Dragon Age 2

I thought it was about time I gave my opinion on this game given my love for the original. Be warned this is not a review in the traditional sense. I am simply going to make points about the changes made and why in my opinion BioWare got almost everything wrong with this game. Wrong? Yes very...

I played the original Origins and it's expansion Awakening extensively and it's safe to say I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Ferelden. Origins had problems certainly. The combat even on the PC was a little clunky and some abilities were never properly balanced. Arcane Warrior while fun was also stupidly overpowered and Shapeshifter... did anyone ever use it? Of course some did because there was so much freedom of choice people liked to play the game multiple times to try out new things. Graphically Origins wasn't very pretty and the universe certainly bore many similarities to other fantasy settings. However these are minor things really, Origins was such a good game that you glossed over these things to enjoy the greater whole.

Now Dragon Age 2 has made some improvements. The combat is much more fluid and in some areas it's a nicer looking game but that's about as far as the improvements end. The core of the game which has been changed has been changed much for the worse. By that I'm talking about choice or should I say the lack of choice. In Origins every player worked towards the same goal of defeating the Archdemon but how we got to the goal was widely different. The Warden character was important and by extension you the player are also important. You travel the land of Ferelden and can make changes that will have a massive effect on that country and indeed the larger world of Thedas. You never get the impression that the character Hawke is important. He rises in power to become Champion of Kirwall but you get the feeling he is just being swept along by the story, which of course he is. The character Varric introduces you as the Champion before you have even created your character.

This is the first major change, the Origins have gone. Hawke can be male or female and can be Warrior, Rogue or Mage but that's it as far as your choices go. No matter what you pick, you play the same introduction. Origins had six different beginnings based on your character but Dragon Age 2 has just one. Not long after starting the game one of Hawke's siblings (Warrior Carver or Mage Bethany) will be killed based on your starting character class. You have no choice in this, it's a scripted event. Already Dragon Age 2 is off to a bad start showing what you decide has no bearing on how this story is going to go. Shamefully this is repeated throughout the game. You are presented with choices either good, bad or snarky but the end result will always be the same and often you will hear the same reaction dialogue no matter how you act.

Dragon Age 2 has one story to tell and it's going to make sure no player is going to muck around with it. Which to me is a fundamental flaw in a Role Playing Game. If I want to watch a story I will turn on the TV, I play games because they offer a story which I can become involved in and the very best games will offer a story I make myself. Like Dragon Age: Origins. Mass Effect 2 another game from BioWare came in for some flack by having limited choices but even in that game you can make major differences with Dragon Age 2 it's like BioWare have tried to emulate Mass Effect 2 as closely as possible while missing the very thing people liked about it.

Of course like Mass Effect 2 limited or even non-existent choice can be forgiven if the story is good enough. Not really. It's a good story but it's not one I feel the need to play again. I got to the end and events happened no matter what I did and now the world has changed but I didn't really have much to do with that. The events have been in motion long before Hawke arrived in Kirkwall and the impression I have is they would have played out the same without me anyway. What made it worse for me was none of the options was a particularly good one. Join the Templars? Why? They are pricks and the leader is clearly going mad long before she gets her MacGuffin. Join the Mages? Why? The Templar's aren't wrong they clearly ARE all Blood Mages! Oh and the Senior Enchanter happens to know a bloke who killed your mother but said nothing. Oh and he also becomes a Blood Mage.

Making sense of some of this requires you to turn your brain off because it really makes no sense whatsoever. Clearly the writers knew there would be no choices for the player so they had to write people into complete extremes. I'm not saying every game should have a Deus Ex level of Grey where everyone has a valid point but just making everyone evil is extremely jarring. Companions also suffer from this often doing the most batshit insane things. Merrill for example will keep using Blood Magic no matter what you do right up to the point the clan leader is possessed. The Elves then go on a suicide mission of their own practically jumping on my sword. There was no point when Hawke shouted "LISTEN YOU SILLY BINT, ALL YOUR MUCKING ABOUT LED TO ME REMOVING 10% OF THE ELF POPULATION!".

In fact the thing that starts the whole war is started by your companion Anders. You can choose to help him or not but he will do it anyway. That's not a choice. Finding a way to stop him would have been a choice. In the end you get the choice of killing him or not (which I did, the stupid dickhead) but by then it doesn't matter. I would have killed him much sooner had I known he was going to start a war with the Templars by blowing up the fucking church! How about blowing up the Templars instead? By removing the one character who could have ended this peacefully BioWare removed the last obstacle to their ending and the failure of Dragon Age 2 is complete.

Along the way Dragon Age 2 is replete with failure of course. The loss of an overhead view makes playing tactically almost impossible. BioWare claim this is due to the high buildings in Kirkwall. Did they really remove a feature people liked just so they could have higher Beige walls to look at? In Origins fights were pre-planned with enemies placed intelligently to use the layout of the places. In DA2 we now have attack waves so every fight plays out like the Agent Smith burly brawl in The Matrix: Reloaded. I find that boring and sloppy yet BioWare claim they are happy with this. On the subject of locations they are re-used endlessly. There is one cave map, one mansion map, one hideout map and you will be seeing them repeatedly. There is no effort to even disguise this with doors just blocked off and the mini-map showing areas you can't get to on this particular visit. The Lead Level Designer thought it wouldn't be an issue.

Dragon Age 2 is clearly a very rushed and under-funded title. There were sweeping changes made to the core game when those changes really weren't needed leaving little time or money to then work on the areas that did need changing. Dragon Age 2 isn't a bad game but what it is, is to Dragon Age: Origins what Deus Ex: Invisible War was to Deus Ex. It's a crying shame especially as the original game was so well received. I have to question what the designers were thinking when they decided to ignore the 5 million people who bought Origins and develop this re-boot for a whole new audience. Judging by the sales figures so far it looks like DA2 won't reach the same sales numbers as Origins either so again why would they chase this new market who seem to have rejected DA2 when they had 5 million people waiting to buy a proper sequel.

BioWare say they have to change, to adapt to the 21st century and their RPG's have to change as well. I would question the wisdom of that decision because making games like Origins is what BioWare do well. I'm sure if the CEO of Ferrari turned up to work some day and announced "Guys I love the cars we make and we make a lot of money from them. But we could make even more money if we started making cheap hatchbacks with the Ferrari logo on them" he would probably turn up dead in a garbage bag in Turin before the sun was down. Make what you are good at making BioWare, the games people love and continue to buy even if they don't buy enough for you to own two ivory backscratchers.

The name BioWare no longer has the luster it once had for me and that's a shame because every new BioWare game was an event for me. Any game from BioWare from now on will be treated with the caution I use with any big publisher release and that's sad.