Dragon Age II

“Wait a minute” you’re thinking to yourself. “I don’t remember a movie called Dragon Age, let alone its sequel!” And you’d be right. Dragon Age: Origins was a video game. It’s sequel, Dragon Age II, came out recently. I bought it and played through it, and decided to review it.

“What?!?” You’re now thinking to yourself. “This is a movie site. Where do you get off writing a review of a game?” And you’d be perfectly right. In fact, if you want to leave right now and come back when I’ve regained my senses, you can. I only offer three rebuttals. One, it’s my site, and I can do whatever I want with it (technically, Evan contributes as well, but if he doesn’t like this … well, he’s much bigger than me so he can do what he wants). Two, I like the game so much I want to write about it. It would be difficult not to write about it, in fact. Third, the game is so cinematic it may as well be 40 hour interactive movie.

The Dragon Age games are made by an Edmonton-based company called Bioware (although they’ve spread out to Austin, Texas and a few other locations that don’t come to mind. They’re growing, and it’s no wonder. They make good games). I was introduced to Bioware when they made Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which is about as close as Dungeons and Dragons will ever get to Star Wars. Released in 2003, it was fantastic! I played it about a year later, and ran around, beheading bad guys with my lightsaber and generally saving the galaxy about 4000 years before Luke Skywalker had to do it again. I bought the game some time later, and have enjoyed it playing through it occasionally (I’ve beaten it four times, at last count).

In 2007, Bioware made Mass Effect, an RPG set in a universe of their own creation. I saw it on the shelf when browsing Best Buy. I remember an ad campaign that had emphasized choices having a huge impact, so I picked it up, expecting another RPG where you’d pick your abilities during combat, and the characters would execute them, much like in SW: KotOR. Instead, I got an RPG/shooter. It was pretty much the perfect game for me. I wanted a shooter interface for combat (emphasizing twitch reactions) and RPG mechanics for story interaction (upgrading talents, weapons, armor). Absolutely amazing. It blew me away, and I’ve played through it a number of times.

In 2009, Bioware came out with Dragon Age: Origins. Another RPG, with interaction similar to SW:KotOR. Set in another original universe, this time a fantasy setting with witches, mages, dragons, swords, and all that stuff. It was a little grimmer than usual. Some of the choices you made had unintentional effects, and beating the game involved a terrible sacrifice or evil decision. Fun times!

In 2010, Bioware released Mass Effect 2. And it was so good, I can’t play Mass Effect any more. Some of the RPG elements were removed (no more inventory management headaches), but the story is still strong, the character interactions are much better, and the shooting is far superior. I loved it. And I still intend on playing it a few more times (in one year, I’ve beaten it four times. It’s so awesome, it’s almost addicting).

When Dragon Age II was announced, I was expecting it to have the same improvements over Dragon Age: Origins that Mass Effect 2 had over Mass Effect. I was a little disappointed in that regard, because it wasn’t quite as revolutionary as I had expected, but it’s still a great game.

Because I usually review movies, and this is something different, I thought I’d review it in a manner that’s different as well. So, here are a bunch of signs I got playing Dragon Age II.

- Sign of a funny game: Acquiring a dagger called “The Tiny Cut (413 out of 1000)”

- Sign of a punny game: Acquiring a shield called “Lord Bearing’s Wall”

- Sign that Windows is taking over the game: Some major plot decisions have a cleverly concealed “Are you sure?” dialogue.

- Sign that Final Fantasy is working its way into your game: One of the characters is an elf names Fenris. He’s an escaped slave from a foreign land. He reminded me very strongly of Cloud, or Lightning, or whatever generic emo protagonist with an object-based name is starring in the latest FF games (in a few years, Square Enix will just give up and the hero of Final Fantasy 27 will be named Noun). Tall, white-haired, and brooding. The only difference is Fenris has Emo-hair, and FF protagonists have Calvin-hair. Also, Fenris has a reason to brood. He had magical substances tattooed onto his body in a process so painful, it burned away any of his previous memories.

- Sign of an updated graphical engine: The game has better graphics, but runs much smoother and quicker than its predecessor

- Sign of a different graphical engine: Any character returning from the first game and its expansion (there are a few returning, one playable) looks a little different. The differences range from “there’s something different, but I can’t quite put my finger on it” all the way to “What the hell?”

- Sign of some graphics bugs slipping through the beta: Clipping issues on shields, swords, and elbows. Whoops.

- Sign some details are to small to animate: There are no scabbards. Daggers are stored on your back, floating about an inch behind you when not in combat. I’ve never heard of gravity defying knives before, but there you go.

- Sign of a cool game: The rogue class is about as close to a ninja as you’ll get outside of an Assassin’s Creed game. Leaping or combat rolling from one enemy to the next. Disappearing in a cloud of smoke, only to reappear behind an enemy to stab them in the back. Spinning roundhouse to the side of the head for extra damage. Dual-wielding vicious-looking daggers.

- Sign of different combat programming: fighting is a lot quicker, especially moving from one enemy to the next.

