Dragon Age II

As the lands of Ferelden are overrun by a Blight, the Hawke family escapes across the Waking Sea to the city of Kirkwall. Here they make their new home, but the city is riven by tensions between the templars, the Chantry and the mages of the city. There is also trouble brewing between the natives and the Ferelden refugees swamping the city, as well as a boat-load of Qunari who have taken refuge in Kirkwall despite their disdain for it. Over the course of seven years, one of the Hawkes will rise to become the Champion of Kirkwall and will decide the fate of the city...and possibly all of Thedas.

Dragon Age II is the successor game to Dragon Age: Origins, although not a sequel in the traditional sense. It takes place in a different location with a (mostly) different cast of characters with, unusually, a much smaller and tighter focus than the first game in the series. These changes have proved controversial, with praise for the focus, the writing and the characters being contrasted with harsh criticisms of gameplay changes and problems resulting from the game's rushed development.

BioWare released Dragon Age II in early 2011, only eighteen months after the release of Origins. Electronic Arts, which took over BioWare shortly before Origins's release in late 2009, is alleged to have mandated a 'quickie' sequel to be developed on a very tight time schedule and budget to help make up for the lengthy (and therefore expensive) five-year development of Origins itself. There was resistance to this at BioWare - the lead designer of Origins quit in protest, fearing the game would suffer from being rushed out of the door - but ultimately they had to comply. At the same time, EA seem to have been rather impressed with Mass Effect 2 and various mechanics from that game, such as the dialogue wheel and the loyalty missions, were transposed over to Dragon Age II.

The result is a schizophrenic game that hangs between some excellent conceptual ideas, characters and writing but in which the gameplay feels like it's been compromised to make up for it. It's still very playable and very enjoyable, but it does feel like a game that's been rushed out before it was fully ready.

To deal with the bad issues first, the most annoying problem is combat. Battles in the game start in the traditional manner with you spotting a bunch of enemies and engaging them. However, most battles will see additional 'waves' of enemies arriving (usually just as you think the battle is about to end) who can't be seen coming and can attack from any direction. Early in the game there seems to be more care taken about how these enemies arrive (jumping down from rooftoops or rushing in from nearby buildings) but by the end the designers have given up and enemies simply materialise directly onto the battlefield. This means that positioning your characters in the best place to have an impact on combat is now futile, as you can be swamped from any direction at any time and not be able to do anything about it. The developers help you out by turning off the 'friendly fire' option on area-of-effect spells (you can switch it back on again at the higher difficulty levels), so you can firestorm the heck out of massed gangs of enemy without fear of sustaining injury, but this simply removes the (limited, but still present) tactical realism of the first game and makes the whole thing feel too arcadey.

This is not helped by the fact that Dragon Age II has simplified inventory management beyond even the heavily-streamlined mechanics of the original. Your companions' armour cannot be changed at all, although you can give them different magical amulets and rings. Only Hawke's weapons and equipment can be changed at will.

Another major problem is the re-use of the same maps for locations. All the mines in the game have exactly the same lay-out as one another. The same is true for mansions, caves and sewers. The developers drop different partitions into the maps to try to change things up, but they are all clearly the same places (and the mini-map never changes to take into account the partitions, often resulting in you going down dead-end passages which are shown as being open on the map). Obviously this is a result of the crippling budget issues, but even so it's repetitive and monotonous to the point of boredom.

The final issue is the lack of choice in the game: major events happen in the game which it is impossible for you to influence, even when it feels like you should be able to (some of Anders's actions in the endgame, most notably). This silliness reaches its zenith in the climactic battle where you have a lot of choices to make and the battle ends up unfolding more or less the same way regardless. The much greater freedom and resonance from your decisions seen in Origins is absent here.

So, weaker combat than Origins (and Origins itself was riddled with some major problems in that regard anyway), a lack of choice and some seriously bland locations should all make for a poor game, right? Not entirely. Dragon Age II does do a lot of other things right.

