Reader Question Day #22 – all about Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2
Manwe writes:
[BioWare canceled the planned Exalted March expansion to Dragon Age 2.] What do you make of all this? Think this was a good move on their part? Or not?
I suppose it came down a raw question of economics. If they figured that the expansion wouldn’t sell enough to justify the expense, then they would certainly pull the plug. And if the basic concept of Dragon Age 2 was flawed, then an expansion back wouldn’t fix it. And I do think the basic concept was flawed. RPG games like “Dragon Age” that give the player an illusion of agency (or control over the story) need to walk a careful line to keep that sense of agency in the player.
Dragon Age Origins did that pretty well. Granted, no matter what the player did, the archdemon died at the end. But the circumstances of that ending could be wildly different depending on player choices throughout the game, up to and including having the player’s character die at the end. You could play Dragon Age Origins a bit like Gandalf, rallying the nations to face the terrible darkness. Or you could play somewhat like the way Cesare Borgia would have fought the archdemon – building a massive alliance by cutthroat diplomacy (and the occasional judicious murder), and then ruthlessly sacrificing Alistair or Loghain to kill the archdemon – and then taking all the credit as the Hero of Ferelden.
Anyway, I don’t think Dragon Age 2 was as successful as instilling that illusion of agency. (More on that below.)
Are you sad to see the expansion canceled? (Were you even hoping for one?)
Actually, I didn’t even know there was an expansion coming. I’m not surprised to see it canceled, though, since Dragon Age 2 didn’t do as well as Dragon Age Origins.
Last but not least, I asked you back last year to tell me your thoughts on DA2 back when you finished it. Well I’m not sure if you have finished it or not, but you may have played it enough to have had it make an impression of you. So, what are your thoughts on DA2? Do you like it? How about in comparison to DA1? You know that kind of stuff. I do remember you saying something about going from epic battle against evil to social justice not being the best of choices!
I never did get around to finishing it – I’ve been crazy busy the last year and a half, and I got to the end of the quest where the crazy blood mage murders Hawke’s mother.
Dragon Age 2 was a perfectly fine game. The story was good. The combat was fun and streamlined. The characters were compelling. The leveling and skill system was coherent. The voice acting, as usual in a Bioware game, was excellent. The game would have made an excellent novel.
That said, I think it had three problems.
The first, mentioned above, was the agency thing. The game felt less like you had control over the choices and more like you were an actor in somebody else’s script. This is of course true for any game, but in an RPG genre, that illusion of agency is important.
The second and third are interconnected. The game lacked a compelling antagonist. In Dragon Age Origins, you had to fight the all-devouring Blight and the hordes of darkspawn, led by the archdemon, once a god of radiant beauty, now a twisted and deformed nightmare spreading its agony through the world. In Dragon Age 2, the villain was…
…social injustice, namely the way the templars brutalize the mages.
This might have worked in a novel, but not in a game. It’s especially tricky because neither the mages nor the templars are particularly likeable. Most of the templars are indeed cruel and paranoid as the mages claim…but most of the mages are indeed the psychotic blood mages the templars claim, and a mage who goes bad can inflict an appalling amount of harm. They kind of deserve each other. The game makes you pick one side or another (though that doesn’t effect the ending – again, the illusion of agency vanishes), which isn’t terribly compelling. (A third choice, one that lets you stay neutral, or wipe out both sides, would have helped.)
The third problem, related to this, was that the game got preachy. The mages obviously represented a variety of oppressed minorities, and I suspect the developers intended the players to sympathize more with them. And there is nothing so boring, or so tedious, as a work of fiction that intends to Make A Point, Teach A Moral, or convert the reader to the author/game developer’s social and political point of view. Storytelling in any medium is an illusion, a magician’s trick – and having a story subvert itself in the service of a moral is a bit like a magician interrupting a trick to offer a twenty minute harangue on the capital gains tax or whatever.
All that said, I do intend to finish the game. Someday. In some magical future wonderland where I have free time.
