Dragon Age II

I wish I could review Dragon Age II without putting up a spoiler-alert, but it's nearly impossible to capture the awesomeness I had for the game without going into at least some of its incredibly detailed story.  So if you want a spoiler-free, TL;DR version, here it is:  this game was fucking awesome and I'm a little upset that it was so awesome because I was borrowing it from a friend and now I have to buy it instead of buying groceries.

First of all, a non-spoiler thing: I don't often get eye-candy in video games, since I have less than usual tastes, but thank you, Bioware for Varric.  Handsome rogueish dwarf with wit and a super-spring loaded crossbow?  Yes, please.  Unfortunately, upon trying to flirt with him, he said I was too high maintenance.  Does this game know me or what?

The game opens with Varric telling a Chantry Seeker about the Champion (that's you) - he stays specifically ambiguous in the beginning to allow players to chose sexy male Hawke or sexy female Hawke to role-play for the duration of the game.  You get a fun little tutorial on how to battle (mash X, occassionally use other powers that you have mapped to Circle, Triangle and Square buttons).  The Champion - Hawke - is fleeing Lothering from the Darkspawn invasion which you might remember happening in Dragon Age: Origins.  So at the beginning of this sequel, you are actually within the time frame of the original game (quite clever, Bioware - a tip of my hat to you!).

After a climatic battle with an ogre, Flemeth (voiced by the ever wonderful Kate Mulgrew) whisks the Hawke family (minus one child) plus one lamenting widow to safety where they make way to Kirkwall, whereupon the family hopes to reunite with a noble uncle and live happily ever after.  Of course, because the Darkspawn are getting their murder on across Fereldan (the continent of feature in DA:O), Kirkwall is flooded with Fereldan refugees, and the locals aren't too keen to let anyone in without the means to bribe the guards.  This plot point was a little contrived (building plot for gameplay necessity), but okay - sure, whatever.  And sadly, your kindly uncle gambled away all your family's fortune, so you must promise servitude to mercenaries or smugglers for a year in order to gain access and make sure your boob-tastic mother (seriously, they're huge!) doesn't go hungry. 

I was impressed that the story then came back to Varric's narration - informing us that the year was sort of anti-climatic.  We did stuff, but it wasn't important enough to bother with gameplay.  Clearly it couldn't have been too extensive because we didn't even gain a level.  A day goes by and I grow in power ten-fold, a whole year and I'm no better with a sword than I was before?  What did the mercenaries have me do, eat potato chips and watch soap operas?


Kirkwall, the "City of Chains" -- sounds kinky!

 Anwyay, your year-long service is over and you and your sister/brother (whoever is alive) are trying to join a Dwarf on an expedition to the Deep Roads, a massive connecting tunnel system created by Dwarves across Thedas.  This makes me feel like Dwarves get awfully stereotyped.  Have you ever encountered a fantasy series with Dwarves where they weren't building massive tunnels underground?  And it always turns up bad.  The tunnels become infested with spiders, and demons, and Darkspawn.  Seriously?  Why not build cottages on the lake or something?

The Deep Roads expedition is going to make you a wealthy nobleman again (don't ask me why - again, the game hopes you just accept this, which is starting to push the limits of my suspension of disbelief), but of course you can't just join based on your good looks and weird smudge thing on your nose, you need to raise the coin and find a map to make it happen.  Varric appears and offers to help you out, and suddenly the game has started in its earnest.  No seriously: up to this point, it's all been linear, spelled-out, and easy-going.  Then the game takes off the training wheels and says: alright kiddo- go explore Kirkwall and make me proud!

Kirkwall is broken into several areas and is the city is the main landscape of the entire game: with a few journeys outside the city limits for good measure.  At first I thought: oh, this is it?  But it transpires that Kirkwall has plenty to discover, and even though the environments are static and reused, they retain my interest by creating one-time entrances to special homes, sewers, etc.  It doesn't have the scale of DA:O, but maybe it shouldn't (see later).

The quests are primarily fetch related.  Between "bring this to me," or "kill this person/monster/group of abominations" were the primary requests made from Kirkwall's many denizens.  However, the dialogue options provided plenty of opportunity to give Hawke some of my personality, which was mostly sarcastic and benevolent.  In my next play through I intend to answer every request with a firm "Fuck off."

