Alright, let's just take everything you've said and tear it to pieces as utter garbage. I apologise in advance for the wall of text, but it is unavoidable.
There is an old saying; "if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no-one." Dragon Age 2 was a crap game on so many levels, even to an individual like myself.
The Dragon Age fan in me felt cheated because it was totally different thematically to Origins - it was not, in fact, a Dragon Age game.
The RPG player in me got sick of their efforts to make it an action hack-n-slash.
The hack-n-slasher in me had to sit through too much RPG.
That's not even touching on the bad design that goes across genre - the copy-pasting of levels, the disjointed character behaviour, the interpersonal mechanics that assumed you were either too young, or too socially inept to understand how to foster a relationship with someone without being told "This is how you be nice. This is how you hurt their feelings. This is how you flirt."
Another addage is "Cheap, Well, Quickly - pick two." DA2 was clearly done using the former and the latter - it feels cheap and unfinished. It is an insult to the medium as a whole to call Dragon Age a good game; it is, at best, mediocre. Mediocrity is
not something to be proud of; it's just a nice way of saying you didn't screw up as badly as you could potentially have.
Now, onto your analysis of the game and its structure.
PROLOGUE: Four characters we do not know are running away from albino umpa-lumpas, whom they seem to think are Darkspawn. They are not Darkspawn; Darkspawn look intimidating.
You encounter Aveline and her Templar husband. The Templar decides that this is a good time to start quoting scripture as opposed to, say, RUNNING FOR HIS THRONE-DAMNED LIFE! You can then choose to complete IGNORE his threats and pretend they never happened, in which case everyone carries on as though they didn't. In fact, everyone carries on as though they didn't happen if you DO react.
This will become a running theme of the entire game; whatever choice you make is irrelevant, because Bioware has decided the story is going to go this way whether you want it to or not.
A few battles later, we have a mini-boss in the form of an Ogre. The sibling who is no-longer required dies, and we don't care (especially if it's the boy) because we know barely anything about them.
Then Flemeth casts Deus Ex Machina and we wind up in Kirkwall. What better way to make a player feel as though he is accomplishing something than to have a DRAGON swoop in and kill all his enemies, dump some random nonesense in his lap, kill off yet another character we don't care about and then teleport us to somewhere else? Truly, Bioware are masters of narrative!
That was what we call 'sarcasm'. You will likely find more of it as we progress.
ACT I: This is known officially as "the Act of Dicking About." The ENTIRE plot summary for this act is "we need money to go down a hole." I
wish that was a euphamism; DA2 would have been a far more entertaining game if it was.
Our first port of call is to assemble the Avengers. Varric joins us because we apparently did a lot of amazing things off-camera which were
so exciting Bioware feared we would die of a heart attack if we actually played them. That, or slit our wrists from boredom. I suspect the former, given how the rest of the game is going to play out.
We then go on a grand quest to find fifty gold sovereigns. This is achieved by completing Side Quests, which have nothing to do with the main plot whatsoever, and Main Quests, which
usually have nothing to do with the main plot whatsoever.
Whilst you're running through the same three areas a dozen times, you will likely notice that nobody seems to be aware of that whole 'Blight' thing that threatened to wipe out all of Thedas. That's because Dragon Age: Origins took place during that "too exciting / fething dull to play" bit, and so everyone carries on like it never happened. Way to make us feel connected to Origins, Bioware!
Eventually, after wasting many hours of your life, you wind up with lots of coins, a rag-tag bunch of characters (some of whom I admit have some good lines) and it's time to crawl down that hole. Spoiler alert - you're about to lose a party member! I sure hope you aren't relying on Bethany to be your primary healer, or The Boy to be your main damage-dealer, because you won't have them after this!
We go down, we get betrayed, we fight monsters we've never seen before (and never will again, oddly) and we come back rich as kings...
ACT II: Three years have passed, and I have nothing to show for it.
Despite supposedly earning enough money to buy half of High Town, my bank account remains what it was when we left. So does my armoury. My allies, despite having come with me, are still in whatever dank squat they were in when we departed. Doesn't
that tell you everything you need to know about Hawke? "Hey Merril! I'm living in a mansion I bought with my beer money! How's life in the slum treating you?"