The future of the series: given DA2, the asunder stuff, etc do you think the series will remain true to it’s high fantasy roots (it was after all supposed to be the spiritual successor of the old D&D games like Baldurs Gate), or do you think bioware will take it down an even darker, bleaker path in future installments? I personally don’t know, maybe with the outcry over the ME3 ending, and bioware rediscovering what made their old games so loved, they will backtrack a little.
I dunno. Bioware is owned by EA now, and EA isn’t exactly known for its devotion to artistic integrity and high-quality storytelling. I think the computer game development is increasingly like the book publishing world – you can find better quality and more vibrant storytelling in independently developed games, rather than in the moribund game publishers.
That said…seeing as how your the master of the ebook and it’s tools: I have a kindle, the basic kind, if I ever were to upgrade it, which should I go with? I don’t believe I need all the extra features of the Fire, though it would be nice to have an ebook reader in color. Is the Kindle Fire even worth it? And while I like Amazon better than B&N, the NookColor looks pretty nice, but not sure if that is better than a kindle.
It depends. An eInk reader is a lot easier on the eyeballs than even the nicest LCD screen. I suspect LCDs will catch up to eInk eventually, but they’re not quite there yet. So if you get a color ereader, you’re essentially getting a basic tablet.
The Kindle Fire gets panned a lot in the press, but everyone I personally know who has one is quite happy with it. (Though anecdote is not the singular form of data.) Granted, it is a very basic tablet – no Bluetooth or microSD slot or GPS or any of the other bells and whistles that come with higher-end tablets. That says, it does everything 90% of tablet users will ever need, and if you’re in that 90%, go for it. The Nook Color/Tablet are both basically color ereaders with some extra functionality attached, while the Fire is more of a basic tablet (Amazon’s app store is way better than Barnes & Noble’s).
The one basic problem with both the Kindle Fire and the Nook Color/Tablet is that it locks you into the respective ecosystems of Amazon and Barnes & Noble. (Amazon’s ecosystem is a lot better, but if you just want a color ereader, go for the Nook Color/Tablet. If you want a basic tablet, get the Fire). If I were to spring for a 7 inch tablet, I’d probably get a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2:
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-Tab-7-Inch-Wi-Fi/dp/B007P4VOWC
It’s $250, but you can install both the Kindle and Nook apps on it, giving you access to both ecosystems.
Kallinikos writes:
Why do the Legions in GHOST IN THE STORM have 600 men in each cohort, when real Roman legions usually had 480 men to a cohort?
Because Caina’s Empire, the Empire of Nighmar, in GHOST IN THE STORM, borrows some aspects from ancient Rome, but only some. (The Empire of Nighmar, unlike Rome, was never a republic.) In the Nighmarian Empire, the Legions have 6,000 men, divided into ten cohorts of 600 men each. Each cohort is divided into six centuries, led by a centurion, and each cohort is commanded by a tribune. The Legion overall is commanded by a Lord Commander. The centurions have different degrees of rank and privilege, with the first centurion of a cohort having more authority than the second, third, and fourth and so forth. The first centurion of the first cohort is the highest ranked centurion in the Legion, commonly called the first spear centurion, which is the rank Ark held when he was in the Legions.
Caina doesn’t interact much with the Legions in THE GHOSTS books, largely because she is a woman and therefore it would be difficult to infiltrate the Legions (who are primarily loyal to the Emperor anyway) to any useful degree. Ark, however, is a veteran of the Legions, which is a major plot point in GHOST IN THE STORM.
Deedee writes:
Does Caina have romance in Ghost in the Storm?
Read and find out!
