I will start by saying that I love Origins, and I continue to play and mod it to this day. I will admit that much of my animosity comes from the fact that I enjoyed Origins so much, and DA2 inexplicably changed so many things I enjoyed. As a result, I will note differences in the way I rate certain aspects of the game based on whether or not you played Origins during the review.
Please be advised that minor spoilers follow. I’ve tried to avoid them or make them as obscure as possible, but you’ve been warned.
This will be a long read, but I applaud you if you do it. Who knows, I might touch on something that hasn’t already been said.
Story
Many aspects of DA2 are tricky to rate, and story is no different. The reason is that it is so dependent on the person. As with the rest of the review, I will try to discuss it from a neutral viewpoint. The story in DA2 is much more focused than the one in Origins. Instead of choosing your race and background, you are limited to playing the same human, whom the story encircles. You can choose your class, at least, but that is about it. On the positive side, this does lend itself to a much more focused story, since the developers only really had to consider one. However, it does limit the amount of freedom you have in determining who your character is.
On top of that, your character is now voiced. This has the very same effect, giving your character a more defined personality and character, but alas, also limiting your freedom with both. This is both good and bad, so whether you feel more bad or good about it depends entirely on you. However, from a neutral standpoint, the new dialogue wheel itself is somewhat flawed. In most cases, you have 3 options – good, sarcastic, and straight shooter/would-be bad guy. This is pretty limiting. On top of that, the options are not always clearly defined, and what your character actually says is different from what the wheel indicates. This is understandable in some cases, as it allows your character to say much more than what would fit tidily in a line of text, but you may say something you really did not intend as a result. Also, it would be nice if things were not always so black, white and/or sarcastic. Origins was much better in that regard, you often had several different ways of saying something friendly, humorous or confrontational. You could also say something down to business without shouting or with a scowl on your face, or say something flirty without using the lamest voice and body language possible to do so. One of my biggest caveats about the dialogue wheel is that what you're saying, and for the most part, the reaction to what you're saying is already known to you. I shouldn't be told which option is good, and which bad, and I certainly shouldn't be told which option will result in a fight. These things should not be known to you before you even speak them. It takes way too much of the thought away from choosing your words.
Warning: minor spoilers follow
As for the story and writing itself, it is again a mixed bag. There are parts that shine, for example I really enjoyed the whole Aveline-Donnic quest. However, most of it is forgettable and, in some cases, face-palm worthy. The feeling of being able to make choices is an illusion. I was on a certain expedition when a certain party member became afflicted by a certain condition and succumbed to it. I was thrilled that I actually felt something, and so I re-played the whole section without them so I could feel better about myself for the rest of the game. However, upon my return, this certain party member was apprehended by a certain organized group in Kirkwall. I then talked to a friend who said he had another party member with him on the expedition, and as a result the afflicted party member joined a certain order dedicated to fighting a certain type of enemy. So, while the story differs a little, the result is functionally the same no matter what you do. In the latter two cases, not even the uniform differs. I was so disgusted and annoyed that I couldn’t come back to the game for a couple of days. I also had a similar experience with a quest involving Hawke’s mother. I found it ridiculous that you couldn’t change anything about it, along with the fact that Hawke is so composed about it right up until the very end. Another thing I found ridiculous was the random quests I had no idea I was doing, where I find some obscure thing and magically know who it belongs to. They thank me like ‘oh, thanks dude, must have dropped that, silly me lol’. I want to do quests that actually engage me and require me to make difficult choices that aren’t so black and white, not obscure psychic afterthoughts.
Companions are a whole other issue. I liked some things about them better than Origins. For example, they seem to have a little more input in quests. You can appeal to them for insight or taking an action. That is a nice touch, but unfortunately the rest of them seems to fall victim to the more shallow experience in DA2. You can only talk to them in their ‘base’ at a certain time (which is broadcasted to you through your journal). It’s all very mechanical and makes it into much more of a chore than doing so because it was genuinely interesting in Origins. I also miss the party camp from Origins and nice touches like going to Leliana or Morrigan for stories. Leliana’s song in Origins was one of my favourite and most memorable companion moments. In DA2, you do a task for your companions, talk to them afterward, then it’s kind of like a ‘talk to you when I need you again’ basis. The romances are also less satisfying, I find. You romance them once, primarily by doing their tasks and throwing in lame, flirty lines here and there, and that’s pretty much the end of it. It also bears mentioning that I didn’t find either female romance option particularly appealing. I went with Merrill because I thought she was adorable at times, but the whole young girl/alien type body thing made it a little awkward. I just didn’t care for Isabela’s character. Seriously, “I like big boats and I cannot lie”? Did anyone over 12 actually find that funny? If you’re going to completely throw atmosphere and immersion to the wind in lieu of a shameless pop-culture reference, at least go for something that hasn’t already been painfully overused for the past 20 years. That's just lazy writing.
