Dragon Age II
Mar. 15th, 2011 02:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joiedecombatI finished Dragon Age II this weekend, so... my observations, let me show you them.
First, the gameplay. I've admitted before that I generally don't play primarily for gameplay, so I'll just get this out of the way - I didn't have any problems with it aside from the lack of auto-attack, and even then, the rogue has a lot of attack options which mitigate it by incorporating leaps, rushes, and flash-steps. And it's actually better for a mage, since they're meant to be ranged combatants.
I was sad at first at the lack of dual wield as an option for warriors - they're now limited to either two-hand or sword-and-board. But now that I've played the game through, I honestly don't think I'd feel the need to ever do a warrior run even if a dual-wield warrior build was possible, for reasons I'll get into more when I talk about the characters and storyline.
Aside from this I found it very similar to the first game's in most respects. Skills and spells still work the same way, although the animations are a little more over-the-top. Enemies spawn in waves for most battles, which can be a little annoying but which I usually didn't find too hard to deal with.
I still like the area maps for Kirkwall, but there's a reason for that; almost all of the game's action takes place there. The instance maps for sidequests quickly get repetitive; get used to seeing the same rocky coastal paths, caves, warehouses, sewer hideouts, and mansions repeatedly throughout the same. (One may find a certain level of stealth genius in this if one chooses to interpret it as Varric not bothering to describe these after the first time or two, leaving Cassandra's imagination to fill them in from his initial descriptions. The framing device is a sneaky way to wave away a lot of this kind of problem.)
I also like the changes to potion, poison/bomb, and rune crafting, although I still didn't by any means use them to potential. Definitely an improvement on the DAO system; the new system doesn't make you take up space in your inventory for items that might or might not be useful for crafting later on, and it's clearer about what's useful and what's purely vendor trash to sell and make money on. The inventory also helpfully rates equipment for you based on your level.
The dialogue wheel, imported and improved upon from Mass Effect, is very useful - having icons to clue you in as to the tone or purpose of a given choice makes it easier to avoid mishaps. What's really interesting about it is that the effects are cumulative; the game picks up on which tone you take most often and slants Hawke's dialogue automatically in that direction, affecting even her combat barks. It also occasionally allows you to invite companions to pipe in if they have relevant knowledge or interests, and it's always worth it to take these options.
I was initially disappointed by the inability to initiate conversations with companion characters at will, but in the end, I think there were still as many opportunities to talk to them, and the game helpfully provides a note in your quest journal when a companion has something to talk about or when you have a gift you can give them. In the end I think I find this method preferable to having to talk to each companion after each plot point to see if they had anything new to say, and often just running through the same dialogue trees with no new material, or just plain running through everything they had to say and getting stuck in a loop. (It's still worthwhile to try talking to them periodically, as their one-line responses change often in response to where you are and what's been going on lately.)
In any case, story and characters are most of what I play for, and I'm willing to overlook a lot of quibbles about the gameplay if I like the writing.
DA2's storyline is a departure from Bioware's usual model. Traditionally, they've allowed the player some freedom about what order they hit plot points in, but regardless of that, the points string together from one to the next into a clearly-defined storyline, with a specific goal driving it: 'stop Malak and the Sith' in KotOR, 'stop Saren' in Mass Effect, 'stop the Blight' in DAO. Mass Effect 2 mixed it up a little by making recruiting and earning the loyalty of the companion characters the main vehicle through which the plot unfolded, but it still basically followed the same model.
DA2, in comparison, is mostly about Hawke's involvement in and influence on events in and around Kirkwall. This takes the form, especially in the first act, of a lot of little missions which aren't really directly connected, save by certain unifying themes - in the end, what drives the plot is the tension between mages and the Chantry's Templars, and to a lesser extent the qunari, all of which inevitably boils over into an explosion that Hawke has to deal with personally. This has caused a lot of players to complain that the game seems directionless, and I can see their point, but I can also see the way in which the early missions lead into the later ones, which all feed into that tension and lead to its eventual eruption. I find it oddly immersive.
