Act One: A Promising Start

It isn’t entirely surprising that Dragon Age 2 has managed to garner a cult audience, long after its divisive state in 2011. Diverging from epic/dark heroism of Origins, returning lead writer David Gaider and returning lead designer Mike Laidlaw had come together to conceive a bolder stance within the sequel. As plans went underway and more was being drafted/altered, the finalization bore a three-act sequence broken up as a novella, a rare escape of the serial TV format the studio was known for. Unfolding throughout is the delve concerning the meaning of freedom and security, a root that sprawls everywhere thick and thin, as well as enhancing the melancholic tone already bolstered thanks to Awakening prior. It seems like it was a game that happened to release just a few years before we had RPGs upholding the same appeal; with the Hero Of Ferelden’s story in Origins, you were guiding the preconceived avatar through various perils plaguing the corners of Ferelden, weighing the options of who to conscript upon the army/Wardens against the Darkspawn menace, and ultimately finalize their story at the climactic bout. Hawke, Champion Of Kirkwall, doesn’t do much of that in 2, however. They largely focus on procuring themself, his surviving sibling Bethany or Carver, and their mother a sense of nurturement within the Free Marches’ city-state of Kirkwall - for them, making “a dramatic choice” just means doing whatever they feel is necessary to provide support for their livelihood, opposition and importance be damned. Plenty of cRPGs and other gaming genres had a stab at it before, but it was a trope and idea that had waned during the late 2000s, early 2010s, with the only other title on my mind within this period being tri-Ace’s Resonance Of Fate. It’s part of what makes Kirkwall stand out not only at the time, but compared to Origins and Inquisition. For in this title, simply surviving the moment in hopes of seeing a tomorrow, is its own tale of a hero’s journey.

And the quests, oh man the quests. Laidlaw has expressed in interviews that this is likely their most reactive title at that point in time, and honestly? I can’t help but extend that to their whole catalog nowadays, at least from what I’ve played thus far. Barring the options an Origins world state can have from either the pre-selected histories or your own save files, any quest you can do here is directly affected one way or another within the next period, radically altering ways this would affect play as well as continue the theming of both the city being a character, and strengthen the belief about having to live through the actions we deem vital. Lives are changed for better or for worse, who once was here is now forever gone, and whether they treat you right or wrong is all dependent on whatever your fealty lie under. It doesn’t quite stick the landing at points, and starts to dissipate once you head further and further in, but there’s something here. There’s a beating pulse that tells us that it has its own agenda to proclaim. Sure, I was apprehensive about certain qualities I knew about from before, and I was curious as to whether these strengths would become potent enough to forgive its missteps, but for now, I’m willing to press onward. Perhaps, in due time, I could find it in me to forgive and accept - maybe even see things I had closed off before…

Act Two: Trouble Brews From Within

DA2’s wavering foundation languishes further, cracks beginning to become more visible with old ones becoming more pronounced. It’s easy to notice this with the visuals: often one of their penchants, Bioware has yet again tried to stylize both the art direction and cutscene presentation within a cinema format, as well as attempt to address the issue of genericness while doing so. Matt Goldman is back on art director duty, and with this he brings new sprinkles of Eternal Darkness, Yojimbo, Conan, Pieter Bruegel, and Akira Kurosawa among many others helps sell the atmosphere of an overburdening, dyspneic place wrought with violence, uprisings, and slave labor. Though Kirkwall itself has managed to instill that vibe, and plenty of loading screens are much more provocative than the one in Origins, I wouldn’t quite say it has escaped the rut. This, of course, is due to the most infamous aspect of the title, that being the reused maps. Origins and (especially) ME1 also had this, and while they also garnered some flack, the level wasn’t nearly as severe due to their implementation as side content. Rarely are any revisits and/or perfunct design impeding the player’s main progression state. Even if we were to talk about them within the story, I’ve dabbled into getting back on Resonance Of Fate’s swing, and that too better instills experimentation regarding enemy positions and/or gimmicks, as well as briskness the other two had from concise combat and room layout. DA2, however, doesn’t manage to implement any of that philosophy, with these repeating dungeon areas - which are even more bespoked Stock Fantasy Backgrounds! - with the only thing separating each of them is that sometimes a door is blocked off or open, and maybe you’re plopped into starting out at the opposite end then going in a different direction. The pacing with each of these visits are also excruciatingly poor, I get dragged back to the Docks, Hightown, and the Sundermounts so frequently it becomes mind-numbing. Combine that with how uncomfortably slow Hawke jogs around, and all of these being more rectangular and vertical in nature compared to the boxy, compact nature of before, and mods to both increase the movement speed and cleaning up any and all typos and misleads in the journal becomes an absolute must. Sure, the codices help to remedy the lack of a distinct world flair especially after the previous title, but that’s lore and worldbuilding (which, even then, still suffers the same problem of being tepidly generic), columns that support the narrative currently taking place, rarely serving as the focal point, and regardless it doesn’t mend the dullness pertaining to these prefab locales for each session at a time.

On note of time allocation, this is right around the time each companion’s turmoil and personality start to encroach upon you, a majority being picked up in the first act with but one or two optional pickups being available. This was the angle I was most interested in revisiting, cause I wasn’t sure if I had a FF13-level reformation of realizing my ire were because I was dumb and didn’t think about emotional contexts, or if they truly were underwhelming in their arcs and development. My conclusion to this is… a bit of both? I believe I can say that I’ve grown on most of them at least a little more at least, and my thoughts about the Friendship-Rivalry system have since deepened as well. Opinions on Varric are universally positive, which makes sense since he’s genuinely a swell guy to build rapport over. Laidback, charming, not quite interested in the goings-on but knows when it's time to cut the shit and get into action, he’s the second party member introduced and he’s far away the best one. It feels like the DA team knew that too, considering its much, much easier to garner Friendship than Rivalry across the length of the venture, which even then doesn’t entirely change the dynamic between the two of you unlike the others. Brian Bloom’s performance heightens the appeal immensely, consistently boasting the best performances in the entire package with his various inflections and line deliveries, bar none. It’s nuts to think that he was originally meant to have a far more sleazy and malcontent persona, then retrofitting into being the “dashing and helpful partner-in-crime” when that didn’t work out. The ones that I actually turned around on are Aveline and Isabela, fitting due to their contrasting ideals. Though one is far more stubborn and law-abiding and the other is too lax and self-centered, they both need a sort of grounding agent to keep them on the path, and showing kindness and meticulous support for one keeps her upright attitude in check, while showing friction and repeated platitudes onto the other starts to lighten up the selflessness buried deep within them, to the point they’ll finally come back if your influence on them is strong enough. I feel bad for not giving these two their proper dues, they’re pretty damn cool and it didn’t take long for them to slot onto my party mainstays.

