First Impressions of Dragon Age 2

[David Brasher]

Yesterday I bought and installed Dragon Age 2. It is kind of odd, because the documentation and the game itself was always trying to get me to hook up to the Internet. I didn't really understand that, because it is a single player game, and the description of the BioWare website makes it sound like a rather boring website. Like it would be more interesting to play the game than to hang around on the website.

 

I haven't played Dragon Age 1, so I went into it not really knowing what to expect. My one-year-old computer is in the middle of the required system specifications range. I left the difficulty level on normal.

 

My first impression was that the intro videos were suffering from lag and minor stuttering, and that the camera work was done in that annoying style like the first season of LOST or The Blair Witch Project. I really thought the videos should have been smooth because they have the option to play them like DVDs so that they will work the same on all computers rather than depending on the game engine to render the graphics at whatever speed individual computers are capable of. (Halo 2 managed to mess this up and use the game engine to make substandard videos even on a console. Objects would pop into existence on-screen rather than already being there when the camera first pointed at them.)

 

The MTV kind of camera work was their artistic choice, but it didn't really appeal to me. It reminded me slightly of blip-verts in Max Headroom. I sort of prefer longer, more distant shots with better continuity so that it is easier to see what is going on in a more real-to-life fashion.

 

The game crashed before the end of the first big battle and before I reached the first savepoint. This was rather annoying and did not bode well for my satisfaction with the game. So I had to play through the intro and the big battle again before it let me save. I was crossing my fingers when I reached the crash point, but I got lucky the second time around.

 

The first battles seem a bit off. Tons of noise, gore, and action, and no danger. I guess it isn't as exciting when there is no danger. It is like they put you into god mode, or make you regenerate faster than any troll. (Your companion doesn't die either.)

 

The next couple of battles were this way too. You just kind of win without trying. And then suddenly with no warning, they turned god mode off on us, and the whole party got wiped out about three times in the fourth battle as I played it over and over. I had to go in and modify the tactics of all the party members before the battle and chug a bunch of potions during it.

 

I guess I am not too thrilled about the unrealistic gore, and the superhero powers that even non-magical characters have.

 

It seems like the game is all violence, and no talking. The hordes of enemies are huge and you just slay and slay and slay. In the first three battles, there was no strategy required, but it looks like that has changed with the fourth battle. It kind of felt like Diablo II without the atmosphere, excitement, and suspense, and like Baldur's Gate without the realism, good game mechanics, and lore.

 

The game seems quite linear so far. Like I can't really choose to do my own thing. Like I have to follow the main quest storyline and either pick option A or option B at any given point. Hopefully that will change. It doesn't seem as free as Oblivion where you exit the prison sewers and can go any direction you want and do anything you choose.

 

The most difficult thing to me is the camera. In my opinion, the camera ought to just automatically point at me and the action. But it seemed like the camera was always pointing the wrong way and like I couldn't see what was going on. It is like you spend half of your time aiming the camera and half of the time controlling your character. It reminded me of the camera system in Fable, although in some important aspects, it was worse than that. It sort of reminded me of a comment a game reviewer once made, "The control interface makes it is easy to control your character in this game... as long as you are just walking straight ahead."

 

So after playing Dragon Age 2 for a few hours, I had gotten my fill for the time being, and went back to playing Oblivion.