Most importantly, it is far better-written than Origins. Dialogue is less expositionary and portentous. Instead, it's more naturalistic and enjoyable. The voice acting is superior right across the board and the companion characters are more interesting. The 'loyalty mission' mechanic from Mass Effect 2 also helps in this area. Each companion has their own interests, problems and issues to deal with, and by helping them out you can improve their loyalty to you. This will determine who stays with you, who turns against you and who flees during the culminating battle. It's a nice idea as completionists will want to complete all of the companion quests, resulting in a better understanding of the characters (in Origins there was a whole bunch of characters I left in camp and never bothered with because the game never gave me a reason to use them over my core team) and their relationships with one another. BioWare have done a better job of giving the characters their own arcs (some rather tragic) and making them deeper and more complex than those from the first game.

Additionally, the story and worldbuilding are much better-integrated with one another. Origins suffered from presenting Thedas as yet another epic fantasy identikit landscape, with the more interesting background elements (such as the the templar/mage tensions and the Qunari) kept to one side in favour of dealing with the generic horde of generic monsters. Dragon Age II, on the other hand, brings these elements front-and-centre and makes them far more compelling as a result. The game also tries to make up for its lack of scale and smaller number of locations by using Kirkwall as a city in which the affairs of the larger world are both reflected in micro and can also cause reverberations across the continent, acting as a sort-of medieval fantasy version of Babylon 5's titular space station. It's an idea that almost works, though the fall-out from the events of this game will not fully be explored until Dragon Age: Inquisition (the forthcoming third game in the series). Dragon Age II substitutes the epic scale of Origins for something more focused and intimate which has its drawbacks (Kirkwall is a well-designed city but you'll be sick of it by the end of the game) but broadly works in furthering the game's themes of tolerance, coexistence and family.

Dragon Age II (***½) is a far cry from the unmitigated disaster some have labelled it as. It has some problems, sure, but then so did Origins. In fact, the two games seem to have swapped their issues: Origins had better combat but poorer writing. Dragon Age II's combat is less satisfying but the writing, story and characters are superior. Ultimately, the two balance out, leaving Dragon Age II a reasonable - if flawed - companion game to the flawed - but enjoyable - original game. The game is available now in the UK (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3) and USA (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3).

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening

Several months have passed since the last surviving Grey Wardens in Ferelden defeated the Blight, ended the Ferelden civil war and restored peace to the lands. The hero of that war has found a new job as commander of Vigil's Keep, from where he (or she) will rule over the province of Amaranthine and try to replenish the ranks of the Grey Wardens. However, when Vigil's Keep falls under attack from the supposedly-vanquished darkspawn before she (or he) even arrives, it becomes clear that Ferelden is in danger once again.

Awakening is the expansion pack to Dragon Age: Origins, adding a chunky new storyline (weighing in at around 20-odd hours), numerous new locations and five new companion characters to the mix, as well as a number of modest improvements to the game engine and a plethora of new spells and skills. The default review for expansion packs is, "If you liked the original, you'll love this," and whilst that's true for Awakening it is also true that it may appeal to you even if you disliked the original.

Awakening is a tighter, marginally better-written and characterised and considerably better-paced game than Dragon Age: Origins itself. It often took a conscious effort of will to force myself to load up Origins during the interminable midgame, whilst I tore through Awakening in a couple of days or so. The storyline is more interesting, since rather being another epic battle against the vast forces of evil, it instead explores the aftermath of such a conflict and also delves back into the reasons for it. Looking back, there's rather a lot that Dragon Age: Origins left unexplained about the Blights and why they happen, and Awakening is happy to fill it in, adding depth and understanding to the first game whilst also improving on it.