The quests to get the coin to join the expedition introduce you to the party members who join you in your thus undefined quest.  There's Aveline, the widow who accompanied you to Kirkwall who now serves as a member of the City Guard; Varric, the aforementioned hunky Dwarven rogue; Merril, a coquettisly inept Dalish mage (the Dalish are the "wood elves" as opposeed to the "city elves," who live in squalor in an alienage in the city's slums); Fenris, a former elvish slave who has Lyrium carved into his skin (the voice actor is the same as Balthier from Final Fantasy XII); Isabella, a pirate lady with huge knockers; and Anders, former Grey Warden mage with pouty lips and who seduced me instantly.

Stopping on Anders for a second.  You might member that the romance in DA2 has been a source of Internet debate.  By seduced me instantly, I should be specific to say that he never came on to me without my initiation.  Whereas boobtactular Isabella wanted to screw everything that moved.  Companion quests make up a significant part of the side quests, so the romance options are important, but not at all blindingly so.  The game knows that players are going to couple off with someone, so they give some options.  I chose Anders, and he betrayed my trust and confidence, which resulted in some amazing Interactive Fiction where I had to honestly think as a character and not just as a player.  I haven't played through every romance, but betrayal seems like a theme in any of your romantic relationships, though Anders has been cited as probably the most inflamatory, since (and again, SPOILERS) he blows up a church like a terrorist during a very, very emotional time in the game.


The Arishok, a particularly violent Qunari.

 The game is told in three acts.  Act I is gathering your allies and building yourself up some coin to join the expedition.  Act II fast forwards past the expedition three years, wherein the Hawke family are now nobles, living in Hightown, and being used by leadership to sway tensions between Kirkwall residents and the Qunari, an Orc-like race of stoic warriors who have been in Kirkwall since your arrival and won't leave.  your role as mediator is put to the test, and you start to learn about the greater concern between mages and Templars, specially trained knights of the Chantry (aka church) who protect the world from corrupt mages.  Act III fast forwards another three years after you have resolved the Qunari problem and are heralded as the Champion of Kirkwall.  The mage/Templar thing has really gotten out of control, and you are again used to resolve the problems between the two (quite powerful and formidable) groups.

Character customization has taken great strides forward since DA:O - with talent "trees" being given for each of the specializations available to each character.  There also isn't a level cap (or, there is, but it's impossible to reach without exploiting a glitch), so you can continue to develop your character throughout the game (a huge problem with DA:O as there was no benefit to gaining experience about 3/4 through the game if you had been playing side quests).

Characters are also well fleshed out.  While some of the cut scene dialogue is a little contrived, your party members interact with each other randomly as you traverse town in some of the best dialogue I've heard in a fantasy video game ever.  It is incredibly genuine and its quality had be stop everything to listen to their discourse before moving on.

On a related note, the game lets you import your DA:O save, which influences some minor details of DA2 to reflect what happened in Fereldan after you left.  The Warden (your character from DA:O) and his/her exploits introduce interesting scenarios and make the Codex entries interesting to read, since you helped craft them!  A couple of characters from the first game show up as well (Zevran, Allistair, and Leilana among them) and what they have to say is based on how you moved forward.  Because the game borrows from the past, there is no "canon" which can be wholly subscribed to.  However, whether by glitch or by purpose, Leilana lives in DA2 even if she died in DA:O (and for any coming future installments, she is sure to play a significant role).


Anders, be still my heart...

 Battle is fun and intuitive, difficult enough without creating any frustrations.  I was sometimes kept alive only by the sheer will of Anders' love.  And by love I mean "healing magic."  As a two-handed warrior, my Hawke was all about doing what I like to do in these games: running headstrong into the fray and mashing X in order to slaughter all the foes that dare stand in my way.

All in all, Dragon Age II presents an expected challenge to Portal 2, which I had assumed I would be playing over-and-over-and-over again so many times that my brain would memorize its detailed environments in case zombies happened and there was some kind of "video game environment recreation" committee that I was assigned to.  However, Cave Johnson has sat on the shelf, somewhat forgotten while I've blasted my way through Kirkwall, and I honestly can't wait to play it again.