-JM
Okay, I had this nice, big, semi-intelligible response typed up, and my laptop went out all of a sudden…guess it forgot to tell me that it was low on batteries. 🙁
That said, I’m going to try and retype what I wrote, perhaps a bit different this time around. Most will be my comments or take on things, but I’ll highlight the questions. So let me begin with this:
Simply put, I think the Dragon Age series rocks! It is not perfect (what series is?) and alot of it’s imperfections come from it’s creator’s PCness and inability to pull themselves out of their own shoes. Some of it just screams ‘out of place’ and wack world building. Sexual libertinism is at the forefront here (open homosexuality, threesomes, characters that seem to think with their libido more than their head, etc). Other times it’s the worldview of characters that remind you Bioware cannot really write a period piece for their lives, and DA is no exception. Sometimes you just have to scratch your head over certain character design. Bioware seems to have a stock collection of personalities that they use in every game, regardless of time or place, some work, but others grate out of place. Usually the list consists of total cynic, whiny dude, sweet girl next door, exotic foreigner, wise teacher, honest good guy, and usually someone on the darkside. DA had them all. That would be okay if some of the characters were not so modern, and seemed more a part of their world (again this is Bioware’s failure). Do I need to mention these guys by name? In DA1 alone Morrigan (uber cynic, ultra contrarian and all around b****), Zevran (a gay elf…Tolkien is spinning in his grave, as are the ancient norse) and Oghren (the comic relief with an affinity for sex jokes) come to mind. And that is just DA1! Where as others would seem to flow with the time more naturally if not for glaring missteps: Alistair sounds too much like a whiny ex-altarboy, Wynne’s odd non-religiousness is just…well, odd, and Leliana, seriously, the one honest religious character in the whole stinkin’ game ends up being a closet lesbian!? See what I mean. And even there something needs to be pointed out. For a game that tells you on several different occasions that the humans are the most religious race in the game…why is it that only ONE of the FOUR humans you get in your party follows that rule and is, you know, actually religious?! The others seem to be indifferent if not down right hostile towards religion and in particular the Chantry. This is just bad world building IMHO. And even there Leliana is not the best example. Though she is well meaning, she is…a heretic. What do I mean heretic? Well I don’t mean in real life of course, but towards the in game religion. One of the major elements in Chantry teaching is that the Maker left the world, and only by converting the entire world to the Chant of Light will he return. Well Leliana says early on that the she believe the Maker is still with them, granted that seems like sentiment on her part, but come on! Minor maybe, but it just goes back to the writers shooting themselves in the foot. I think I made my point without having to venture into DA2.
Regardless, DA is one of the better video game series out there, and very enjoyable. I wish it the best, just at the same time wishing Bioware would get it’s head out of it’s own butt.
Regarding the expansion, it was the latter reason rather than the former. EA/Bioware has the cash, it was the flaws that did in DA2:EM. Or rather it was the fans reaction to the flaws. DA2 got good reviews and sold very well (2 million copies in less than a month). But DA1 fans flipped over it. Alot just hated the game, look on any customer review site and see the big negatives people gave it. This reaction already cause Bioware to retool some of the DLCs, but alone it was not enough. What really did it in was the year Bioware has been having. It should have been it’s biggest year to date, it was, and it wasn’t in big ways. Not only the whole DA fan mess, but Star Wars The Old Republic, while being a critical and commercial success (over a million pre orders), was not as big as they hoped. Tons of people played at launch, but less than a month later a nice chunk left the game. Alot (including me) thought it was a great game, but alot also thought it was way over rated and over hyped, and not the WoW Killer™ it was thought to be. That and the fact that there was virtually no end game content (coupled with quick leveling) soured some people. Considering Bioware was expecting this to be the next WoW and then some (some devs talked about what TOR will have achieved in 2025 for god’s sake!), it is obvious now that it will not be. And given that TOR was the most expensive mmo and game ever made (some $200 million invested in it), I don’t even know if it has paid it’s bills yet. Then their was this years Mass Effect 3 fiasco, of which your aware. So Bioware has had an odd year as of late, taking more flack than ever before, so it’s no wonder they would seek to reexamine themselves now. Sadly, DA2 was a casualty of that move. It was part of the problem, and so they threw it under the bus.
And I agree with what you said about DA1, it did that very well, DA2 not so much. Besides that DA2 (though good) lacked the epic feel of the first. Of the two, DA1 is the better, though DA2 had some general improvements, it was in other ways a step backward.