Also of note: this game does not have nearly as many points at which you can find a compromise or a third and better option when faced with a difficult and unpleasant choice. There aren't any Redcliffes or Brecilian Forests in DA2; the player just has to pick whatever they believe is the lesser of two evils, most of the time, and then deal with whatever mess it creates.
This is definitely a middle installment of a trilogy, and like a lot of those, it's more of a downer than the first game was. The situation in Kirkwall gets resolved - more or less - thanks to Hawke, but a much bigger mess is created in the process and the end of the game is clearly leading into DA3 and an epic resolution. This, again, has netted a lot of complaints that it feels like a prologue, and about the lack of resolution, and again I can see the point. I didn't personally find it unsatisfying... although it does make me wish that the next game were already available. Or at least a DLC pack.
The framing device - Varric telling the "real story" of Hawke's role in the whole mess - is highly entertaining and I enjoyed it a lot. It helps that Varric makes for a great narrator.
Which brings me to the characters. Being fully-voiced has the benefit of making Hawke, like Shepard in Mass Effect, a fully-realized character rather than just a player avatar, and the three different tone options provide even more flexibility for developing Hawke's character than ME's Paragon/Renegade system did.
And then there's the companion characters, and this is still a Bioware RPG, although they've adapted the approval system from the first game into a friendship/rivalry system which gives bonuses for either direction.
- Aveline, as I said before, is my buddy. First of all, how awesome is it that one of the two main warrior options is a woman? She's both noble and highly pragmatic, and completely badass: she first turns up in the prologue, punching a darkspawn to death. I love her to pieces. She was my Hawke's best friend throughout the game, and I'll probably never want to take the rivalry route with her ever.
- Varric is a fun, fun character. He fills the good-natured, smooth-talking rogue slot in the party, defying all kinds of dwarven stereotypes in the process; he's a storyteller who recognizes genre tropes and drops thinly-veiled pop culture references, and he turns out to have a heart of gold. Never, ever pass up the opportunity to ask him to step in during a dialogue - the result is always epic BS.
- Bethany and Carver, I have less to say about. Bethany exists primarily to be Hawke's mage sister if Hawke is a warrior or a rogue, providing Hawke with a personal interest in the situation between the Templars and mages in Kirkwall. She fills the role effectively, but I can't really find a lot to say about her personality beyond that her interactions with Varric are adorable. Carver, now that I'm trying a mage Hawke, is potentially more interesting. He's predisposed toward rivalry with Hawke; he seems to feel overshadowed by her, and he's quick to object to a lot of her choices, but I can't help but notice that in quite a few cases he seems to be objecting to courses of action that might specifically get Hawke into trouble. It'll be interesting to see where that leads. Also: everybody picks on him, and it's kind of hilarious. "Bit of a tit, your brother."
- Anders... well. I was not all that attached to him in Awakening, honestly - I much preferred Nathaniel - so I do not have very strong opinions about the changes in him between Awakening and DA2, but even ignoring those, he's just generally a highly divisive character, and he's sort of the Alistair or the Morrigan of DA2 in that he's the companion with the most significance to the main plot, as a runaway mage with very strong feelings about the Circle and Templars. "Anders, WHAT DID YOU DO" was a recurring theme throughout my initial run through the game. He's also a love interest, but not one that I'm interested in for a variety of reasons.
- Fenris is very intense and prickly and hard to please, and is therefore a joy to watch for his amazing deadpan and his moments of awkwardness (and sometimes smoldering flirtation). He is my love interest of choice, because what can I say, I like them emotionally damaged and brooding. I enjoyed the way his romance played out; the fact that he is difficult to please made it rewarding to see him gradually unbend and struggle with his feelings. He also provides an interesting perspective on the main plot, since he has very strong feelings about magic and mages and will inevitably butt heads with a mage or mage-sympathizer Hawke over it. (Bonus: rivalry does not preclude completing a romance. My rogue managed to max his friendship levels, but my mage is going for hatesex.) I also really like his character design - he's the one elf in the game the new elf design actually works for, and man does it work for him - and he's got a deliciously low, faintly growly voice performed by Gideon Emery (who was also Balthier in FFXII).
