Dragon Age 2's ending: The Last Straw

We're talking about Dragon Age 2. Again.

This will be, I think, the fourth review of Bioware's DA 2 on this site alone. I will make my actual review very quick and then get onto the point of this article - constructive criticism. Yes it will be as smug and deluded as it sounds.

So, a very quick review of a game I'm very interested and emotionally-invested in. This sequel tries a lot of new things to break away from the traditional Bioware RPG plot, and for the most part I think it succeeds beautifully. I absolutely love the party-members and Hawke's relationships to them - they really felt more like friends and less like quest companions. I think the linear, framed narrative is restritive but spectacular - balancing emotion, plot and subtle recurring themes and motifs in a way I've never seen in this medium. I was hooked. And the combat - superb. I prefer it over any combat system Bioware have put out before.

However... the setting is very poorly designed and far, far too small. The opening to the game (excluding the framed narrative, I would say) is a confusing, dull, poorly-structured mess. And the ending...... well this is what I want to talk about. It killed the game for me - it's broken, short, rushed, meaningless and involves very little role-play. It is - don't pardon the pun, it's awesome - an abomination.

Seven out of ten, but only just.


But what I wanted to blog about is how easily this game could have been saved. I finished the game yesterday and spent an hour or so yelling at the walls about how I, or any fan, could have written a better ending in a day.

So - in order to calm myself down - here's an idea or two for a more competent ending. I'm not saying I'm about to write anything good here, but I guaruntee it will be better than the final, appropriately-titled quest in Dragon Age 2 - 'The Last Straw'. I'm going to try and make this pretty close to the real ending, except for the very first bit. My spin on the tale begins when....

* Flemeth returns. At the Bone Pit, as soon as the high dragon dies by your hand, another one appears. Your weary party is frightened but determined, and you sigh deeply when the dragon transforms into Flemeth, who laughs haughtily. She warns you that your role as Champion is about to be truly put to the test, and that you will have to strengthen yourself and your principles before the day is done. She slinks off in human form. Returning home, you find Bodhan and Sandal leaving your estate for Orlais. They are pleased to have seen you before they go, and they say their goodbyes, giving you one last chance to enchant, buy and sell. There is a note from Orsino or Merdith, begging you to rush to the Chantry.

* You arrive outside the Chantry, to find Meredith, Orsino and one or two templar bodyguards. The two (who, incidentally, really should have been introduced to the plot in Act 1 or 2) are arguing personally and bitterly. Orsino wants to call out the Reverend Mother. Both are armed and it looks like a duel is about to break out. You attempt to either reason with them or goad one on, but just before the reaction you attempt to foster either dawns or fails, Anders shows up.

* Anders makes a speech about Mages' rights. A good speech. A good speech that lasts more than five seconds and is actually very moving. Hell, maybe his voice cracks. Something soft and kind that makes you weep for the mages no matter what your alignment. And then, Justice appears in his eyes. Anders glows blue and gets pissed off. If you have a friendship you can attempt to calm him down, and if you romanced him, you can try even harder. He falters but doesn't stop yelling. The player starts to realise that the dividing line between Anders and Justice / Vengeance has blurred - you hear them both speaking with one mouth, but they clearly agree. They want blood. If you romanced Anders, there is dialogue explaining how this happenned behind your back. Hawke is either hurt, proud or angry.

* At this, Anders makes his move and performs a spectacular, non-demonic spell which completely destroys the Chantry, including several innocents and the high priest. And the player understands how he did it! For a moment, we let the horror of what has happened sink in, then a crowd slowly begins to arrive. Meredith is understandably enraged (not because of a magic sword but because the Chantry just exploded) and invokes some kind of rite, which would massively reduce the personal freedoms and legal rights of all mages in Kirkwall, some kind of Spanish Inquisition-type affair. Orsino is outraged, refusing to let his people accept responsibility for the actions of a single terrorist, and then goes further to demand that the Templars give up control of the city and grant more freedom to mages. They both argue, loudly, dividing the crowd, both making good points. The Champion's party-members arrive too, one by one, appearing behind Hawke and adding their voices to the row.