This segways on the influence mechanic in question, the Friendship-Rivalry system. Due to not being a leader of a personal army amassing forces necessary to combat a physical force, the vibe of the party this time is about the unity of other people that are all on the same boat as you are, and your actions dictate whether you’re a trusted friend sided onto the same beliefs, or a belligerent rival that can be called upon to help solve issues, but nothing more. I’m of two minds regarding this. While the Influence system in Origins was largely easy to gain favors for, it still made a distinction of allowing numerous different tallies to accumulate these points over the course of the journey. Understandably, DA2 isn’t able to replicate that notion, and instead pools about the same amount of points for one side or another depending on dialog choices made during the quests, right down to limiting the amount of times you can even give one a gift to just twice overall. This, as a point, I don’t have any troubles with - what arises, however, is the extremely fickle nature they’re wrapped under, to the point metagaming is the only surefire way to succeed. Fenris is the ultimate example of this. A victim of slavery and an abusive magister, he’s extremely poignant about his feelings regarding these subjects, and proving to befriend him while having to juggle the other Mages can prove challenging… or you can just bench him, take him on quests where you can yell “SLAVERY BAD” to the opposition and/or support anyone that are less fortunate than you, and you’re able to quickly cement your status as friends. This cuts into the same problem Mass Effect has and increasingly worsens: if you try and do your best to roleplay given circumstances, you end up making haphazard progress with the relationship bar, thereby limiting the depth of your relationship with a given party member. However, as long as you know what will occur (be it from following a guide or inferring in-game), you can specifically plot who will be brought along, accrue these points for everyone you want on one side of the bar or another, and repeat this until everyone’s bars are where you want them to be. In complete fairness, I did still end up liking Fenris’ arc and presence - even to the point I’d say some of his quests are flat out the best in the game! - and I find that the situations in running against these intents aren’t quite as abundant as I make them out to be. That said, I’m still just not sure if this was the right way to go about it, doubly so on the fact that real life friendships can easily break under extreme circumstances, a gameplay swerve that is hardly ever utilized, at least in terms of potency, compared to its predecessor.

What I do find to be a certifiable negative, however, is yet again the binary status this envelops. Largely speaking, you’re either enabling their habits, or hindering them in the hopes of having them recognize their flaw(s) and proceed to grow from them. Again, this by itself would largely be whatever, in fact half of the companions here don’t even fall victim to this, but the ones that do really stick out like a sore thumb. I’m saving Anders for the Act 3 cover, and I don’t want to repeat myself on why Sebastian Vael is an utter drivel of a character, so instead I’m focusing on Merrill. She’s often derided as Thedas’ Tali’Zorah, and as much as I really wanted to believe otherwise, it’s unfortunate to say this is one of very few generalizations that ended up becoming true. She leans much harder into the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype than her counterpart, but her arc and central quest revolve around the same thing: fascination with ancient history integral to their race’s history, and how this hyper-obsession has wrought havoc upon their state within their community, and incited inquiries as to whether they have the right interest at heart. Thing is, however, the focus is shifted - Tali’s Loyalty mission largely centered around her father with the casualty being about the burgeoning Quarian-Geth war (which you are even able to point out the Council’s motives if enough investigation work was done), while Merrill’s the sole center due to a particular event from years ago affecting her mental state to such a degree she becomes hyperfixated on not only righting this wrong, but uncovering one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the Dalish customs - no matter where and how her desires treat and take her. This is a great flip on an idea that was released just a year prior, and the events that follow incorporate this by… making her really, really delirious and unwilling to listen to reason by everyone involved, as well as make it real obvious she’s under a manic control from a demonic entity that’s only after itself, where the choices are to either still enable her actions if you’re trying to befriend her, or point out how doing this is A Bad Idea which weirdly portrays an unnecessarily accost thrown towards her. I have no problem with characters in fiction acting irrationally under emotional distress - in fact I think this is vital ingredient if a story is supposed to keep the tension afloat, despite what seemingly many others try to say - but so much of her arc just feels trite and overbearingly hyperbolized, all because of this push to either exclusively and rampantly enable her to the point her people could become slaughtered at the end of it all, or retort so often she becomes woefully depressed and has no idea if she’ll ever find someone to take her under care and consideration. This point about an overzealous second to the Keeper endangering her community through unforeseen consequences is a fantastic one, and yet I’m just left tugging my shirt and nervously rubbing my neck from how hard it is to take at a base level. And yet that isn’t even the worst part of the narrative, that’s just a supplement to the bigger issue!

Act Three: Bioware Pulls A Bioware

I’ve been vocal about Bioware being ill-mannered when it comes to doing grand quandaries, and this one is no different. The Mage-Templar Conflict is one of the longer spanning debates within Dragon Age, and it’s all set within the foibles of the Circle’s infrastructure, as well as how the Chantry and Templars, preying and mentally harming the Mages they’re overseeing, are the potential factors as to why so many of them run amok and turn to gruesome methods. This was established in Origins, but its delivery had been ambiguous enough aside from a few codex entries and the Mage prologue, relegated to a “trust the members vs enforce the security” dilemma. It wasn’t perfect, and the baggage can be hefted to a degree, but the maintenance withholding the line between real world and fictional was doable enough to overlook the questionable aspects. DA2 ups the ante to a significant degree, consistently making its mark within the acts, party banters and dispositions, (even being the first thing you see on the title screen), cementing itself as the theme’s apex. You learn more about the Mages, their lifestyle and study habits, how they’re ostensibly a standee for a marginalized group (in this case, inferences and allegories pointing towards neurodivergence), how many take to drastic measures due to expectations and temperaments being too much too bear. The Templar’s obscene, tight grip borne amongst the forefront, their security and tolerance within these people generally becoming antagonistic in nature, with but a few genuinely caring for the others in any manner they can are also raised over the course as well. The final mission of Act 3 erupts when Anders commits a terrorist act upon the Chantry’s building, plunging everyone into a civil rebellion. In layman’s terms, pick between an allegorical group stigmatized within the world due to being “different”, or the institution overseeing and stigmatizing the Others, and side with them. Anders becoming a hardcore insurrectionist is already a contentious arc to develop, but it’s made worse since Jennifer Hepler, his new penner, admitted to positing him as one with bipolar disorder, which showcases harmful representation as he’s constantly demonized for his outbursts long before the final climax, stemmed from Justice now inhabiting his body to live in the mortal world to help his friend, becoming warped and twisted from his burning hatred of the institutions into the new form Vengeance. This isn’t even a theoretical analysis, it’s a hard read backed by the game itself a la being a recurring topic in his conversations - this postimage gallery being one instance - as well as the contents of Act 3’s codex entry making it the focal point. Some of the sources pertaining to Hepler’s decree are unfortunately down, but they were preserved via two different Tumblr users that you can find here and here, both also delving more into the topic in question.

