There are no spoilers, if you care about that sort of thing.
Okay, this post is a departure from what I normally blog about, so bear with me (or, you know, don’t read). I promise this is more story-centered than combat-centered (which I also have thoughts on but will instead just whine to my sister about). Dragon Age II is the sequel to Dragon Age: Origins, which I thought was an amazing game. One not without its flaws, certainly, but one that brought to balance nicely the things I enjoy in video games. First, the story was compelling. The world was rich and varied, the characters had desires and pasts and complexities, and the plot kept my interest (and continues to keep my interest through multiple playthroughs). So when I heard about the sequel, I was super excited.
Well, now that I’ve beaten the second game (which I only did so quickly because I’ve been too sick to go to work all week, but lucky for me, the couch doesn’t care if I breathe on it, or if I fall asleep on it while I’m in the middle of playing), I’ve got some thoughts.
It’s a fun game. Fun, but not amazing. And let’s just get this out into the open: I was a bit biased against it to begin with. Mostly because I really enjoyed my character from the first game (who, it must be said, was a major badass) and this game was selling a new character that the designers seemed to be pushing as somehow superior to my world-saving Warden in the first game. My new girl just worked in a city. So right up front, I was a bit annoyed that they were downplaying the plot set up to be so instrumental in the first game (the trouble with sequels, no?).
Story Within a Story
DAII also operated as a story within a story, where a character is narrating events that happened in the past. But the way the game was sold made this fall flat a bit. It was interesting to have it done this way (something I’ve never seen done in my admittedly limited gaming experience), but it starts out with the legend version of the true story where you can do crazy amounts of damage and all the women have absolutely huge boobs (sigh). The writers seemed to want to do something with how we retell factual events, but as this was only used one other time in the game, it seemed almost incidental. I wanted them to either cut it or work with it more. Continue reading “Some thoughts on story in Dragon Age II” »