* Suddenly, Hawke is forced into a decision. Orsino and Meredith's weapons come out, simultaneously, and the player must leap in to save one of them. Hawke is given a choice of dialogue to make his position clear as he lunges, and give one side his support. The party he sides with is struck, surprisingly, not by his/her opponent but by an anonymous dagger or fireball from the crowd. A riot breaks out - mages, Templars and sympathisers battle, with Aveline's guards vainly attempting to break the fights up. The player fights a group of mages or templars, and the fight moves toward the Gallows, spreading throughout the city as it goes. If Hawke does not have a strong friendship with a party-member who disagrees with his decision (Fenris, Bethany, Carver or Merril, say) then he or she leaves to fight for the other side. Whichever leader you supported, Orsino or Meredith, is seriously injured but alive, and is carried to safety by sympathisers.

* Anders runs, a victorious but broken man - but Varric stops him with an arrow, through the leg, perhaps, or pinning him to the wall if that's not too cliche. Hawke takes a moment to speak with him, and the various party members demand that he should be killed, put to purpose on the team, imprisoned or even allowed to go free. If Hawke has a friendship with him, there is an emotional scene where we realise just how far Anders and Justice have fallen in the pursuit of their goal. If Hawke has romanced him there is a very emotional conflict. Hawke can, if the player is careful, convince Anders to repent, and separate from Justice - OR to convince Justice, now Vengeance, to take the body completely and aid you against either side. You must decide Anders' fate - to come with you and attempt to atone, to come with you and then go to the dungeon / be made tranquil, or to die. If he dies and was romanced, Hawke kisses him before killing him.

* Then there is the inevitable fighting. Hawke and his remaining crew battle their way through hightown, lowtown and the docks before reaching the Gallows. Along the way they mainly fight Templars (not an army of demons) if you sided with the mages, or mages (not an army of bloody demons) if you picked the Templars. Maybe there are even some dialogue choices where you can try to save commoners or something.

* When you reach the Gallows, the first thing you find is more fighting. You fight your way to the base-camp of the side you championed - a massed gang of mages or the bulk of the Templars. With no leader they are scared and outnumbered. Hawke delivers a moving speech - a long one, with several directions the player can take it in - and leads them out of the stronghold. At this point, if a party-member left earlier, s/he returns with a gaggle of mages or Templars in tow. Mirroring the earlier fight with the Arishok, there is a duel. The new enemy fights you, does not go down in three bloody hits like Fenris did for me yesterday, and falls. Then begins a war of words, where Hawke and the beaten companion try to convince one another to join them. Hawke can draw on their past to convince them at the last moment, and s/he dies either as a bitter, betrayed foe or a grateful friend. Then there is more fighting as his/her followers attack. Then there is a little rest where you can speak, one last time, with your party-members. If you have a love interest who is still alive, s/he steps up to kiss you before you go. Bethany or Carver, if they are a friend, apologises to Hawke.

* Finally, Hawke fights the personal guard of either Orsino or Meredith - whoever remains. Orsino absolutely does not suddenly use blood magic, but some of his followers do. There are demons, and they animate the forlorn statues of tortured mages that decorate Kirkwall. If you fight Meredith, the mages on your side animate the staues to fight a vast army of Templars. When all is said and done, there is one more duel. Your opponent, Meredith or Orsino, does not become a monster of any kind, but rather shows a more sympathetic, human side than we have seen from them so far. Between rounds of combat, there is dialogue where you debate the themes of the game. The foe is defeated - either killed or admitting defeat and going into exile. The survivor - Orsino or Meredith - reappears, still wounded. They bitterly regret allowing the conflict to escalate so much, and thank you, offering fabulous rewards. The player chooses whether to accept, granting them the Viscount's crown, or to execute/exile them himself, making himself the new ruler.