I don’t think I need to mention how horrendous this all is, doubly so since I’m speaking as someone that’s on the spectrum. I get the need to have a moral dilemma, especially concerning what’s happening here and before in Origins, but this runs across the X-Men problem of the scenario becoming so close to real life, it’s hard to read it as fictionalized events and drama, worsened by the studio’s stupid need to Both Sides-ing it. Even if you (somehow) disagree about the real-world implication seeping within the Mage V. Templar debacle, the weight of the entire situation matters naught because all pretenses of “making and dealing with choices” are dropped, each side instead being handed woefully undeserved conclusions. In fact, it runs from the opposite directions of what entails in the main/secondary quests prior: The decision regarding the Sibling “not mattering” obfuscates the point of that turmoil about how even after gathering the mettle and funding necessary to rise to the top, your actions dictate the immense cost in the form of either their compromised freedom (forcefully conscripted with the Circle/Templar/Wardens) or be another death toll from the forces you were once trying to flee from (death from the Blight corruption); siding with the mages doesn’t matter because, at a specific point, the leader starts to partake in blood magic in the stupid hackshit of “I SHALL BECOME WHAT THEY FEAR TO SHOW THEM ALL!”, all because plot elements tied to the Mage side were cut without any time available to fix it. The death of Ketojan the Saarebas is fixed, but the intent is not - if you dare to give them a chance at life and free them from their shackle, you witness that the Qun’s mantra and philosophy has seeped so deeply into their inner core, that they would willingly die from a self-inflicted spell than break that vow entirely, culminating in one of the game’s best scenes. From this, you can spur yourself to retort against the Arishok’s fatalistic ways, never able to successfully convince him but the garnered respect evolves into being treated upon equal level shared by almost no one else in Kirkwall, all from a brute that’s more focused on themselves (yet doing nothing to appease their desires) than any ‘reasonable’ measures; siding with the Knight-Commander reveals she’s harbored a Red Lyrium idol from Varric’s brother at some point, infused it within her sword, and from this kickstarted an accelerated rush of her worries and fears clocked into overdrive, therefore becoming one of the factors as to why this all happens to begin with. You’re only barely given any sort of reason as to why she acts the way she does, she spends more time hiding away while the Grand Cleric badly and erroneously struggles to appease the two sides, and even then, siding with such a force has already deigned you as the propagator for the entrapment for the Mages. At least when Mass Effect 3 was crashing down, it stuck to one of its tertiary themes despite all of its own can of worms.

Amongst other things that had wore myself out was the combat, an overhauled and streamlined set of systems and rulesets that devolve into being so undercooked in its mechanics, thoroughly mundane in its design format, and so tediously elongated due to these two factors that, even when using every single DLC item when appropriate, I felt the call of lowering the difficulty from Normal to Casual, and almost but never truly caved in. It isn’t really hard to figure out why the shift to a more action flair happened; around this point, senior producer Fernando Melo had (rather infamously) stated that the studio was looking to bridge the gap between the progression systems trickling within in action/shooter titles such as Call Of Duty with actual-ass RPG systems and mechanics, alongside Laidlaw going over control transition and player responsiveness in an old Playstation blog, and marketing director David Silverman doing a spot for GameTrailers about how now, “when you press a button, something awesome has to happen”. Despite all of that, the end result is a sloppy, incongruent marriage of Origins’ tactful acumen and Mass Effect’s stylized and squad-centric groundwork, without any of the things that made the two work within their own fundamental boundary. The problem lies in the immense homogenization that has plagued the three classes here. The Mages were far away the most powerful class in Origins, so it makes sense they had the heaviest nerf, but this seems to have swerved too hard onto the opposite direction cause now so few of the mages you can have in this game are able to keep to their own line of spell specialities, and step on other boundaries too often with vaguely different support and attack options. Warriors were a bunch that already struggled to really present themselves differently, but this serves to drive the point home further with DPSers and Tanks now being available on both sword-and-boarders and two-wielding berserkers with such a weak appeal for either draw that you likely can just keep the one on you at all times and double up on Mages or Rogues. Speaking of, while Rogues lightly get off easy and keep their bag of trick mein or swashbuckling retorts intact, too often do skills in branches crop up to “inflict Disorient on Target”.

This is all done to incentivize cross-class combos, a technique that does massive damage as well as a bonus effect on a target, but that’s something ME2 was able to do better since the general class system Shepard and his squad generally fall under were largely more dignified in their nature, as well as the important ability of actually being able to do this yourself. Far too often are battles under the attrition warfare where you whack each other with soft sounding weapons as you trickle number values slowly because of how inflated health values have become, droningly clicking the same few abilities so often because potions of any kind have largely been downplayed to heighten this “action” approach, and by the time you have clenched victory, the game throws you Wave 2 of 4 as the illusion of challenge. It’s agonizingly tedious, as if the main goal wasn’t bridging these two aspects together, but really try and throwback to the absolute worst section of KOTOR1 by making it the sole loop of combat. This soils a majority of how these quests are handled, and nowhere is that prevalent then when night has fallen, where you participate in fending off against three different gangs depending on the district you’re traversing in. This is in every act, and these can interfere with the actual quest stuff meaning you spent more fucking time doing this shit than actively sleuthing down the dozen items/POIs you were designated to do, where you’re already doing this to begin with! So your options are to either bear it all and deal with a bunch of enemies at once, or take a detour and solve an obviously fodder line of quests just to get a move on. Because of all of this, pacing in DA2 isn’t just shot, it’s rotting in a ditch. In Origins and ME1&2, completing 10 quests in an arc would roughly take a few hours, effortlessly containing signifiers on whether you’re at the midpoint or endpoint whatever that storyline is covering. In DA2, completing about half that would take that long, and this gnawing feeling of endlessness becoming more or less pronounced depending on what exactly it is you’re doing (this is likely why I’m fond of Act 2 the most, any quests there are almost always intriguing one way or another and lead to something). The idea that Kirkwall is a living character is nullified by how this is all incorporated, and it sort of reinforces a Sick Mentality I have that “all good RPGs should be a little broken”. Even ignoring ME, their 2005 title Jade Empire trounces this in every single way, including how it presents its differing schools under mechanical implementation and design.

