Join the Champion of Kirkwall in their Rise to Power.
Dragon Age 2
Developer: Bioware
Price: $60.00
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3 [reviewed], PC
In Dragon Age 2, you presume the role of Hawke, a completely customizable character to your liking who escapes from their hometown with their family. The game takes place directly after the events in Origins, so if you haven’t played the first one, you might want to pick it up in order to get a good idea of what’s going on. It’s not mandatory, but it is a spectacular game, so why not?
Dragon Age 2 takes place in the city of Kirkwall, located somewhere in the Free Marshes. It is here where your Hawke will rise up from being a simple refugee at the start of the game and forge a name for themselves, changing not just Kirkwall, but Thedas, the world as a whole. The game also takes a much different approach of storytelling as its predecessor had—it’s a framed narrative, retold by one of your companions you journey with. Your companion, a dwarf named Varric, happens to be one of the most likable characters in the game. It is especially entertaining when he inserts good-willed humor and exaggerates certain aspects of the story as it unfolds, then is pressed by his interrogator to tell the story as it really happened.
This framed narrative also means that Hawke must be a human, and cannot be an elf or dwarf from the previous Dragon Age. The lack of this option will understandably put off some players, but it is a necessary evil, as your character is fully voiced this time around. Dialogue is much more streamlined, as it now utilizes the dialogue wheel, like BioWare’s Mass Effect. Usually there are three options to interact with characters—there’s angelic, sarcastic, or ruthless Hawke. However, there will be moments where you as a player will be able to divert from these three options. One especially neat feature in Dragon Age 2 is how it keeps track of which dialogue option you pick the most—it keeps a hidden tally. On occasion, Hawke will respond without the player’s output on the dialogue wheel. Based on which personality you mostly picked, Hawke will respond accordingly. They also participate in party banter with the personality you picked the most.
Dragon Age 2’s plot, without delving into spoilers, is a much different beast than Origins. Origins was more on a grander scale, a classic role playing good versus evil plot having you, a Grey Warden (a group of warrior that fight evil creatures known as the darkspawn) save all of Ferelden by ending the blight, a war between Ferelden or possibility Thedas’ citizens against the darkspawn and the archdemon. Dragon Age 2 is a much more personal tale, telling of a person’s inner struggle while obtaining power by making radical decisions and changing the world forever.
The game is separated into three acts, and each act has its own premise, each providing exposition of how your Hawke rose to power and overall shaped Kirkwall by the actions they made, effectively earning the title ‘Champion of Kirkwall’. While the pacing of the narrative may feel underwhelming in the first act, as you are quested to gather a sufficient amount of money even though at first there is hardly a driving foce, hardly a narrative to go on, which will lead to some players losing interest fairly early, the game’s narrative does a great job of keep all the acts correspondent to each other and the pacing does improve as the plot moves into its second act.
Dialogue isn’t the only thing that has been streamlined; gameplay has as well. For example, you cannot customize the armor your companions wear, yet you can customize their weapons and accessories, which feels like an odd decision. While it was explained by the lead designer of this game that this was done to give each character their own ‘distinct and iconic’ appearance, overall it seems like a lazy design choice and was done to cut corners.
Cutting corners is definitely something players will grow aware of fairly early in this game. It is obvious that this game is a rushed product, lacking the polish that Dragon Age: Origins has overall. While Dragon Age 2 did some things right and took steps forward it also took some steps back.
The companions this time around are all interesting, as were the companions in the last. However players will be disappointed to know that they will not be able to interact with them as much overall as they could in Origins. In fact, your companions will let you know when they want you to speak to them. You won’t learn as much about them as you did the characters in Origins, and the romance options (at least for a heterosexual male) will feel lackluster compared to what players could experience in Origins.
How a companion feels about you is gauged by a ‘friendship and rivalry meter’. If you make decisions that the character approves of then the friendship meter will increase. On the opposite end of the spectrum, by doing things that go against the character’s believes and making occasionally morally ill decisions or even morally correct ones will affect how the character views you. Regardless they will follow you and journey with you but how they perceive you effectively correlates to how they’ll speak with you personally when you go out of your way to have a conversation with them. This is another step forward in the right direction as it adds a layer of depth to the character and how they perceive the choices you make.
