Dragon Age 2 - What Went Wrong @ RPS

John Walker has written a lengthy piece titled Thoughts: What Went Wrong in Dragon Age II in lieu of a standard review. John goes to pains to point out DA2 isn't a bad game and some of the hysterical reactions are over the top - but nevertheless, he was disappointed with the game:

The trouble is, each time the game jumps forward three years, any sense of having connected to anything that’s going on is torn from you. Suddenly you’re not who you were before, with the seemingly interesting bits happening while we were off watching an animated cutscene. Oh, I’ve got my own place now? I’m rich now? Then how come I have the same amount of gold as before, the same equipment, and so on? Oh, I’m the Champion now? That little fight was enough? Really?

(The most hilariously daft aspect of these three year comas must be the man queuing up to see the Viscount, who moans every time you walk past him that he’s been waiting all day. “For six years!” I would helpfully tell him as he repeated his only line deep into the game.)

And the city doesn’t change in any interesting way. Sure, the Qunari (the oversees race who seem to be in town to cause some sort of trouble) eventually are gone, so that bit’s closed off, or whatever. But the same people mill in the same places, the same merchants stand at the same stalls, the same buildings stand in the same places. It’s a conceit that the game seems entirely unwilling to deliver on in any imaginative way.

In other news, IGN has a very short bit with with DA2 developers selecting a couple of their favourite humorous dialogue quotes from the game.