- Sebastian, the bonus companion from the Exiled Prince DLC, turned out to be adorable. I'm sure other players will find him preachy, but for me he turned out to be effectively the team's therapist, and listening to him trying to counsel Fenris and Anders was kind of heartwarming. He's well-integrated into the main plot, and he's got an interesting conflict going between his vows to the Chantry and his heritage as a prince. I'll probably find it in me to do a run in which I'll try out his romance, oath of celibacy or no. The Scots burr is oddly cute.
- Isabela, I did not manage to do much with. She's also kind of significant to the plot and I'm going to try to actually work up to friendship with her to see what effect it has, but at the moment I haven't settled fully on my opinion of her. It bothers me that her promiscuity is apparently played as one of her most defining characteristics, and also played for laughs; it's one thing to see her hitting on Fenris, and another to find out that she's had Anders heal her of STDs - more than once.
- Merrill is my least favorite companion, hands down. I could deal with her wide-eyed naivetey and dorky cuteness, although it's not my favorite personality type for a female character, but she compounds it by joining Anders in Team Bad Idea and refusing to listen to anyone who tries to talk any sense into her about it, no matter what. Aaaaargh.
I mentioned earlier that I don't really feel any need to do a playthrough as a warrior. That's basically because of how much the game's storyline focuses on the conflict surrounding mages; either Hawke is a mage herself, or she's got a mage for a sister, and either way the other mage companions are basically nuts and left me flailing in frustration. Seriously, Anders and Merrill are Captain and Lieutenant of Team Bad Idea. Meanwhile, playing as a warrior would mean there'd never be a point in having both Fenris and Aveline in my party, and I love them both dearly; playing as a rogue allows me to do my own lockpicking and trap-disarming, which is highly valuable: even though Varric was almost always in my party, traps are only revealed when he comes within range of them, and since he's usually following behind Hawke... yeah.
The only trouble with not playing a warrior is that the boss fight of the second act is a one-on-one duel that was tough to get through as a rogue, and I'm not looking forward to it as a mage, either. Although I gather that it's possible to avoid the duel and fight a big free-for-all with your party instead, so there's that.
Bioware has, I think, been listening to complaints about how companions are handled in their other games, because they put a lot of effort into giving the companions more depth in this one - not just in personal character development, but in making them really seem to have lives beyond following Hawke around. Rather than simply being glued to her heels once they're recruited, or hanging around camp waiting for her to pick them up, they each have a home or a hangout or a place of business where Hawke can visit them, and they at least nominally have other things going on when they're not with Hawke. It's not perfect - you can always just keep a companion in the party all the time - but it definitely adds something. They also react more to the things that happen to Hawke over the course of the game, in dialogue with her and with one another, to the point of whoever Hawke is closest to turning up to try to comfort her after a particularly rough plot development. They also very clearly have relationships with one another distinct from their relationships with Hawke; I was pleased to discover that Aveline, Varric, and Fenris are all friendly with one another, and Varric's interactions with Bethany and Merrill are adorable.
I got surprisingly attached to some of the NPCs, notably Hawke's mother. There are also quite a few cameos from the earlier material - aside from, of course, Flemeth, I ran into Cullen the Templar, Leliana, Alistair, Nathaniel Howe, and Zevran. Even better, some of them turned back up to help out in the final battle - a very pleasant surprise. I do wish, however, that they'd introduced Knight-Commander Meredith and First Enchanter Orsino earlier in the game - granted, you hear about Meredith almost from the beginning, but you don't actually meet either of them until almost the end of the second act, and they're both very important to the storyline.