Combat is much more flashier and faster paced this time around. As a warrior or a rogue, players will quickly dash into the fray, and enemies will explode rather comically as the battle unfolds. It’s bloody and visceral and much more addicting than Origins was. While overall the game’s combat feels more unrealistic and cartoonish, especially given the occasion enemies that will appear from thin air and battle you and your companions, the combat will hold your interest. Your Hawke and your companions will level up, be able to gain new abilities in doing so and will be able to equip better gear, provided they allocated their attribute points accordingly to fit requirements to equip a certain piece of equipment.
There is no auto-attack on the consoles, which might annoy some combat players as they will have to constantly mash the ‘A’ or ‘X’ button, but this problem can be rectified with a patch that could possibly come in the future.
While the mage was arguably considered overpowered by most, BioWare has fine tuned the other two classes to give them more appeal. In fact it can be argued that warriors, especially its two handed build, and the dual daggers rogue are on par, if not much better than the mage class overall because of their dps (damage per second, which correlates to how much damage they can deal) and how the warrior can control waves of foes. But that is another subjective matter. Overall, there is a reason to replay Dragon Age 2, if not for the sake of using the different classes, then for the sake of making drastically different decisions you made on your previous play through.
This game doesn’t feature nearly as much lore as Dragon Age: Origins did. While it expanded on Qunari culture, players won’t learn a ton about the world as they did in Origins, so some of the more avid fans of this series will be disappointed. It is also important to note how disappointing it is that Dragon Age 2 takes place in Kirkwall and in a handful of areas outside of the Free Marches—Sundermount. Outside of this though the game feels much more linear and repetitive and overall feels like a wasted opportunity.
Thedas is a huge world, but we only explore one city and three or four areas outside of it, set in a mountain region? The game’s setting lacks diversity. Many of the dungeons you travel will look exactly the same as the last—save for an entrance being cut off here and there, but it’s all relative.
Lead designer responded to this ridicule and explained how in order to create more content for Dragon Age 2 they’d have to recycle environments because they did not have enough time to create new ones. This becomes a question of quantity over quality and vice versa. Over all, quality wins in the end, and the recycled dungeons don’t really do much outside of artificially stretching on the game as providing a more mundane and repetitive experience.
The graphics in Dragon Age 2 are a step up from Dragon Age:Origins. While they’re not ‘super hot’ as developer BioWare claimed it would be pre release, the art style has changed wonderfully and made the Dragon Age universe seem more distinct and recognizable overall.
The music in this game is fantastic—a step up from Origins. Granted, players who pre order the game and receive the BioWare Signature Edition will realize that not every song in the game makes the cut on the official soundtrack. Regardless, that is a minor fault. The music feels a lot more memorable and not as generic as its predecessor which is always a step in the right direction. Voice acting is once again top notch, with each voice being completely distinct. While it is rather obvious that an RPG of this caliber would use recycled voice actors, that difference is not discernible—every character, especially your companions, all sound different, have different dialects. Some of the characters, paticularly the Arishok in my opinion, have some of the best voice acting I’ve ever heard in a video game.
There are many side quests in this game, but as previously stated, the areas are recycled, so while the premise of the quest feels different from one another, when it gets down to the exploration of it all, each quest feels rather similar given the five or so dungeon designs in total.
Dragon Age 2 provides a decent length of play time. While it is not nearly as long as Dragon Age: Origins, which personally took me fifty hours to complete on my first run compared to Dragon Age 2’s thirty hours, the game will last a good amount of time, also considering how anyone who enjoyed this game will most likely want to play through it once more because of all the decisions players can make which will have different outcomes.
While overall it feels as if Dragon Age 2 is lacking a particular more fine coating of polish than its predecessor has, Dragon Age 2 is without a doubt a great game. Hopefully Bioware will be able to find a comfortable medium between Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2. And there will be a third game, as evidenced by the rather disappointing cliffhanger ending we were presented with at the end of this game.
The Final Word
Dragon Age 2 is a great game–not as great as its predecessor but a great game. It may not have an epic good versus evil tale, rather, but a personal one that presents a dark and gritty set of choices you must make which blur the shades of gray.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
