Just finished Dragon Age II…  Fun game, but not quite the sequel I was expecting.

I already mentioned that it didn’t actually follow the events of Dragon Age: Origins.  And I’m OK with that.  It’s kind of interesting to see the bigger picture…

In DA:O you spend the whole game fighting darkspawn and trying to end the blight.  You finally kill the archfiend and it feels like you’ve saved the world.  But over here in Kirkwall they never really noticed the blight.  Sure, there were a few refugees…  But life continued as normal.  The Qunari were more of a problem than darkspawn ever were.  Hell, the blight was just a business opportunity – all the darkspawn are dead now, so let’s run into the Deep Roads and grab us some treasure!

It really makes you realize that there’s more to the world than just Grey Wardens and darkspawn.  That your heroic bit of adventure in DA:O was just the tiniest piece of the puzzle.  And maybe, in the grand scheme of things, not even that notable.

There’s a very stark difference between the Mass Effect series, and the Dragon Age Series.  The ME games are following a specific person’s heroic efforts to stop a specific enemy.  While the DA games are telling a story about an entire world, and all its varied threats and heroes.

And I’m OK with that.

But DA2 didn’t feel nearly as epic or grand as DA:O did.

DA:O had you wandering all across the kingdom of Ferelden.  You start out with your own, unique introduction and tutorial…  Then you make your way to Ostagar…  And then to Lothering…  And then you make your way around to see the Circle of Magi, and the dwarves down in Orzimmar, and the Dalish elves, and you have to get help in Redcliff, and eventually you make your way to the capital city…

All the assorted side-quests take you to geographically distant locations.  You’re actually trekking across the countryside.  You’ve got your own war party, and you set up camp at night.  You’re building a genuine army to hold back the blight.

In DA2, you’re doing various heroic things in Kirkwall.  You never go more than a few miles from the city gates.  You visit the Bone Pit…  And the Wounded Coast…  And Sundermount…  There’s the expedition into the Deep Roads…  But really, all the action happens in Kirkwall itself.

Which makes the game seem much smaller.

Sure, you save the city from the Qunari and start a massive uprising…  But it doesn’t seem nearly as epic as trekking across the land and building an army to stop an archdemon.

And the dungeons get kind of repetitive…

To a certain degree, it makes sense.  Again, you never really leave Kirkwall.  So it makes sense that if you revisit Darktown or the Wounded Coast or whatever, it’ll probably look fairly similar to the last time you were there…  And there are some little changes here and there…

But the fact of the matter is that they re-used the same maps over and over again.  They just threw some rubble across a hallway here, or locked a door there.  There were probably four dungeons in total.  Maybe five.  And all the assorted quests through all the assorted chapters were just variations on those few dungeons.

This, combined with the fact that you never really left Kirkwall, made things start feeling awfully repetitive by the end of the game.

And then there were the little changes to the world I’d grown familiar with during DA:O…

Qunari suddenly have horns.  Maybe they were always supposed to have horns, and Sten was an aberration.  Maybe not.  But the only Qunari I dealt with in DA:O didn’t have horns, and it seemed odd to see all of them running around with horns in DA2.  At the very least they should have featured a few Qunari here and there without horns, so we knew that Sten wasn’t an absolute freak and that we weren’t completely confused.

Blood magic has become virtually synonymous with diabolism.  In DA:O, blood magic was outlawed and frowned-upon…  But you didn’t have to play with demons if you were a blood mage.  And there were a few instances of blood mages who actually turned out to be decent folks.  In DA2, however, pretty much everybody who tinkered with blood magic wound up turning into an abomination.

And the whole abomination thing was really watered down…  In DA:O, abominations were downright scary.  They were something to be feared.  You heard whispers about them here and there throughout the game…  But only really ran into them at the Circle.  And they were fairly tough.  In DA2 you’re practically tripping over abominations, and they really aren’t that much different from any other critter you kill.

