Dragon Age: Origins was in development for five years and after it was released, it was relatively a success in the CRPG genre. The world of Thedas was supported by lore influenced by numerous fantasy novel series and films like the Song of Fire and Ice series and Lord of the Rings. It was populated by traditional characters like the reluctant, free-caring Alistair, the cynical Morrigan, and the devout Leliana. Dragon Age: Origins contained flawed but complex, party-based real-time tactical combat, and carried moral ambiguity and weight as you made choices which later at during or the end of the game the consequences of your actions were revealed.
However, Dragon Age 2 is a different manner of beast entirely. Whereas Dragon Age: Origins had five years in development, the sequel had a much shorter time. An interview with Inon Zur from IGN revealed much about the game’s progress:
“…Unlike other titles from Bioware, this [score] was kind of a rush job. EA really wanted to capitalize on the success of Origins, so the game was really being pushed hard to be released now. So I'd like to know if there are bugs, or if there's anything we could patch or fix. “
And it was evident that Dragon Age 2 was a rush job; much of the complexities that were in Dragon Age: Origins were stripped from the sequel. There are no skills to invest in such as Coercion, Pick-pocketing, and etc. Much of the class and skills are simplified into shorter trees of advancement. However this also limited customization of your other party members. If I wanted to bring Merrill for the majority of my adventuring and needed healing, the problem was that all of the characters had their own skill and specialization trees and Anders the mage was the only one with a Healing skill tree. So yes, bad Merrill, no healing skills for you!
Besides whittling down complexities in character building and customization, the dialogue system took a hit too. In favor of a system similar to Mass Effect, you have a wheel system with one option for investigation dialogue and three responses marked by icons representing moods: diplomatic, snarky, and just plain rude. Where is the coercion selection where you try to convince a party member or NPC to do something for you? At least in Dragon Age: Origins if you had enough points in your coercion skill, you could convince somebody if the option was allowed.
Getting back on track, the game stars you as “Hawke” who is a warrior, mage, or rogue that fled Lothering with his/her family from the Blight to north in the Free Marshes where he/she in time becomes the Champion of Kirkwall in the span of 10 years. The tale of the Champion of Kirkwall is told by one of the player’s companions Varric, a dwarf with an affinity for telling tall tales, during an interrogation by the Seeker Cassandra, who seeks the whereabouts of the Champion in order to stop a coming war.
This would’ve been interesting where not the noticeable corners that were cut. You can’t talk to your companions and other NPCs at any time to get to know them better like the original Origins. Kirkwall, a city where most of the game takes place is beautiful and still lifeless and drab at the same time. Even if time passes during my progression of the game, the city doesn’t even change in appearance. I would’ve appreciated some changes like banners celebrating the victory of repelling the Qunari invasion; no I get some NPC mumbling “Champion” as I run past.
None of the characters are even remotely likeable nor change. In Dragon Age: Origins, Alistair was a goofy sort that I wanted to be best friends with, and had the option of hardening him through selecting dialogue options telling him to be a man and suck it up. But in Dragon Age 2, you have none of that. You have three selections that will bring your companions closer to either friendship or rivalry. Characters don’t really change despite your actions and no option to use Coercion (Why Bioware why?) Fenris will still hate mages even though you save mages and try to convince him that not all of them want to bring the second coming of the Tevinter Imperium.
The good parts of Dragon Age 2 lie mostly on the combat but I use the words good parts. The shuffling from Origins is gone and replaced by a responsive system. Your character and companions will immediate rush and attack if positioned near an enemy. There is little to no lag to response when you select skills to be used in combat. However, the combat is less tactical than in the first game. There are waves and waves of enemies to confront even though you’ve killed the first group of baddies, taking away the planning of decisions on a battlefield in favor of reactions to consecutive skirmishes. Literally, enemies jump from the sky to join the fray. I don’t know whether to see this as comical or grating, but to me, it is just pure, lazy encounter design; something that needed to be fixed in Origins yet in this game it was rewritten into something completely stupid.
If it wasn’t that evident the game took about a year to make, the corners cut was shown by the reused maps for quests and encounters. Even in Acts 1 and 2 you went to the same locations which used the same caves that hosted waves upon waves of enemies to clear, making combat a more arcade-like grinding instead of the squad-based tactical combat that Bioware was known for in Origins and the Baldur’s Gate series. In the first act you went to the Deep Pits to clear out some dragonlings and encounter a dragon. The third act, oh no! The dragons are back, this time you have to fight a HIGH dragon! Seeing the reused maps, I feel both disappointed and cheated that Bioware, known to produce quality RPGs, would stoop to this.
In a Eurogamer interview, Mike Laidlaw tried to defend the changes in Dragon Age 2, including the reason for the recycled maps:
“…the re-use of the levels is something we knew was a bit of a risk, but we wanted to make sure there was more content rather than less, so re-using some of the spaces and coming to them again was certainly one we were careful about and tried to re-use as artfully as we could. …Well it's hard to know exactly what's going on with scores that are really, really negative. One possible culprit could just be a change backlash, i.e. this isn't Origins and I wanted Origins 2. There may be some degree of what I would honestly say is emotional investment in the Origins story, or in the way Origins was presented which is leading to a stronger than average reaction of disappointment.”
The problem these reasons is that the execution of including more content was just sloppy. In the original game, both the main quests and side quests actually had a decent background and reason why the quest should be completed, either through NPC or lore interaction. Here, it has been reduced to a series of fetch quests that feel more like chores than adventures. Also, the accusations that the low user scores in Metacritic are due to the backlash to the changes, well Laidlaw is correct. The complexities and depth from the original are stripped from the game making it a shadow of its former self. Therefore these low reviews are just mere reactions, they are credible complaints.
The game isn’t certainly worth the $60 price tag, nor does the current and advertisements for future DLC make it any better. This RPG is a huge disappointment from Bioware and has certainly made me wary of any games the company might release, especially their juggernaut MMO “The Old Republic.”
I rate this game 4 out of 10 hitpoints.