All of this came at a boiling point, an about face regarding someone I scoffed as being an annoyance: Hawke. From the offset, the team had created the goal of creating a protagonist with depth, confided with acknowledgement about the differences a voiced protagonist can have compared to that of a blank slate, last saw with Origins’ Grey Warden, and have decided to follow the mold of their sister series’ Commander Shepard, a being with a wholly complete backstory, and infuse the two components together. The result, however, is severely lacking. Because of the dialog wheel being the centralized mechanic of conversations, your options in presenting yourself amongst a group has limited considerably. Origins’ strength was effectively handing you several different ways to convey the same 3-4 personality quirks befitting whatever it was you had crafted that blank slate’s being with. You are as much the arbiter of the narrative and what the Hero Of Ferelden faces in their growth, as you are the face of several different backgrounds that look upon you; Hawke can only ever respond Diplomatically, Charmingly, or Aggressively with little deviations as to the how and why of the prose - said prose, by the way, having the worst of ME’s own paraphrasing problem. The amount of times your class-specific option or even your personality-specific interjection can play out are so pitiful it enlightens how bad this combination was from the start. My demur isn’t actually against the dialog wheel, because the way Mass Effect utilized it is so much more palpable it’s a wonder people at the same company keep getting it wrong. Shepard’s personality is set in stone no matter what; his is about the correspondence to the other party, achieving this in either a bridge into unity and togetherness, or abiding by dogmatic ruling and justifying the means no matter what. Broad strokes, but this ties into the implantation of roleplaying, such as a Renegade Shepard doing what they can to have Feros succeed after much tribulations, or a Paragon Shep not immediately trusting the Legion and either forking them over to Cerberus, or continuously belittling their place in the squad; with DA2 being way more binary in morals compared to those, decisions are revolved around either being Pro-Freedom or Pro-Security, and the wiggle room in deciding between the reaction from the instigator are curtailed in comparison to even Mass Effect 2. Your appeasement to factions comes down to saying The Right Thing at The Right Time, with the Right Members joined at the hips willingly to raise their Special Meter in accordance to what your pre-planning was. Hawke is NOT the blank slate meant to instill personal stories, NOR is he the concrete body that holds to his own beliefs and concerns - he is instead, a blob, that meekly shapes and morphs itself into whatever the person facing him needs to hear. Hard to grasp the influence of Planescape Torment, one of the most beloved RPGs to have graced the medium, when the 30-45 minutes I’ve played of that has the Nameless One expound so much more personality and spice than Hawke ever has in this entire package and a majority of its DLCs.

Epilogue: Contrition And Desolation

So, what the hell happened that caused the package to end up like this? Well, a lot of things. Between the company’s Golden Era and the Huskified Corpse era, there’s a middle point comprising titles that are, for lack of a better word, ‘contentious’: this, Mass Effect 3, Star Wars The Old Republic, and Dragon Age Inquisition. I believe most people have since assuaged the bitterness unto EA for how these have turned out (NOT to say they were entirely blameless, mind), and realize that the developers actually involved were somewhat-mostly causing these issues to begin with. DA2, however, is different since it was conceived as a last-ditch effort for EA to get something within the Q411 fiscal year, showing up on the planning periods before and during production, the latter two docs being available on their Quarterly Results page. Jason Schreier’s book, Blood Sweat & Pixels, has a section for the studio that mainly covers Inq.’s dev process, but there are tidbits related to DA2 that are relevant, so I’ll address that, thanks to a summary I found from another tumblr user. Essentially, SWTOR’s development had continued to trip across numerous snags and trepidations, leaving EA without anything to make up that bulk of the period. Hastily, they focused on Dragon Age to fill this void, and in a meeting had given the task of getting this done to a team planning a potential successor. The deadline? 14-16 months. Mark Darrah has also recalled details surrounding this period in a Twitter thread mid-December 2021, with environmental artist Lee Scheinbeim chiming in to say that his “understanding as someone who wasn't in any meeting rooms was the choice was either lay a bunch of people like me off or make what became DA2 in a year”. Numerous, grandeur ideas for that initial phase had to be cut down and saved for Inq. just to get it by store shelves in time, which is also why the setting of Kirkwall has a habitual love affair of reused assets, such was the case of its canned expansion Exalted March. If you wanted to know why there’s even a “2” despite bearing little, significant connections to Origins, well that too was a marketing tactic forced on by the executives - internally and in a rampant push to have it stick from the team, the original name was pinned as Exodus.

Some of you familiar with Bioware have likely went “Wait, wasn’t DA2 originally an expansion that became a full game?”. While David Gaider has said this at numerous points after the game’s release, it isn’t… exactly true. Er, OK, it kind of is actually. See, in a response to Mark, he shares his perspective; he transferred pretty early on Awakening’s life to do concept work for what, as he noted, “...was initially discussed (to me) as a stand-alone xp”. Once that rapid pitch for DA2 had occurred, he had transferred onto Mark’s team, and in a manner of speaking, “DA 1.5 became DA2, and we expanded what was originally supposed to be a "connective" story into its own thing.” With that in mind, Gaider’s also been adamant about sharing other forms of cut content, such as one time when doing an interview with VGS, and having tweeted about it himself in different intervals back in mid-April, which you can read PCGamer’s cover article about. One of these, in particular, are about a “Synder Cut” exercise going over things he, in retrospect, would’ve added/altered/accentuated upon; these include restoring an actual time passage to reflect Kirkwall’s change, implementing callouts and details centering around a Mage Hawke, an extended prologue where you actually had more time with both Siblings before the main event kicked off, and doing multiple, multiple ideas regarding the Act 3 conflict. While this hypothetical time extension would help out with some of the limped mechanics, I unfortunately doubt that such a thing would drastically improve the game beyond recognition. I’d still find the fundamentals and new direction of combat to be a wimping farce, the quest structure would still largely consist of running around beating shit up for A Thing, and oh yea, that awful Act 3 proposition would still be there, even with these supposed fixes and more “I don’t wanna deal with this shit” callouts. To me, it’s really just a reminder that sometimes, the best course when it comes to bandaging things up, is to just throw it out and go back to the drawing board.

That’s just what I’ve been able to gather during the writing process, there’s likely more stories from the people involved I haven’t found and/or weren’t documented by others. Whatever the full story, it was labelled as a success, being one of many titles in its lineup to reach over a million sales, and as stated before, there’s a following for this that has since brewed larger and prouder years after it was released. In fact, I’ve seen countless, countless fans going “holy cow, it’s amazing how much they were able to get done in such a short time!”, but like… is it really? Is being fed to the grind solely for their publishing company to rake in cash something to be proud of? I’ve hit numerous statements that said this ordeal has brought some of them together, same with sifting through many different people illuminating their joyful experience with the story and the events that unfolded. I’m happy for those folks, and I wouldn’t dare wish for them to rescind any of that at all. I can’t help but continue to feel like I’m just missing whatever is available - KOTOR2 has faced similar and arguably more egregious woes, yet that’s one of my favorite pieces of art ever made. It’s been several months since I’ve touched Tomb Raider Underworld, facing development struggles as well, yet I was able to skirt by with more positive feelings than shackled remorse. What was the difference?

Perhaps, this time, it’s because the hurt was harder to ignore.