- Sign the player-base likes rogues and mages: playing as a warrior is kind of dull. Yes, combat happens faster, but most abilities are only useable in certain situations and have long cooldowns. Plus, the resource bar for tanks (I played as a tank – someone who gathers the enemy’s attention and soaks up their damage while my team mates laid the smack down) is pretty small since tanks concentrate on building up health, strength, and defence. So the resource for abilities (called stamina) is tiny and used to quickly, and then there’s a long wait for it to recharge.

- Sign of the times catching up with the game: the main character is fully voiced, after being a silent protagonist in the previous game. Mass Effect’s effect, I guess.

- Sign of trying to reach a wider audience: They eliminated skills entirely. Now there’s only attributes (Strength, Agility, Cunning) and abilities. I’ll miss pick pocketing, persuasion, poisons, and what-not. I’m not really surprised, because this was similar to the style of change between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.

- Sign the lore team is well paid: They’ve developed a detailed religion that most of the citizens of the game believe in. It was in the first game, too, but it’s more in depth here. Of course, it’s also spawned its own in-game curses as well, like “Maker’s Breath” and “Andraste’s Flaming Knickers!” Fun times.

- Sign the political subtext team is well paid: In this fantasy land, only one nation has legalized slavery. Most people detest it, with obvious reason. However, if a noble or king of a slavery-free nation needs cash, they can surreptitiously round up a bunch of people (usually malcontents) and sell them off to this nation as slaves. How does this nation pay for the slaves? When you get free labour, you save a lot of gold. It’s makes total sense from a pragmatic viewpoint, and is disgustingly sick from an ethical viewpoint.

- Sign the party was well designed: There are six roles possible. Two for the warrior (Tank and melee damage), two for a rogue (melee damage, and ranged damage with a bow) and two for a mage (ranged damage and healing). Each of these roles are filled by one teammate, with only one or two overlaps (there’s more than six party members, although one’s downloadable and one’s temporary, leaving after the first act). Some are optional and some can leave if you make the wrong choices. I don’t begrudge Bioware designing it like this, but the problem is that whatever role you choose, you’ll wind up leaving the teammate whose role you stole at home a lot.

- Sign the character’s writers had fun: Each character has several different interactions possible with each other character. Most of them are pretty funny, and they usually crop up when nothing else is happening (walking from one location to the next).

- Sign that pop culture goes way back: In one situation, it’s possible for a character to say “I like big boats and I cannot lie.”

- Sign that romance is harder in real life than a game: I (a male warrior) was nice to everyone in my party at the appropriate junctions, and wound up getting kissed by a dude. Thanks, Bioware, but where the hell did that come from?

- Sign the romance team has given up completely and just allowed everything: There are five characters able to be romanced, and all but one are available for male and female characters. So I ended up kissing a guy and two girls. I broke the guy’s heart, and one of the girls moved in with me. The other, I’m sailing around the world with. So bisexuality and polygamy are fine in this game. I’m not sure what Bioware is hinting at, except that it’s tired of everyone complaining about the romance options, so it threw everything in.

- Sign that the writers know their clichés: “Nobody believed in me” is common in movies, where one person, or one group of people, go against everyone else, and is proven right. In this game, it looks like that’ll happen, only the character ends up being wrong, and the events are tragically awful (or awfully tragic). It’s heartbreaking.

- Sign the writers saved the best for last: The ending sequence and final boss is set up by a devastating betrayal. Like, a fall-to-your-knees-in-despair betrayal, and an unpreventable war after a terrible tragedy.

- Sign the designers saved the best for last: The last boss fight is … well, there’s only one word for it, and that word is EPIC! It’s not that hard, but it’s ridiculously cool. You get through about a quarter of the boss's life, and then a cutscene ensues that could teach movie studios a thing or two about cinematics. A-maz-ing! And then it goes from there. And the bosses death is in another fantastic cutscene. Seriously, the end is made of pure awesome. Cranked up to 11.

- Sign the humano-centric programming is lessening: Dwarves no longer look just like short humans (their jaws are much bigger), and elves no longer look just like humans with Spock ears. Elves are much thinner, their ears are generally longer than before, and their eyes are set farther apart, and are sometimes larger. They look like a cross between the Na’vi and the aliens at the end of A.I. One of the elves had such large eyes, and was so overwhelmed by the city (“there was a mugging, right outside my door. It was fascinating!”) that it’s impossible not to want to protect her, even from herself. And that’s how I wound up with a live-in elf girlfriend.

- Sign the game takes up less space than it could: There are only two or three (admittedly large) cave designs. The game opens or closes portions of them to simulate the differences between each of the several caves in the game. “Wait, this looks familiar.” The annoying thing is that they didn’t change the colour at all. The DLC came with the exact same cave, but used a different colour, and the difference was staggering. It was like being in a whole different place.

- Sign the programmers were stingy with their code: The DLC character, Sebastian Vael, comes with his own interactions with other party members, a few short quests, and some cutscenes. It comes in a package 31.6 MB in size. For reference, in the original game, there was a DLC character Shale. There was probably three times the content, but the DLC was over 500 MB.

- Sign the item creation team ran out of ideas: I had a pair of gloves called “Gloves of the Unknowable Unknown.” Really, Bioware? What’s next, Boots of Foot covering? Breastplate of Upper Body Protection?

