Dragon Age II

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Dragon Age II for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

[ashman86]

At E3 2004, BioWare revealed what was, at the time, just known as Dragon Age. They billed it as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate that would combine that game's tactical gameplay and storytelling with the exploration of Neverwinter Nights and the Xbox-era BioWare RPGs. To say I was excited is an understatement. And then we didn't hear about it again for four years, and I'd started to wonder if it had become vaporized.

Vaporized it was not, however, and I found a second home on the BioWare forums once the game was re-revealed as Origins in 2008. Origins was everything I'd hoped it would be, and I bought it for both Xbox 360 and, later, PC, and sunk hundreds of hours in the game across multiple playthroughs.

And then, all of a sudden, DA2 was upon us. How could this be, I wondered? How are we already getting a sequel? My spidey sense was tingling, but BioWare had literally never let me down before (Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood was a close call), so you'd better believe I hopped right on that hype train.

Before too long, they released a demo of the game, and I can remember rushing home from work that day to play it. I kinda dug the stylized art direction they were taking the series in, and the combat in the game felt action-packed and cinematic. The environments in the demo felt a little bland, but, hey! It was a demo.

After the final game released, I could barely believe my eyes the first time I saw that one dungeon with the waterfall a second time. Was this supposed to be the same area, I wondered? No, it couldn't be. BioWare was re-using assets!

And that action-packed combat? Sure, it was fun, but it came at the cost of the tactical, isometric-style combat I'd come to love in Origins (at least on PC). Baldur's Gate, this was not. And to make matters worse, the game's reliance on spawning hordes of enemies out of thin air really rubbed me the wrong way.

I dropped the game, hardly believing what had happened. I blamed EA for rushing BioWare and complained to anyone who would listen to me about how angry I was that EA had snatched up my favorite developer. Two months later, The Witcher 2 arrived and gave me the BioWare-style RPG my heart desired.

I wouldn't return to Dragon Age 2 until just before Inquisition came out. After forcing myself to play the game to completion, I found that I liked it better than I originally gave it credit. The characters were great, the combat was still fun (if cheap at times), and I really loved that nearly the entire game was set in just one, big city. Still, DA2 will never be able to shake that initial bitter taste it left in my mouth, and BioWare's never really been the same company since in my eyes.

[The_reviewist]

I didn't play Dragon Age 2 until some time after release, with Inquisition upon the horizon, and for the first third of the game, I was more than a little baffled by some of the choices.
I did like the setting, although the choice to force your character into being Human initially seemed stifling, I went with it, and I had some fun. Always with my eye on this great expedition that loomed on the horizon. Sure there were odd decisions, many repeatedly re-used assets, and enemies constantly abseiling in like drop-troops from the sky, but I was still enjoying it.

But then it came, the Dwarven Mines... and ... almost immediately it ended in tragedy, and I was home again! And that's when I realised... this is a game about making your situation your home. Making the people round you, your family. Not the usual KOTOR-esque whistle-stop tour of kingdoms picking up cool dudes in every town to fill out a party. That's when the game clicked for me, and I fell in love with it, and with Kirkwall as a place.

With that mindset, I was completely invested, in the character, in cleaning up this town of scum and villainy, while worrying about those irksome Qunari who were so pointedly "NOT LIKE US" in such a painfully on the nose way, that the allegories for immigrants, different belief systems, cultures and religions couldn't be avoided. And by the end I was genuinely saddened to leave the city. It was my home.

Now sure, the game is far from perfect, there are a lot of issues,. The writing, while trying to address real world problems in a fascinating way, is both great and terrible. Ideas such as forcing you to be human, so you became both an outsider to many of the game's characters, work brilliantly, till they are let down by stock cliches and tropes and the unbelievable dropping of the line "We have found a Final solution to the Mage problem!" near the end that made my eyes roll.

But even with that in mind, DA2 will always be for me, an absolute diamond in the rough, an RPG game that dared to play by its own rules.


p.s.
I wouldn't normally drop something like this, but I did actually write a lengthy essay on why I think DA2 is utterly misunderstood. I've summarised some of my points above, but if you want to know what I thought in far great depth... it's all there, and is I hope, a fun read.
https://reviewistgames.wordpress.com/20 ... -about-it/

[Doctor Raphael]

Dragon Age Origins was the first BioWare game I played, as well as first CRPG and I only picked it up because it was going cheap when I bought my PS3. I fell in love with it hard and was going to pick up DA2 no matter what as a result. I got the first game only a few months before the release of DA2 so I had not followed along with the press for it before that. However, I played the demo more times that I care to admit. Short and not particularly exciting gameplaywise the demo still had me right where it wanted me, devouring the breadcrumb sized story tease over and over like a starving gerbil. I was in head-first day one of release of the main game (and DLCs for that matter).