I did like how they handled equipment for your companions.  It was nice not having to hunt around for armor for them.  Nice that they had a unique look.  Although it felt kind of odd that you didn’t share armor with your companions…  But you did share weapons.  Would’ve made more sense, I think, to make it all unique – kind of like Varric, and his crossbow.

The storyline was interesting.  Especially how it all wound up tying back in to that Deep Roads expedition.  And it’s interesting to think that you’ve managed to start a huge uprising across the land…  I’m curious to see what happens with DA3.

I also really enjoyed the changes they made to the classes…  Rogues felt far more badass than before.  And warriors were far more mobile.  Mages weren’t nearly as squishy in a fight.  Combat felt more dynamic, more fluid…  Less like slowly whittling down a tree, turn by turn.  Two-handed warriors were viable DPS characters.  Far more mobile.  Able to leap into battle and carve somebody down.  Nothing like the slow, lumbering tanks of DA:O.

It was great to see some characters returning…  Bit characters from DA:O like Merill and Isabela became full-on companions.  And companions from DA:O like Zevran just wander through briefly.  It went a long way towards making it feel like a single world.  Like your actions in DA:O weren’t completely forgotten – even if they weren’t central to this story.

All things considered, a very solid and enjoyable game.  I just kind of wish it’d been a little more like a sequel to DA:O.

So, in the Dragon Age world you’ve got these folks who can do magic and communicate with demons and things like that – mages.  There’s a religion largely based on the martyrdom of one woman who fought back against the Tevinter empire – an empire ruled by mages.  That religion teaches that magic should serve mankind, rather than ruling it.

To that end, you’ve got the Mage’s Circle and the Templars.  The Circle is a safe place for mages to practice their art…  And the Templars are there to protect them.  Sort of.

The Templars and the mages have an antagonistic relationship at best…  And, especially around Kirkwall, the Templars seem to spend most of their time hunting down apostates and treating mages like criminals.

We’re constantly told how badass the Templars are…  And in Dragon Age: Origins, we get to see how they’ve got special abilities that allow them to combat magic.

The Templars, and their treatment of mages, are central to the storyline of Dragon Age II.  You’re constantly hearing about how badly they treat mages…  Bethany and Anders are constantly worried about being discovered by the Templars…  You hear about how they’re relentless in hunting down apostates…  How absolutely nobody with a drop of magic in their blood is safe…

But I go walking around town with a mage in my party every day.  And she certainly looks the part – robes, staff, hurling fireballs at everyone we meet.  And she’s not just a mage – she’s an unapologetic bloodmage.

Then there’s the apostate grey warden who opened up a clinic in Darktown…  Casts healing spells pretty freely.  Walks around with a staff and robes.  Oh, and he’s possessed by a demon err…  Spirit of Justice.

And then there’s all the bloodmages you run into in dark alleys around town…  And the piles of apostates you’re asked to hunt down, or smuggle out of the city, or whatever…  And the random magic users you run into here and there…

I’m thinking the problem is those helmets the Templars wear.  Those eye slits are obviously too narrow, and obstruct their view of anything that isn’t standing directly in front of them, screaming obscenities, hurling fireballs, and calling up legions of undead.  That’s the only explanation.

Just started playing Dragon Age II, and I’m thinking the title is more than a little bit misleading.

Dragon Age: Origins did pretty much exactly what it said on the tin.  It was the first game of the series, of course…  But it also explained the origins of the “Dragon Age”…

That “II” in Dragon Age II implies that it is a sequel…  But it isn’t, really.  Yes, it is the second game they’ve released, but it’s only tangentially related to the first game.

DA2 starts out during the Fifth Blight, shortly after the battle at Ostagar…  You’re a refugee of sorts, fleeing from the Darkspawn.  You make your way out of Ferelden entirely and wind up in Kirkwall.  Your character has nothing to do with the Grey Wardens, or the Darkspawn, or the blight, or any of the events of the first game.  In fact, if you do import your save file from the first game, all it does is change some of the background.  It doesn’t do anything to your own character or party.

