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[GodLikeDevil]

After months of dilly-dallying and waiting for patches, I finally finished Dragon Age 2.  As a veteran of Origins and Awakenings, the shift in story from sweeping epic to personal rise to power and prominence was a bit jarring but ultimately a nice change of pace. I am not saying the overall tale is better than that of Origins or Awakenings, but it is different enough to be entertaining, at least, if not engaging. But of course your mileage may vary.

But I really dislike how the flow of Act 3 seemed rushed, particularly towards end. Anders blowing up the Chantry really made me want to slap him upside the head for being a royal idiot. An act of terrorism, for sure, but I felt the seeds of Anders' radicalism were not cultivated long enough. His act seemed too abrupt. I can wrap my head around the idea that merging with Justice left both of them a bit more hypersensitive to the injustice against the mages, but I feel there should have been a longer development of that plotline to illustrate Anders' growing extremism and the supposed growing cruelty of the Templars.

Because really, up until Anders goes Unabomber, the conflict between Meredith and Orsino seemed like a loud but ultimately manageable lovers' spat between married people. The lyrium idol sure might have heightened whatever paranoia and prejudice within Meredith, but she was still willing to listen to Elthina, if not Orsino, and thus open to some sort of less extreme aproach towards handling the rampancy of apostates and bloodmages in Kirkwall and the surrounding area. All in all it seemed they made Anders blow up the Chantry to accelerate the plot. I would have expected Anders would have found a way, thanks to all his underground connections to just target Meredith herself rather than blow up the Chantry. An assassination attempt on Meredith would have made more sense, and would have served the same purpose of  ratcheting up the Templar-Mage conflict.

Orsino going Harvester, and the reveal that he assisted Quentin in his research again fell flat for me. There was not enough set-up or foreshadowing to illustrate that Orsino was willing to embrace extreme measures himself to achieve his goals. Not enough light was shed on his potential dark side, as it were.

As for the conflict with Meredith itself, the battle itself was alright, but the events leading up to it seemed lacking. Simply put, I have no deep underlying reason to want to see her dead prior to the confrontation at Lowtown. There was not enough interaction with her prior to the final quest that made my conflict with her personal or at the very least seem organic. I preferred the way the conflict with the Arishok in Act 2 was set-up over that with Meredith. In Act 1 and 2 you got to interact with the Arishok, you got to understand him a little better, where he's coming from, and why he blows his top that inevitably ends in Hawke clashing with him. I felt more invested in the Arishok rather than Meredith.

All in all, and this is just my opinion, and feel free to disagree, but I feel the game could have used at least 1 more act to set up the Mage-Templar conflict and the clash between Hawke, Orsino, Meredith, and Elthina. All throughout the game you were told that Orsino, Meredith, and Elthina were the big players in Kirkwall who can set things in motion. Acts 1 and 2 also set it up that you would rise to their level of stature and become a player yourself. I would have preferred that the 3rd act explore the effect of your entry into the upper echelons of influence in Kirkwall on the existing power dynamic between all the other big name players in town. Instead you never got the feeling that you were the influential Champion everyone seems to make you out to be, because your influence was not as fleshed out as it should be. It is like there were only a smattering of quests and activities that you did something Champion-like. If the 3rd act spent time illustrating the agenda of the Mages and Templars while pursuing your own and those of the members of your clique, the story and end conflict would have been better and improved.

Anyway, I just felt the need to write down my thoughts on the game's end. I eagerly anticipate the next Dragon Age game.