* We then return to Varric, who gives a long, long, description of the consequences of all Hawke's decisions to the Seeker. The Ferelden-bred peasant sirrah Hawke has made Kirkwall his home, and truly earned the title 'Champion'. The dark old city-state is now safe from bandits, the Qunari and the Chantry/Circle infighting, thanks to its strong and fair/powerful hero / Viscount.
If the player sided with the mages, then they are granted great freedoms in Kirkwall and eventually Ferelden and beyond - Hawke (and, controversially, Anders) becomes a hero and a new age of magic and co-operation dawns on the Free Marches, the Templars' numbers dwindling.
If the player chose to aid the Templars, then they an the Chantry regain control of Kirkwall and gain strength throughout Thedas. Mages and non-believers are restricted heavily, but a new age of peace dawns. Kirkwall becomes strong and builds an Alliance with Starkhaven. Instances of blood magic and rogue apostates drop sharply, and many lives are saved.
And if the player chose to rule Kirkwall himself, then we get something in the middle. Varric tells the story based on choices and allegiences Hawke made during the game.

And so ends the story of sirrah Hawke and the magic dispute in the Free Marches. The Seeker is surprised and impressed.


Well I feel a lot better now, anyway. Thanks for reading.

If you're slamming a fist on the table and crying, 'Bullshit!' after reading my version, then well... yeah, I hear you. It's just that - the above is genuinely what I expected to happen all the way through the third act. When the real ending came, I was as shocked as I was disappointed.

The reason I had such a negative reaction to this game, or at least the last few hours of it, is simply because I had such a positive view of the middle. I adored about 80% of this game, and I was crushed by that trainwreck of an ending.

The real question is - what would you have done differently? How would you have ended this game, or even begun it? If, like so many people, you felt let-down by Dragon Age 2 - how would you have liked to see that game play out? Do let me know in the comments here, or on the fanfic forum I moderate!

-

Oh. And Bioware? I will work for minimum wage if you want me on DA3. Just saying.

Also - this.

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

The Fall of the Old, The Rise of the New

There were only a few reasons why I enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins more than Mass Effect 1 & 2, but they were enough. More than enough.

In DA:O, the graphics were shit, the story was ripped right out of Tolkien, Jordan and Martin's discard pile, and the glitches were many. But that didn't change the fact that they had BioWare's creative force full-on behind this title. The characters were well-written, the lore was detailed and expansive, and I loved the whole concept of the Grey Warden. On top of all that, the Origins were a fantastic concept: playing different races, different sexes, different classes and knowing that you were going to get a new story every time was absolutely brilliant!

But the one thing that the game did that allowed for absolute immersion was the classic dialogue tree. By making the playable character silent and giving him/her a set of detailed reactions to a given situation, this helped the player create their own voice, habits, and peaceable/violent tendencies for their character. You weren't playing the Warden, you were the Warden.

This was in sharp contrast to the Mass Effect series. Giving Shepard a name by which everyone could refer to him, a voice that allowed him to respond back, and only giving the player "degrees" by which to have Shepard respond, it didn't feel as much as an immersive role-playing experience as much as it felt like you were deciding how a movie would play out. Sometimes, it was hard to even predict what you were going to have Shepard do. There were a few times when I would select an option that seemed reasonable and Shepard would go about kicking people out of windows.

There is a very big difference between a reaction like:

"One more word out of you, dwarf, and you'll find yourself on fire."

and:

"No."

The reason I bring this up is on account of the details that have been released regarding Dragon Age 2, and they were very dramatic details. Here are a few:

1) You will play as a character named Hawke.

2) The combat system will get an overhaul.

3) The story will take place outside of Ferelden, in a new part of Thedas.

4) The story will begin after the destruction of Lothering, and will then continue over the course of a 10 year timeline.

5) You will be forced to play as a human.

And lastly:

6) Hawke will be a voiced character.

There are many things I'm all right with. New combat system? Sure, that's fine by me. I'll miss the KotOR-like system, but that's okay (I'VE LEARNED TO LIVE WITHOUT IT). Experience a new part of Thedas? Fantastic!

