Dragon Age II slightly departs from certain elements established by the first, Dragon Age: Origins (DA:O), and this has been the subject of much vitriol from gamers. It should be noted that I reviewed the PC version of the game, and it is the PC gaming stalwarts that have arguably made the most noise over the new direction set out in Dragon Age II. ‘BioWare has sold out to the console market’ they would decry, with accusations of ‘dumbing down’ and ‘neglecting the platform which made them great’ thrown in for good measure. As a stalwart PC gamer myself, I too was rather concerned that Dragon Age II would turn out to be a shadow of its former self.
For a fan of the original, on the surface there are some stark changes. Gone is the silent and varied choice of a protagonist, once a mainstay of BioWare’s PC RPG titles. In their place, is a single predefined character, a human named Hawke. A player’s only choice (other than first name and some appearance customisation) is whether to be male or female and which character class to play – warrior, rogue, or mage.
The story goes that the Hawke family is trying to escape their hometown of Lothering which is being overrun by the Darkspawn blight. As they battle their way through the wilds, facing loss and meeting allies, they are beset and nearly overcome save for the intervention of Flemeth, the Witch of the Wilds. In return for saving their lives, Flemeth tasks the player with delivering an amulet to the Dalish elf tribes near Kirkwall. In a happy coincidence, the Hawke’s were trying to reach Kirkwall anyway, and given no real choice in the matter, our hero agrees.
Flemeth aides their journey to Kirkwall and upon arrival the player best get comfortable with their surroundings, because this is where the bulk of the game will take place. From here there story sprawls out along numerous quest lines; main plot, side quests, secondary quests, and companion quests. Despite this illusion of variety, things are actually rather linear, with one leading on to another. There are a few main plot decisions which can be made, and these will no doubt influence the inevitable sequel.
Essentially the player’s choice is whether or not to complete the variety of non-plot quests on offer, to the detriment of their levels and abilities should they choose not. The story of the game spans a decade, and after a certain point, the non-plot quests will fall away as the game accelerates the story through a span of time, before plonking the player back down into the middle of yet another busy period of do-gooding and/or skulduggery. Without giving away too much of the plot, the overall character arc departs to the traditional ‘saviour of the world with no other choice’ vein and settles into a ‘I’m here and I need the work’ attitude, with the player rather being roped into various tasks as they have nothing better to do.
The story concludes on a cliff hanger, and with a number of loose ends to the plot. Obviously this is with a view to the inevitable DLC, expansion pack and sequel. Enough mention is made of the actions of the hero from DA:O to lead one to believe that these two separate stories might intertwine for Dragon Age III.
Characters
Hawke is fully voiced and conversations are lead with the Mass Effect precedent – a conversation wheel with vague paraphrasing of the conversation option and an icon that gives an indication of tone.
For the most part, the voice acting is good, with only a few strange or disjointed examples of voice acting coming from the NPCs. The player’s companions are well voiced and the actors do a great job of remaining true to their part throughout, and one might find they become quite fond of the various characters. The scripting is good and never becomes tedious or boring; but I wouldn’t expect players to be reliving most of the conversations on their subsequent replays of the game.
Hawke is probably the weakest point in the whole dialogue system. The three most general conversation choices range from pious goody-two-shoes, to sarcastic clownish jerk, to violent maniac. Moving between the various options makes Hawke come across as schizophrenic, and one may frequently reload to explore the best reward outcome for a conversation path. Upon doing this one may also be disappointed to discover that the conversation paths only provide an illusion of choice and there are rarely two or more different outcomes.
The alternative is to decide which of the personalities you are going to use, and stick to it no matter the consequences. While this might give the illusion of remaining true to their character, it may also lead the player to do themselves a disservice. I suppose it depends on whether you are the type of gamer who will be happy with letting events unfold at random thanks to your conversation choices, or if you are the type that want’s to strive for that perfect playthrough. That said, through varying conversation options Hawke doesn’t deviate in character too dramatically.
Combat
Another profound change from DA:O is the revamped combat mechanic coupled with some stylish moves. Gone are the understated and often lumbering attack moves of DA:O, replaced with over-the-top flashy combat moves. Characters will scythe enormous great-swords through the air as if they were made of tinfoil. Warriors will dash forward to engage, rogues blink in and out of battle and both attack with a flourish of blades. Mages twirl around and weave elaborate moves with their staffs. Most of the spells are quite the spectacle, with flashes and visual aplomb. Blood flies through the air and enemies explode into a pulped and gibbed mass of gore when felled with a particularly vicious attack. In general, the combat is far busier visually, but for the purists this departure from the traditional may be irksome. Setting those concerns aside the combat is a lot more fun to watch than in DA:O. Coupled with some the great sound effects, I dare say that in many ways, this is an improvement.