- Sign I’m not the player I thought I was: A lot of people are saying almost all the battles can be won by simply auto-attacking. I dunno. While there certainly are a lot of battles (probably a little over half) where I didn’t have to do much more than auto-attack with my own character, there were some were I had to use a lot of my abilities, as well as being aware of what my teammates were doing, and issuing orders to them. I mean, spellcasters are a pain if you don’t immediately kill them.

- Sign the music is a rush job: Besides the composer saying it’s a rush job? It uses a few of the cues from the previous game. I even thought I heard a clip of the Kashyyyk music from KotOR, but maybe that’s just me. Plus, the music itself just isn’t very good. I bought a special edition of the game, which included the soundtrack. I had a listen, and there was one good part of one song. That’s it. I’m kinda disappointed.

- Sign that gear involves circular logic: I killed a High Dragon (the toughest kind of dragon in the game). It was fairly late in the game too. It had a lot of fire based attacks, and no enemies afterwards had any fire attacks of significant value. The dragon dropped Dragon’s Blood, which I could take to an NPC, who crafted an amulet for me. It had +1 to all stats (at this point, pretty meh) as well as 20 health (again, meh) and a bunch of fire resistance. Which would be really helpful, if I ever had to KILL A HIGH DRAGON! Thanks, Bioware. The rewards for killing a particular monster is an object to make killing that particular monster easier.

- Sign that morality can be complicated: There’s a race in the game called the Qunari, who follow a strict philosophy of duty to their society. Obey, or die. It makes them seem evil, except they make a whole lot of good points, especially about the despicability of parts of our society. Plus, they rarely judge. Anyone can join the Qun. Most people would see it as militaristic, but they would contend it’s discipline. It’s a very fine distinction, but the writing team makes it legitimate.

- Sign that while party banter is mostly fun, it can add subtle emotion: Two people are talking about Anders, a mage. “I feel sorry for Anders.” “Why? He’s a danger to himself and everyone around him.” “I think he broke the thing he meant to save.” Such a simple but heartbreaking line.

- Sign of recycled animations: There’s only one animation for a basic attack with a melee weapon. I definitely remember trying to stab someone with my mace. It’s a testament to my strength or my stupidity, I’m not sure which.

- Sign the fourth wall has a hole in it: As mentioned above, the characters look a bit different from the previous game. So when one shows up in a cameo – “Isabella, you look … different.” “Don’t we all.” I LOL’ed.

- Sign my character has ESP: Characters will unsheathe their weapons at the beginning of combat (or at least, grab a hold of them from their invisible scabbards) and put them away again at the end. Combat usually has more than one wave of enemies. They’re timed waves though (the second comes about 20 or 30 seconds after the first wave has been engaged, not immediately after the first wave is killed). If you’re quick enough, the first wave will be killed a few seconds before the second wave shows up, instead of a few seconds afterwards. This leads to a situation where all the enemies are dead, but the characters keep their weapons out, as if preternaturally sensing the enemies who will pop out moments later. The tip is, if your characters keep their weapons out, their will be another wave. Probably because of the programming, but I like to think it’s ESP.

- Sign that asymmetry is popular: This happened in the first game as well. I’d get a suit of armour, and it would make me look cool, or shiny, or badass … except for one thing. The left would be exactly the same as the right, except for one shoulder, or one arm. Attached would be some spikes of doom, or a giant shoulderpad, or something to throw off the symmetry. I have no idea why these are on there. Sure, it make easy identification of rank in the military, but four stars on a collar does that too. It’s not like I need the left half of a set of football pads to tell me that. And it looks pretty ridiculous.

- Sign that real life annoyances can infiltrate games: one of the codex entries (the codex is basically a journal that stores all the information relevant – and sometime irrelevant – to the story, including info on characters, weapons, places, game-play, and lore) told part of a story about a monk who had a problem with lost socks whenever he did the laundry (as many of us have, as well). Going back over his life, he found he had lost quite a number of them (something like 800). Determined to get to the bottom of it, he constructed a sock blind to spy on the socks while doing laundry, to see where they went.

- Sign that Psycho is creepy everywhere: At one point, my character’s mother disappeared. While tracking her down, she was repeatedly referred to as “Mother” and not “my mother.” As in “That’s Mother’s locket!” It was very … Norman Bates-ish, and I wished the protagonist (whom I was supposed to cheer for) wouldn’t be quite so uncomfortably ungrammatical.

- Sign of pun-based pop-culture references: There’s a gang called Reining Men. They were hurting a lot of people, so I killed them all, but I can only imaging what would happen if they were decent and trying to rescue some people in a bad situation. “Who’s there?” “It’s Reining Men.” “Hallelujah!”

- Sign that hypocrites do well in fictional worlds: Near the end of the second act, I killed a group of enemies simply labelled “Looters.” This was ironic, since I had been grabbing everything everywhere that wasn’t nailed down (there was a surprisingly large amount of stuff nailed down. I was disappointed).

So there it is. I don’t know what all these signs mean, except that I enjoyed a great game with an epic ending and a lot of funny, and sometimes touching, moments.