I suppose this last bit is the “being real” portion, cause truth be told, I’m exhausted. I’ve largely procrastinated, even to the point finishing the game took longer than it should’ve, solely because I didn’t want to continue. Many times I have fluctuated as to whether or not I even wanted to bother writing a full-length review and figure to opt for a summary style of likes, dislikes, and neutrals, but that wouldn’t satisfy me, that wouldn’t cover all my thoughts. A couple cases I felt like I should’ve wisened up, cut my bond, and stopped giving the game attention, but that would solve nothing but fuel the escapist mentality that has disproportionately affected my headscape, making me forget I like so much of what was on offer despite all the problems. Every time I would sit down and try to focus, I would feel numerous pits swell because I keep hitting stories about hype and reassurance only for those all to fall flat on their faces, matched against . Each time, I’m reminded of the suits maiming and draining the forces of passion harboring inside developers, all for profit that wouldn’t even fucking matter. And now, as I play various CAVE OSTs in the background, recovering from a cold, to finalize this doc, something that has faced more scrapped ideas and reshaped forms than the 70 or so hours I’ve allotted onto the main game, to completion, I’m nagging at myself that I’ll likely never be satisfied by it. It’d be easy to end this whole thing with a generic “I HATE CAPITALISM AND CRUNCH CULTURE” spiel like it’s the greatest goddamn revelation no one’s ever thought of, but I’m already vociferating enough that more would take it less seriously, especially since everyone has bore witness to the failings of The Game Awards’ presentation on how they treat this same group less than the dollar signs of adverts.

I suppose if there is a nugget of relatability Hawke has given me, it’s that both of us just wanted things to be over with before they get any worse, to stop facing reminders that we can never go back to how things once were. A fitting rang for the signaled death knell of a once respected studio.

I tried giving this my all but I could not bring myself to complete this even when I was around the middle point of the game after beating a few Act II missions. You’d think that a sequel would up the ante by taking what worked in the first place and building upon that but this was the complete opposite. As someone who quite liked Dragon Age: Origins and enjoyed enough from the Awakening expansion, this was a massive let down, and that's putting it a bit nicely. This has only a fraction of the budget of Origins and it shows depressingly. It plays like a PSP game at best and at worst a shoddy Switch port of an older handheld and mobile game. It’s such a confusing followup to Origins because it changes things for no reason to the point it doesn’t look like it even belongs in the same setting or series anymore.

The Mass Effectification is incredibly shameless and spotty here. They got rid of having different racial backgrounds in favor of a predefined Commander Shepard hybrid protagonist who is just dull to even be immersed in. They overhauled dialogue to just be the dialogue wheel from Mass Effect and it doesn’t work knowing what worked perfectly fine before. Even the tactical nature of Origins’ party based combat is barely kept in what’s just one step away from being boring action hack and slash combat. The party especially feels poorly balanced and lacking in variety because 2/3rds of them are just mages and only one of them you can really have as your default healer because of plot reasons one of them is forced to be benched. The party members are also just a sad bygone from how charming and well-defined most of the companions of Origins were with the only two decent ones were Isabella and Merril. And one of them is basically the Dragon Age equivalent of Tali. Origins definitely struggled with trying to balance and define itself visually on an artistic level, it didn’t want to be too Heroic Fantasy like its spiritual predecessor Baldur’s Gate but not completely Dark Fantasy, but I don’t even know what the fuck this is.

There’s not really much of a real story even. There’s a premise for sure, but it didn’t feel like it was actually building up to anything interesting beyond constantly hinting that stuff will eventually. So most of the game is just you trying to make ends meet in working your way up to what has to be one of the most boring video game worlds you’re forced to walk around in. Fereldan isn’t perfect but at least it lets me move beyond Denerim and feel like I actually am exploring different environments and towns with different things going on. At least I felt like I was going on some adventure, regardless of how high or low the stakes are at hand. Kirkwall is devoid of anything interesting to even interact with other than just running slowly from Point A to Point B to meet up with quest giving NPCs who point you to some copy and pasted dungeon to kill some asshole or whatever. It’s just Sidequests: The Game, but unlike Mass Effect 2, none of these feel rewarding to even clear out. The combat just doubles down on everything that made Origins’ combat fairly boring and repetitive but just mindless so they feel more clear than before. I can’t speak for the third act since I didn’t go that far but the first two feel disjointedly put together with the only thing that’s trying to tie them together are these weird “You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation” cutscenes that only confused me more than intrigued me.

I don’t even get why this was framed and marketed as a direct sequel to Origins when it feels like an awkward spin-off that wants little to do with the first game beyond some cute references to choices you’ve done thanks to a save file and how it diverges from the BioWare Formula that game followed by. You’re not really saving the world by gathering people to unite against some big bad or whatever (I think that's the case here) but just trying to navigate through a troubled city dealing with political turmoil which should feel like an interesting change of pace narratively and gameplay wise, especially for BioWare because from the games I’ve played they really only can tell just one story, except it doesn’t feel like an intentional creative choice but something they forced into because of deeply troubled development and a lack of real budget needed to make a worthy sequel. There’s the discussion to be had with how BioWare has stagnated as the developer that used to make actual RPGs but this definitely helped embody where this all snowballed hard from.

To me this is the worst entry by far. It was so boring and repetitive that it took me months to finish. I don't like the new characters at all. The concept of the story is fine and I like some of its execution.

I was also mad when I realized that Isabela (One of the most promising characters) existed, because it was after I finished the whole game. The reason why is that you have to enter the bar in a very specific window of time for no reason, and if you don't, you don't get to even know she exists. It's so stupid.

I think DA2 does a lot to improve on the original game, I really enjoy the setting and how each act has it's own storyline that each build on each other and effect each other. Another thing I enjoy is how all your choices in the first game all matter in this game and have some kind of effect, it's great world building that gives it even more unique playthroughs than the first one.

All the characters are great and I enjoyed going on quests with all the companions and hearing their banter. The dialogue and story of the game, along with the world building is all carefully crafted to make the game feel unique.

The ending is a very climatic event that wraps up the entire game very well, the combat is a welcomed improvement from the first game and the game just feels and looks better than the first one.

The transition between all the Dragon Age games feels very smooth despite all the possible routes to take the games and that is really some amazing world building by the developers that makes Dragon Age feel like an exceptionally unique series among other series.

I went with with rogue duelist btw. Kind of wish we could choose between different races/backgrounds like in Origins but it was best for the story.

literally my favorite game of all time. i love the characters so much just thinking about them makes me want to cry from various emotions. i actually like the friendship/rivalry systems.

i'm not sure how they thought they could introduce fenris with him ripping a man's heart out of his chest and then expect me to be normal about him. thank god for rivalmances.

i support mage rights but i also support mage wrongs

It has almost been 10 years since I last played DA2 as a 15 year old and now as almost a 25 year old, going back to DA2 felt like rather weird, but at the same time cozy and comforting. I don't remember much about my experience back then, but I think it most likely mirrored the way I felt about it now. DA2 is surprisingly a good game, even though it was made in 16 months, with lovable cast of characters, likeable protagonist and interesting city to explore. The combat feels better and more impactful than in Origins and it felt easy to build an efficient rotation that would work in every encounter. The story isn't amazing and the timeskips (that I think could have been utilized better somehow) felt jarring, but I still found myself wanting to play a bit more every time I shut off my xbox. This time around I also played the DLC, really liking Legacy, but Mark of the Assassin really missed the mark (hehe) and if I'm being honest, it is my least favorite out of all BioWare DLCs so far. I just couldn't stand Tallis and I just found the story of the DLC very uninteresting and unimportant regarding the bigger picture.