So it seems a little misleading to call this game Dragon Age II, when it has so little to do with the first game.

I’m also a little annoyed at the lack of choices in character creation.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing my dwarven rogue through DA:O, and was looking forward to playing her through a second game…  Or at least another dwarven rogue…  But, instead, I’m stuck playing a human of some sort.

This also means that the dramatically different opening chapters, which I thought were absolutely amazing, are all gone.

Also – since when do Qunari have horns?  Wasn’t Sten, in DA:O a Qunari?  He didn’t have horns…

This kind of shit makes me embarrassed to be a heterosexual, male gamer.  Well, but I guess it isn’t just the hetero male gamers this time around…

Penny Arcade has a comic, and a summary…

Basically, there are an assortment of romance options in Dragon Age 2.  One of those romance options is a fairly forward male who makes passes at the player and gets annoyed if you don’t reciprocate.  Which all makes perfect sense if you’re playing a female character…

But BioWare wanted to be inclusive, and made all the romance options available to both male and female characters.

Which means that if you’re playing a male character, you’ve got a gay guy hitting on you and being annoyed if you don’t reciprocate.

One heterosexual male gamer out there is thoroughly bent out of shape by this.  Thinks BioWare isn’t catering to him enough.

And one gay gamer out there is also bent out of shape by this.  Thinks that BioWare is portraying gays unrealistically.

Seriously.

Folks…  It’s a game…  They’re characters…  They aren’t supposed to be some kind of benchmark to measure your sexuality against.  There are gay people out there who are forward and get their feelings hurt if you don’t reciprocate.  This character is potentially one of them.  Deal with it and move on with your life.

I finished the quest to unlock Shale, and I’m pretty happy with him so far.  He reminds me a bit of HK-47 from KotOR.  He’s got the same kind of disregard for life.  The same kind of malicious streak.  The same kind of insulting humor.  He’s also missing memories…  And I suspect there’ll be quests available to restore them, which should prove interesting.

I also completed the Soldier’s Peak quest…  Was a little disappointed in that.  It was interesting enough, especially with the darker slant on the Grey Wardens…  But I guess I expected more.  Maybe it’ll be more impressive if wait for the place to be fixed up or something.

I was curious enough after playing through the origin story for my Dalish Elf character that I decided to roll up a couple more new characters and see how they start out.

First up was a Dwarven Noble.  Amazing just how bloodthirsty and treacherous they are.  All sorts of backstabbing and double-crossing.  Within the first 5 minutes I had the opportunity to have  several people executed just for talking to me.  Amazing.  I can’t wait to get back to Orzammar and take revenge on the bastards that got me exiled.

Then I rolled up a Human Noble.  Very nice, peaceful, idyllic start…  And then everything hit the fan.  Again, betrayal.  Again, I can’t wait to get back to seek my revenge…  But this time it’s going to be in the city of Dennerim.

Very cool stuff so far.  And I still haven’t gotten around to the Awakenings expansion yet.

So, I’ve been playing Dragon Age again.

This time around I rolled up a Dalish Elf, an archer, instead of the Casteless Dwarf MeleeRogue I had before.  And I’m really impressed with the differences.  Sure, I’m still playing a rogue.  The mechanics really haven’t changed much.  I’ve been putting points into archery instead of melee skills…  But I could pick up some swords and start swinging them if I really wanted to.

What’s impressed me is the difference in storylines.

My Dalish Elf started out in some wooded area – out hunting with a friend, or something.  We ran into some humans how were ranting about a demon in a cave, so we went to check out the cave.  In the cave we happened across the remains of some human architecture, some elven artifacts, and a tunnel that looks like it used to go down to the dwarven Deep Roads.  There’s a fantastic sense of history and untold mysteries.  A suggestion that all three cultures met in interesting ways, and nobody remembers when or why it happened.

