Ramble Party: Dragon Age II (it's like, after impressions hurhur)

By bonbolapti March 21, 2011 1 Comments

  
[Note: This is more of a brain dump about the game because I feel like I have too many thoughts going on and can't collectively put them in order. So this is what we get, a Ramble. TAKE WHAT YOU WILL FROM IT. ALSO, probably lots of spoilers because I don't care to be sensitive to that shit. So you've been warned.] 
 
Having Kicked Dragon Age II square in the face. (in terms of beating it/wrapping it up) I'm here with more of a review than an impression of this game. This... Short game.
 

Let's cut to the chase here, This is a short fucking game. It's a three act play that can be done in roughly 2 days. But from my experience in playing Mass Effect 1 and 2, this game is probably around the same length of time as every other Bioware game that's been released in the past (however many) years. The only difference is that this game FEELS short. Possibly because of how mapped out it is as three acts. But it's also because the game is comprised entirely out of side quests. The direction for the overall story doesn't feel like it's there, so you could end up just wandering aimlessly and then just happen to beat the game before you know it. This doesn't necessarily feel like a bad thing but, (This has happened to my friend, as well as me) you're left wanting more. It just doesn't feel “complete”! That could be my own doing, I feel like there's quests I could have missed out on, seeings how I played the entire game without Isabella, I JUST HAD NO IDEA WHERE SHE WAS. So I went on the expedition anyway and didn't even bother looking back.
 
I suppose the only answer to that is to just wait for Bioware to release all of their planned DLC before playing it again but that always made me sad to resort to that. I haven't even given MEII a second play through but I guess I'm going to wait till that new DLC for it comes out, that I can be happy I'm playing a really BIG game right? Oh that reminds me of something that I should probably address.
 

Okay so, I think there are a lot of people that have the wrong impression about this game, or maybe even the series? Well let's look at it shall we? The first game is called Origins for a reason. It's the first game in the series to set up the world, but it's also tongue in cheek (if you would call it anything) about it's theme of starting the game as any number or races with any number of lifestyles. I think a lot of people were into that so much that they probably thought every game was going to be like that. If you really think about it though, you could see that they want to set up a big enough world so they could tell more stories, with different characters. You know, actually build a character sustained in the world that you don't have to make yourself, to care about. But I guess you could still argue that you should still be able to make your own character with the different race and everything. But there's also nothing wrong with letting them create their own character with his own shit worry about.
 
I could agree that it's what takes away from the experience a bit, but I never expected it to be exactly like Origins and I doubt that the 3 game will be a continued story of the champion. They created enough lore that they could do whatever they want with it and I wouldn't care about how I had to play the game.
 
[I've also heard that people are comparing Hawke To Shepard, but that's just misguided due to the fact that the game just feels more like MEII cosmetically, These two characters are nothing alike.]
 
Characters this time around definitely have a personality, but they seem a little more, instigative. Or how can I put this? There's always that one thing about them that they keep pushing to the point where they start coming off as One dimensional, Anders is a good example of this story wise, being it doesn't matter what you do, he's still going to make you hate him in the end. He hates Templars so much that everything else he's about as a character seems almost like a distraction and out of character for him to even (want to) have a personality.
 

Fenris, is one sided with the fact that IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU DO, he's always just going to be a little bitch to every decision you make, and nothing can make that cunt happy. Aveline shines in my eyes as the character with the most development, a woman who only knows how to do one thing with her life but eventually learns to grow in terms of strength, friendship, love, while still being devoid of a sense of humour. Merrill was my choice of love interest (because that's the kind of women I seem to go for in reality) which actually made if interesting for me to play the game as a guy with this totally hot elf with a great personality who is so far deep into blood magic that she'll never even realize how wrong it is. (while I was typing this, I had no idea she was part of the Dalish Elf Origin Story. I guess she didn't make that big of an impact for me then, but I feel bad because that was my Origin in the first game :( ) It all plays out in the end in the weirdest way when everyone picks a side. It's all too abrupt and never impacted me in anyway when I found myself killing Fenris because he hated mages THAT MUCH. The dude was in my party the whole time and we've been through the worst. Meredith was an insane enough bitch that it shouldn't be hard to figure out WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T BE DOING. But I guess if he wants to go off and be a flawed character that's his problem.
 
It was even weirder to see Anders on the Mages Side after I told him to fuck off. Nobody should have been able to forgive him enough to let him fight along side him.
 
You know, I think this games flaw isn't bad story telling, but bad decision making. The dialogue trees are never what you think they're going to be, the initial headline is what the sentence is supposed to mean but it's never how it's said. That's always really irked me, especially since this game seems to sneak in serious ramifications for what you think is just going to be a simple outcome. I really hate that about this game. Bioware needs to work on being clear what their conversations are going to be, it's been how many games where they're done dialogue trees and it still kind of feels like they're not even doing them right. OHKAY LET'S JUST KILL ALL THE DALISH ELVES BECAUSE I'M PRETTY SURE ALL I TOLD THEM TO DO WAS SETTLE THE FUCK DOWN.
 
ANDRASTE'S SAGGY TITS THAT'S SO INFURIATING.
 

Meredith works as the villain for this game. She's hate-able but gives a good enough reason for here tyranny even though she's holding a plot device that exaggerates her attitude. She's played up very well in the first act that when you finally meet her you understand exactly what you're going to have to do and becomes the driving force for playing the rest of the game and pays off very well if you can get into it. Orsino, on the other hand, fails as the voice of reason. He's put there only for the sake of deciding between two things doesn't even have any other development besides “MEREDITH UGH, SHE'S SO MEAN, UGH. SHE'S GOING TO KILL US ALL, UGH! SOMEONE HAS TO STOP HER.” Well at least Meredith has all these other characters and side quests talking her up like she's actually going to mean something to the story. Like okay, you KNOW that you're going to decide one thing or the other. I played through half the game openly supporting the mages but Orsino can't even make it look like my decision is going to be good.
 
And allow me to go on ANOTHER tangent by saying that there's no point in making decisions if the game is just going to play out the same. DAII plays out a little too linear, (or at least feels that way.) but I suppose I should take the time to play through Pro Templar before I make any rash decisions about this game.
 
So as you can probably tell, well maybe... hopefully, I'm at a loss with this game. It's not bad-- Quite ENJOYABLE actually. But as a story it's too short in it's length, presentation, and abruptness. Focusing on a single character than rather a whole bunch does not damage the game for me in any way, in fact it's good for them, because I don't see why not. I think what I would like though is dialogue trees that actually make sense. Instead of ones that get me frustrated that I have to rationalize what just happened and then convince myself that “they know what they're doing, they write dialogue all the time.”
 
As the game is too short, I can only assume that they have nothing but DLC planned for this thing, But in terms of what we should expect for the next game? I expect that if they continue to tell the story of the champion they would still have to call it Dragon Age II but give it a sub-title, As it's my understanding/come to expect every Dragon Age game to be a different story/characters from the other one. They really have a nice thing going and I doubt they could really screw it up. Unless they want to convolve everything with carry over of decision after decision that the games just become a shorter mess of EVERYTHING YOU'VE DONE TO EVERY GAME SO FAR. It's really cool and all, don't get me wrong. But Dragon Age, if they're not too careful, can really suffer from that. And that's something I wouldn't want to see happen.

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