The game doesn't come without its issues though; repeating environments, acts that feel disjointed from each other (every act has its main plot that are all separate from each other, which leaves a bit weird feeling. For example something big that happens in act 2 is never really discussed again in act 3, even though it would have impacted Kirkwall greatly), some rather annoying bugs (Hawke wouldn't drink a health potion no matter what), clunky AI and weird difficulty spikes with some of the bosses prevented this game from really shining. I think DA2 does suffer a little bit from being in a middle of a trilogy, not doing much to it in general, but it is still worth of playing and experiencing at least once.

I don't accept any of the disrespect this game gets.
For me it's the must fun among all DA games because it just feels very dynamic and alive.
I don't really care about the repeatable dungeons, you spent like 3 mins in each anyway. The world design is very on point, it has this dark fantasy vibe connected with poverty and ugliness, very tangible
I adore that the plot is created mostly by your companions and their awful decisions, I love all of them because it's just so fun to feel backstabbed by your pixel friends all the time (except Varric, I'd die for him any time, my ultimate bro). Also 6 years of my Hawke being rejected by her love interest?? That's what I search for in romance.
Hawke is probably my favourite main character in any rpg with customisable protag EVER, her (I played Marian) character is pure gold I wish I could be like her or also maybe marry her

I remember downloading the demo for Dragon Age II on PS3, coming out of several Origins playthroughs and being hungry for more RPG action. And oh boy, did I get action, with the new game gearing much towards that than the quiet, strategic gameplay of its predecessor. Units zoomed across the field and dished out attacks at impossible speeds, mages flung out spells like confetti, and enemies flooded the battlefields. As jarring as all of that felt, what really stood out was how unpolished the game looked and felt. "Surely this isn't coming out for at least a year or so, right?".

"...What? What do you mean 'it's coming out next week'?!"

Following hot on the success of DA:Origins, the geniuses at EA thought Bioware could pull a Majora's Mask and make a sequel to that game in a year or so. The result was not only massive crunch within the studio, but a final product that lost them much of the hype DA:O had garnered. While not exactly critically panned, it didn't come close to the acclaim of its predecessor, and its uneven quality set the fanbase ablaze -- to this day, some wince at the title's mere mention.

Myself, I was merely disappointed by the game's demo and completely forgot about it up until I was met with a very cheap copy on a retro game store a couple of months back. Somewhat reeling from the shock of realizing that its age was closer in years to the Pokémon Snap cartridge I picked up on the same trip than to the present year, I decided to dive in and see just how bad Dragon Age II was. By the end, I was positively surprised: the sequel to DA:O might not have reached the same heights as the original, but it hardly warrants the hatred it gets.

Dragon Age II opens rather unusually: a dwarf by the name of Varric, under arrest, is being interrogated by Cassandra, a Seeker of the Chantry. It's suggested that a great crisis struck the city of Kirkwall and then spread throughout the rest of the world; at the epicenter of said crisis, there was a key figure referred to by the Seeker as the Champion of Kirkwall, who has disappeared amidst the chaos and is wanted by the Chantry. Cassandra barely knows who they were, however, so she has Varric tell her the story of what transpired in Kirkwall. The entire game is told as a tale within a tale, with Varric recounting the Champion's ascension to the Seeker as he remembers it... with a few creative liberties, of course.

That story begins in Ferelden, still during the events of the first game, right after the fall of Ostagar. With Lothering soon to be overrun by the Blight, the Hawke family, led by the playable character, who's their eldest daughter, attempts to flee. Stuff happens on the way, but the group makes it more or less safe out of Ferelden, reaching the port of the city of Kirkwall, in the Free Marches. There, Hawke's rise to power, beginning all the way at the bottom of the ladder, begins.

As with many high-profile titles that were rushed -- Pokémon Scarlet and Violet being the most recent ones that come to mind -- that fact is immediately apparent by the wildly disparate levels of polish applied to different parts of the game. For instance, DA2 features much more impacting character designs than the original: the new designs for the Qunari and Flemeth stand out, as do the iconic designs for the main character and most of the main and supporting cast. Everyone feels more like characters from a fantasy setting instead of someone straight out of the character creator.

But then you look elsewhere, like the environment design, and that spark is gone. The opening segment areas look hideous; the city of Kirkwall is so little like a city and so underdesigned for the amount of quests that take place in it; most famously, for every other type of area in the city and its vicinity -- caves, dungeons, warehouses and so on -- there is one map for that type of place. Every grotto, every maze, every temple has the exact same layout flipped around and with new enemy placements, and sometimes having a couple of paths cordoned off. More than repetitive, this becomes extremely confusing not too many hours in.

Systems also have their own ups and downs: instead of the janky morality systems of other RPGs, DA2 has a personality system which keeps track of the style of dialogue options that gets picked the most and performs subtle changes in dialogues, like adding or taking away certain choices in conversations, or having NPCs take Hawke's threats more seriously if she's been consistently aggressive. It's a fantastic idea that, unfortunately, ends up very underused in the final game, and may even confuse those who don't know about it. Its subtlety should also not imply that the dialogue wheel is as smooth as it could be, as this is the easiest of all Bioware games with it to get jumpscared by a dialogue option that causes Hawke to say something completely different from what was expected.

My biggest dislike in terms of systems, though, has to be the combat. I specifically want to say that "I disliked it" instead of saying it's bad because what happened with Dragon Age's combat was a bit tricky. One would think, by the way DA2 seems like much more of an action game, that Bioware had created a more streamlined experience, but it was actually quite the opposite: skills are a lot more diverse and splashable in DA2, opening up far more possibilities of builds. Characters also end up with a ton of active abilities, so if playing a mage, for instance, players will be unleashing a constant barrage of spells, which means having to stop time to aim all the time.

All of that, combined with a more dynamic and faster paced game, in which the party is constantly getting ambushed and flanked, make for a far more tinkery experience, one that can't be survived without elaborate tactics setups and plenty of micromanagement on top. It's perfectly functional, and there are people who like it and have gone to great lengths theorycrafting around it, but I, myself, despite usually playing DA:O on Hard or Nightmare, grew less and less willing to put up with combat in DA2, lowering the difficulty to Normal by Act 2, then Casual by Act 3.

So... all those downsides in mind, why is Dragon Age II so great even then? Simply put, the writers and actors hard-carry it. As flawed as the main plot might be at times, there's a legitimate warmth to Hawke's story that is hard to ignore: Hawke loses almost everything to the Blight and has to start from scratch elsewhere, rising to the top from the lowly status of refugee -- it's an underdog story, and everybody loves an underdog. Plus, that rise is enhanced by a sociological aspect to the storytelling that greatly enhances it, owed to the brilliant choice of setting.

