I was perusing the various announcements for the upcoming Dragon Age 2 DLC "Mark of the Assassin", when I noticed a few disparaging comments about it. Not surprising, there's a lot of hate for DA2, not all of it unwarranted. However I was surprised to find that these were particularly about how Mark of the Assassin basically rips off the Kusami mission from ME2. This, I found rather unwarranted. Allow me to review what we know of these two DLC's and let's have a discussion on whether it is a rip off.
Beware, if you haven't played "Stolen Memory" on ME2, I'm about to spoil it for you, and even a few other tid bits from ME2. If you've already played it, feel free to skip over.
So that was "Stealing Memory". What do we know about Mark of the Assassin?
According to the trailer, it seems that Hawke is invited to a party, at which point (s)he is ambushed by Talis, who asks him to steal a jewel called "The Heart of the Many". It features large open environments, traps, monsters, and a private guard of Orlesian Chevaliers, the most renowned knights in Orlais. She was hired by the Qunari, and there seems to be hours of gameplay.
So beyond, "stealing something" and "there's a party", WHAT ELSE IS THE SAME? Nearly every aspect is different beyond the most basic elements of setting, and anything beyond that is loads different. Is it just me? I see no basis to call this a "rip off of the Kasumi mission".
Edit: Some are arguing that you can't rip something off if you own it. If that is your argument, then replace "Ripping off" with "copying and pasting".
Beware, if you haven't played "Stolen Memory" on ME2, I'm about to spoil it for you, and even a few other tid bits from ME2. If you've already played it, feel free to skip over.
In Stolen Memory you are given a new team member, theif\Infiltrator Kusami. Unlike your regular team members, there is no mission to acquire here, you just talk to her and agree to eventually do her mission. The mission is basically to secure her loyalty for the suicide mission on the Collector base.
Her mission is to sneak into a mercanary leader's (Donovan Hock) home and steal a grey box, basically a storage device for human memory. Her plan is to make up a story about a small merc band and gets Shepard to play the role of said merc group's leader, thus getting him invited to a party the antagonist is throwing. She sneaks in Shepard's weapons by hiding them in a statue of Saren from ME1 as a tribute for the party. Shepard has to go and find ways to help Kasumi break into the vault, and when they accomplish this and find the grey box it is revealed that the Hock knew what was going on the whole time, and let Kasumi enter as a trap so that she could unlock the grey box for him. Without her, he'll never break the encryption. She and Shepard break out, and eventually defeat Hock in a giant gunship. The grey box is found to not only contain information damning against the Alliance, but also the memories of Kasumi's now dead lover. Shepard is given the choice to have her delete the files and save the Alliance a possible embarrassment, or keep the only thing that remains of her love but risk having it fall into the wrong hands. You can probably get through it in about an hour.
Her mission is to sneak into a mercanary leader's (Donovan Hock) home and steal a grey box, basically a storage device for human memory. Her plan is to make up a story about a small merc band and gets Shepard to play the role of said merc group's leader, thus getting him invited to a party the antagonist is throwing. She sneaks in Shepard's weapons by hiding them in a statue of Saren from ME1 as a tribute for the party. Shepard has to go and find ways to help Kasumi break into the vault, and when they accomplish this and find the grey box it is revealed that the Hock knew what was going on the whole time, and let Kasumi enter as a trap so that she could unlock the grey box for him. Without her, he'll never break the encryption. She and Shepard break out, and eventually defeat Hock in a giant gunship. The grey box is found to not only contain information damning against the Alliance, but also the memories of Kasumi's now dead lover. Shepard is given the choice to have her delete the files and save the Alliance a possible embarrassment, or keep the only thing that remains of her love but risk having it fall into the wrong hands. You can probably get through it in about an hour.
So that was "Stealing Memory". What do we know about Mark of the Assassin?
According to the trailer, it seems that Hawke is invited to a party, at which point (s)he is ambushed by Talis, who asks him to steal a jewel called "The Heart of the Many". It features large open environments, traps, monsters, and a private guard of Orlesian Chevaliers, the most renowned knights in Orlais. She was hired by the Qunari, and there seems to be hours of gameplay.
So beyond, "stealing something" and "there's a party", WHAT ELSE IS THE SAME? Nearly every aspect is different beyond the most basic elements of setting, and anything beyond that is loads different. Is it just me? I see no basis to call this a "rip off of the Kasumi mission".
Edit: Some are arguing that you can't rip something off if you own it. If that is your argument, then replace "Ripping off" with "copying and pasting".