There was probably more I meant to say, but this is spammy enough for now and it's stupid o'clock, so I'll let that be it.
First, the gameplay. I've admitted before that I generally don't play primarily for gameplay, so I'll just get this out of the way - I didn't have any problems with it aside from the lack of auto-attack, and even then, the rogue has a lot of attack options which mitigate it by incorporating leaps, rushes, and flash-steps. And it's actually better for a mage, since they're meant to be ranged combatants.
I was sad at first at the lack of dual wield as an option for warriors - they're now limited to either two-hand or sword-and-board. But now that I've played the game through, I honestly don't think I'd feel the need to ever do a warrior run even if a dual-wield warrior build was possible, for reasons I'll get into more when I talk about the characters and storyline.
Aside from this I found it very similar to the first game's in most respects. Skills and spells still work the same way, although the animations are a little more over-the-top. Enemies spawn in waves for most battles, which can be a little annoying but which I usually didn't find too hard to deal with.
I still like the area maps for Kirkwall, but there's a reason for that; almost all of the game's action takes place there. The instance maps for sidequests quickly get repetitive; get used to seeing the same rocky coastal paths, caves, warehouses, sewer hideouts, and mansions repeatedly throughout the same. (One may find a certain level of stealth genius in this if one chooses to interpret it as Varric not bothering to describe these after the first time or two, leaving Cassandra's imagination to fill them in from his initial descriptions. The framing device is a sneaky way to wave away a lot of this kind of problem.)
I also like the changes to potion, poison/bomb, and rune crafting, although I still didn't by any means use them to potential. Definitely an improvement on the DAO system; the new system doesn't make you take up space in your inventory for items that might or might not be useful for crafting later on, and it's clearer about what's useful and what's purely vendor trash to sell and make money on. The inventory also helpfully rates equipment for you based on your level.
The dialogue wheel, imported and improved upon from Mass Effect, is very useful - having icons to clue you in as to the tone or purpose of a given choice makes it easier to avoid mishaps. What's really interesting about it is that the effects are cumulative; the game picks up on which tone you take most often and slants Hawke's dialogue automatically in that direction, affecting even her combat barks. It also occasionally allows you to invite companions to pipe in if they have relevant knowledge or interests, and it's always worth it to take these options.
I was initially disappointed by the inability to initiate conversations with companion characters at will, but in the end, I think there were still as many opportunities to talk to them, and the game helpfully provides a note in your quest journal when a companion has something to talk about or when you have a gift you can give them. In the end I think I find this method preferable to having to talk to each companion after each plot point to see if they had anything new to say, and often just running through the same dialogue trees with no new material, or just plain running through everything they had to say and getting stuck in a loop. (It's still worthwhile to try talking to them periodically, as their one-line responses change often in response to where you are and what's been going on lately.)
In any case, story and characters are most of what I play for, and I'm willing to overlook a lot of quibbles about the gameplay if I like the writing.
DA2's storyline is a departure from Bioware's usual model. Traditionally, they've allowed the player some freedom about what order they hit plot points in, but regardless of that, the points string together from one to the next into a clearly-defined storyline, with a specific goal driving it: 'stop Malak and the Sith' in KotOR, 'stop Saren' in Mass Effect, 'stop the Blight' in DAO. Mass Effect 2 mixed it up a little by making recruiting and earning the loyalty of the companion characters the main vehicle through which the plot unfolded, but it still basically followed the same model.
DA2, in comparison, is mostly about Hawke's involvement in and influence on events in and around Kirkwall. This takes the form, especially in the first act, of a lot of little missions which aren't really directly connected, save by certain unifying themes - in the end, what drives the plot is the tension between mages and the Chantry's Templars, and to a lesser extent the qunari, all of which inevitably boils over into an explosion that Hawke has to deal with personally. This has caused a lot of players to complain that the game seems directionless, and I can see their point, but I can also see the way in which the early missions lead into the later ones, which all feed into that tension and lead to its eventual eruption. I find it oddly immersive.
