Way back in 1985, Rare predecessors Ultimate scored two UK #1s in quick succession by following up the isometric 3D Knight Lore with Alien 8. The two games did the same thing in different settings, of which I said: “There’s something familiar and amusing in a view of the world that presumes the available narrative choices as being magic, knights, and lore, or technology, light years and spaceships: the two genres.” Decades later, it’s the same story for BioWare RPGs, with the spaceships of Mass Effect followed by the magic of Dragon Age, even if increased industry inertia meant this time it was their respective sequels which made it to #1.
Dragon Age II is very much the same model as Mass Effect 2. It simplifies RPG systems as far as it can get away with to act as a means for storytelling with an emphasis on an array of distinct characters and their colourful interactions. Lots of time is spent killing and wisecracking, often simultaneously. Of the two, Mass Effect has the more appealing setting to me (as evidenced by it being the one I played at the time), so I was a bit surprised by how much more I enjoyed Dragon Age II.
Most of the best differences come from Dragon Age II’s specific approach to relentless simplification. I found the combat system in Mass Effect 2 both fiddly and pointless. Removing the shooter aiming elements is a big personal plus, but there’s also something to be said for the straightforwardness of turning combat into something where you spend 90% of the time just pressing A (which is also an RPG classic going back to the original Final Fantasy and beyond!). There’s even some more smartly applied depth with a tactics system that lets you logically automate teammates’ actions like Final Fantasy XII‘s gambit system but with most of the work done for you.
In combat, the sense of loading your characters up, pointing them at enemies and getting things over with is still there most of a decade on from Knights of the Old Republic. I was able to transform a fight against powerful blood mage Decimus from a failure to an easy win just by directing all my team to attack him right away rather than his mob. Fights come quick and are over quick to get onto more interesting things.
What works even better is the similar bite-size approach taken to its story. There are some big arcs and season-finale-worthy events with eldritch underground horrors, but for long stretches of Dragon Age II it is mostly an extensive selection of quick dilemmas, popped through one after another. In each, you’re introduced to a couple of new characters and their problems (generally that someone needs either killing or saving), you solve them and get a quick little insight into those characters and your party’s. Then you go back to the map which is barely more than a menu and plunge onto the next one, like an auto-playing next episode of a streaming TV show.
Is it alright to help out someone importing poison to the city if he pays you well? Do you take the side of dangerous but unfairly persecuted mages, or the Templars who are out to keep them in check? Is this suspiciously empty warehouse a trap? (That one is always yes.) Any consequences come straightforwardly and slip away for the next episode, and even as people deal with death, betrayal and various horrors the tone is matter-of-fact, and your characters approach it with a humanising humour.
This requires the cast to be likeable and funny, and that is a success. Stuffy warrior Aveline, intense Fenris, confident pirate Isabela, and others are drawn in fairly broad strokes, but their interactions with each other are entertaining and informative. And it even extends to main character Hawke. Bioware use their typical dialogue selection wheel, but rather than just paragon or renegade there is also a whole section dedicated to making them give funny responses. Voice actor Jo Wyatt is more than up to the task of delivering them with the right wry detachment, and it also makes a nice change for the witty, detached woman with a British accent to actually be voiced by someone British. When a magical shapeshifter gives the advice that it’s only when you fall that you learn if you can fly, getting Hawke to deadpan “cheap advice, from a dragon” punctures the moment splendidly.
Plenty of humour and camaraderie was present in Mass Effect 2 as well, but Dragon Age II feels more comfortable in running with the fact that this is where its appeal lies, and to focus accordingly. There is certainly some valuable self-awareness present in some of its most ridiculous aspects. I’m thinking primarily of the blood splatter which covers every available inch of skin, clothes, and weapons after each fight, a patina of gore adding comedic edge to conversation close-ups, whose disappearance is as fast and as unremarked-upon as its arrival. Technical advances were allowing games to go for much more ambitious types of serious storytelling less rooted in video game convention, but there’s also something appealing to doing something bloody silly, and doing it really well.
Top of the charts for week ending 12 March 2011:
