Of Dragons and Expectations - Dragon Age II
I recently lent my copy of Dragon Age II to a friend of mine (guess who?) who had just finished completing his platinum trophy for Dragon Age: Origins and finished the content from Awakenings and the rest of the DLC from the first game. He returned DA2 to me a few days later after playing it for awhile and told me, quote: “I played this game for about 5 or 6 hours and put it down to play Final Fantasy XIV. I found XIV to be at least three times as engaging as this.” I’ll take a moment to let those of you who know the implications of that statement digest that…
Now, of course there’s a matter of personal preference when it comes to a quote like that, but given the tribulations (putting it mildly) that still surround the flopped release of Square-Enix’s latest MMORPG, the thought that a AAA-Industry sequel to an award winning game drew such intense negativity is somewhat indicative of problems that run rampant through the game. Let me take a moment to say that this article will -not- be a ‘hate rant’ about the game. I believe the game has failings, I also believe the game has strengths.
As a public service announcement: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS ARTICLE! DO NOT READ IT IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT SPOILERS!
Ok, now, I see what they were trying to do with the plot of Dragon Age 2. The Circle Wars are obviously going to play a huge part in future titles in the franchise, and the developers wanted us to have a chance to see how it started. The problem with this is that from a narrative perspective, they failed utterly in building up the significance of the underlying stress in Kirkwall. The first two acts have token quest lines indicating that there’s underlying trouble between the Templars and the Circle. You hear vaguely about Meredith (who you don’t officially meet until the end of Act II, more than 75% of the way through the game), there’s Anders (I’ll get to him) who talks incessantly about the oppression of the Templars and all that. But, for the entirety of Acts 1 and 2, your primary focuses are elsewhere. First in the expedition, and then in the Qunari; both of these tie only marginally into the ‘dramatic’ reveal in act 3.
Alright, first some good things: The combat mechanics in this game are an astounding improvement over the first game. I all but giggled with glee when my two-handed warrior started wading through enemies en masse and exploded them into pressurized giblet dispensers. Similarly, I enjoyed using my rogue to instantly assassinate the latest smarmy villain who thought he was all that in a bag of chips. And the mage was pretty spectacular too with its spell effects and the power of the Blood Mage. Donning equipment based on what your class’s primary statistics are: just a damn good idea. I personally like the text wheel and the non-silent protagonist concept, but Hawke’s lines are sometimes disjointed and forced. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the end of my positive marks for the game. Pretty good skeleton system they set up, but it’s as if their muscles, organs, and skin were hastily duct taped together to provide us with a shambling successor.
I’m going to start with the immutability of the story of the game. From the beginning to the end, the game has a story to tell and, for the most part, the actions that Hawke does have little impact on the overall outcome. Consider the potential endings of DAO: You have multiple scenarios for who sits on the throne, who is sacrificed to the Archdemon, what you did at each of the other locations, and what you said with your party members. In Dragon Age 2: Anders will always start the war, the viscount will always die, Bertrand will always get the idol, your mother will always die, Orsino and Meredith will always go crazy, and the list goes on and on. For the most part, the only influence you as a player have on the ending is which faction you side with in the final battle with a few variations depending on who you romanced. After the open-ended nature of the first game, the fact that DA2 railroads the player into a pre-ordained outcome is offensive in its simplicity.
While we’re talking about the immutability of the game’s events, let’s talk about some of the other party members. Here you have a little more lee-way, but in the end if you pursue their quests there are things that will always happen: Merrill will always try to reconstruct the mirror (despite it being LUDICROUSLY STUPID), Aveline will always marry Donnic, you can’t actually convince Sebastian to embrace his nobility and forego his chantry vows, etcetera. Additionally, none of the characters are as fully realized as any of the characters in the first game, except possibly for Fenris. Not convinced? Here’s a side-by-side comparison of a few:
Allistair (DAO) – The bastard son of the last King of Ferelden who became a Templar after growing up in Redcliffe. Later became a Grey Warden but maintains a distrust of mages. Through the course of the game you can reunite him with his sister, harden his attitude to the world around him, manipulate events to put him on the throne of Ferelden, and more.
Aveline (DA2) – An honest soldier who was forced to kill her Templar husband who became tainted in the escape from Lothering. Later she becomes captain of the guard in Kirkwall and through the course of the game marries Guardsman Donnic. The depth of her personality extends to an amusing thick-headedness when it comes to romance.
