Dragon Age 2 isn't just bad. To merely be a bad game would be disappointing, but then all I have to do is return the game be done with it. No Dragon Age 2 committed the grievous sin of killing it's own franchise with how awfully bad it was, and worse than that, it was a game with no soul, no charm, no substance.
DA2 was constantly sold as both your rise to power in the city of Kirkwall and a game where your choices would shape the city, and BOTH of these wound up being false. "But wait" you go "Hawke becomes the champion and, in one ending, the viscount, isn't that rising to power?" well no, no it isn't. See the rise to power indicates a struggle, something you have to fight through to achieve said power, and always more satisfying when you planned it. But Dragon Age 2?
Okay in the first act you stumble across dwarven treasure, get 6 Soverigns from it and a nice house in the Noble district. Nothing through out the chapter made any damn difference to that though, all that happened was wave after wave of trash and fetch que-HAHAHAHA no. See Dragon Age 2 can't even do fetch quests right, every quest has at least 10 waves of Dog Lords for you to kill.
Okay so you became noble, after one quest, and nothings changed. Oh wait your Siblings missing, you have the ability to slightly alter why, but never to keep them from disappearing. In act 2, again NOTHING you do has any baring on 'rising to power' you're still running murder quests for everyone.
Oh and side deviation, don't you just love it when someone approaches Hawke for a job, and then you can respond "I'll help you, for a price" NO FUCKING SHIT FOR A PRICE, HE'S OFFERING A JOB YOU ANNOYING FUCKSTICK! I have never hated my protagonist more than any time Hawke opened his stupid blathering mouth, Good, Wacky or Evil options he ALWAYS sounded like a retard.
Anyway, back to act 2, the only moment of importance is A. your mother dies, can't change this. B. The qunari attack the city then leave.
See the last one is the weird part, it's a common trope that you can not 'Thwart stage 1' which means you can't stop the conflict from beginning, because otherwise the game is too short. Except We're 2/3rds of the way through the fucking game, stage 1 should not be occurring NOW! and no matter how you settle shit with the qunari, either through diplomacy or combat, you are always made champion of the city.
Fucking AYE, I earned this how? what was my drive for doing this again? I don't care about these asshats. Kirkwall needs to burn to the ground.
I guarantee you are doing the planet a favor
I'm going to expound on a little love I have for a lesser known game, Way of the Samurai 3. See almost immediately after you start up the game, you're informed that if you kill every single 'save point' you can no longer save the game. The point was the game pretty much said "Do what you want" and fucked off then and there leaving me able to do anything I wanted... including TURNING AROUND AND LEAVING THE GAME. Seriously you can just walk out the province and the game ends. Everything I did in WotS3 I did for me, everything had a change on the worldscape. Hell if you continue doing the one quest of 'Find an old ladies underwear' the NPCs eventually comment that the old lady goes and hides her underwear, simply to give you something to do! BEST WRPG I've played in... oh wait WotS3 is Japanese... oh well!
Way of the Samurai 4 is coming out in Europe this year, PS3 is region free so import it
Anyway, Act 3 is when you finally start getting some choice, and they are the best choices in the game by far. "Uh... what?" you ask, "Didn't you just get done saying this game has no choice?" yes I did, what I mean is it doesn't have any choice that does what it promised to do. There are a few choices in this game.
KILLING OFF YOUR FUCKING ASSHOLE PARTY MEMBERS! I gotta tell you after hours of this shit I was giddy beyond belief. Let me cover just how much fun it was to send Fenris the emo brooding git wasting Gideon Emerys voice off with his master, dooming him to be a slave. Stabbing Anders the terrorist traitor fuck in his stupid whinging face, Siding with the Templars, so Varric and Aveline would stick by me, while I got to kill Isabella dirty slut who likes sex (because she's a whore, that's her character) and Merrill the retarded ~KAWAII UGUU~ blood mage because they sided with the Blood Mages (There are no mages in Kirkwall, only Blood Mages)
SPOILER ALERT: MAGES ARE RETARDS
And I REVELED in it, I hated these fuckers, every single one of them was an exercise in pain and frustration, annoying me at every turn and making me wish I could just cut them down and be done with their shit. AND THEN DA2 ACTUALLY LET ME GET RID OF MOST OF THEM! I mean sure I've still stuck with Aveline, but besides her retarded personal quest she was pretty chill, and Varric is completely unoffensive! BUT THE ANNOYING ONES WERE ALL DEAD!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA
Ahem... anyway, the only other choice in the game is "Be viscount for a week and then run off" or "Run off" because siding with the templars and blood mages just leads to the exact same god damn scenario. Hell it leads to the same ENDING!