The flaws often raised about this game are all totally valid. It is ridiculous that, in a game that could have gotten away with having you visit the same places over and over due to the plot staying in one place, they still used quite so few assets. I’ve played the game several times through and I still struggle to distinguish one place from another. Who knows how I felt at the time but barring the main characters its all pretty ugly to look at too. Whilst I appreciate the aim with making a combat feel more like an action game they did not really move on that far with it compared to origins and it still lacks any sense of weight. It all feels less satisfying from a tactical sense too. I still found it enjoyable but it is far from amazing.

With Origins and Awakening I enjoyed the gameplay but it was the story, and more specifically the world of Thedas the team at BioWare had created that I was so taken with, and that is what I was coming back for. In my mind, I think they did a great job with the story. The over arching mage vs Templar plot may lack enough nuance to be really effective (although for years I have been consumed with the fear that my siding with the chantry is saying things about the real me that I do not want to know) but the depth added to the characters, the focus on such a small area over many years and the diversity of peoples and factions in such close proximity does create a rich and absorbing narrative few games are able to match. Comparing it to the otherwise superior Inquisition I am happy with the choice they made to focus on Kirkwall rather than have miles of open world (sort of) to struggle to fill with interesting plot beats and characters. The change to a largely predefined protagonist was also a good one in my opinion. Likely emulating the success of Shepard in Mass Effect not only did it allow for better writers than me to words in the characters mouth it also added the emotional weight a voice actor can bring. The companions are all well realised and give you real reasons to end up on either end of their friendship spectrums. The act structure keeps the tension of the story better than many open world games do.

In short it is the writing of DA2 that allows it to shine and for me overlook any weaknesses it otherwise has. The best indicator of just how much I liked it is that it made me so excited for the next game that I went full on HYPE, hovering up any old clickbait news about the game almost daily for like a whole year before release. That does not prove DA2 was a good game, nor that it was good for me but must mean I had a good time playing it (oh god i hope it does). I would recommend Dragon age 2 to any one who enjoyed Origins or Inquisition, likes a good fantasy tale or even just a richly realised world. Even if you just bust it down to easy and play it like an interactive story there is still a lot to enjoy here.

[Belmont03]

My experience with the game never happened. Dragons Age Origins had taken me for a complete surprise. I had been gifted the game, along with Bad Company 2, out of the blue. I'm not sure I had even heard of the game prior, although I did know about Bioware and their previous games, even if I had never played them. With my magazine gathered information, of Bioware, I set out to play DAO. LONG story short I fell completely in love with the type of game they made, and have since then caught up on a load of CRPGS.

Then enters Dragon Age 2 less than year after I had been enamored with DAO. Immediately after seeing an early trailer I sat in disbelief wondering how could they have left behind the dialogue complexity and tactical combat. They had seemingly just repainted Mass Effect 2 with a weird looking reimaging of DAO. Maybe, people could have seen that as a good thing?

ME2 is an amazing game, even if, admittedly, I hadn't played the game, and wouldn't for a few years, but DAO wasn't trying to be like Mass Effect or ME2. Hating, Bioware had sacrificed a design to fit with what was probably a more popular design, when they already owned and created the other said design, I never played the game nor wanted too.

Here's to me hoping the chat on the game will make me realize I missed an experience worth trying.

P.S. This totally happened for me with Bioshock Infinite, so fingers crossed.

[The_reviewist]

They had seemingly just repainted Mass Effect 2 with a weird looking reimaging of DAO. Maybe, people could have seen that as a good thing?

ME2 is an amazing game, even if, admittedly, I hadn't played the game, and wouldn't for a few years, but DAO wasn't trying to be like Mass Effect or ME2. Hating, Bioware had sacrificed a design to fit with what was probably a more popular design, when they already owned and created the other said design, I never played the game nor wanted too.

Really curious about this comment. Now I never saw the Dragon Age 2 trailer, but I never heard anyone say that DA2 was basically a reskinned ME2. Was this a common comment at the time it came out? The game certainly isn't that at all.