Act 2 does better than Act 1 in that it has a plot - the Qunari are getting restless, everyone is afraid of them, and the Viscount would like it very much if they didn't start murdering people. Only Hawke can possibly help because, despite only meeting the guy once, the Arishok believes Hawke is damn awesome. He must be a member of Bioware's development team, because there's no other reason for him to respect our protagonist.
The main advantage the Qunari bring is a change of opposition. Sadly, you'll still spend a lot of this act (and the rest of the game) fighting the same generic undead, daemons, insane mages and generic bandits you always do.
At least Origins had the decency to spice things up a bit. "Circle of Magi? Abominations, demons and the odd blood-mage. Brecillian forest? Lots of wild animals, werewolves and the undead! Orzammar? Angry Dwarfs and angrier Darkspawn! Haven? Dragon worshippers and dragons galore!" Clearly, Kirkwall doesn't matter enough to apply any variation to what we face; it's the same enemies over and over and over again,
Best of all, Act 2 poses a question for the player to ask: "Why am I doing this?"
The answer is "Because Bioware said so." You may be rich, but you're not a landowner. You're not an arl, a teyrn or any other leader of men. You hold no political office and no military rank. You don't even a
job in Kirkwall; you've just been living off what you stole from the Deep Roads!
This is the biggest issue with the game at this point. If this were a pen and paper RPG, I could at this point have turned to the DM and said "Dude, I have enough gold to
rebuild Lothering at this point! Why do I have to stay here?"
But, as I said, the answer is "Because I say so." You are going to be the hero of Kirkwall because you are going to be the hero of Kirkwall, and no matter how hard you try to derail the plot, Dragon Age 2 will force you to save the day despite any actual motive being present on your part.
In due course, the most interesting characters in DA2 - the Qunari - will be dead and gone and you are the Champion of Kirkwall. At least, Hawke has a job!
ACT III - The Act of We No-Longer Care.
We are told that three years have passed, and that Meredith and Orsino have been at each other's throats the whole time. It's a good thing we are told this via clunky exposition, because I sure as hell wasn't seeing it by actually
playing the game!
A conversation opportunity arises, and it's time to pick a side. Yes, no matter how you've behaved thus far, the side you're on for the final battle appears to hinge solely on two petulent man-children having a tantrum in public, and which of them you choose to shout at.
Permit me a slow clap for Bioware's continued literary brilliance. *clap. clap. clap.*
The rest of the act will be spent resolving the Mage-Templar war. Allow me to save you some time - the Mages Win. Whatever side you pick, for whatever reason, the Mages Win. Anders will ask you to help him blow up the Chantry, and if you refuse he will blow it up anyway. The Templars will ask you to help them slaughter the Mages, and if you do you become a hero to the Mages anyway, because it seems the Circle of Magi find nothing more inspiring than the story of a freelance lunatic who butchered an entire Circle and drove the First Enchanter to Blood Magic in a desperate bid for survival.
Best of all... it's a
cliffhanger! Yes, Dragon Age 2 was
so terrible that Bioware had to pull the Cliffhanger Card - "We'll give you an exciting plot development later, because we don't have one now!" Cliffhanger endings are a sign of bad writing. They're a good way to end a chapter of a story because
on the very next page we find out what happens. When we have to wait
years to find out (assuming the damn sequel isn't killed whilst it's still a foetus) it's just insulting. They have so little confidence in the game they've made they honestly don't think we'd want to buy Dragon Age 3 if they didn't dangle that stupid little "Look! Leliana's a member of a weird new cult of Chantry Ninjas!" in front of our faces. Sorry, Bioware, but I'm not willing to bite.
So there you have it. Dragon Age 2 is a story about characters we don't care about, Deus Ex Machina'd into a location they have no reason to care about, dragged into a conflict they have no motive to be a part of, and then given an ending that ignores what actually happened.
By far, this is one of the most spectacular screwups I've ever seen; it is best played in the same light as you would gawp at a car accident - you do it not to be entertained, but because you're morbidly curious as to just how horrific the accident really was.
Modifié par TonberryFeye, 29 juin 2012 - 07:08 .
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