Gameplay
This is probably the area I feel strongest about, because itmis the main thing I get enjoyment from and which contributes to subsequent play-throughs the most. Overall, I feel pretty negative about the changes in DA2, and I’ll go over some of the reasons why.
Combat is just ridiculous to me. It’s extremely over the top and exaggerated. I know that appeals to some, and I can appreciate it too (I’ve played God of War, Bayonetta, etc), but it’s not how I thought of Dragon Age. I really liked the gritty, realistic feeling of Origins. When I watched a two-hander fight, I could almost feel the weight of the weapon as it was swung and crashed into it’s target(s). Origins could feel a bit clunky at times, that’s true, but I actually find DA2 clunkier. It’s nearly impossible to target anything without pausing because everything moves so fast and sometimes an enemy’s name may be significantly out of synch with it’s body, and targeting them becomes a toss-up between which one you need to click. This is also true of traps. I can’t count how many I walked into when I had intended to disarm them. I also find the waves silly. I mean, honestly. It pretty much ruins any real strategy. Gone are the days of stealthing across the battle field, gaining tactical positions, arming/disarming traps. Not only is it ridiculous to see wave after wave appear from thin air, but it’s logically stupid, too. Your enemies would have a much better chance of success if they all attacked at once. All this serves to do is make the battles less challenging, but more annoying. I often find my companions doing odd things, also. Not drinking a potion when I tell them to, standing there doing nothing, getting interrupted everytime they’re hit for 4 damage from some lowly enemy while I’m just trying to reposition them somewhere. The whole experience just feels much more clunky and awkward to me than Origins, as well as ridiculous and irritating.
Skills and attributes I have mixed feelings about, but it’s mostly negative. First of all, attributes are even more shallow than they were in Origins. I played a rogue, as I always do, and I was very disappointed. Essentially, there are only two attributes of use and/or interest: dexterity and cunning. Every rogue mechanic is tied to these two attributes, whether it makes sense or not. I realize this makes things convenient for people who don’t want to think about how they build they characters too much, but I find it horribly shallow. It’s even worse when you realize that dexterity is pretty much forced on you as it is a requirement for equipment (more importantly, weapons). Origins had requirements too, but they were primarily strength. This made more sense, as strength should obviously dictate whether or not you can carry/use something, and it also gave more depth to the builds as you had to consider how much you invested in a third attribute. Dexterity should only contribute to things like accuracy, evasion and possibly critical chance and/or speed. Having it affect damage and so many other things as well just makes anyone stupid not to invest heavily in it. That doesn’t leave much room for customization. Essentially every rogue build becomes whether you invest entirely in dexterity, or throw some cunning in there too, depending on how offensive/defensive you want to be. Mages suffer the same fate, too. Magic and willpower. 75/25%, give or take a little. Pretty much every mage right there. Warriors can at least play with a third attribute, dexterity, if it pleases them.
I like some of the changes to skills, but they also fall victim to this. Things like stagger, brittle, disorient and all the synergies is nice. It’s also nice to see a lot of ‘upgrades’ to skills, allowing you to focus more on your type of character. However, I quickly noticed just how many of these skills become obsolete as a result of either similar skills, or attributes. This makes the depth of classes and combat even shallower than Origins. My plan was to be a purely offensive rogue, focusing on cunning to boost critical damage and high damage abilities/stealth. I planned to use the skill that grants 100% critical chance while flanking to make up for the critical chance deficit I would have from not investing as heavily in dexterity. That skill, btw, pretty much makes the similar skills that grant 100% critical chance from stealth and 100% critical chance on a stunned enemy obsolete. However, then I realized that I pretty much had to invest in dexterity if I hoped to use any decent equipment. I then also noticed that any gear I wore inevitably had the same bonuses – critical chance, critical damage, and/or physical damage. Toward the end of the game, even with low dexterity my critical chance was nearing 70%. Combined with the flanking bonus in the game from the beginning, this pretty much made my 100% crit while flanking skill obsolete, as well. I then realized just how little customization I actually had with my character and approach to combat.