Being forced to play as a human? I...yeah, I had trouble with this one. It's odd to go from a game that allowed for three races, multiple origins, and have a sequel that has none of these. Seems like a step back to me, but I can sorta live with it (though, I'll miss playing as an elf). Having a character named Hawke? I...I guess I can live with this, too. After all, there's little difference between being called Warden or Hawke. I did like not being referred to by name and by title only but, again, I guess I can deal with that.

But the one thing I absolutely cannot deal with is the fact that HAWKE will be voiced. It just sucks! and let me tell you why. Dragon Age: Origins represented a classic RPG experience, where you could play your character how you wanted to play him/her. You could be who you wanted to be, act how you wanted to act, love who you wanted to love. When someone asks you something in-game, you get a list of responses, and what your mind does when you select a response (similarly to what it does when you're reading dialogue in a book) is attribute a voice to it. And that voice isn't that of Mark Meer or Jennifer Hale. It's yours! And the game responds to your voice!

This almost (almost!) allows for complete immersion, because suddenly a part of you is floating around in the game. Characters are responding to it, laughing it, loving it, dying for it. You feel like you're a part of the story. The reason I say "almost" is because DA:O was a last generation game. There were a lot of technical hangups that were frustrating to deal with, and I always assumed BioWare would change all of these things in the sequel. Better graphics, better gameplay, more detailed world.

But it's as though BioWare made a list of all the aspects of DA:O that I absolutely fell in love with and wiped them out from the sequel. I really, really Do Not want "Mass Effect: Dragon Age Edition." I do not. BioWare had a winning formula that needed improvement but, instead, they created a game that no self-respecting RPG lover could possibly want. Because Mass Effect 1 & 2 were not Role-Playing Games, they were Shepard Simulators. DA:O was a true RPG, which is why it actually sold BETTER than any of other BioWare title to date!

There is an easy solution, and that is to give players the option to keep their main character silent. Assign HAWKE some celebrity voice actor if you must, but give us the choice to stick to dialogue trees if we want to. Please! I don't want to look back at DA:O and know that it will be the last BioWare game that calls back to the good ol' days of the RPG genre. Because, BioWare, Bethesda just isn't as good at this writing thing as you are.

Her name was Naresha.

When Knights of the Old Republic came to an end, and the redeemed Jedi Knight Revan stood before a cheering crowd of victorious Republic soldiers, I couldn't fathom what could possibly come next. The Star Forge had been destroyed, Darth Malak's reign had come to an end, and Revan and Bastila now had an entire future to look forward to. Bioware's epic tale had come to a gripping conclusion.

But I never would have guessed that it would end there.

I finished the game over four years ago, and for months afterward, I scoured the internets for any hint or rumor of a true sequel to KotOR (that incident with Obsidian Entertainment doesn't, doesn't count). Once a week, I would look over the biggest fan/mod page available to hear what was going on with Bioware and why they weren't making this thing!

Eventually, I would give up on any prospect of seeing the continuation of Revan's story. It was a slow death for me.

To keep the memories alive, I started working on a KotOR fanfic called Revan's Shadow, the story for which I had quietly been working on ever since I first finished the game. About one year and 90,000 words later, I'm fast approaching the publication of the last chapter. Thinking it might be fun to throw around a bunch of little references, I start looking over the Knights of the Old Republic page on Wookieepedia. And, to my surprise, there's an actual entry for KotOR 3.

"No way," says I, and immediately click on the link. What I find is information yanked from a recently published book on LucasArts called Rogue Leaders, and what I read absolutely breaks my heart.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 is a canceled video game in the Knights of the Old Republic series and is a follow up to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. According to designer John Stafford, "we got quite a bit of traction... we wrote a story, designed most of the environments/worlds, and many of the quests, characters, and items." However, when the game was close to starting development, LucasArts hit a difficult period in the company's history which led to the project being canceled.

