Dragon Age II: EA boogaloo

[CharlesPhipps]

Rhianna Pratchett had nothing to do with Dragon Age 2, going by my admittedly-quick research. Somehow I suspect the game would've had a better story if she had...

Some of Rhianna Pratchett's video game work is pure awesome.

Some of it is not.

[chaos42]

I have to agree with you chuck this game was hell for me. I got it and beat it the year before last just before i got my ps4 -i got it through my job there is this point thing you can redeem for stuff and i worked there for over a year and got a ps4 out of it, i knew it would come eventually so i played 1 and 2 and i have to say 1 was better though it has its own glitches but still its fun, this one is like anti fun its just depressing everything happening is depressing and i felt like its just set up for the next game, which got heavy changes due to mass effect 3.

[Robovski]

While I completed DAII (on my PS3) I found it disappointing with how on-rails it was and the sheer volume of reused assets. Also I had great frustration with the fact that you basically kill your way through all your problems. I feel Chuck's frustration in this regard; little choice, little control, little agency as a player to be the driver of the story, but somehow us gamers don't know what we are talking about when we don't like it as much as the critics do.

[Rodan56]

I was sad to see Chuck's utter terrible experience playing this game. I can completely understand it, especially when the game itself was clearly rushed and badly planned. That Inquisition was an improvement in many cases is astounding, that game isn't perfect either but it was by no means on rails nor did you ever feel like you had no effect on anything.

To play devil's advocate for a moment, I think the intention of the storyline was the idea that "You can be an amazing, awesome, powerful figure in society... and still it won't be enough. Sometimes things will be bigger than you and there's not much you can do to stop or prevent them." No matter what Hawke does, he/she can't solve the bigger problems. They're bigger than any one person and Hawke can only do so much.

That's a good idea for a game, but there's a problem in it for one that emphasizes choice. A lot of these quests force you into a singular outcome. They say you're our best hope for saving the day and they yank that out from under you. Hell it just seems to force stupid crap onto you, forcing you to fight people you probably don't want to. Like the Templar-Mage conspiracy against Meredith, why didn't we have the option to join them? Why did they think we were aligned with Meredith? In contrast, you can side with literally anyone in Dragon Age Origins and the end results can lead to a crazy amount of different outcomes. So even thought the story is set in stone, it feels like you've had an effect.

Here, no matter what you do, you'll end up fighting the same people with little means to get around those fights. Think of how much more cool the game would've been if you found a way to convince enough Templars to join you and fight Meredith? Or how much better the overall story would've been if they didn't constantly use the extremes of each side to demonstrate the overarching story? Because a few reasonable Templars and Mages in the bunch would've helped cement that both sides have something of a point. A ball they dropped again during the Geth/Quarian conflict in Mass Effect 3. It's hard to sympathize with the Templar's problems when they only seem to illustrate how shitty they are as people. And it feels so unfair, like every Templar is somehow the worst kind of person ever. It's not much better when the Mages we encounter all practically end up as an enemy, even if we help them. It makes them hard to trust and the Templars idiotic villains. It doesn't matter who we side with, they're both pretty terrible, it's just one group is an extremely oppressed minority. So you kinda already side with them, even when they keep doing stupid shit.

I don't know, I just feel like DA2 would've benefited more from people taking a step back and asking if these quests were leaning too heavily into the extremes constantly.

[Winter]

On thing I feel DAI did a lot better then DA2 was how they handled the Mage/Templar conflict, throughout most of the first act you get to see the good and bad of both sides, you see good Templars or former Templars as well as good Mages alongside the jerks instead of both sides being absolutely horrible with only one or two good mages and Templars. You also see that while many Mages wanted out of the Circles you see that some were okay in the Circles for reasons that are actually understandable, some liked having a house over their head and that not all Templars were jerks who saw all mages as monsters that should be killed.

Cullen even goes on record that his hatred towards was misplaced and while he doesn't think Mages should have some limitations he does see that mages are people and should be allowed to leave the Circles instead of being held there all their lives. Take this in contrast with Fenris, who's biggest change towards changing his opinion on Mages is not hating one or two mages while insisting that the rest be killed or locked up.

Also, while Merrill is working with Demons unlike Anders she's only working with one and doing what she can to make sure that if anything goes wrong she is the only one that gets hurt. Sure her keeper gets killed and her whole clan can die but in all fairness that is largely due to her keeper not trusting her and deciding to put Merrill's well being over the rest of her clan. I always find myself being more annoyed at the Keeper then Merrill because Merrill knew the risk and most of the things that go wrong are due to her keeper screwing up. For example, when one of her clan members die it's largely due to A) him thinking that the monster was less dangerous then Merrill because he was a idiot and B) The Keeper spreading rumors that what Merrill was doing would bring ruin to the clan.

And what boggles the mind is that the only way to get Merrill out of this is to side with her clan and say that she is at fault for her keeper's death even though, when you get down to it, it wasn't Merrill's fault. The game encourages you to belittle and blame someone who is actually not at fault for anything going wrong.

This made me feel like a really shitty lover as I was pretty much telling her off for getting her mother killed as it was the only way for her to avoid killing the rest of her clan/family! WHAT THE HELL BIOWARE?!?! You have Anders make unwanted advances on me and then force me to either kill Merrill's family or have me blame her for something she didn't do which make Hawke come off as either a borderline abusive boyfriend/girlfriend or just a plane bad friend as I tell her she is horrible after she just suffered a traumatic event.

NICE F#ING JOB @$$HOLES!!!

[GandALF]

I'm sure all the casteless dwarves, city elves and toothless human peasants feel sorry for the poor oppressed mages with their warm beds and free education.

[Madner Kami]

I'm sure all the casteless dwarves, city elves and toothless human peasants feel sorry for the poor oppressed mages with their warm beds and free education.

A golden cage is still a cage and the very real problems of one group do not justify or cancel out the very real problems of another group.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I'm sure all the casteless dwarves, city elves and toothless human peasants feel sorry for the poor oppressed mages with their warm beds and free education.

You know the mandatory major exam in that free education is "we throw you against a demon and if you succumb we stab you, or you have the option of being brain-neutered." If that's the choice, I think I'll take a heap of straw and the ferelden equivalent of community college.

[Robovski]

Still not crying a river for the mages over the peasantry, who we do very little for in general in the game. But that's the framework we have here, Templars vs Mages and the Other Elites. Poor people don't have power or money and are lucky to get a job in a mine where they get eaten by Dragonlings.

[Winter]

When I first played DA2 about half way through act 2 I remembered one of Hamlet's famous lines, Denmark's a prison. Same thing here, Kirkwall's a Prison A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Kirkwall being one o' th' worst. When I played Mark of the Assassin it was like a breath of fresh air to get out of Kirkwall if only for a little bit before going right back to the Worst City in Fictional History, eat your heart out Gotham.