This brings me to the next issue: items. This drastically changed my view of the game. When I started out, I began finding items with properties I hadn’t seen in Origins. I got excited, because I assumed I would see items with those properties IN ADDITION to the ones in Origins. However, I soon discovered that pretty much every item you find is the same 3 or 4 properties with slightly higher or lower values. Then I discovered that you couldn’t actually change your party members’ armor. That was nearly the last straw for me. I had a hard time getting back into the game after that. I was utterly shocked and had a hard time believing not only that I was playing an RPG, but the AAA sequel to Dragon Age? I was in disbelief. The other issue is that 90% of the stuff you find is just vendor garbage. Anything remotely useful you find is just completely predictable: it’s either in a chest at the bottom of a recycled dungeon during a main quest, or on the corpse of a boss, OR POSSIBLY in a store. Few surprises here, I’m afraid. As if that’s not enough, they completely revamped crafting (see: damn near removed it). Essentially, now you go around finding a plant or resource which you know nothing about, show it to someone who does, and they make things for you with unlimited supply as long as you have enough money. Yawn.
Presentation
I’m not a HUGE presentation guy, though I do certainly appreciate it. Overall, DA2’s presentation was a technical improvement over Origins, but I didn’t feel so good about most other aspects of it. That being said, this didn’t hamper my experience quite as much as gameplay and story.
First of all, the graphics themselves have been upgraded from a technical standpoint. Overall, this is an improvement. Textures appear crisper than in Origins, especially with the high-res texture pack. DA2 also supports various Directx 10 and 11 features. However, my respectably powerful system could not run Directx 11 with very high settings as the frame rate became unplayable. I have a six core processor OC’d to 3.8 GHz, 6 GB of ram OC’d to 1800 MHz and a GTX 480 OC’d to 745/1500/1920. The various cutscenes and overall presentation is also an improvement over Origins, for the most part. I am speaking strictly of visuals here, as nothing in DA2 made me feel what I felt from things like the Battle of Ostagar in Origins, but that’s more of a story issue.
Despite the technical improvements, the stylistic changes are much less favourable to me. I’ll start with the UI. Maybe it’s just me, but I just think it looks cheap. It’s hard to explain why, but when I compare it to Origins, I just think it looks like something from an indie developer, or a free-to-play MMO. Next, nearly every race has been redesigned. I’m not sure why, as I certainly had no complaints about them in Origins. Apparently, Qunari have spent the last 15 months training with the Spartans from 300, Elves have been chiselling their ears and bodies to a more elongated version of Yoda’s and Humans have all been boxing as they all seem to have bad cases of cauliflower ears. Why, exactly? Who knows. I know I didn’t complain about them in Origins, and I don’t recall too much of it from others. But, there you have it. This isn’t as bad as the other notable change, though…
Environments have been drastically cut down on, and recycled to gross excess. There are a few pretty sights, such as some places in Kirkwall and the Wounded Coast. Unfortunately, there isn’t much else to look at. The majority of the game takes place in either of those, or a combination of the same recycled warehouse, recycled cave and recycled mansion. This was the second time while playing that I was in utter disbelief since I discovered the limitations of items. Once again, I couldn’t believe that this was supposed to be a AAA title, the sequel to Dragon age: Origins. The only difference between these areas is the entrance you enter from, and the doors/paths that may be opened or closed to you depending on what quest you are doing. Honestly, I’m not even sure I’d expect this from an indie developer. It’s just inexcusable from a studio like Bioware and a title with so much hype that is supposed to be the sequel to such a critically acclaimed RPG.
Overall, the music was alright, but I preferred Origins. Many scenes in Origins were made that much more simple by the music that accompanied them. When I think about it, I actually can’t recall much of the music from DA2. With Origins, I distinctly remember the music that set in during the Battle of Ostagar (I guess it wasn’t just the story), when you romanced your companions or talked with them in camp, the song Leliana sang about the Elves, and the music from all of the origins, especially the human noble one while you’re escaping the castle. Origins had fantastic music, all around. Unfortunately, I just found DA2’s music forgettable (literally). The voice acting is decent, but again, if you’ve played Origins you will appreciate it less as several voices are obviously reused here.
Final thoughts
Overall, I have to see Dragon Age 2 as a failure. If I hadn’t played Origins, I might not feel so strongly. Unfortunately, I find so much of DA2 inferior by comparison. DA2 does some things well, and I think it’s important to acknowledge them, as long as we acknowledge what made Origins an overall more solid game.
