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DA2:Just considerably too gloomy and strange for my taste (ENDING SPOILERS)
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
WARNING HEAVY SPOILERS ABOUT ENDING AND STORY HERE!!!
Oh my, I don't even know where to begin. Having playing DA2 thought moments ago - and having made notes about thoughts in the last days - I still have this feeling like "this is the last DA game I have bought." It's just designed in ways, I feel not like I made a good choice.
Overall, I never ever saw a single game in 25 years which was SO gloomy, dark and depressive, and that includes even stuff like Fallout, which after all is around World War III. The only thing that dampens my sadness over the course and ending of the game is the fact I never really identified with Hawke over the course of the game. Partially because I always kept thinking of myself as The Grey Warden still, and partially because of the odd storytelling. Let me make some examples:
1) My Family
When I was Grey Warden, I essentially started from scratch. So everyone I knew I knew from the game. Here, I had a mother, sister, brother and god knows who Hawke knew, but I did NOT. So when Carver died at the start, it was more like "meh, there goes my tank". After a while my sister was brought to the mage circle, and until the end I never ever saw her again. Then mother. Good riddance, while I did not feel much for her, this way of killing her off was really tasteless. I felt was WAY too dark and bizarre, and it was one of those moments I thought "is THIS the sort of story I want to play as my spare-time fun? That my virtual mother is used as spare part of some zombie?" And my answer was: rather not. Over time, as the game got darker and darker, I started to EXPECT that all of my family would die horribly, so I stopped caring and it made me distance myself from Hawk, because essentially, I did not WANT to identify with a character with such a fate.
2) Time Jumps
The Time Jumps didn't help either. All the time I seemed to know people, which Hawk knew and with whom Hawk had experiences, but I the played did not.
3) The psycho companions
Good grief what an assortment of psychos. Outside of Varric and The Guard Captain (I didnt even memorize her name...) ALL of the companions seemed in various degrees of madness and severe mental illness. In reality, they all would be the LEAST people I would surround myself. A traitorous and lying Pirate, a mental and hate driven half-mad ex-Slave, that creepy she-elf-wizard, that self-absorbed Prince and of course Anders, prolly the most psycho of all the crew. What a farce. I don't even know where to begin!
Every time I met my old companions from DA:0, I felt like I wanted to wave and jump and yell "hey it's me, your old friend, get me outta here!" And compared to the DA:0 companions, the new companions clearly were B-List. NONE of them had the class, depth or closeness to me that any of my DA1 companions had. And their psychopathy... it was really driving me off. The only reason I treated them well and agreed with their sayings was, that I knew I needed them in my group. Anders was, after Bethany went to the Circle, my only mage able to heal. So I was essentially stuck with him. If I had had my say as I felt about them, almost ALL of them would be either dead or gone FAR before the end. They were a bunch of psychos and outside the Dwarf and the Guard Captain I disliked them all.
4) Anders
Anders is really worth his own topic. Loving to play a gay romance, I had him and that hate driven Elf. The Elf creeped me out with his Anakain way. I did not want someone whose entire heart is absorbed with hate, and while I did not really like Anders much, I sympathized with his pain and played along the romance. And BOY, was that bad. You know the end. My lover, my HUSBAND is a terrorist who blow up the Church just to give a sign! I mean, wow, after the death of my brother and mother and after all the bad that happened, it was really it! The point where I decided, NO way in hell am I going to EVER EVER play romances in Bioware games again. NOT EVER. THIS is certainly NOT what I want to experience in my spare time fun, storytelling or not. It WAAAY overstepped limits of good taste, and I am sure it can seriously unsettle some people. Anders was such a fun char in the DA1 expansion, and I felt that was sort of ruined. Developing him into a terrorist, after he lived with me for 3+ years was just so.... unbelievable. Especially that Hawk would note nothing about it.
