In general, after watching the Devs Pax East discussion about 'lessons learned' from DA:2 I was concerned by how quickly they glossed over Charater and Player Agency, saying only that they were going to fix it. While I appreciate that it is difficult to get into detail without over-selling a game that's still in development I want to elaborate the degree to which this is a problem in what I believe is a constructive manner. I would hope that it is considered the primary issue, even above follower equipment and recycled maps.
a) Character & Player Agency
I hope it doesn't sound contrite when I say Hawke is five minutes late for being one of the best fantasy heroes in modern gaming.
This is spoiler free so I'll dance around specifics but consider how frequently you find yourself going 'if the game had let me stop X when I figured out it was going to be a problem then Y would never have happened'.
A clear example where this represent a failure of player agency is Isabella's 'crisis point' at the climax of the second act. The game assumes a degree of trust between the player character and Isabella and gives no opportunity for the player to contradict it. Hawke is left to engage two parties of a battle he's not involved in, rather than pursue a stolen artefact the return of which could prevent significant loss of life. The fact that Hawke later difuses the situation (potentially with Isabella's help) is tragically too little too late for the people of Kirkwall.
These kinds of moment are particularly problematic when the game itself regularly berates Hawke for his lack of alacrity in responding to emerging problems. If you remove yourself objectively it seems a little strange for the game to be chiding the player for the lack of agency the game itself provides. 'Why didn't you do that thing I wouldn't let you do'
If we interpret this as the game trying to give the player that feeling of frustration from 'not being able to save everyone, no matter how hard they try' then that's a noble goal but its been incorrectly done. The goal in such a circumstance should be to leave the player saying 'Hawke did everything anyone could have done and it still wasn't enough' rather than 'Hawke did everything the game let him do'. The former creates an empathic link between player and character, the latter does create frustration but it is directed at the game, not at Hawkes circumstance.
From a braided narrative point of view an easy approach is to give the player two mutually exclusive choices, save person A and it means person B dies, save person B and person A dies. In Dragon Age 2 the player is given a variety of options to NOT take the path to save person A or B. This would be perhaps more forgivable if the steps required to rescue our hypothetical letter people weren't always stand out obvious, as in the Isabella example above.
Now before I risk being unreasonable I want to flag my understanding that a game designer cannot be expected to predict every possible course of player action. Indeed the greatest challenge (and most of the fun) of interactive design is trying to give the player the options they want while stil providing an exciting story.
Oddly DA2 does not appear to be a simple case of the design not realising we'd try 'X'. Even putting asside the numerically significant number of examples similar to the Isabella situation above there is at least one case where the game somewhat sheepishly admits it knows you want to do something but it is disinclined to let you.
Once more dancing around specifics we all remember a certian antagonistic chantry member in acts 1 and 2. There is one particular early moment where the player is given a conversation option to the tune of 'I should kill you'.
The characters response is to say they appreciate that but that they will not 'give you the chance to do so'.
I've seen a half dozen different people reach that seen and the reaction has been a consistant 'I wasn't aware this required your approval'. This is understandable given Hawke and his three heavys of choice are standing less than a yard away and blocking the only exit to a tiny house in the bad end of low town and the chantry member has a lone body guard.
Of course a great many people have developed a variety fo reasons why Hawke couldn't/wouldn't/shouldn't have been able to kill Petrice but I believe the issue I'm highlighting here is that this scene is the game admitting there are things that it knows the players want to do that don't fit into its story.
As an isolated incident it might be forgivable but in general Dragon Age does not feel like Hawke's story and the title 'rise to power' is unusual because he does not. If you analyse the decisions available to the player, and what the outcomes of those are, Hawke never demostrates any motive, personal growth, or interest. Its not that they've left him open for the players to provide input, its more that he just doesn't do anything. Take out the other characters and reactive behaviours and the Hawke story is 'Hawke escapes the blight, buys a house and falls in love, the end'. Indeed if the Blight hadn't hit Hawke would probably have been a farmer in Lothering and the events of Kirkwall would have proably unfolded just the same.
From an interactive story perspective the player character probably should have been Anders (or a PC replacement with a similar story arc). He had a pivotal goal and for better or for worse he took actions to see it through. In that role the player could have been given a number of different choices as to how to fullfill the goal and while we'd have had to accept the premise that Ander's end objective was ours this is a requirement of most games (consider: Pacman is a very different game if you assume the end goal is to be /caught/ by the ghosts). In terms of the shell narrative it would certainly make more sense if the Seekers were looking for Anders instead of Hawke who was basically a mercenary with no real convinctions or intiative.
Ultimately the player needs to control the protagonist who drives the story rather than observes and reacts to it. If the players view point rests with anyone else then the interactivity and the agency will be about 'how can we prevent the player from affecting the story' rather than 'what options can be we give the player to move things forward'.
Apologies for the long post, consider it a balance point for the lack of frequency.
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