I was devastated. Here, after four years of waiting, I was finally being told that not only had a sequel been in production, but that it had been CANCELLED as well. And they were basically saying, "Hey, we totally got everything ready and were THIIIIS close to making that game but...man...you know...shit happened." It was a terrible letdown. I can still imagine all that the game could have been. All that it could have accomplished and I hang my head in disappointment.

This should have been the game that we got instead of this MMO that Bioware is set to make a bunch of internet-money on. Maybe someday. If Sysyphus' punishment is to always push a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down when it reaches the top, then my eternal punishment will be to forever cleave to a small fragment of hope that we'll see Revan's story continued in some way.

And hopefully not in shitty comic form again.

Enjoy the picture I've posted above, because it is all that remains of the game that could have been Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3.

/cries

Game Review: Braid (Third version)

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Pretentious? Moi? Then perhaps I shall reverse the flow of time and undo these pretentions? Mwa ha ha I'm so clever.
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This is not the first lengthy blog / review on the subject 'Is Braid Art?' and it will not be the last.

It is, however, the first game review here at Fanfiction Shenanigans AKA Buch and Knight's Old-Fashioned Fan-fiction Pub.

EDIT: This is the updated, less angry version, after I had calmed down and finally 'got' how the game works.

EDIT EDIT: I also added a bit at the end, after I finished the game.

"Braid" is a downloadable, short, 2D platform/puzzle game on the Xbox 360 and I believe now you can get it for PC.

This started as a thread where I was venting in the ME fanfic forums. It became so long that I thought I'd put it up here on the blog, and just leave a clipped version at the forum.
The version I posted was very angry at the pretention the game has - and it really does, but I had barely played the game itself, so annoyed was I by its narcissistic style.

I just bought it, and at first I was very impressed... but a couple of hours in, I think I hate it as much as any game I've ever hated, albeit for completely new and original reasons. It's not just that I sucked at it - I really sucked at it for that first hour or so (and the game makes no attempt to ease you in) - it's also that it seems to present itself so proudly and arrogantly that I'd like to punch the creator in the face.

On the official site, there is an 'official walkthorugh', written by said creator, which starts off by painstakingly walking you through every step of the easy intro stage - and then tells you not to use a walkthrough, and ends.

This did not help with my frustrarion.

http://braid-game.com/walkthrough/walkthrough.html

It says you will spoil the game if you use a walkthrough, and promises that if you just try to solve the 'not unreasonable' puzzles, then you will feel clever and great. I just wanted to punch this website in the face.
The front page of this site has a list of grand boasts, like "Every puzzle in Braid is unique. There is no filler" and "Braid is a platform game in a painterly style..." (wow, you know a long word. I bow before you. Please accept 1200 microsoft points as tribute oh mighty Creator) and "Braid does everything it can to give you a mind-expanding experience." So far it had given me a wallet-shrinking and curse-word-vocabulary-expanding experience.

This game has a 9.5 out of ten at Gamespot, very positive reviews all round. I've read up on it and discovered that there is a very, very good ending to the poetic, dreamlike story (wish I hadn't spoiled it by reading ahead) and even a rather nice political subtext.

But all of this is presented with such arrogance and such contempt for the player, that I can't stand it. The levels are preceeded by blocks of text which set up a vague but good story about a relationship breakup in deeper and deeper layers. But the little passages read like an angsty poem by a school kid who just got dumped yesterday. Big, sweeping mixed metaphors and words that have been found in a thesaurus and shoved awkwardly in the middle of sentences that don't quite make sense because they're so poetic and whimsical. At first I thought the game must just be so damn good that it was above me. I was awed and intimidated, which I suspect is the point of the game. Then I concentrated, re-read the lines and realised that no, sometimes they just don't make sense.

It's little things like this. I got this quote from the wikipedia page-

He [the author, Johnathon Blow] has also said that he "would not be capable" of explaining the whole story of the game, and stated that the central idea is "something big and subtle and resists being looked at directly.

Oh fuck off and give me a real walkthrough.