The skill upgrade trees are interesting and offer enough variety so that players will likely have to make some decisions early on as to which paths to specialise in to avoid becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none. Each of the companions has their own unique upgrade path as well, which can be affected positively by either a rivalry or friendship with the player character. The spell book which mages used in DA:O has been replaced by this upgrade tree as well, and likely this will annoy purists. However, I feel that the skill tree offers a fairly decent choice of spells (albeit far less than those available in DA:O) and by upgrading certain paths some quite spectacular high level spells can be gained.
Party tactics remain, and for those who don’t like to bother with these nuances, the presets actually prove useful. On the ‘normal’ difficulty setting things appear a touch too easy, with only the most extreme combat scenarios proving challenging. However, this is likely a nice pace for first time players and those inexperienced with the tactical combat elements of Dragon Age. For hardened veterans, the tougher settings offer the desired challenge, requiring a lot more planning to go into battles, proving to be an engaging and in-depth experience. Make good use of that ‘pause combat’ button.
The choice of giving companions armour found through adventure has been removed. This has been replaced with a character specific set of armour; a major bone of contention for some. Rings, amulets and weapons can still be dictated. BioWare clearly put a lot of work into giving the companions their own distinct visual style and this is likely why the companion armour is in place. Companion armour can be upgraded through specific items found or purchased, and these do provide minor visual tweaks. Some characters may also change their armour through the storyline.
Pathfinding can prove stupid at times, with characters getting stuck on scenery and not attacking because they are busy plotting an escape from their strife. At one point an enemy fell underneath a set of stairs, and my warriors stood above him attacking thin air while the spellcasters ran back and forth like headless chickens. Thanks to the tight confines of the level design, having reached a dead end I was annoyingly boxed in by my party members, who then had to be forcefully moved in order to make room for my main character to take the lead.
Visuals
The isometric view is gone and the camera is locked above whichever character is selected. One can zoom in and out and rotate the view. While this makes sense in order to create a uniform experience across platforms, it would have been nice to give PC gamers a movable camera since we have the advantage of a mouse and keyboard control system.
Visually, the game is full of detailed characters and environments. Unfortunately those environments are recycled relentlessly. Players will spend the bulk of their game in the brownish-beige stone-clad city of Kirkwall, with a few forays into some bland wilderness areas. The underdark is probably the best environment to explore in terms of visual variety and interesting decals but these segments feel too few and far between. Dungeons are reused constantly, and from quest to quest one may find themselves running through carbon copies, with the only variation being a few closed off paths or placements of treasure.
To be clear, I don’t mean noticeable reuse of modular rooms to make up a dungeon run – you will see the exact same areas again and again. Granted, these areas are rather interesting visually, but they fall flat for their lack of variety. This is a disappointment coming off the back of DA:O which offered a vast array of varied and interesting locations to explore.
There are also a few minor annoyances with the character models. While everyone is wearing cool looking armour or fabrics, there is a distracting amount of clipping. When characters articulate even slightly, their pauldrons clip into the rest of their armour. Likewise fabrics will clip into bodies. ‘Sheathed’ weaponry also simply hovers on the back of characters; while not noticeable in combat, during cutscenes I found it particularly ridiculous to look at Isabela’s twin hovering daggers for example.
PC gamers with adequate rigs can really benefit from the high resolution texture pack released seperately by BioWare. This pack really steps up the quality of the visuals from the standard texturing. In the shadow of the high resolution pack, the standard textures look drab and undetailed. Of course not everyone will be able to run this as it requires a beefy DX11 card, and so the standard texturing is still visually adequate. It is also good to note that a budding Dragon Age II modding community is already working on some content for the game, despite the fact BioWare has yet to release official mods tools.
Speaking of DX11, while I had very little problem with the game using an AMD GPU, there have been numerous reports of Nvidia users (MyGaming’s own Nic Simmonds included) experiencing impossible gameplay lag and terrible visual glitches on very high settings in DX11 mode. At the time of writing, reports are emerging that a new set of beta Nvidia drivers have rectified these issues. Still, one wonders how BioWare can release a title that has such profound problems running at such high settings on a particular range of hardware.
Conclusion
Dragon Age II, for all of its flaws, turned out to be a fun and engaging title, although DA:O purists may be disappointed by some of the changes. The combat system turned out to be fun to watch and engaging when explored fully. The storyline and scripting is good, expanding on many of the concepts introduced in DA:O without losing new players in a mire of lore. The visuals are colourful and detailed but disappointingly recycled. The companion characters are interesting to engage with and each carry their own unique visual style. Overall, Dragon Age II proved to be a fun experience that kept me coming back for more, and that should ultimately be the mark of a good game.
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