As I mentioned, the story and quests had some shining moments. Companion input and interaction is good, however don’t limit it to such rigid conditions. Choices that matter, matter. More ambiguity in those choices would also be good, 90% of the time in DA2 I found it painfully black and white. Do I side with the soft-spoken mage or this other guy who literally sneers while he talks like a villain from a Disney movie? Hmm, I wonder who the bad guy is here. Some of the writing was also horrid. “I like big boats and I cannot lie”. I just wanted to quote it again and let it sink in. I would also love if my hand wasn’t constantly held while I did quests. Everywhere I went, I had a nostalgic feeling of the old days of playing Diablo 2 with a maphack. At any given time on the minimap, you can see if a path leads to where you need to go, or just to an open room which predictably leads to a fight and/or a chest. I tried playing with map markers and all that turned off, but unfortunately the mechanics are built around them. When you find a note on a corpse, you can’t just read the note and find clues. Instead, your journal updates instantlytelling you where to go and what to do. If you turn off the map markers, you’re just a blind man searching. You can’t ask information from people or do your own investigating, because clearly the game didn’t anticipate someone actually not wanting to follow a glowing beacon on their map doing all the work for them.
The combat needs to be significantly rethought. Origins was a little slow and clunky at times, but DA2 is much, much worse in my opinion. Try this: turn off the game’s music and sound effects, and play the Benny Hill theme song while you’re fighting in DA2. The effect is hilariously, as well as depressingly fitting, especially some of the Darkspawn fights. Make attributes, skills and items matter again. In fact, just focus on making characters customizable again beyond illusions, including party members. If you’re going to make an illogical change like turning a rogue backstab into an active skill, at least have them move swiftly to the back instead of teleporting into the ground. Also, I’d like to have my dog back. No, not this strange creature that instantly appears when I blow a whistle, doesn’t interact with anything beyond auto-attacking things to little effect, doesn’t allow me to control it, doesn’t level up, or gain attributes or skills or develop in any way, shape or form. I mean my dog. Make strategy and tactical gameplay matter again. I want the game to be challenging because I have to really think about and plan what I’m doing, not because 10 enemies magically appear around one of my companions who doesn’t run somewhere else when I tell them to.
I give DA2 a 6/10. That’s an honest review. If they release toolset resources, I might raise it to 6.5 or 7/10, depending on how expansive and useful they are. For what it’s worth, I’d give Origins an 8/10 before the toolset, and 9/10 afterward.
I know there are a lot of ridiculous 1/10 reviews out there. I agree that isn’t an accurate review, but at the same time I totally understand why they do it. They want to bring those averages down considerably, because the message needs to be heard. If you liked the game, that’s great, but I can’t understand how people can give 9/10 or even 8/10 for a game that was so obviously rushed, incomplete and shallow compared to it’s predecessor. If you praise it, they will only do it again. That’s the reason for all the 1/10s. Even with my enraged hiatuses from the game, it still only took me about a week to complete it, doing every quest I came across and listening to all dialogue. I haven’t the motivation for anymore playthroughs, so I’m sad to say I could have rented this. The only reason I’d have to come back to it would be a toolset.
It's funny. If I had to sum up DA2, I'd compare it to an immature friend who just turned 18 (everyones had one) and thinks the 'adult experience' is all about profanity, cleavage and cheesy sexual innuendos. Last I checked, thinking for yourself was a large part of it.
Where to go from here
One last thing I’d like to discuss is where does the responsibility lie for what DA2 is? I know a lot of people are pointing the finger at EA for wanting to rush things for a profit. I don’t disagree with you, I realize that is probably true. I’ve known Bioware long enough to know they appreciate quality, especially with a flagship series like Dragon Age was becoming. However, is it not Bioware’s choice what they do with the time they have allotted to them? Was it really necessary to revamp the races? Did the Qunari really need horns and all that added mass? Did the Elves really need to be slimmed down even more, and given some kind of strange cross between Irish and Welsh dialects? Did Flemeth really need all that extra cleavage? Would that time not have been better spent on other lasting aspects of the game, the ones that will truly decide it’s lasting impression and lifespan?
Discuss.
Edit: I have no idea why the text is aligned so oddly. If anyone knows how to fix this without going through and editing each line, please tell me.
Modifié par Anomaly-, 25 mars 2011 - 10:32 .
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