Kirkwall is a fantastic place to set DA2 in: being only a city-state, a place of a much smaller scale than the kingdom featured in Origins, it allows the writers to tell more personal stories, focusing on developing the characters close to the protagonist, as well as the dynamics between the different castes of people living in the city. The latter is important because, as one soon realizes, Kirkwall is a disaster waiting to happen, with serious tensions building within it from way before the moment Hawke and company set foot on its shores. These tensions feed into one another, and are ultimately going to reach a breaking point she interferes or not.

Dragon Age II resembles, in that sense, the first Mass Effect, by featuring a character who's but a tiny piece of the story, and also in how it always leaves that feeling of disgusting inevitability when looking back at the chains of events that shaped that world of the game. The three act structure, with a time skip between each act, also echoes the satisfying feeling of continuity from that series as the consequences of events in previous acts snowball into the next. Since DA2 is a self contained game instead of a trilogy, however, it enjoys a more consistent vision -- unfortunately, that does not save it from having a haphazard conclusion, but I guess that can also be considered a shared feature between the two series.

The more personal focus of the writing means that even with the main story removed, however, The Daily Adventures of Ms. Hawke & Pals would have been worth the ride for the phenomenal character writing alone: Hawke is an amazing protagonist and delivers on great lines regardless of whether she's being played as diplomatic, humorous or aggressive. Her responses, and sometimes, unhinged monologuing, would have easily earned her the #1 spot in fans' favorite companion lists in any other game, but the fact we have direct control of her makes it even more special. And that's not to say that the companions in DA2 leave anything to be desired.

Almost immediately upon booting the game, Varric wins over everyone's hearts. He is the ideal sidekick to Hawke, and the two play off each other spectacularly, with the game presenting a legitimate, wholesome development to their relationship over the years. The same happens with Aveline, an honorable warrior met still while on the run from the Blight who, despite a rocky start, becomes almost like family to Hawke, a friendly face with whom a bond of complete mutual trust is shared. Speaking of family, though, we have that too! Hawke is accompanied by her mother, Leandra, as well as her siblings Bethany and Carver. It's so rare to see a good sibling dynamic in fiction, some good old butting heads but with a lot of love sprinkled in, and Dragon Age II nails it perfectly.

And there's more! Do you like weird, asocial mages? Anders is back from Awakening! Do you enjoy a pirate lady with killer gear and even more killer looks? Isabela, once a minor character in Origins, has gotten a makeover and is now a stand-out member of Hawke's group! Do you like unhinged elves with dangerous magical powers? We've got two of them! DA2's cast is almost as large as its prequel's, and the seemingly unending stream of character interactions are bound to get chuckles out of the player for the whole ride.

Like the rise of the champion of Kirkwall, Dragon Age II is a glorious mess: a game rushed out the window that, despite the odds, still managed to come out with an incredible amount of heart. It's definitely a terrible starting point to Dragon Age for new fans, but fans of the series really ought to give it a fair shot.

Tried to re-play for only the second time ever, but abandoned late in Act II because of the absolutely atrocious design of wave combat encounters. An awfully, lazily designed game from (inconsequential) dialogue choice to setting to endlessly re-used assets to random encounters to equipment. The only saving graces are the companions and the Friendship-Rivalry scale (that I'd like to see utilized more often if BioWare is going to continue to write railroaded bullshit like this). Amazing what a second playthrough can do for the revelation of what I somehow previously did not see as wildly naked flaws. I think this game can be appropriately historically upheld as one of the greatest case studies in the exploitative and vile labor politics of the industry. One of the dev team's biggest mistakes was naming this Dragon Age II -- i.e. positioning it as a direct sequel to Origins, when nearly everything it does serves as a massive slap in the face to all the greatness that came before it.

The glitches, reusing the same 3 maps for everything, the combat, all objectively a step down from Origins... But idk I just love that the protagonist is a PERSON in this one, I actually care about Hawke in a way that I just don't for my Warden and Inquisitor. Hawke and their companions just feel more like a family, and I buy into their relationships more, which is..... ultimately what I care most about in video games!

Also, fuck Bioware and the way they always make mages turn to blood magic even when it goes against literally everything they've been saying, just because "ooo mages bad because blood magic" is the only flimsy argument they've got in this franchise :)

Finally, Fenris, if you're out there, I'm in love with you. See you in Dragon Age 4 ❤️

While I think Dragon Age II has some interesting ideas, I also think it kind of reeks of low budget. Sometimes a low budget can help a creative work, make it so the mechanics need to be distilled down, the ideas focused, and just can help make the game more charming. DA2 feels like a different beast though, like a game that wasn't just designed within a small budget but designed to wear that budget as a business success. So, it all takes place in a handful of maps in one location, the city of Kirkwall. There's a new art style too, one with a bit of a comic book feel to it, which just happens to come along with (at least what appear to be) simpler looking models. Maybe that's all that necessarily feels cheap here, but the implementation of Kirkwall, the Only Setting of the Game, leaves some to be desired I think.

Now the whole one city thing was something I was actually pretty excited for. I LOVE a good, large RPG hub, and Kirkwall oft gets compared to Sigil in Planescape Torment (most of the setting of that game) which is one of the greatest RPG hubs. Kirkwall even has a lot of the hallmarks of a good hub, like quests that have you crossing knottily through the city, different districts, characters that change with the city as the game goes along.

My thing is it feels like the city was built off a checklist. It's got different class divided districts, just like Taris, but there's no progression through them. There's recurring characters that grow with the city, but they never make much of an impression, as if they're all from the same mold just tinkered with a tiny bit so they fit their quest. But those quests are my main issue. I think they were going for a kind of "the city is the main character" thing, because there doesn't really seem to be a main plot, or at least there wasn't one when I stopped playing at the end of Act 2. Instead, there's a main plotline for each act, which runs simultaneously with a bunch of sidequests. Each of these quests feels about equally complex, and by and large these are the only type of quests in the game. There's one fetch quest, and it's pretty involved for a fetch quest, but the rest of the game is just going back and forth between characters, talking and progressing quests with that mass effect dialogue system, and writing that's middling, if well delivered. It's a fine way to do quests, it just feels so... static. There's no variety. I don't think the fact that this is a quest-marker driven game helps thing either.

Moving on to the one part of the game that doesn't feel low budget, the combat is... well it's not great. It's kind of a combination of a Jade Empire-like action system with a RTWP system. Or at least that's what it seems like it wanted to be? In reality it's just RTWP but the default settings make it so you need to press a button to attack every time and hold a button to pause. Thank god you can change that! The bigger issues are 1. Because the game thinks it's an action game, every move has a cooldown and a resource drain. It seems to be influenced by MMO design I think? But without interesting ways to replenish your resource, it's not so much a resource management thing as two very long cooldown timers on every ability. It takes what's supposed to feel fast, fluid, and interesting and just needlessly slows it down. You can easily just end up without anything to do after a couple seconds besides autoattack until your abilities ready up. Even health potions have cooldowns on them. I get it's supposed to get you to focus on the tactics, but I was playing on easy because I know I'm not tactically minded, yet the game still felt always either slightly too easy or way too hard.

