Having completed the game yesterday night...
...and haven written a somewhat informative, yet wholly non-entertaining and emotionally detached review on my experiences, I came to the following conclusion about all the ailments haunting Dragon Age 2.
They Are Syntoms of Puberty...
- It's Bioware's attempt to mature the Dragon Age franchise from the black and white world of the Grey Wardens and Darkspawn and the obvious limitations of their endlessly cycling conflict to a fully fleshed out world with worthwhile narrative beyond fending off its imminent destruction by an ancient evil - hence the game isn't allowing for more than just the most minute influence over the main narrative, which is built to provide lasting change to the social landscape of Thedas - so it's mostly comprised of peripheral narrative with little influence on the greater scheme of events to unfold. While much of the peripheral storytelling is memorable and consequential, it is disjointed from the main narrative and lacks the ability to incite passion for the main storyline.
- It's an attempt to bring the classic fantasy RPGs inspired by pen and paper games like Dungeons and Dragons to today's audience by adding more active combat mechanics to the gameplay. While I personally embraced the changes made, playing it like a stop motion Ninja Gaiden game on Nightmare difficulty, the general gaming populus didn't find it quite as enjoyable. Combat is neither fish nor fowl. Played on lower difficulty settings it's more akin to a third person action experience mired in layers of RPG artifacts holding it back. On insanity difficulty, many genre trappings don't work as they usually do, due to more active combat. There ain't no such thing as mitigation tanking or a main healer. Crowd control has been extremely de-emphasized.
- It's all about smart movement and aggro management. Keeping incoming damage on high fortitude characters. It feels like the game has been built around actively playing a warrior, while using the other classes for mere support - which is exactly what I did and thus I had an outstanding combat experience. It's definitely not what rogue or mage players expected out of their experience.
- It's an attempt to give the franchise more distinctness from generic fantasy fare by adding a more stylized look to its character art and re-vamping various races from the ground up. Horned Qunari and more goatish looking Elves and clean shaven Surfacer Dwarfs - a painless and successful change which hasn't caused an outcry.
- It's a low-risk production for EA, which obviously didn't go all out financially. Short development cycle and penny-pincher production budget most obviously displayed by the extreme re-hashing of environmental assets. I'm sure Dragon Age 2 is a 'Live or Let Die' production for EA, which isn't quite sure of Dragon Age's further economical sustainability as an active franchise - this insecurity being to its detriment.
All of these are growing pains of a franchise in puberty. Syntoms of growing up. Of finding its own personality. I hope EA finds confidence in Dragon Age - so we'll see another interation of this universe footing on stronger financing. I hope Bioware decides between fish or fowl combat more clearly - personally I'm hoping they're going all-in third person action, de-emphasizing companion control and stats-driven mechanics completely (fuck knockback and fortitude and finicky companion controls) and emphasizing on active movement and dodge and block and parry more. I'd rather tag-team with companions or play companion characters in specifically designed combat scenarios tailored for them rather than having to control a whole group in a game more suited for third person action gameplay.
Despite of all of this circumstance, I did massively enjoy my sixty odd hours in Kirkwall, mainly because I embraced the stop-motion third person action/RPG-hybrid combat mechanics on Nightmare difficulty and had plenty memorable 'by the flesh of my teeth' encounters. I'm hoping to see a fully grown up Dragon Age game knowing exactly what it wants to be with a focused and driven and compelling story to tell and a production budget to back up its promise with a rich assortement of assets.
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