Also of note: this game does not have nearly as many points at which you can find a compromise or a third and better option when faced with a difficult and unpleasant choice. There aren't any Redcliffes or Brecilian Forests in DA2; the player just has to pick whatever they believe is the lesser of two evils, most of the time, and then deal with whatever mess it creates.
This is definitely a middle installment of a trilogy, and like a lot of those, it's more of a downer than the first game was. The situation in Kirkwall gets resolved - more or less - thanks to Hawke, but a much bigger mess is created in the process and the end of the game is clearly leading into DA3 and an epic resolution. This, again, has netted a lot of complaints that it feels like a prologue, and about the lack of resolution, and again I can see the point. I didn't personally find it unsatisfying... although it does make me wish that the next game were already available. Or at least a DLC pack.
The framing device - Varric telling the "real story" of Hawke's role in the whole mess - is highly entertaining and I enjoyed it a lot. It helps that Varric makes for a great narrator.
Which brings me to the characters. Being fully-voiced has the benefit of making Hawke, like Shepard in Mass Effect, a fully-realized character rather than just a player avatar, and the three different tone options provide even more flexibility for developing Hawke's character than ME's Paragon/Renegade system did.
And then there's the companion characters, and this is still a Bioware RPG, although they've adapted the approval system from the first game into a friendship/rivalry system which gives bonuses for either direction.
- Aveline, as I said before, is my buddy. First of all, how awesome is it that one of the two main warrior options is a woman? She's both noble and highly pragmatic, and completely badass: she first turns up in the prologue, punching a darkspawn to death. I love her to pieces. She was my Hawke's best friend throughout the game, and I'll probably never want to take the rivalry route with her ever.
- Varric is a fun, fun character. He fills the good-natured, smooth-talking rogue slot in the party, defying all kinds of dwarven stereotypes in the process; he's a storyteller who recognizes genre tropes and drops thinly-veiled pop culture references, and he turns out to have a heart of gold. Never, ever pass up the opportunity to ask him to step in during a dialogue - the result is always epic BS.
- Bethany and Carver, I have less to say about. Bethany exists primarily to be Hawke's mage sister if Hawke is a warrior or a rogue, providing Hawke with a personal interest in the situation between the Templars and mages in Kirkwall. She fills the role effectively, but I can't really find a lot to say about her personality beyond that her interactions with Varric are adorable. Carver, now that I'm trying a mage Hawke, is potentially more interesting. He's predisposed toward rivalry with Hawke; he seems to feel overshadowed by her, and he's quick to object to a lot of her choices, but I can't help but notice that in quite a few cases he seems to be objecting to courses of action that might specifically get Hawke into trouble. It'll be interesting to see where that leads. Also: everybody picks on him, and it's kind of hilarious. "Bit of a tit, your brother."
- Anders... well. I was not all that attached to him in Awakening, honestly - I much preferred Nathaniel - so I do not have very strong opinions about the changes in him between Awakening and DA2, but even ignoring those, he's just generally a highly divisive character, and he's sort of the Alistair or the Morrigan of DA2 in that he's the companion with the most significance to the main plot, as a runaway mage with very strong feelings about the Circle and Templars. "Anders, WHAT DID YOU DO" was a recurring theme throughout my initial run through the game. He's also a love interest, but not one that I'm interested in for a variety of reasons.
- Fenris is very intense and prickly and hard to please, and is therefore a joy to watch for his amazing deadpan and his moments of awkwardness (and sometimes smoldering flirtation). He is my love interest of choice, because what can I say, I like them emotionally damaged and brooding. I enjoyed the way his romance played out; the fact that he is difficult to please made it rewarding to see him gradually unbend and struggle with his feelings. He also provides an interesting perspective on the main plot, since he has very strong feelings about magic and mages and will inevitably butt heads with a mage or mage-sympathizer Hawke over it. (Bonus: rivalry does not preclude completing a romance. My rogue managed to max his friendship levels, but my mage is going for hatesex.) I also really like his character design - he's the one elf in the game the new elf design actually works for, and man does it work for him - and he's got a deliciously low, faintly growly voice performed by Gideon Emery (who was also Balthier in FFXII).