We also found a mirror that somehow infected the two of us with the darkspawn taint.  Duncan found me, got me back to the camp, I healed up.  Then I went out looking for my buddy back in the cave.

Turns out the mirror was used for communication once upon a time, but it’s become corrupted by the darkspawn taint.  So Duncan destroyed it.  We never did find my buddy.  And then I left with Duncan for Ostagar.

And I’m left very curious about how the rest of the game will play out…

When I go to Orzimmar, for example, I will have no ties to anyone there.  I won’t have to worry about my childhood friend betraying me, or my sister marrying a noble.  I won’t have that added burden in the decisions I have to make there.  And I wonder how that will alter the story.

When I meet humans there’s always an assumption that I’m somebody’s slave.  There’s always that added friction.  It hasn’t amounted to much yet…  But it’s definitely there.

And when I go to the Dalish Elves, I wonder if I’ll see the same kind of ties in to my origin as I saw with my dwarf going back to Orzimmar.  Will the elves know me?  Will my buddy show up again, now corrupted by the darkspawn taint?  Will there be new side-quests, new moral dilemmas?

I’m also playing through some of the DLC that came with the Digital Deluxe version that I purchased.  Right now I’m working on recruiting the golem Shale into my party.

I really kind of expected it to be a very simple and straight-forward process.  Install the DLC, click a button, and I’ve got a golem in my party.  But that isn’t how it worked.  It’s actually been integrated into the world fairly smoothly…

I found a merchant out on the road, standing by his cart.  His mule had run off, he’d been having some bad luck, and he just wanted to get rid of a dwarven artifact – the golem’s control rod.  I took it off his hands.  He gave me directions to the town where the golem was.

I arrived in town to find it overrun with darkspawn.  So I had to fight my way through quite a few of them before I found the golem.  But the control rod didn’t work.  He didn’t wake up.

I went looking for more information in the basement of the golem’s previous owner…  Turns out he was some kind of important mage.  And the town’s survivors were hiding in his basement behind some kind of magical shield.

The mage guy is dead, killed by the golem years ago.  Only his now-grown child is left.  He knows the command word to activate the golem, but he won’t tell me until I rescue his daughter who has wandered off into the deeper recesses of the mage’s laboratory.

So I fight through some more monsters and eventually find the girl…  With a talking cat.  I’m going to assume that the cat is not, in fact, a cat.  I’m guess it’s a demon.  But now I’ve got to separate the girl from the demon and get her back out to her father…

And the reason I’m doing all this is not because I want a big ol’ rock guy fighting along-side me.  I’m sure he’s a decent fighter, but that isn’t my motivation.  I want to see what interesting things happen when I bring him into Orzimmar.  I want to see what the dwarves think of having a golem around.  I want to see if he remembers anything interesting when I go looking for Carridan’s Forge later on in the game.

I’ve also got a different party going this time around…

Previously I generally brought Alistair, Leliana, and Wynne along wherever I went.  Alistair was the tank, I was melee DPS, Leliana was equipped with a bow and did ranged DPS, and then Wynne kept us all healed.

Well, Wynne isn’t in my party yet…  And once she is, I’ll likely user her again for healing.  But I’ve been bringing Sten along for more melee DPS this time around, while I handle the ranged DPS.  And it’s resulting in some different conversations already.

All things considered, the game feels almost completely new at this point.

The first time I played Dragon Age, I was playing a pirated copy.

I grabbed some package and downloaded it.  I didn’t have any DLC installed because I didn’t have a legitimate copy of the game.

Now I’ve actually paid for the game.  Not just the retail version – the Digital Deluxe version.  The version that would, I assume, include some extra goodies.

Now, I realize that additional DLC has been released since the time the game first game out.  There’s the Darkswpawn Chronicles and the Feastday Stuff, for example.  And I’m fine with that.  I like to see a quality game expanded with additional stuff.  Add-ons and DLC and mods and whatnot.  That’s a good thing.

