Dragon Age 2
I've sat down, imported my save from Dragon Age Origins(or more accurately, from the end of Witch Hunt) and started the Journey. And right off the bat it's a bit different then Origins. It starts with a rather Hunky(and strangely beardless dwarf) named Varric being hauled into an interrogation room by a rather angry woman named Cassandra and questioned about "The Champion", which then leads to being plunged straight into a big battle with a ton of darkspawn before a fucking dragon shows up. The whole thing is interrupted by cassandra yelling at him and telling Varric to "TELL THE STORY RIGHT!", in that unreliable narrator way that I kind of dug, before resetting and explaining that Hawke and his family are(were) a group of refugees fleeing the destruction of lothering during the blight.
This is an interesting starting point of the game, and while the whole opening bit of trying to flee the horde through the blighted lands near the Kokari Wilds is basically a tunnel alternating with cutscenes and boss fights, it does give a view into how shit the blight really was for a lot of the common people of ferelden. The opening area looks like a fucking wasteland and darkspawn are everywhere. In origins mostly you'd have the map slowly turning a kinda nasty blackish color from the south heading north as the game progressed and the occasional random encounter, but none of them really showed much devastation and a lot of the damage to the blight was off screen. Denerim was the one on-screen exception(assuming you didn't let Redcliffe get razed) but mostly it was just people talking about how shit things were in much of the country.
It also punactues the fact this that this seems to be a more personal story based around Hawk and her family(I picked Mage Lady Hawke, because Snarky VA and I wanted to do a Mage but not have the Circle Origin) and how the blight basically changed their lives(and a lot of other lives forever). Faced with few other options, they flee to Kirkwall, the city of chains, somewhere to the North in the Free Marshes(though "Free" seems to be used very broadly here), where Mother is originally from before moving to Ferelden a while back. The family apparently has an estate there and friends, but once they arrive they find they have neither. In fact, the city is choked with Fereldener(?) refugees fleeing the blight and the locals aren't letting anyone else in leading to Hawke basically becoming an indentured servant to pay for a bribe for the family to enter.
Considering how much refugees fleeing from war torn(and climate damaged) regions of our world has become a massive political issue, this feels very relevant, probably a bit more then it was when the game came out.
Kirkwall itself is a very different beast then ferelden, being in a much more arid and rocky location closer to the equator, but also because was once the hub of a massive Slave Network to work the quarries that once fed the Monument building for the Treventitor Empire, until the Slaves revolted and burned down a lot of the city in protest. Even a millennium later it's still ominous and monolithic, with huge ziggraut-like temples and statues of slaves cowering and in pain everywhere which nobody has bothered to remove in the centuries since. It's a really interesting, in theory, setting and I've spent a decent time exploring the city once getting to actually wander around it after a Time Skip. Also, I'm gonna say, it kinda reminds me of the Slaver cities from GRR Martin's ASOIF books/Game of Thrones Series.
Even inside the (relative) safety of Kirkwall, the family is destitute living in a really shitty part of town(called "Lowtown" appropriately) in a hovel and has like a couple silvers to their name. The Uncle who was left lost the estate some time ago, apparently due to making a series of bad choices and is resentful of you moving in with him. This leads to Hawk and Carver, Hawke's brother, trying to get hired onto an expedition to the deep roads for the possibility of a lot of treasure to save the family and catching the attention of Varric, the aforementioned dwarf with a really cool...Automatic?...Crossbow that he named. But they need money to get in on the expedition, because Varric is giving them a chance to buy in as partners, so that means it's time to do a bunch of quests for experience and money.
Speaking of which, I find it interesting that Hawke agrees to a year of indentured servitude and then the game just skips that entire year to being paid off(and broke). It also feels wierd being this poor again because I ended Awakening having so much money I was just buying shit willy nilly just because I had the money to toss around, so why not buy all the healing potions I'll never fucking use. Now I'm broke and while there are plenty of shops I can't afford much of any of it, but that does integrate with the plot very neatly. The game does imply Hawke gained quite a reputation during the year working for the smugglers(I chose the smuggler elf lady over the mercenary dude and I have no idea if it matters at all in the long run) but you never see it and I kinda wish that had been part of the gameplay. I can only imagine the 18 months of total dev time probably had a lot ot do with it. In fact, I'm gonna assume that many if not most of the problems this game has are gonna be explainable by 18 months of dev time.
Also, the fact the entirety of Dragon Age Origins essentially happens during the time skip feels weird considering I just spent like 60-70 hours of my life playing events and stories that just went by in the blink of an eye.
That out of the way, the game looks a bit better than Origins. The character models look more fluid and "real" for the most part, even if some of them look a bit different then I remember. Flemeth, who makes a cameo really early on before her "Death", looks a wee bit different here, with horn-hair(?) and then there's the Elves who looks weirdly proportioned, like super skinny and it looks like maybe their shoulders don't exist or something? As mentioned above, it's weird and kinda offputting to look at.
On the other side of the spectrum, there's Varric, and man, I can understand why people talk about him so far. He probably put all his points into Charisma(what do you mean that's not a stat in Dragon Age?) and while I've never thought of myself as gay curious, I'd seriously consider it if Varric asked me to. Just saying. My wife would understand I'm sure.
But generally the games does look better and fortunately, not as browny muddled in the color palette. Unfortunately, most of the environments are still really brown so it's hard to notice and it feels like kind of a waste that they're not taking advantage of...wait, 18 month dev cycle, nevermind. Also, the codex entries feel like they're easier to read now. Thank god.
Gameplay feels like it's been streamlined a bit, with combat feels a bit faster and more and the skill upgrade system has been redone into trees inside of bars from origins. I have to check guides again for mage hawke because I'm sure skills have been rebalanced so not everything works the same as it did before. The combat is more fun to watch at any rate and at least the tactics system still seems to work as I remember so I can automate the people I'm not controlling.
I think that covers all my initial thoughts. To finish this off, I remembered Miracle of Sound did a song about DA2 a long, long time ago, so I'm gonna drop it here.
You're welcome.