Some will bemoan the lack of Dragon Age: Origins's cast of characters, though I found them mostly an uninteresting bunch. I did find it odd that arguably the least interesting, Oghren, is the only playable character to continue into this game. Other than that, the characters in Awakening are improvements. Justice, a spirit of law and order forced into the body of a dead human, feels like a character imported from Planescape: Torment with his moody musings on ideology and its rigidity providing some (moderately) intellectual food for thought. Anders, a persecuted and highly sarcastic mage, adds some colour and humour to the game. Nathaniel, the son of your enemy Rendon Howe from the first game, is an interesting addition as he starts out hating you and only over the course of many hours of adventuring learns the truth about his father and how he can escape his father's legacy to become his own man. Standard fare, perhaps, but well-handled.

Where Awakening scores its biggest points is in turning the darkspawn from a raging morass of fanatical monsters into more of a civilisation with different factions and leaders. The threat of one such hostile faction is kept front-and-centre in the game, with side-quests presented firmly as sidelines and not confusing matters. Dragon Age was rather unconvincing in how the darkspawn were a raging menace for the first 10 hours of the game and then put on hold for the next 40-odd hours whilst you dealt with Loghain and then suddenly the darkspawn were back as the main bad guys for the endgame, but Awakening maintains focus throughout. Awakening also abandons the somewhat cheesy 'campfire' mechanic from the first game to give you a permanent base of operations, Vigil's Keep. In between quests it's a good idea to repair to the Keep to offload loot and talk to the keep's inhabitants, who keep up a steady stream of news and provide new quests, and equipment to help in your adventure. You also have the ability to upgrade the Keep by repairing its walls, bringing in new merchants and reinforcing its soldiery. It's another nod for this franchise towards the excellent Baldur's Gate II (though you only have the choice of one base of operations) and this one works a lot better, especially when the endgame asks some really hard moral questions of the player.

On the downside, some of the UI oddities of Dragon Age: Origins remain intact. Characters knocked back from melee by spells or attacks will just stand there a few feet away from the fight until you order them directly back into it. The camera controls remain as mixed a bag as in the original game. Sometimes quests will be rendered un-completable without warning: for example, having recruited a new follower I was directed to return to Vigil's Keep to induct them into the ranks of the Grey Wardens. Yet upon returning to the Keep, whenever I talked to the seneschal to start the procedure, instead he'd demand an answer about an unrelated story event. Replying yes would instigate the end of the whole game, making it impossible to formally induct the new follower into the ranks.

Still, these problems aside Awakening achieves a lot of the promise left unfulfilled by Dragon Age: Origins and works as both an effective epilogue to that game and a bridge to the controversial Dragon Age II.

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening (****½) is a significant improvement over the base game in terms of writing, structure and characters. The game is available now - in an 'Ultimate Edition' also including the original game - in the UK (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3) and USA (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3).

Dragon Age: Origins

The lands of Ferelden are threatened by a Blight, a horde of monstrous creatures known as darkspawn erupting from underground and destroying everything in sight. The Grey Wardens are charged with defending the land against the darkspawn. In alliance with the King of Ferelden, the Grey Wardens are assembling an army to face the Blight at Ostagar, but treachery awaits and it falls to the order's latest recruit to help save Ferelden.

Dragon Age: Origins is BioWare's reflective look at their own origin (so to speak). It's a big, broad, swords and sorcery epic meant to evoke memories of the Baldur's Gate series, where BioWare got started in RPGs. It's also in 3D, with streamlined controls, inventory management and in-engine cut-scenes. It's BioWare's attempt to blend their original, more hardcore RPGs with their later, stripped-back and more cinematic games like the Mass Effect series. It's a game that tries to balance the old with the new and does not quite succeed.

Which is not to say it doesn't have a go. The game is huge, taking upwards of 50 hours to complete. Cleverly, the game reorganises its opening two hour prologue based on your race and class: a dwaven noble starts in a separate location to a human mage, with a totally different cast of supporting characters, enemies and opening quests. The fact that you can replay the game several times and get a different opening, with the various versions not aligning until you reach Ostagar, is quite clever and rewards replaying the game. Indeed, the choices in these sections reverberate throughout the whole game, with your eventual return to your starting location allowing you to address unfinished business. It's the game's main selling point and is something that is handled very well, making it all the more bemusing that the concept was completely chucked out the window for the two sequels.

