Dragon Age II (2011) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / December 7, 2014

Dragon Age II is a strange case. It’s a sequel that is without question inferior to its predecessor (Dragon Age Origins), shows all the signs of being rushed out the door and yet has a number of things it did right.

            Dragon Age Origins was somewhat of a sleeper hit back in 2009. They had taken their time in developing a fantasy/medieval world filled with characters and lore. You could create your own character which greatly influenced the story in ways both big and small, your companions were wonderfully written characters with lots of backstory, emotions and motivations. In short: a classic RPG. Granted, Origins wasn’t exactly a graphical powerhouse, but who truly cares about graphics when you’re offered such an engaging RPG experience? A few years later, the sequel surfaced. But what was supposed to be a proper follow-up to Origins turned out to be a downgrade in most aspects, save for the game’s handful of saving graces.

            The first thing that separates II from its predecessor is the size, or lack thereof. Whereas Origins allowed you to traverse forests, cities, dwarven cities, II only allowed you to explore one city and its immediate surrounding area. And by separating the regions with loading times, it only made the game feel even smaller. The most troubling aspects were the obvious reused dungeons which made it uncomfortably clear this game was rushed.

            The gameplay was also overhauled and not necessarily for the better. Whereas Origins’s combat relied more on strategy, BioWare apparently wanted to make it more exciting, so they attempted a tactical kind of hack ‘n slash. Though this made combat more visceral, BioWare also decided it was a good idea to have the player mash the attack button in between using skills. Not an improvement in my book, just a failed attempt at pleasing everyone.

            Characters are crucial to a BioWare game and those on offer in DA2 are somewhat of a mixed bag. While Fenris and Varric are among the better ones, I couldn’t get into the rest. Isabella is a boring sexy pirate whose romance path is simplistic and predictable. Merrill is a mostly annoying, failed attempt at an ‘awkwardly cute’ character, etc.

            Things get more complex on the story front. While the scope is smaller than Origins’ story, I did like the change of pace. Rather than rounding up your companions and saving the world (how novel…), this time you were just part of a family fleeing an overrun city, just trying to survive. You make your way to Kirkwall where you mingle amongst the lower class. After doing some odd jobs here and there, you get to take part in an expedition and voilà, you’ve financially secured your family’s future. Your name spreads and your opinions are increasingly sought after. This also leads you to slowly but surely become more and more embroiled in Kirkwall’s political conflicts. While the story’s size is undoubtedly smaller, it gives the story more focus. Rather than skipping from place to place, from town to town, you’re constantly concerned with one city’s future. For better or worse, it also leads to a somewhat predetermined ending (the city’s doomed no matter what), which is a far cry from Origins’ many endings, but it shows how you can’t fix everything, which gives the game more in common with The Witcher 2.

Interesting.

One such political conflict includes Knight-Commander Meredith who has something of a zero tolerance policy when it comes to mages. Eventually, it’s revealed that her mind was corrupted through a magical artifact. This is completely uninteresting. Why? Because it lacks complexity and nuance. It’s not a matter of politics, character motivation or differing worldviews anymore, just a simple matter of her being turned evil through some magical force. How interesting…

Not so interesting...

Without a doubt, the story peaks in the conflict with the Qun. You’ve just started to become famous and you’re asked by the higher-ups to talk with the leader of the Qunari who’ve manifested themselves in a section of Kirkwall. Their leader is a strong-minded character and is disgusted with the state of things in Kirkwall. He doesn’t see the appeal and the point of the way their society works. According to him, Kirkwall’s people lack direction and so on. The Qunari follow a very strict way of life. I guess you could see it like a somewhat more attractive form of communism… That’s not the point. The point is that throughout the second act, you start to see the appeal of the Qun through this leader. You complete missions and you get a grasp on Kirkwall’s fear of a full-on Qunari invasion, but you also see how the Qun could improve Kirkwall. Also wonderful is how you communicate with the leader. At certain times it seems better to lie to him to avoid conflict, but he’ll find out anyway. What’s absolutely wonderful is when you’re brutally honest with him about everything. This will lead him to attack Kirkwall anyway, but if you negotiate with him in a certain way (like giving him back an important book to the Qunari and handing him your companion Isabella who stole it), he’ll agree to leave, but not before saying you’re pretty much the only one in Kirkwall worthy of his respect. This entire part of the story is wonderfully realized, not only because it clearly lays out the Kirkwall-Qunari conflict, but particularly because it provides insight into the complexity and appeal of the Qun. You know you’re writing your fiction well when it’s actually appealing to earn the respect of the leader of a fictional group. Plus, unlike Meredith, the focus was not on boring deus ex machina magic artifacts, but entirely political and ideological.

Another thing DA2 did mostly right has to do with the romance options. Origins required you to raise characters’ approval ratings before you could romance them. This also includes the god-awful gift system, a system I revile. With conversations and romances, the game designers try to make you care for the characters. That’s the whole point: to provide an emotional experience. The gift system couldn’t be more removed from this goal if it tried. Granted, some items in Origins unlock an extra conversation, so there’s that, but overall it’s such a dry experience. What is the emotional appeal in going to a character in the inventory menu, selecting an item, give it to a character and see their approval slightly change, accompanied by a random remark from said character? It just emphasizes the romance as being a game of statistics (‘damn, I can’t romance character x yet, because the approval rating is at 60’), not as a naturally evolving relationship which in terms of romance is something no video game has yet achieved, I think.

DA2 did it slightly different, both for the better and for the worse. Rather than dealing with approval ratings, romancing a character merely requires you to select the conversation option that includes a big red heart. Again, it just emphasizes the technical aspect of romancing a character. What is ideally supposed to be a naturally evolving relationship, boils down to ‘press the heart-shaped convo option to romance’. At least Origins’ conversation system randomized the order of responses, forcing you to carefully consider your response and the character in front of you, rather than select the ‘good’ option in the upper right corner of the dialogue wheel. What DA2 does right however has been called ‘rivalmance’, the ability to romance someone even if the character disagrees with you. This is good in that it varies from the usual way of romancing a character: select dialogue options that they agree with. DA2 instead shows that romance rises above merely agreeing with someone every chance you get. You could be a mage, side with the mages and still romance mage-hating Fenris, for instance.

So yeah, amidst all the massive downgrades, there are a number of things I think DA2 did right, things that were well-written and interesting. The ‘rivalmance’ provided a welcome variation on the typical way of romancing characters and the basic plot—culminating in the game’s depiction of the Qun—was different from the usual ‘save the world’-fare you see in every BioWare game. For all its faults—and they are plenty—Dragon Age II definitely had its moments.