As some of you may know, I only really got into Dragon Age this past summer. I knew going in that DA2 had a somewhat checkered reputation, but I did enjoy playing it and often found myself thinking, "Why do people bash this game so much?" On the other hand, when I got to the end, I couldn't help but wonder where the rest of the story was, and I might well agree that the game is ultimately a failure, even if it's an entertaining and well-intentioned failure.
Two things that did *not* bother me, incidentally, were the smaller scale of the story and the limited nature of the game world. I've been saying for a while now that games don't have to be about The End of the World As We Know It to be engaging, and I'm of the opinion that Mass Effect suffered from introducing the Reaper threat in all its details too early. Focusing on all the conflicts and machinations in Kirkwall was fine with me, and Hawke and her companions held my interest even if they weren't quite up to the level of the DAO cast. I played a female Hawke, rogue, pro-mages and generally pro-underdog, but trying to stay within the confines of the law except when the authorities were clearly abusing their power. The latter aspect prevented me from recruiting Fenris and delayed Sebastian's recruitment until Act 3, which was kind of annoying, but I could live with it and the other characters were still supplying me with plenty to do.
The mage/templar conflict reminded me a bit of the Scoi'atel/Order conflict in The Witcher, in that no matter how hard you try to convince both sides to calm down, the fanatics seem determined to fight to the bitter end and will eventually initiate violence despite your attempts to prevent it. While it was sometimes frustrating not to be able to exert more influence on the situation, it was justified in story terms, and seeing well-meaning people like Anders and Orsino turn to extreme measures was genuinely tragic. The one complaint I did have was that the pattern of mages turning to blood magic when they had their backs against the wall had become a little overdone by the time Orsino does it - two of the three mages that Meredith asks you to track, as well as one female mage caught in the fighting at the end, do so as well. It might have been more effective if Orsino was the only example. OTOH, I guess it also showed how Meredith's measures were turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
However, when it was all over, I expected to see a little more of what actually happens after Hawke and her companions defeat Meredith. Instead it was just a cut back to Varric with, "Yeah, so we won, but templars came the next day and we had already left, and eventually we went our separate ways." In a way, there was more closure for the companions who abandoned me - Isabela absconded with the relic and never came back (I didn't have a very high friendship or rivalry score with her), I told Anders to leave Kirkwall and refused his help in the final battle after he blew up the Chantry, and Sebastian left when I refused to kill Anders. But these at least felt like natural exit points for them. For Aveline, Varric, Bethany, Merrill, and Hawke herself, it felt like any number of things could have happened after the final battle, and we don't find out about them simply because the Seeker woman told Varric she'd heard enough and he could leave.
It's somewhat unclear what happens to Kirkwall. Cullen had turned against Meredith at the end, so I suppose there's some hope for at least a slightly more moderate approach from the city's templars towards whatever mages hadn't fled or been killed, but again, Varric just kind of stops telling the story. And while I suppose you could view the game as an exercise in building Hawke's character, I didn't feel like the dialogue choices really drew out a clear personality for Hawke as well as they could have - being diplomatic often seemed to equate to be being bland, as if it weren't possible to be forceful and articulate in the cause of peace or compromise.
I hope Bioware hasn't taken the wrong lesson from the mixed reception for DA2 - I'm all for a game that focuses on smaller conflicts, player-characters with more limited influence, and emphasizes developing your own character just as much as action, combat, and saving the day. But a character-driven game ought to have a character-driven ending, and DA2 instead ends with what's at best a half-resolution of a plot thread and almost zero resolution of multiple character threads.
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