Reviews// Dragon Age 2

At others, they’ll take the lead anyway, and ignore your protests. You can side with them in arguments and ignore their needs in favour of more pressing matters, and every decision you make sculpts not just their feelings toward you, but their actions in the world in general. Perhaps they’ll side with you despite their better judgement. Perhaps they’ll become desperate, and take more drastic measures in achieving their goals.

They’re a memorable bunch. From Varric, the tale-spinning dwarf (who narrates the story in flashback, and occasionally embellishes facts to make himself the hero of the game) to Aveline, the stoic, man-handed guard who’s unlucky in love, every character is a rich, multi-faceted, and a delight to adventure with.

And then there’s something Dragon Age 2 portrays unexpectedly well: a sense of family.

Family’s at the very heart of Dragon Age 2. Nearly every quest you undertake revolves around an errant family member, a runaway wife or a son in the throes of teenage rebellion. The familial relationship acts as a microcosm for the issues of the rest of the city: these people mightn’t like each other but they’re stuck inexorably together, and one person’s problem is shared by everyone else.

Dysfunctional Family
When you’re not rescuing daughters or talking sense into their dads, you’ll be trying to sort out your own dysfunctional family, and it's these scenes that are the most emotionally resonant in the game. It's always difficult to convey love in a video game and in the past Bioware have come under fire for the portrayal of romantic entanglement in their games. But in Dragon Age 2 they’ve excelled at making a family that you’ll feel proud of when they succeed, and desolate for when they fail.

And this is where problems arise. The plot and - in particular - the characters of Dragon Age 2 are so bewitching it almost seems like they’ve been attached to the wrong game. The ‘dumbed down’ combat isn’t the problem, there’s enough tactical depth to satisfy fans - especially on the harder difficulty levels. Everything runs smoothly enough to add a certain action veneer missing from the original game but there are cut corners and bugs aplenty.

Conversations repeat themselves. Quest markers go missing. The occasional texture vanishes in a sheen of pink and green stripes. Once I had an entire location’s worth of sidequests disappear from the game altogether.

Biggest Crime
But Dragon Age 2’s biggest crime is that, being an adventure set almost entirely in a single city, the city itself should be interesting place to tour and traverse - it should be the star of the show. Unfortunately Kirkwall is disappointingly bland.

There are few explorable locations within it, and even after trekking across each of them many times I was still getting lost when finding my way from one end of the map to the other. The Gallows, Dockyards and Lowtown all blend together after a while, and the option to visit each location in either day or night adds little variation to them.

Likewise, the game reuses locations for its dungeons. One mansion interior or underground grotto is pretty much the same as another - there are a few more locked doors or passageways closed off, but otherwise they’re identical.

That criticism levelled, I must say that instead of focusing on an epic quest across fantasy lands, the game turns its gaze inward to examine the kinship we have with our friends and families, and the people we live with.

It’s a game that says a man can make a difference, not by being a Spectre or a Grey Warden, but by being a friend to those he cares for, and standing up for what he believes in. By the time Varric finishes his tale and the game is done you will have changed history for better or for worse, and knowing you’ve made a difference to Kirkwall and the citizens within is a feeling no amount of ‘dumbing down’ can change.

Conclusion
“There’s power in stories. That’s all history is: the best tales, the ones that last.”

There are countless RPGs that cast you as a hero destined to make a difference. Dragon Age 2 takes things further than that. Rather than defeating an amorphous darkness you fight anger, prejudice and other weaknesses that are all too human.

SPOnG Score: 90%