Several hours later I felt the need to amend this review with a list of things that are undeniably excellent about the game -
- The music is lovely and haunting.
- The art is impressive, even if it does know it.
- The attempt to take the classic platform game hero (esentially this is based on Super Mario - there are lots of unsubtle homages) and show him as a human being, albeit an angsty, poetic one - what would his motivations be in rescuing this Princess? How did he come here? What is he becoming? etc.

Then I got to playing, determinded to give it a second chance, and I actually won a couple of levels.

Now I kinda like this game. And I am dreadfully embarrassed by my earlier tirade.

--

Real men, and real game reviewers, are not ashamed to admit their mistakes.

--

However. Let me say this. Braid and its writer are so unbelievably full of themselves that you will find it a challenge not to hate them at times. If I meet this guy at some convention or whatever, I'm punching him.

It's a unique and story-driven platform puzzler. That is all. It's not art. And its writing leaves a lot to be desired.
It is, however, testament to the game that whenever I pressed 'backspace' during the writing of this amended article, I got a little trippy and felt that I was reversing time with the button.

(That could also because I haven't slept since yesterday.)

--


FINAL UPDATE:

I finished the game. It was fun, although the last few stages were ridiculously hard and I had to use a walkthrough. Shockingly, this walkthrough did not ruin the game as warned. Indeed all the statements on the website turned out to be bullshit - there was quite a bit of filler, for instance.)

The last level was very, very good in terms of the story and how it presents it. There's a little gimic relating to reversing time which made me want to applaud. Then you have to read a lot more bad poetry while the themes are made more vague for no reason, and the story of the game is compared needlessly to the creation of the nuclear bomb. That bizarre comparison really jarred with the rest of the game, making it seem a bit awkward.

The ending was going beautifully - better than anything you see in games and genuinely expanding the medium..... until it got too far up its own bum and became deliberately inpenetrable.
The rest of the game was just the same.
-

Three pretentious faux-watercolour backdrops out of five.

Fanfiction is for losers

--

This is going to be another rant. I've been thinking about the incredibly uncool stigma fanfiction has.

I'll say this right away - I know it's never going to be cool. In my spare time, rather than going out and meeting people or playing sports, I stay in a single room and type stories based on computer games and space movies, and hope that the strangers who read them will leave a review. It's extremely nerdy.

But!

Did you see the movie Terminator: Salvation recently? How about Star Trek? Did you ever see Jaws 3 or 4? Alien Ressurection?

Those scripts are one step away from what we do - and that's a big budget. They were no better than the good fanfics (Jaws 3 and 4 were far worse), they were made as tributes by gushing fans who use too many references (I'll Be Back, CGI Arnold, The photo and tapes of Sarah Connor etc etc etc.) The Director of Terminator 4, one McG, even uses a catchy net-like pseudonym instead of his real name. He also did 'Charlie's Angels'.

That's a fanfiction writer, right there. Not even a very good one. He just gets paid millions for it.

These are movies made as expansions to classic nerd favourites that the directors and writers loved. They were not written by the same writer as the original, directed by the same director, or had the original cast (except for Spock's brief role in the new Trek and Sigourney Weaver embarassing herself in Alien 4.)

These are good mov..... Star Trek was a good movie and we all loved it. But please remember that it's just a fanfiction script that happenned to be written by rich, succesful writers and got picked up by JJ Abrams.

There are hundreds of better Star Trek sequels, spin-offs and reboots which nobody noticed when they were online and which weren't comissioned by a studio. Certainly, there are billions of piss-poor fics in which two random characters meet, have terrible out-of-character dialogue and then have sex.
But then, Star Trek had a random, out of character coupling too - remember? I loved that scene, but if I were reading a fan script in which Spock and Uhura kiss in a lift after Vulcan exploded, I would have instantly discarded it and handed over a critical review.

I don't know what my point is here. I must sound very angry and impotent, like a yapping, chained-up dog barking at cats across the street.

I'm just saying. 20% of fanfiction I read is really good. And 60% is better than Joss Whedon's script for Alien 4.