Morrigan (DAO) – The ‘daughter’ of Flemeth, Witch of the Wilds and a master of Shaper Magic. Through the course of the game it is revealed that she is a cultivated ‘clone’-like vessel for Flemeth’s cycle of immortality (maybe). Also you can crack her tough exterior somewhat and get her to ostensibly care for your character. She has a way of getting around the Grey Warden sacrifice at the end of the game.
Merrill (DA2) – A dalish elf present in DAO in the dalish elf starter, who is the second to the Keeper in DA2. She turned to blood magic to try and restore the cursed Eluvian mirror. Mousy and naïve, no amount of communication can convince her that demonic blood magic is a bad thing. Eventually she ends up killing her mentor, and potentially her entire clan.
Leiliana (DAO) – An ex-spy (for lack of a better word) from Orlais who took up the chantry robes. She has a divine vision (dreams) about the Grey Warden and follows them in the first game. Over the course of the game you can discover the true nature of her sordid past, harden her against her newfound wide-eyed mentality, and get her into a foursome with Isabela, Zevran, and yourself.
Varric (DA2) – A clean-shaven dwarf bard born above ground who helps Hawke raise money for Bartrand’s expedition. He tells the story of DA2, embellishing some parts for his own amusement. You can convince him to kill or spare his brother later in the game, but the results are essentially the same.
I rest my case. Not only are the DA2 characters almost universally less interesting, you can barely even have conversations with them except for specific times in each act, and even then sometimes only if your affection with them are at a certain level. There is no option to go to camp (or their house) and banter about events, which helped flesh out the world of DAO. Additionally, the inter-party conversations they have are simply less amusing, or interesting, as the ones that occurred in DAO. In DAO the conversations sometimes revealed additional tidbits about the character. Conversely in DA2 almost every conversation Fenris has with any other mage can be boiled down to “I hate you because you are a mage and mages are universally EVIL!” Insightful.
On a technical level, I was bothered what I could not equip armor to my party members. Here I was a rogue Hawke getting droves of plate armor and mage robes, which are effectively useless except for vendor trash. If you’re going to make 2/3 of the equipment dropped in the game useless, why even have it at all? That the option isn’t even there at all is only limiting player creativity and influence, which seems to be an ongoing theme of the game: limiting you from what you could do in its predecessor. This next part is definitely going to sound like a vitriolic hate rant, but it bears being said. Re-using the same exact layout for your dungeons/tunnels/caves without even altering the mini-map or changing the color palette/underbrush is fucking lazy. Period. Unfortunately I can see how it would be an effective cost/time-cutting measure. If you’re bothered by this as much as I am, you need to let the developers know that this sort of shortcut is utterly unacceptable.
Now I’m going to get to a conceptual level. I understand that, due to the nature of the game’s events, most if it takes place in Kirkwall. Here’s the problem with that: Kirkwall is not an interesting place. In the end the length of the game is artificially inflated by the addition of scouring for events and treasure in multiple incarnations of the same Kirkwall (day and night, three acts), and trudging through the same 5 or 6 dungeon maps to ‘experience’ the entirety of the Free Marches. By the middle of Act 2, I realized that I had been everywhere before and wasn’t going to see any new content. And I think that’s really what it boils down to. DA2 is short and should have been an expansion pack to a fully developed game. Strip out all the excess bullshit and it’s about as long as Awakenings. There is enough of a significant plotline occurring that it seems important for the players to experience, but to try and tout it as a fully envisioned sequel with so many failings is foolhardy.
I am going to go one step farther and lay out an accusation to Electronic Arts. This is a simple question that I would like answered honestly, not through some jargonized PR letter provided for mass media consumption. Did you strong-arm Bioware into making this game on a rushed timeline in order to capitalize on the success of Dragon Age: Origins, without giving the developer enough time to design the sequel they wanted to make? I have a hard time believing that the Bioware studio could produce something so ill-conceived without a proverbial gun to their head. How could anyone look at this game and not tell me it was rushed? It’s amazing that it’s as polished as it is considering some of the glaring holes in the game itself.
In the end, it is my hope that Bioware declares for Dragon Age 2 what Capcom declared for Devil May Cry 2; that it never really happened.
P.S. I thought of including a line or two about the ‘controversy’ surrounding sex and romance in the Dragon Age/Mass Effect games, but it turned out to be largely irrelevant to my points about DA2. So I will simply say this to Bioware: If you were willing to push the envelope in Mass Effect 1, stick to your guns. The only way society develops is by controversy. Embrace it.