5) Every side is evil
In the end, or rather way ahead of it, I often felt like: If I really were Hawk, I'd just sell my stuff and go back to Ferelden. What is keeping him? It all went from bad to worse all the time. I tried to play as good and rational as I could. I did not blame all mages even to the very end, no matter how my rationality was tested. I still think, confining mages is wrong, even if some do bad things. But I felt that all my good doings led to nothing. I can accept that not all good plans work out in a game. But I felt like cheated, since essentially ALL things were for naught. All went downhill and into flames. Besides my two trusted Companions, by and large everyone was evil in various degrees. In such a situation, why stay? Why not leave with King Alistair and go back to Ferelden? I would have done so, in the time Alistair came, and just leave a no-win situation behind. Because at that point it was quite clear this was a no-win situation for Hawk. And did that Chief Mage REALLY had to use Bloodmagic in the end, when I decided to side with the Mages? Did you REALLY even have to destroy THAT small moral victory from the player? It was just mean and sad.
There would be many things to add, how the RPG element was severly cut and the game was way too much a railroaded action game with cutscenes and dialogues, but that has been said enough by others. It was, I really have to emphasize that, rarely had a more unpleasant and depressing game experience in all my life and I seriously do not want to experience such a story ever again.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
Thank you for making me feel good about my decision to NOT carry on after DA:O with purchasing THIS. I wondered if I had made the right decision, and now....I believe I did. Again....thank you.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WATCH FOR SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Man did I love the game, every part of the game in fact was fantastic for me. The only parts that weren't fantastic for me were the parts where I constantly retreaded over places I had been a dozen times (no exaggerations) However, the damn story was fantastic. Varric was a classic character, one of Biowares best and by no means do I feel like the game was a waste of time or not fun.
So in short, I disagree with 80% of your post. Cheers, but the game was pretty damn fun.
People think it's fun to pretend your a monster. Me I spend my life pretending I'm not. - Dexter Morgan
I really had no interests in Dragon Age 2 anyways, so to hear that the story is really railroaded doesn't bother me in so much as I kind of had a feeling that was the way it would end up. Bioware really has seemed a bit off with some of their recent games.
Most of your post however seems more of a personal thing (which from your OP is what your getting at as well) with the dark fantasy turn the game seems to be taking. I'm not really surprised, being "edgy" has become the thing for Bioware lately it seems, and I feel the stories have suffered a bit in exchange.
Though I usually like dark stories to begin with, seeing as I tend to be a realist and I rarely see things as black and white; I tend to feel that with the darker side of story telling one must focus much more on the personal qualities of the characters to offset the fact that the reader/player has to deal with complex moralities. Which is difficult in a game where the player creates the character as they go through choices, because you then have to design that characters companions and experiences to fit them more personally.
Your post is a perfect example of my point, for you this kind of story is just too dark and gloomy; and since you could not effect the outcome into the ending that you as a person in the character's shoes would have the whole thing just falls on it's face. For me the story would have fit fine, I would have had no problem being the lawful evil. But the game fails in allowing the player to have enough of an impact from what it sounds like, and that was supposed to be it's selling point from what I understood.
Too bad, but thanks for the write up.
I usually never post on MMORPG.com but I had to because this review reflected exactly the same experience I had for this game. Amen Brother.
When my Hawke in the ending ran away from Kirkwall, he had achieved NOTHING. MANY were dead, a world war had erupted and he was a poor refugee again. Not to speak that all his friends had apparently left him.
What is to love with such an ending? *shrug*
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Yeah, it's definately personal flavor. I honestly might have enjoyed that ending, with dark stories an ending as you described actually might be an interesting one. But once again, without giving the player the power to change it and overcome such an ending it just ends up being a "oh look you failed" game.
I remember the first time I finished Mass Effect 2, my whole crew was killed; rather gruesomely. I honestly thought to myself, "Oh well, sometimes shit happens. I'm still alive." But then I found out you could save them and that made my ending have a bit more weight because I as a player had failed to save my crew by being unprepared; instead of the game simply going "Hah, suck it!"
Honestly we both know why it was done this way; now they can make a game where everything is redeemed and all is well ! Yay us!