But it annoys me a bit when they’ve got DLC ready the very day the game ships.  This was the case with Dragon Age, because there were hooks in-game to DLC in the pirated copy I played.  The retail disc, right out of the box, had some NPCs that offered you quests you could only take if you paid for DLC.

It annoys me even more now that I have the Digital Deluxe version of the game, and it doesn’t include some of that DLC that was available on the day that the game launched.  It seems to me that a deluxe edition of the game ought to include pretty much everything available at the time.  But it doesn’t appear to.  There’s still DLC being offered, that I know was available when the game launched, and it is not in my game.

This kind of sours me on the whole DLC concept.  It seems less like a way to extend and expand a game, than a way to squeeze a few more dollars out of your customers.

Yesterday, for Father’s Day, Terri got me the new Aliens versus Predator game.  The same game that I bought myself a few months back.

So, we returned it, and I picked up the Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe + Awakenings package on Steam.

I played Dragon Age through to completion a few months ago, but I didn’t purchase it.  I’d pirated the game.  But it was a good game, and I’ve enjoyed BioWare’s games in the past, so I wanted to support them.  And now I’ve not only purchased Dragon Age: Origins, but also a pile of DLC and the Awakenings expansion.  All of which are sales that they would not have made if I’d never pirated and played the game.

Once again, piracy winds up benefiting the content creators.

As you play through Dragon Age there are various specializations you can unlock.  These are refinements of the three basic classes.  Rather than just be some generic warrior, you can be a champion, or a templar, or a berserker.

Some of those specializations take a good amount of time and effort to unlock…  Which means that you won’t generally get them until towards the end of the game, making them rather useless.  In order to combat this, a specialization isn’t unlocked just for that one character – they’re unlocked on your computer in general.  So you can roll up a new character and use those specializations from the start.

A side-affect of this is that you can game the system a bit…  You can save your game, purchase a specialization book for 15 gold, and then go back to your previous save.  You’ve still got the specialization unlocked, but you also have your money back.

This is handy for the specializations you can buy with gold, because it saves you some money…  But it’s insanely helpful for the specializations that require you to take dramatic action.

Over the weekend, I was given the opportunity to unlock the reaver specialization.

This requires you to do a very bad thing.  I won’t say much more than this, as my wife reads this blog, and I don’t want to be gutted with a rusty fish knife…

But, before I did the very bad thing I saved my game, because I didn’t want to live with the consequences of my actions.

At the time my party consisted of Wynne, Leliana, Alister, and myself…  When I did the very bad thing both Wynne and Leliana were horrified.  So horrified, in fact, that they drew their weapons and attacked me.

Frankly, I’m surprised Alister stayed by my side…  I can only assume that he’s required for some event or cinematic later in the game.

Well, I fought back…  And killed both Leliana and Wynne…

They did not get up after the battle.  Which makes sense, because they’re enemies.  It’d be a pretty annoying game if your enemies kept getting back up after you killed them.

But that’s kind of the point.

The fact that they didn’t get back up after the battle was a clearer indication of their rebellion than their shouted words and drawn swords.  Whatever magical protection allowed my party members to get back up after being felled in battle no longer applied to them.  They were now, officially, badguys.

Seeing them lying there after the fight was truly odd.  Especially when their bodies started sparkling.  And when I looted them, I was able to remove all the gear I had equipped them with.  It was so strange to see a character go from a trusted member of my party to an enemy – no different than all the swarms of darkspawn I’ve killed.

That, more than anything else, conveyed the awfulness of my actions.

More than the horrified looks on their faces…  More than their shouted objections…  More than the monsters appearing to punish me for my transgressions…  More than the dramatic cinematic sequences…

The fact that those two characters had changed from being party members to just another enemy to kill spoke volumes.