It doesn't feel properly balanced, and the game just feels willingly constricted under it's budget. I didn't really love DAO, and I was hoping the black sheep of the series would win me over (as often happens), but even I've gotta say this just feels rushed out the door.

The best Dragon Age game to date, possibly my favorite RPG ever. It's an extremely flawed game, due to, ostensibly, its short development time, which led to a plethora of annoyances and questionable decisions, most glaringly:
- Extreme reuse of assets and levels (every cave is the same, every underground hideout is the same, etc.)
- Enemy waves combat system (instead of properly tuned combats with finite enemies, you get waves of invisible enemies appearing on-screen.)
However, none of these flaws can overshadow its many achievements:
- A personal story of family, belonging, personal growth, friendship, and more; all tied up with the larger themes of the series and ongoing story threads.
- An engaging combat system that hits the soft spot between DA:O's tactical combat and DA:I's fluidity.
- A very well written cast of characters.
- A main character defined enough to have a personality and not look out of place in the middle of a cast of well-rounded characters, but malleable enough that you can make them feel and act like you want them to.
- A good length--not too short, not too long.
- An unmatched handling of the passage of time thanks to its 3 act structure. You can see how your choices shape the city and its inhabitants.
All in all, Dragon Age II is Bioware's best, and one can only dream of what could have been if they had been given enough time to polish its obvious flaws.

Dragon Age 2 is not a game for everyone. But if it IS for you, Kirkwall will stay with you forever.
Few games let you just live the life of someone slowly figuring their life out across 7 years in a fantasy setting.

Even fewer can say they are not about winning and saving the world, but trying to save the little peace of it that you know and love. You can't really save Kirkwall, or change the world in a meaningful way. But you were here for a while, loved some people for a while, and that's all that mattered in the end.

In the end, the best way I can describe it is a little quote your character can say about the city it's taking place in: "A city of people living their lives, good or ill."
So with all of it's flaws maybe that's what the game is all about. And that's what makes it feel so real to me.
An RPG about life, the good and the ugly.

I only gave 3/5 because the game is clearly a rushed mess.. But fuck , it's my rushed mess.

IMO the most interesting story out of the Dragon Age universe , has my favorite characters , one of the best uses of dialogue wheel and voiced protagonist in a WRPG. Also story is quite emotional and dark.
Being Hawke is suffer.

Total Guilty pleasure of mine , 5/5 star in my heart.

God, I love this game. I LOVE THIS GAME.

Okay, so the 5 star rating is biased of me. It does have flaws, which everyone else has already covered extensively - the repeating environments and the waves of enemies jumping out of the sky are the two that stuck out to me. We're not going to talk about how terrible everyone's hands look.

But that can't even nudge this out of its place as a firm favourite game of all time. I love the characters. I love the fact that rather than a generic Chosen One world-saving plot, it's centered around this small-scale storyline of one scrappy refugee and their friend group in one shitty little city. I love that the companions feel like an actual tight-knit group rather than co-workers forced together - they feel like they're there because they care about Hawke, even when it's inconvenient for them, not because they have some goal that aligns with yours and so they need to be.

I love the soundtrack, I love the combat (and if you know me you'll know how rare it is for me to say that about games), I love the atmosphere. I love the political machinations of it all, the way your companions have their own stories and motivations that may conflict with and throw off yours, the fact that the game spans ten years so you watch things change and improve and deteriorate and fall apart and be put back together again over time.

I love Hawke! I love that the game actually works the personality-type you lean towards more often into their characterisation, so that the deeper into the game you get, the more your typical approach to situations - diplomacy, humour, aggression - will show in their idle lines and what they do even without your input.

I love the friendship-rivalry system; it's so incredibly interesting, it adds replay value, and it shows you such different sides of each character, both in terms of a platonic connection with them and a romantic relationship.

I love that the story is framed through a narrative of Varric telling the story to Cassandra in the present-day, with her pulling him back at the beginning and end of arcs (and sometimes in the middle of them) to call him out on lies or evasions or comment on your actions, and how utterly Varric slots into the trope of unreliable narrator - not just because he wants to, or because it services the story, but because he's doing all he can to protect the friend he loves.

I love the quests, especially the companion quests. I even happily do the side quests every replay! And that's saying something, because I can't even count how many times I've replayed Dragon Age 2.

I've played it over and over, and I will continue to play it over and over. This game has such a special place in my heart. I don't care about the fact that every cave looks like different angles of the same location - DA2 is almost my perfect experience.

Favourite Male Character: Anders (I know!)
Favourite Female Character: Merrill (I know!!)
First Character I Liked: Fenris
Favourite Character Design: Isabela
Favourite Moment: The Chantry incident
Favourite OST: Love Scene, Fenris Theme, Rogue Heart
Least Favourite Character: Aveline

I think Dragon Age 2 gets a bad rap. It's not Dragon Age: Origins. We can all agree on that, ok? It's just not. But what it is, is a tight little adventure. I think I would've been mad if I paid full price for this game when it came out. Back in like, 2011 or whenever, we had this expectation that a sequel should be bigger, grander. There should be more Things!

Dragon Age II does not have a lot of Things. It even has less Things than Origins, I bet. But that's ok, because Dragon Age II knows that it's about the motion in the ocean, not the size of the vessel. Yes, most of the dungeons are blatantly reused over and over. Whatever. I mean, I don't really care about that. It doesn't scratch the exploration itch, but Dragon Age II isn't a game about exploration.

Dragon Age II puts you in a city, and you go around exploring it kind of. You fast travel to certain hub spots, and there are places that branch off from those hubs. It's not very big. BUT. The city changes (kind of). At the end of each chapter, you advance in the timeline some amount of years. This moves the narrative of the city along, but doesn't bring about any physical changes to the city (that I noticed). I think that would've been cool - you have a time skip, and now something is physically different.

The combat is fun. It's faster than Origins was if I'm remembering correctly. It's also loot based. The numbers go up. You can still pause if you need to, which is something I'm sure you have to do on higher difficulties. I didn't play on a high difficulty because I didn't want to have to think about the combat.

So the other thing about the time skip stuff, is it gives all your companions believable character arcs. There was one in particular that I really loved. I'm not going to spoil it, but like, man, what a bastard. Of course that is what that character would do.

And you actually have the opportunity to interact with your companions in ways that change the overarching narrative of the game. I'm don't know how much actual depth there is here, but the game gives the impression that each playthrough can be very different narratively.

Overall, Dragon Age II is like a really good AA game. It has a vision that it realizes. It's really tight. And I think it was something that was hugely disappointing to people when it first came out. It's really interesting to see Inquisition as a reaction to Dragon Age II. "The players want more Content?" says the dev. "Well, time to buckle up, motherfuckers. If you want Content, we'll give it to you."

You should play this game.