Review: Dragon Age II Demo – Rise to Power
Unlike Overlord Johnson (and many of my friends and compatriots, to be frank), I have never touched a Massively Multiplayer Online game. This is for two reasons: first, that they all fall short of being truly great gaming, and roleplaying, experiences; second, that my obsessive-compulsive gamer impulses would kick in, and I would find myself unemployed for being unable to tear myself away from an endless social-combat-XP-level grind.
As such, having rich and enjoyable gaming experiences with definite endpoints are key to my enjoying myself while continuing to have marital and financial happiness. Bioware has been my primary source for this of late, through both the excellent Dragon Age and Mass Effect series. Since these are not trivial games to delve into if one intends to complete them and simultaneously succeed at real life obligations – I put over 140 hours into completing Dragon Age: Origins, exclusively playing it in my free time, and it took me 7 months to do so – it’s fairly important to know if the journey is going to be, truly, worth it.
For this reason, I was eager to snag the Dragon Age II demo that was released Tuesday. DA:O was, simply put, the best roleplaying experience I’ve had in the digital medium, and so I happen to be rather excited for the sequel. What put the original over the top for me was the depth of non-player character interactions and the quality of the writing, from dialogue to world building. DA:O is also fairly strong in almost all the mechanics one has come to expect from digital RPG’s, such as combat and loot management. Much ado has been made about Bioware’s announcements on how they are going to change these mechanics for DA:II, and the Rise to Power demo does alot to show off the results.
- Rise to Power consists of approximately an hour’s worth of gameplay, inclusive of the game’s prologue and an unrelated scene further into the story. Many of the fun fiddly features, such as inventory management and character customization, are inaccessible for the demo. The goal seems to be to present the two elements of gameplay that have been revamped the most: combat and the dialogue tree.
- On the surface, little has changed from DA:O about how combat works. It takes place in real time, with the ability to actively control any party member; you can pause the action at any time to use the radial menu to issue commands; and every character in your party can be assigned different tactical decision algorithms for when you aren’t in active control of them. What’s changed is that, simply put, combat feels more fun – the overall pace has been sped up, the attack animations are more dynamic and diverse between classes, and magic spell effects are more vibrantly detailed. The net effect is that combat feels more action-oriented without losing tactical precision, which is most certainly A Good Thing.
- The dialogue trees for interacting verbally with NPC’s have been completely overhauled to match the superior system from Mass Effect. Instead of a silent protagonist, the main character of Hawke has a fully recorded dialogue track for both the male and female gender choices. While DA:O often featured four or five possible lines of dialogue per conversation point, some of which seemed ambiguous in terms of how they would be interpreted, most conversations in DA:II include three responses – positive, snarky, and negative – in addition to other situationally-specific options. Each choice has an accompanying icon, which makes it easy to judge what effect your selection is going to have on a particular character or situation. This leads to a more immersive experience, which is also A Good Thing.
- What the demo doesn’t provide is much insight into the story content, but it does give some tantalizing hints. Most of the game is going to be told as a frame story from perspective of a dwarf named Varric, who has adventured with Hawke. Varric has been captured and is being interrogated about Hawke’s exploits, and the player goes through the game segments as the dwarf tells them. Interestingly, he is not a reliable narrator: one example is that as he starts his tale, the initial tutorial puts you in the role of the default iconic Hawke in a hopeless battle. Varric’s captor then interrupts him because she doesn’t want to hear the legend of Hawke that she already knows, but the true story of what happened. This leads to you customizing your version of Hawke to what she or he really looks like, and Varric restarting his story.
If you are thinking of making the time for DA:II, the demo is worth checking out as a quick taste of what you’re in for. While I’ll be talking more in this space later about storytelling techniques between different games, it’s worth noting that DA:O gave us a complete epic Hero’s Journey with a character who was also The Chosen One. DA:II promises another take on this, only with a character who is Everyman, looking out for her/his family, and happens to be in the right place at the right time to change the world. And I’ll be definitely making time for that.
[This review is based on the PS3 demo for Dragon Age II. John Cmar has no financial or personal interests in Bioware.]
Tags: Bioware, Dragon Age, reviews