So stop making fun of us, internet. You're hurting our feelings.

(And I LOVE Joss Whedon. He's like a god to me. If I live to be a hundred I will never equal 'Firefly', 'Hush', 'Once More With Feeling' or 'Dr Horrible'. He is a god.)

For Forks' Sake

See that image to the left? That's a massively sucessful author.

I'm reading Twilight at the moment and I have to share this with everyone who will listen.

I can't tell you how angry I am about this.

In chapter one - CHAPTER ONE - the author Stephanie Meyer - the published author - who is paid for her work.... paid money...

wrote this...

( just after the narrator/protagonist Bella whines about having to do P.E. in her new school )

wrote this.....


"Forks was literally my own personal Hell on Earth."

What? No, Stephanie, no it wasn't. It wasn't literally Hell, was it? Was it?!?! Do you mean 'figuritively', Stephanie? Metaphorically?
Did you know that 'literally' means the exact opposite of what you were trying to communicate? You unbelievble moron?

I just can't believe that someone who doesn't know what 'literally' means is selling 53 million copies.

I'm not pretending to be angry here to be funny. I'm THAT pissed off. The most popular author in the world now does not know what the word 'literally' means.

I found some small solace here...

http://www.twilightsucks.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3331

Sequels, Remakes, Reimaginings and Adaptations

And reboots



The other day when I saw the latest "Harry Potter" flick there was an advert for a new film and it blew my mind - I simultaneously loved and hated it. It's just called Sherlock Holmes. The movie looks like a LOT of fun... but.... watch it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQbmFAE5WI

Now I don't know very much about Sherlock Holmes. I've seen and enjoyed a couple of films with Peter Cushing (You may fire when ready) or Christopher Lee (Qui-Gon was once my apprentice or something) but I've never gotten around to reading any of the stories. They're on my list.

But I think I know enough about Holmes to find this trailer terrifying. In it, Robert Downey Jr plays Holmes as a wisecracking, irresponsible, musclular playboy manchil..... Iron Man. He plays him as frickin' Iron Man. Now I love Iron Man, but I don't want every fictional character to just become Iron Man!

I know Holmes knew how to fight and I know he was eccentric. But come on!

Also I love the part where the genuinely English, relatively unknown actor says to Downey, "This may be a hobby to you but I do this for a living."

--

I'm looking at the top five movies at the box office on Rotten Tomatoes. I was hoping there would be a majority of remakes and sequels so I could look clever on the blog here.

1) Harry Potter and the Oh My God Ron is Totally In Love With Hermoine Oh My God
(fifth sequel and adaptation)
2) Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
(second sequel)
(The 'dawn' of the dnosaurs? During the Ice Age? What?)
3) Bruno
(You know it counts as a sequel)
4) The Hangover
(Completely original)
5) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
(Sequel to a remake)

Right now Tim Burton is finishing up Alice In Wonderland. (Second adaptation.) The biggest and most successful franchise now is Batman (reboot of a remake of a remake of an adaptation). They've now run out of Marvel Superheroes to make movie reboots of, but DC are yet to get around to Wonder Woman (I guess because no-one in Hollywood looks like her) and the Flash (because the Flash sucks).

--

I just wrote 'why?' and deleted it - I guess they do this because they make more money than when they make films that tell an independent, singular story with characters unique to it and created for it. Or maybe it's too much work. Maybe in Hollywood they just sit around with twenty or thirty people in suits and trainers around a huge, solid gold desk and they drink coca-cola and say, "You know what I like? Sherlock Holmes. Dude was badass. Let's make a movie about that."

Meanwhile, around the globe, millions of talented writers with things to say and facinating new concepts and characters just waiting for someone to read about them continue to eat cans of sweetcorn for lunch to save money (meeeeeeeeee).

Bane of the Sith: A Most-Kindly Retort

Thought I'd throw in my thoughts on the this Karpyshyn talk we've had, because this author is one of two really noticeable enigmas that I've kept my eyes on; the other being Orson Scott Card.