As is traditional with BioWare games, your main character is fully customisable but the supporting cast are set in stone. You can accumulate up to ten companion characters throughout the course of the game and take three of them with you on missions. Your inactive party members hang out at a campsite you can periodically visit to exchange information, form friendships (and even romantic relationships) and improve everyone's equipment. The game has a reputation system for each character, and winning their trust will give you bonuses in combat and open up additional questlines. It's a nice idea but also one that's easy to neglect. The game also treats morally ambiguous sorceress Morrigan and sarcastic warrior Alistair as almost the secondary main characters, each with huge roles to play in the endgame, which is rather bizarre if you've just gone through 95% of the game favouring other characters instead. All of the companion characters are nicely-developed, though it's far from the strongest cast BioWare have produced for a game and some self-derivation can be detected: Shale is awesome, for example, but feels a little too reminiscent of Knights of the Old Republic's HK-47.

You spend the game doing what you usually do in a BioWare games: a broad variety of quests, varying from the mundane to the epic, and getting into lots of conversations and fights. A lot of fights: you seem to spend the overwhelming majority of the game in combat, and violence seems to be the solution to almost every problem in the game. There's a few quests based on diplomacy and dialogue, and a few fights can be avoided through intimidating or persuading the enemy, but otherwise be prepared to do a ton of fighting. Fortunately, the old 'hit space to pause' option is still present and correct, allowing you to assign orders to characters and take stock of the battle as it develops. A quickbar allows easy access to abilities, spells and weapons. Combat is generally satisfying, although health spells feel a little weak (at high level they restore so few hit-points it's almost not worth bothering with them). The biggest weakness is positioning: enemy units can clip or shove past your units with ease, making it impossible to create bottlenecks in corridors and engage the enemy with warriors whilst wizards and ranged fighters engage from afar. This seriously limits tactical options and can make fighting large numbers of tough enemies particularly difficult. Some abilities also feel overpowered: the enemy's ability to encase your characters in null-magic zones where healing magic simply does not work can result in total party wipe-outs all too easily.

In technical terms, the game is okay. Graphically it looks solid on PC (but a bit washed-out on consoles) and mods are available to improve textures further. The game is a bit flaky on multi-core PCs but runs fine if you assign it to run on just one core. Camera control is a bit of an issue: the PC version allows you to play the game from an overhead viewpoint (reminiscent of Neverwinter Nights except, bizarrely for a seven years-newer game, far less customisable) but you can't zoom out very far, and enemies often engage you from outside this viewing range. Switching to the over-the-shoulder view (which the consoles are limited to) is great for spotting distant enemies and engaging them at range, but is useless for melee. You can switch between them easily enough, but it feels a bit annoying you can't stay in the viewpoint you favour throughout the game. The overhead view also sometimes seems to get confused on whether it should be 'locked onto' your selected character or allowing you to free-roam.

The writing is a mixed bag. A lot of dialogue in the game is obvious, expositionary and risible, not helped by severely variable voice acting (Claudia Black is the standout as Morrigan). There are attempts at nuanced characterisation - key villain Loghain has his reasons for doing what he's doing, though he's such an unrepentant martinet that most players will feel zero sympathy for him - but they mostly fall flat. The game also makes a nod towards gritty realism through its political infighting and bloody combat, though the game goes completely over-the-top with your characters walking out of fights covered head-to-foot in gore. The political angle also doesn't work very well due to the politics being rather boring and it's difficult to care about Ferelden when you spend most of the game hearing about how isolationist and racist it is, riven by internal conflicts with few genuinely good people in positions of authority.

Despite the clunky writing, poor camera controls and focus on violence as the solution to just about everything, the game just about manages to keep its head above water. It's satisfyingly huge and the worldbuilding is derivative (a mash-up of standard fantasy tropes with more than a bit of inspiration from George R.R. Martin) but somewhat interesting. The differing opening sections of the game give some good replay value. Combat is solid if unspectacular. There's a germ of a really good game here, but there's also an overwhelming feeling of blandness and predictability that rears its head all too often.