I realize I’m a bit behind the times…  Dragon Age has been out for several months now.  There’s DLC available.  There’s an expansion on the way.  Most people have moved on to other things.

But I’ve been busy with work, and EVE, and AvP, and life…  And I’ve just gotten around to playing Dragon Age: Origins.

So…  Gameplay-wise, it’s another RPG from BioWare.  If it weren’t for the conspicuous lack of a WotC logo and familiar characters they could call it Baldur’s Gate III.

It’s a little more action-oriented and real-time than the Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter Nights games…  But it was obviously built by the same folks.  There are a lot of things that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever played one of BioWare’s D&D titles.

The setting reminds me a lot of Robert Jordan‘s Wheel of Time books…  You’ve got darkspawn that are the result of some prideful magic-users tainting the source of their power.  You’ve got magic-users that have to go through a potentially fatal test before they’re even allowed to live.  You’ve got a force of soldiers who are devoted to tracking down and eliminating rogue magic-users.  Magic-users who can’t handle the test are made tranquil by stilling their thoughts and feelings.  You’ve got wardens devoted to tracking down and eliminating darkspawn.  You’ve got a foreign force of mighty warriors encroaching on the land.

It isn’t officially a WoT game…  But it’s fairly obvious that folks on the development team were at least familiar with Robert Jordan’s books…  Either that, or it’s one hell of a coincidence.

So, gameplay-wise, Dragon Age is a pretty solid title.  But that’s not what has impressed me the most about it…

Dragon Age: Origins is the first game I have ever played that genuinely deserves an “M” rating.

This is the first game I’ve played that is genuinely aimed at mature audiences.

I don’t just mean that there’s bloodshed and violence…  Nor am I talking about some nudity and sex scenes…  I’m talking about the substance of the game.  The storyline, the characters, the plot – none of which is simple or straightforward.

The first character I rolled up was a city-elf rogue…  Within about 15 minutes of starting up the game I was introduced to a life of squalor and oppression.  The elves are “free” in name only.  They’re second-class citizens in every way.  They’re mistreated, abused, and discriminated-against at every turn.

A human noble shows up with some friends and kidnaps a number of elven women with the intent to rape them.

During my rescue attempt one of those women gets cut down in cold blood…  And another innocent dies as well…  And at least one of those women does get raped before I can rescue them…

Then, after the survivors make it back to town, the guards show up.  They’re here to arrest who elf who killed the nobles – nobody cares about the elves who were kidnapped, raped, and murdered.  I wind up having to join the Grey Wardens and leave my home behind just to make it out alive.

Later I see a mighty general betray his king, resulting in the death of hundreds.

Later still I have to eliminate a demon.  I can kill the child that the demon has possessed…  Or I can have a renegade mage, an admitted assassin, attempt to sacrifice the kid’s mom to preserve the child’s life…  Or I can run to the mages for help, several days away, and hope that nothing horrible happens while I’m gone.

And, whatever you do, one of the characters in your party is going to call you out on it.  Somebody is going to disapprove of your actions.  Somebody is going to be unhappy with your choices.

This is the first game I’ve ever played where there was real moral ambiguity.  Where it wasn’t obvious which was the good choice and which was the evil choice.  Where being a good person wasn’t simply a matter of picking the nice dialogue option every time.

It’s a little intimidating, to be honest.  Now that I’ve finished up in that town I’m actually pondering where to go next.  I’m wondering if I really made the right choice back there…  If there was some way that I could have saved more lives…  If maybe I would have done better had I been a mage, or if I’d had different people in my party.

Deciding whether to go to the humans, or the elves, or the dwarves next isn’t just a simple matter of which one sounds like the most fun.  I’m actually contemplating which is most likely to give me help quickly, so that fewer people are harmed while I waste time.  I’m wondering whether I can get a couple groups behind me quickly, and if that will make it easier to convince some others…  Or whether that matters at all.

In short, this is the first game that’s actually making me contemplate the consequences of my actions.