I think the overall feeling of being smaller world and story actually benefits the game quite a lot. All the characters are distinct and interesting, with different motivations to drive them and different feelings on the story. The companions are probably the best part of the game: Origins was good in this regard, but suffered from a few underdeveloped companions who seemed to be there just to add more classes. The writing is fantastic, adding a lot more personality to the multiple characters. As a result of being more linear, the story is more personal to Hawke, meaning it has more importance to the player in some areas. The storyline offers a lot of interesting world building and ideas that greater explore the world of Dragon Age. The combat is much faster paced and more engaging. Considering that it has less replay value as a result of removing these freedoms and customisations, 2 is much smaller than Origins. And the overall game is just shorter - on my first playthroughs of both, excluding DLC, Origins took me at 42 hours while 2 put me at 28. The story is much more linear, forcing you into three acts of the game compared to the freedom of Origins. Gone are the multiple origins, instead you are always Hawke. Dragon Age 2 is a game that, size wise is nothing to Origins. Dragon Age 2 was obviously rushed, and it shows. But look at Mass Effect 2 and 3, which both took over 2 years to complete.
#ADDING DRAGON AGE 2 CHARACTERS TO ORIGINS SERIES#
Granted, the first game in a series usually takes the longest because it has to develop the ideas that are present through these series. Production of Origins took 4 years, more than 5 times the time it took to develop 2. Now, that might seem like a long time, but lets compare it to other Bioware games. Dragon Age 2 took nine months to produce. Now I could argue extensively about that against Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age Inquisitions, but Dragon Age 2 is a much more interesting affair. While I have problems with them now, many would argue that Dragon Age 2 was essentially the mark of the end of Bioware, withe Mass Effect 2 being their last truly great game. After Mass Effect: Andromeda, the studios have been steering clear from the formula that worked so well in their classic games. As a stand-alone game: 6,5/10 As a sequel: 4,5/10īioware remains one of my favourite game developers, but as of recently, they've fallen down a bit. Let's hope they'll learn from their mistakes for the next one. There is an interesting game buried beneath Dragon Age 2 too bad they obviously rushed it, cutting corners. Friendly fire is tied to difficulty, so it's present only if you play on "nightmare" (which means even more boring encounters). Characters jump and rush, covering huge distances in a split-second - more "teleporting" than "moving" - making tactical placement pointless. Hordes of trash mobs keep spawning, wave after wave, literally falling from the sky you'll soon start to dread (in the wrong way) nocturnal missions, where these tedious encounters are even more frequent.
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Combat is a bore: if you thought the Deep Roads in Origins were tiresome, wait and see this. An intriguing unreliable narrator idea is vastly underused.
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Anders from Awakening makes a comeback as irritating as his new emo self can be, he has an interesting arc. Especially memorable is unflappable, roguish dwarf Varric. While the story's structure is questionable (various acts don't really glue together all that well), characters are OK, although not on par with Origins'. And Skyrim had MANY cities and a huge world all around them. Kirkwall is nothing special the main cities in Skyrim are far more realistic and detailed, featuring NPCs with daily routines and most buildings being accessible. Now, you can set a whole RPG in a single location, but in that case the place needs to be EXTREMELY well-done.
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Let's give credit where it's due: at least the developers attempted to do something different from the usual "chosen one saves the world" formula, going for the more personal story of Hawke (the protagonist) and his rise in the city of Kirkwall. Since, however, it was made by BioWare, the people behind Dragon Age: Origins, the Baldur's Gate series, the Mass Effect saga and Knights of the Old Republic, its missteps are glaring. Had Dragon Age 2 been called "The Kirkwall Chronicles", an original game by unknown developers, I would have cut it a lot more slack and praised some interesting choices and compelling characters.