- Sebastian, the bonus companion from the Exiled Prince DLC, turned out to be adorable. I'm sure other players will find him preachy, but for me he turned out to be effectively the team's therapist, and listening to him trying to counsel Fenris and Anders was kind of heartwarming. He's well-integrated into the main plot, and he's got an interesting conflict going between his vows to the Chantry and his heritage as a prince. I'll probably find it in me to do a run in which I'll try out his romance, oath of celibacy or no. The Scots burr is oddly cute.
- Isabela, I did not manage to do much with. She's also kind of significant to the plot and I'm going to try to actually work up to friendship with her to see what effect it has, but at the moment I haven't settled fully on my opinion of her. It bothers me that her promiscuity is apparently played as one of her most defining characteristics, and also played for laughs; it's one thing to see her hitting on Fenris, and another to find out that she's had Anders heal her of STDs - more than once.
- Merrill is my least favorite companion, hands down. I could deal with her wide-eyed naivetey and dorky cuteness, although it's not my favorite personality type for a female character, but she compounds it by joining Anders in Team Bad Idea and refusing to listen to anyone who tries to talk any sense into her about it, no matter what. Aaaaargh.
I mentioned earlier that I don't really feel any need to do a playthrough as a warrior. That's basically because of how much the game's storyline focuses on the conflict surrounding mages; either Hawke is a mage herself, or she's got a mage for a sister, and either way the other mage companions are basically nuts and left me flailing in frustration. Seriously, Anders and Merrill are Captain and Lieutenant of Team Bad Idea. Meanwhile, playing as a warrior would mean there'd never be a point in having both Fenris and Aveline in my party, and I love them both dearly; playing as a rogue allows me to do my own lockpicking and trap-disarming, which is highly valuable: even though Varric was almost always in my party, traps are only revealed when he comes within range of them, and since he's usually following behind Hawke... yeah.
The only trouble with not playing a warrior is that the boss fight of the second act is a one-on-one duel that was tough to get through as a rogue, and I'm not looking forward to it as a mage, either. Although I gather that it's possible to avoid the duel and fight a big free-for-all with your party instead, so there's that.
Bioware has, I think, been listening to complaints about how companions are handled in their other games, because they put a lot of effort into giving the companions more depth in this one - not just in personal character development, but in making them really seem to have lives beyond following Hawke around. Rather than simply being glued to her heels once they're recruited, or hanging around camp waiting for her to pick them up, they each have a home or a hangout or a place of business where Hawke can visit them, and they at least nominally have other things going on when they're not with Hawke. It's not perfect - you can always just keep a companion in the party all the time - but it definitely adds something. They also react more to the things that happen to Hawke over the course of the game, in dialogue with her and with one another, to the point of whoever Hawke is closest to turning up to try to comfort her after a particularly rough plot development. They also very clearly have relationships with one another distinct from their relationships with Hawke; I was pleased to discover that Aveline, Varric, and Fenris are all friendly with one another, and Varric's interactions with Bethany and Merrill are adorable.
I got surprisingly attached to some of the NPCs, notably Hawke's mother. There are also quite a few cameos from the earlier material - aside from, of course, Flemeth, I ran into Cullen the Templar, Leliana, Alistair, Nathaniel Howe, and Zevran. Even better, some of them turned back up to help out in the final battle - a very pleasant surprise. I do wish, however, that they'd introduced Knight-Commander Meredith and First Enchanter Orsino earlier in the game - granted, you hear about Meredith almost from the beginning, but you don't actually meet either of them until almost the end of the second act, and they're both very important to the storyline.
There was probably more I meant to say, but this is spammy enough for now and it's stupid o'clock, so I'll let that be it.