Dragon Age: Origins (***½) is a very solid game from BioWare, although it's self-reflection on BioWare's past is rather pointless: the Baldur's Gate series is still extremely playable and frankly on almost every front bar the technical one are better games than Dragon Age. For those simply after a big, enjoyable fantasy RPG, Dragon Age certainly fits the bill. Its ambition is impressive and even in failing to fully achieve it, it's still very playable and worth a look. The game is available now - in an 'Ultimate Edition' also including its expansion Awakenings and several DLC episodes - in the UK (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3) and USA (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3).

DRAGON AGE III will be a next-gen title

It's been claimed that Dragon Age III has been upgraded from a PS3/X-Box 360 title and will instead launch on the next-generation versions of both consoles. A date of (financial year) 2014 is given, tentatively giving credence to reports that the new consoles will launch before the end of 2013 and Dragon Age III may be a launch title for them.

Not entirely surprising news, especially given the rumours that BioWare may make Dragon Age III much more open and freeform than any of their previous titles (and more like Bethesda's RPGs).

More info about DRAGON AGE III leaked (allegedly)

Dragon Age III may soon be competing for some kind of award for the most information ever revealed about a formally-unannounced game. This time around, the leak comes from a survey BioWare have been conducting of their fans to test out some early ideas they are discussing for the game.

A fanmade logo for the game, nothing official.

First up is a bare-bones plot summary:

"A portal between the worlds unleashes hordes of demons in the land, civil wars rip apart nations and the corruption is limitless. Someone is behind the shadows, drawing the threads which destroy the world. Time has come for the Inquisition.

Take the Inquisitor's cloak and lead the only force able of bringing light into the darkness. Choose the direct method and gather your armies, send spies into the shadows or engage in a political war, make friends and use your connections indirectly: it is up to you how you lead the inquisition. But you'll have to take lead of it from the beginning. Make your player a rogue, warrior or mage and set up your crew from up to ten (!) complex companions to lead them against those who attack you by systematically spying on, revealing and destroying them."

And then a slightly more detailed one:

"The great nation of Orlais, the most powerful empire in Dragon Age, tears itself apart in civil war. The stout men and women of Ferelden struggle to recover and reclaim their nation from the horde of vile Darkspawn that lay waste to its lands a decade ago. The Chantry, the once-unified faith of the Dragon Age world stands divided. The Templar order has broken away, claiming the church has become too lax in policing the dangerous powers of the mages. The Mage circles have rebelled, believing the Templars have become too strict, too zealous in their duties, and too quick to slaughter those who step out of line

The world of Dragon Age is one on the brink of collapse, and when a desperate gathering in the name of peace becomes the epicentre of a magical blast that decimates the Chantry's leadership, it becomes clear that someone or something is manipulating events to drive the world into chaos. From the ashes of that explosion, some new rises: The Inquisition. As the Inquisitor, it falls to you to build up your power and martial your forces, uncover secrets and build connections across the world. You must explore forgotten spaces, uncover ancient mysteries and uproot those who would destroy the fabric of the world."

For possible images related to the art style of the game, check the link.

Finally, a list of potential subtitles for the game. This is intriguing, as BioWare haven't used a subtitle on one of their sequels since Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, a dozen years ago:

Dragon Age 3: The Breach
Dragon Age 3: Exarch
Dragon Age 3: Inquisition
Dragon Age 3: Inquisitor
Dragon Age 3: Apocrypha
Dragon Age 3: Please Throw Us a Bone on This One, It Will Be Good This Time, Honest

(note: one of these subtitles might not be accurate)

Since this appears to still be in the early stage of development (and the game remains - ludicrously - not formally announced yet by either BioWare or Electronic Arts), some or all of this may have changed by the time the game is finally released. Or it might have been a fake in the first place, of course.