Remember in Dragon Age Origins where they did the Black Isle/Obsidian style ending where they went over how your actions would have far reaching effects for people and places, further proving that your choices, while not exactly immediate, did have an effect on the world?
Right well DA2 doesn't do that. What DA2 does is give you the SAME DAMN ENDING but throws in a "Oh and Hawke left with *Love Interest* of course" of course I killed all of them so Varric just bugged out and paired me with the brain damaged retarded elf.
If I hadn't come to Sundermount you would still be a fucking idiot!
But worst of all, isn't just that your rise to power isn't really there, but that your existence in the plot is pointless.
Remember how Darkspawn Chronicles showed that "Well without the Warden everyone would have died after having to compromise their morals"? well DA2 is like that... except not. If you have never come along, the Lyrium Idol would never have been dug up, and maybe the Qunari would be assholes and Kirkwall would have suffered, but it would have been rebuilt. The events of the game? besides you activating the plot switch of the lyrium idol? which can be done by Varric alone mind you? they don't need you.
Kirkwall doesn't need you.
And that was why DA2 was pointless, because your choices didn't make a damn difference, because really without you, nothing changes. And the funny thing is Bioware confirms this at the end of the game! "Oh the champion was just in the wrong place at the wrong time" You were NEVER a hero, just an errand boy. It's one thing to not save the world, like I said I love Way of the Samurai 3 and I can turn around and walk out the door without a problem the game doesn't mind. But I could make my mark on that province. That is choice, that it player agency. And THAT is why DA2 failed, because ultimately you didn't matter, and if you don't matter then why the hell are you here?
And people are going to jump in "Well I personally felt connected to useless NPC etc. etc." well I didn't. I struggle to pick the evil options in games even when just to do something like unlock the Blood Mage specialization because at heart I'm someone who doesn't like to commit evil acts. And yet I didn't feel the same sort of sickness killing my party as I did in DA:O condemning a little boy to being the slave of a demon and killing his mother. I just felt giddy because they were done annoying me.
Dragon Age: Origins was not a perfect game, but it was a pretty good game, their was potential for greatness. The setting was generic but it was the harmless kind of generic the same "Okay yeah easy to understand lets jump right in" that 'generic' fantasy uses. Not very original but not making my eyes bleed.
Dragon Age 2? killed it. Stone Fucking Dead
And you want to know the most annoying part? They didn't learn from it! Those smug assholes acted like they created a work of fucking art when the player base was reeling and puking from the shame of having to have played the hunk of shit. You make the worst game of 2011 by FAR, and yet they have the gall to say "Well you're just not able to understand how DEEP it is"
Guess which art style they decided was better
you know just a few weeks ago I replayed Medarot: Metabee Version for the gameboy advanced, a linear JRPG about 10 year olds, was still better written than this slog, hell the two romance options (yes romance options for kids) were both better choices than anyone in DA2
Well I've made it my new years resolution to stop getting pissed off at this piece of shit (and to burn it and salt the earth where it's ashes are scattered) but where else am I going to get a game that handles a small scale introspection of the self when compared to it's predecessor which was about saving the whole damn world from imminent world ending catastrophy?
.Hack//G.U. handles the issue of Pansexuality, split personalities, suicidal depression, the basic human desire to help people, and does it all without giving you the healing penis
Oh hey.