Regardless you did not actually answer the question, ***are you saddened by it’s cancellation? Granted you did not know of it, I didn’t either (it was never officially announced) but Bioware usually does expansions, so I figured their would be one. I think it stinks, DA2 was flawed, but I would have liked to play more of it, and to get closure on the Hawke storyline. So how do you feel about that?***
As for your 3 problems, I generally agree. DA 2 did lack the agency of the first (in part because you really were playing someone else’s character; Hawke was Bioware’s creation, not yours). And yes, social injustice is not anywhere near as interesting as a world devouring menace. Plus it just seems silly in a fantasy. Like I said earlier, DA2 lacked an epic feel, for this reason alone, not even counting the fact that the whole thing took place within a city, where as DA1 took you all over a nation. As for the third problem, I do generally agree, the preachy element was way too, well, preachy. Now I don’t know if I totally object to any kind of preaching in story telling (there is that whole “and the moral of the story was…” bit), but it has to be the right kind. And even then it has to flow with the story and not feel forced. However this generally only work with the old stuff, particularly because of their non-ideological and universal nature. The ‘new stuff’ as I’ll call it grates like iron on rock. It is ideology, and little else. Given that Bioware is a Canadian company, and given the dominance of uber left wing thought in that nation, it’s not hard to imagine there may be more than a few ideologues in that company. That would also explain the “inclusive” mentality of their recent games (i.e. adding homosexuality to all their IPs, and even to those IPs which are not theirs). Some in-game dialog does not help with this (Anders and other mages complaining about church…oops I mean chantry, policies and say things like “the Maker made me like this” sounds more than a little like the cry of a real life minority group). However, this may be more due to the devs latent liberalism than they actually meant it to be. I finished the game, and you have not yet, maybe that is why we had a different take on this part. From my perspective it felt less like the devs wanted you to take up the mages cause rather than their desire to have you exposed to the corrupt nature of both sides in this conflict. As you said, both sides here are pretty bad. That both of these kirkwall factions were pretty deeply corrupt, that neither side was good in this conflict, I think was the premise of the game. However I do believe this was only true of the Kirkwall elements, as I do not recall the Templar and Mages being so screwed up in other lands. Some fans didn’t like this aspect and said the game went into black vs black territory, which it somewhat did. That is not good of course, but I think it needs prospective. All Templars and Mages are not as bad as they were in Kirkwall, but regardless, even at their worst, you must choose which philosophy to follow, I think that is why it wa done the way it was. Perhaps it was a way to get you to refocus on that, by tossing out identifiable personalities, showing both sides at their worst, and thus making you look at the heart of the matter: should Mages roam free (even with the probable risk of abomination), or should they be kept down (even to the point of persecution) to avoid the greater threat they pose to civilization. Actually IMHO that is the philosophy behind the whole series. It’s not so much about good vs evil (though that does happen), but rather about the individual good vs the greater good and which is ultimately better in the end. And the Templar/mages struggle represents this quite well. The mages fall very much into the ‘individual good’ category; it’s usually about the mages wanting to live a normal life, and not be persecuted or even killed. None of that is bad, in fact it would seem to be the good option, BUT…that’s where the Templars come in. They represent the ‘greater good’ element. Templars can be harsh yes, but what they do is in service to save everyone else, they are usually looking at the bigger picture and seeing what will happen if the mages are left uncontrolled and the devastation an apostate can cause, remember the horror that was the Tevinter Imperium before the time of Andraste, when mages roamed free.
That is just my opinion of course, but I think that underlying philosophy girds most of the decision options in the game (even the non templar/mage stuff). Personally, I choose to side with the Temps. I don’t like killing mages, but Bioware made them too dangerous for their own good in this series. Just look at the damage only one abomination can do (remember the circle of mages quest line in DA1)! Plus…I just like templar knights, haha!
A third option would have been nice, but rather than killing them all, I’d rather there have been an option to reform the factions (neither one is evil at heart).