Karpyshyn's impact on my life, and I can only assume on Buch's as well, is indisputable and, possibly, unmatchable. As the lead writer for two of Bioware's most renowned products, Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, I assume he was responsible for the genesis of both Darth Revan and Commander Shepard. Both of these characters, as ambiguous as they might be, are most certainly two rather big inspirations to my writing. Therefore, it's so damn hard for me to reconcile those senses of wonder, horror, amazement, fear, anxiety that I felt through playing these games with what I read in books like Star Wars colon Darth Bane colon Path of Destruction.

He's obviously a talented writer, and deserved every inch of success his games have received, but I have no idea how he could go from writing KOTOR to The Marvelous Misadventures of Darth Bane. I realize this is the title of our fanfic, but come on, that's what I was thinking the entire time I read it.

I hated the fact that the majority of the story takes place in a SUPER SITH ACADEMY, yet, we learn almost nothing about the Sith, besides the fact that they're real pricks of Malfoy-like proportions.

I mean, come on (again!), Darth Bane was supposed to be a major influence on the likes of awesome Sith Lords like Darth Sideous and Darth Vader, because I haven't read an EU book in that time period where Bane isn't mentioned. But Bane is the worst goddamn Sith I've ever read about. Not to say the book completely sucked or anything, but Bane himself is just a shitty kind of Sith. I've yet to see him win a lightsaber duel. The last one I saw, he was fighting with his old weaponsmaster, and Bane very nearly lost, but managed to use the Force to collapse a temple on the poor man's head.

Sure, this can be justified: the Sith are just a bunch of cheaters, anyway. They must win by any means possible. But that doesn't mean you have to be a bitch about it. If you can't win a lightsaber duel with an old master, then what right do you think you have becoming the Sith Master?

Much sense, this does not make.

To wrap this up here before I make my way down to a rant about airline food, Karpyshyn needs to start taking his novel career seriously, or not do it at all. I'm tired of reading his introductions in which he pretty much apologizes for any mistakes therein, since he's burdened with so many deadlines. I have no doubt this is seriously the case, but there's gotta be a time when he can take a step back and seriously crank out an original novel of his own.

It's only because I worry.

Heroes Die

So, I just got through talking with my friend, whom I had lent all three of my Matthew Stover books to. I had my hands full with my Star Wars books and The Lies of Locke Lamora, so I sent them all his way.

Basically, he returned Shatterpoint and Revenge of the Sith and said: while they were well-written, they just weren't his thing--Star Wars hasn't been his thing for a while, apparently (although I did get him all hyped up for The Old Republic mmo, so that's a point for me).

But I got in the car with him tonight for a quick cruise and a smoke, and he told me, before anything else, Heroes Die is now on his top ten list.

This is of some significance, because my friend is very particular about the fantasy stories he likes, and he's practically read them all to find those handful. From Robert Jordan to George R. R. Martin, from Brandon Sanderson to R.A. Salvatore, this guy has read thousands of books.

And Heroes Die made it into his top ten, even though he still has a hundred pages left in it.

Not that it surprised me: Matthew "Fucking" Stover is a brilliant author. I brought up this list that mentioned Heroes Die in the same breath as The Song of Ice and Fire by GRRM. My friend whirls on me, smoke fuming from his nose and hate spewing from his mouth in regards to Martin's work, and lays out a long ass case proving how much better Stover's work was in his opinion (though, he would claim that anyone who didn't share his opinion was someone less-than-human).

Jubilations! Can't wait for him to finish it now. Although, I am almost hesitant to get excited. If I like Heroes Die, I know I'll have to buy the second book, Blade of Tyshalle; which, if you look at the Amazon page, costs about thirty wing-wangs used (and $100 new!). So that might be difficult to do. It might be cheaper to step up my harassment game and get Stover to send me one.

Makes me wish his publisher would re-release those damn books. He's mentioned an omnibus of some kind before. Here's hoping that happens. xD