Dragon Age 2 - Is This Bioware's "4th Pillar?"

I am now almost, finally, finished with my first play through of Dragon Age 2.  It's taken me a long time, playing in fits and spurts and just generally not really getting into it.  At the prodding of a friend I'm pushing on through to try and finish the thing, and at this point I have a few things to say about the game.

The game certainly has many positive improvements over its predecessor.  The graphics are better, the conversations are more interactive and the PC having a voice is nice.  Streamlining the crafting system and removing the fatigue system were both solid quality of life improvements.  Runes giving benefits based on the quality of the item they're slotted in is a big plus in my book.  I also like that each companion has there own unique skill tree in addition to the ones every member of their class has.  Overall, the game has been moderately enjoyable to play.

There's a "but" though.  A really big one. More than one to be honest.  Dragon Age 2 came out very quickly after the Dragon Age expansion, Awakenings.  That suggests the game might have been rushed a little, and unlike typical Bioware games, that seems to be the case.  There is a disturbing lack of polish to the game, and an annoying number of inconsistencies in stories and events.  I haven't encountered too many actual bugs, but the game just feels very rough at times.  I think DA2 could have benefited greatly by an additional 4-6 months in the oven.  Even two or three more could have made a world of difference.

While I understand the reasoning behind having the text displayed on the conversation wheel differ from what the character actually says (repetition is boring) I've lost count of the number of times what Hawke says has absolutely no relation to the text I chose whatsoever.  Saying the same thing in a different way is fine.  Saying something different is not.  Why give me a choice if my choice doesn't matter?  Of course, that sort of comes back to the "number of inconsistencies" complaint I had earlier.

The combat has also been a disappointment for me.  Sure it looks nice.  It makes for some great promo videos.  When actually playing though it's pretty monotonous.  Whereas Dragon Age had an emphasis on highly tactical fights with small numbers of strong enemies and fairly frequent use of bosses, Dragon Age 2 has focused on massive brawls with large numbers of weak enemies, often coming in waves, and very few bosses. So in general the fights are easier (and thus more mindless) but take as long or longer (due to numbers and waves), and rarely culminate in anything as there are so few bosses.  Ogres in Dragon Age were fearsome foes and the first battle with one was very difficult.  Ogres in the sequel are pushovers who only manage to kill someone in a cutscene.  I don't consider this an improvement.

Dragon Age was always somewhat "on rails" with only the illusion of an open, explorable world.  DA2 has discarded the illusion and turned the game world into a series of compartments that are accessed through an overview screen.  Kirkwall doesn't feel like a contiguous place to me, whereas Ferelden did.  Well, closer to it anyway.  So they divide the game into little boxes and then fail to take advantage of some of the benefits of doing that.  The game world tends to be very unchanging, much like an MMO, and not at all like a highly instanced single player rpg.  Once the dragon burns down the mines the equipment there burns forever.  You can leave and go back as much as you like, and the fires just keep burning.  It's bad enough in an MMO, but what excuse is there in a game like DA2?  Laziness?

The single biggest issue I have with Dragon Age 2 though, is story.  Or rather, the lack thereof.  From a developer proposing to revitalize the MMO genre by bringing the story of it's single player games into the MMO format, Dragon Age 2 is surprisingly lackluster in the story department.  Unlike the original game which featured an epic quest to stop the Blight while simultaneously taking down a traitor to the crown and installing a new king, DA2 has you mostly . . . running errands.  The "story" of DA2 seems to be "the crap that Hawke had to deal with in Kirkwall over 5 years".  Instead of a single overarching epic, we have dozens of little short stories.  It's all very MMO-like.

Instead of injecting single-player story goodness into their MMO title, Bioware seems to have injected multiplayer quest blah-ness into their single player title.  I can only hope that they'll take the time to make Dragon Age 3 a better game, and merge the aspects of the original game and its sequel that worked, rather than use Dragon Age 2 as the starting point, or worse yet, start from scratch.

Dragon Age 2 Impressions

I've been playing Dragon Age 2 in spare moments when I haven't really been up to playing Rift, or have just wanted a more story driven experience than MMOs currently deliver (whether Star Wars: The Old Republic will truly bring story into the MMO gamebook is another topic entirely).  Overall I do like the game, but much as I didn't care for the simplification Mass Effect 2 wrought upon Mass Effect, I don't like the direction Bioware has gone with Dragon Age 2.

At it's heart, the game is fun.  I have very few qualms with the core gameplay of the game.  I will admit it seems a little too easy compared to Dragon Age, but they have difficulty settings for that after all.  But, the sad truth is I'm an old-school RPG gamer at heart, and when you start ripping out (sorry, "streamlining") core RPG tropes like armor collection, inventory management, and meaningful character development choices I get a little cranky.  I will say that Dragon Age 2 has not been streamlined as heavily as Mass Effect 2 was -- you can still find cool armor for your main character and weapons and accessories for everyone, there are still multiple meaningful ways to spend your skill and attribute points as you level up . . . but there's less variety than there was in Dragon Age.  I am not a believer in the "less is more" approach to RPG development.  Those are nitpicky things though.  I still enjoyed Mass Effect 2 even though I couldn't really find cool weapons and armor anymore, and didn't get to pick a cool specialization, or any of the other things they cut from the sequel.  I'm sure I'll still enjoy the gameplay of Dragon Age 2 despite it's streamlining as well.

However, where's the story?!  I'm several hours into the game now, and have no idea what my goal for the game is supposed to be.  In Dragon Age you after the starter area that your goal was to find a way to defeat the Blight, and no matter how many side quests you diverged on, you always came back to this core storyline.  In DA2 . . . I'm running errands.  That's it.  I know there must be a story here somewhere, since there's a narrator retelling the story from his point of view and it can't all be about errands, but I'm having trouble logging into DA2 lately because there seems to be no point.  I've even had quests that seemed like they should be leading up to something (such as the DLC "The Exiled Prince") that just . . . stop.  If this is still the "tutorial" area, then . . . ugh.  Final Fantasy XIII had a "tutorial" that just dragged on and on and on, but at least it was clearly directed.  Either give me an open world where I can do whatever I want or give me a well crafted story.  Don't give me a guided errand running experience.

MMORPGs are the ultimate "errand" games.  Most quests in those games are just errands for NPCs.  If single player RPGs start devolving into that they're really going to lose me.  It's especially galling that Bioware, champion of the "fourth pillar", seems to have forgotten the importance of story in their single player games.  Mass Effect 2 was like this as well -- the actual "story" for ME2 lasted a mere couple of hours.  The rest of your time was spent running errands . . .