and I also wish that he could express his opinion in more than just three tones. Could BioWare not think of more emotions?

If there is a major flaw with Hawke (besides the fact that voicing the main character takes up a lot of space on the disc and a large chunk of the production budget, which ultimately leads to less content for something that, I think, is a gimmick), it's that your choices just do not matter in the long run. You are destined to become the Champion of Kirkwall, and you will, indeed, get there eventually. There are no multiple endings and there's a very small chance of you comparing your game experience with someone else and discovering significant differences. All of the choices that you make - the choices that you will certainly put a lot of thought into - will ultimately amount to nothing. At the 11th hour, as the final battle looms, you will be forced to make a decision that determines how everything will play out.

There is no middle ground. There is no negotiation, nor will any of your previous decisions affect it in any way: Mages or Templars. I was completely flabbergasted when I reached this point in the game. For a game, for a company, that places so much emphasis on choice and consequence, there wasn't much of either when all was said and done.

When the credits rolled (they glitched, I wasn't able to hear the song), I felt like this is where the game really should've started. Hawke became the Champion of Kirkwall, though I honestly did everything I could to avoid it while I played. The world was his oyster, but nothing came of it. A cliffhanger ending, which left a sour taste in my mouth after dealing with the Assassin's Creed endings for a year. I'm tired of cliffhangers...

Is Hawke's story ends here, I could live with it. If it continues on into the unfortunately-named Dragon Age 3, I'll be disappointed to hear that BioWare couldn't (wouldn't) extend the same courtesy to the Warden. I would've followed the Warden until his Calling.

In Summation: "The Theory of Yes and No."

I now look at Dragon Age 2 in the same way that I looked at Fable 3, as a game that improved on all the wrong things, and ultimately ended up falling short of the very high expectations I had set for it. To say it's a bad game would be a lie; it's not a bad game. If you take a look at the few RPGs that have been released in the last couple of years, DA2 is certainly near the top of that list. Heck, I'd go so far as to say that if you didn't care much for DA:O, you might really get into DA2. But that really touches at the heart of the issue.

All of what you've read here is completely subjective and very, very biased. Dragon Age: Origins, as I've said, is one of my favorite games: bested only by the two games that changed by life forever. I've read both books, bought the game twice, and played all the DLC. I even have Morrigan and Sten posters up on my wall here. Biased. Dragon Age 2 had every reason to succeed. It was being created by one of the premier RPG producers in the industry, it boasted lore with enough depth to make Oblivion blush, and was using as its foundation one of the most successful RPGs of all time. Dragon Age 2, as it stands, was not the game it should've been.

I'd never ask BioWare to make a game to my exact specifications, but I would ask that they (at the very least) respect what made Dragon Age: Origins a hit in the first place. It was made abundantly clear: in the way much-loved characters are given token cameos; in the way the events of Ferelden are minimized to some foreign incident; in the recycled dungeons; and how in a series that made a name for itself by harking back to the classics of the genre, such slights against its roots are not only implemented, but celebrated... BioWare didn't respect the property or the people who gave BioWare reason to make enough DLC for DA:O to justify an "Ultimate Edition."

It's interesting to watch Dragon Age 2 hit the shelves the same year The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is due to be released. If you had asked me during that time between when I'd finished DA:O and when I started to hear details of DA2, I would've said that Dragon Age 2 would be the one to watch. That BioWare would surely put out an RPG that wouldn't merely be an alternative to TES, but a full-on competitor. But here I am telling you that, at the very least, Dragon Age 2 bested Fable 3.

I'll be waiting for Dragon Age 3, if only to see if BioWare will (this time) really listen to their fans. To me, Dragon Age 2 seemed like a bad experiment, which is not what I thought the sequel to one of my favorites would amount to.

3 out of 5 Stars