Gaming: Dragons and Pirates. What Can Go Wrong?

Dragon Age 2 had been out for about a week or so and people are not happy.

Scratch that. People are mad.

Why? Well if you are a fan of the original game then there are quite a few things (meaning a lot) in DA2 that will chafe on lovely memories of DA:Origins.

To give you an idea what the hoopla is all about, Hawke, the main protagonist of the game escaped the Blight of Ferelden escaping with his family from Lothering. He will then go to Kirkwall to start a new life and eventually become the city’s Champion. How you get from a dirt poor runaway to a money showering celebrity is the question.

The game is told from the perspective of Varric a suave (and hairy) dwarf who is one of Hawke’s companions. He is being interrogated by Cassandra a Seeker of the Chantry. It is interesting in the way that depending on how you play the game, the narration will revolve around it. The game is separated using Bioware’s three act scheme. The time line of the game starts as the same time as the Blight hit Ferelden and will span the next 10 years. As usual, incredible writing makes each act compelling on its own though there is a lack of having a main bad guy. The first game had the cataclysmic Blight to work the end-of-the-world route but for DA2, it feels more like you’re a glorified investigator. All that search and apprehend (or destroy if it suits your fancy) makes it difficult to appreciate anything bigger than getting that dick who started killing people.

The environment is bigger and richer than the previous game as you have a veritable city to explore but that’s it. Yes folks, aside from a little frolicking in the forest to meet the elves, you’re pretty much stuck in Kirkwall. It’s got its charms but looking at the same scene over and over again for the next 50 hours makes me wish that I can pee on the walls. At least the music is still top notch though all those spiders dropping at the same time makes for a very loud entrance that almost gave me a heart attack.

Combat has been streamlined. Everything is faster and your enemies explode like watermelons. It could get a bit hectic as combat is very flashy. The game highlights the different skills you can use in combat but what it doesn’t highlight is the tactical zoom that the previous game use to have. You can still pause and give commands but the tactical element of it is zilch as you will have to wait for your enemies to come to you or you go to them.

The linear skill trees have been replaced with a new system that lets you choose skills with its branching function. I’m still not decided where that is a good thing or not.

Your companions are probably one of the elements that can make or break a game especially with the DA series which has that Fellowship-of-the-ring feel to it. Each one of your companions has a story to share and it rewards the player who unravels them. One of your companions has a particularly Greek Drama feel to it as it tries to follow the tragic hero routine. Your hero can build a romantic relationship with practically anything that has two legs with a few exceptions.
Party banter is top notch and may I say a lot more crude. Characters in game will be cussing up a storm and you’ll notice how much more polite people are across the sea in Ferelden.

There are a lot things that makes this game somewhat better than the first and there certainly also a lot more things here that will probably piss the living hell out of the fan boys. Do I hate it? No. I love the game. It might have sucked compared to the first one but it’s still a game.