Either way I hope they go back to a blight like enemy in future games, I’d rather the temps and mages just kiss and makeup and move on! 😀
I know what you mean about EA caring more about profits than storyline, but I think you missed my question. ***It was whether or not you think the DA storyline is going to get darker in future installments; will it retain it’s high fantasy roots, or drop it to follow the dark and cynical path like GRRM’s stuff? Like I said, supposedly that was a semi-inspiration for DA, yet I don’t really see the connection. DA to me is a darker, more historical flavored version of D&D rather than Martin’s ode to cynicism.***
Last but not least, (and thanks for making it this far!), some of your comments about what you could do in DA1 mad me want to ask what you did in it. As for me, I can’t help it, I always end up playing the all around good guy, even when I don’t want to 😀
DA1 is no exception, in fact I hear talk that the chantry is considering my canonization 😉
I was a male human warrior, a noble to boot. I was best buds with Alistair and romanced Liliana (though Morrigan got all hot under the collar over me, not sure why, guess leaving her in the camp all the time turned her on, hey she is that contrarian that it’s a possibility). I always tried to do the right thing, and I sacrificed myself in the end, thus dying so that others may live. If there was a moral alignment bar in this game like in KOTOR, the slider would have been near the top.
***So what was your play like? (you didn’t sacrifice Alistair did you? 😉 )***
Wow that was longer than I antcipated it. Sorry about that, I talk too much!
“and alot of it’s imperfections come from it’s creator’s PCness and inability to pull themselves out of their own shoes.”
Yes. BioWare isn’t as bad as some at this, though. Star Trek was notorious for it.
“Bioware seems to have a stock collection of personalities that they use in every game, regardless of time or place, some work, but others grate out of place. Usually the list consists of total cynic, whiny dude, sweet girl next door, exotic foreigner, wise teacher, honest good guy, and usually someone on the darkside.”
Yes. See below:
http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=1755
“but alot also thought it was way over rated and over hyped, and not the WoW Killer™ it was thought to be.”
I think the “killer” idea, both with games and other technologies (such as the iPad) is misplaced. Last year people kept talking about how the Kindle Fire might be an “iPad Killer”, but the point isn’t to kill the iPad or WoW. Killing an established ecoysystem is a lot of work. Much easier to grow your own customer base (or overlap with a previous one). Instead of taking WoW’s piece of the pie, it would be easier for BioWare just to grow a bigger pie. (Essentially what Amazon did with the Fire.)
“Regardless you did not actually answer the question, ***are you saddened by it’s cancellation?”
I only had a vague idea that it was coming out, so not really. Ignorance occasionally has its benefits. 🙂
“***It was whether or not you think the DA storyline is going to get darker in future installments; will it retain it’s high fantasy roots, or drop it to follow the dark and cynical path like GRRM’s stuff?”
I dunno. I saw “The Avengers” this weekend, and since Joss Whedon directed it, I strongly suspected he would throw a political reference or two into it. But he didn’t, and it was a straight-up excellent superhero movie, which no doubt explains why it raked in $200 million this weekend. BioWare might wise up and do the same with Dragon Age 3.
I suspect Dragon Age was influenced more by D&D and the Wheel of Time (specifically, how the Seanchan deal with channelers) than Martin’s work. I’ve heard Loghain described as a character from a Martin novel, given his betrayal of the king, but frankly Loghain strikes me as more Shakespearean than anything else.
“So what was your play like? (you didn’t sacrifice Alistair did you?”
I think this will be a separate post. 🙂
“Yes. BioWare isn’t as bad as some at this, though. Star Trek was notorious for it.”
True, on both counts. I may pick on Bioware a little more however, because I like their games more, and I know they have talent, they just need to stop shooting themselves in the foot.
“Yes. See below”
lol, I see. It seems Bioware follows a pattern in more than just it’s character design. That said, the cliches of the chart are less annoying then out of place characters, which one must deal with the entire game. I wouldn’t mind it if all mu guys had humble origins, just so long as my companions weren’t gay cynics with an odd secular humanist take on things (okay I combined several different characters in that one…).
“I think the “killer” idea, both with games and other technologies (such as the iPad) is misplaced.”
Agreed! I’m getting tired of all the “killer” prophecies. It’s more than just misplaced, it’s avarice misplaced. WoW, whatever it’s flaws, ain’t a bad game at all, so why the desire to see it brought down? Just like you said, why not see something else raised to it’s level! It’s funny, it actually seems kind of marxist/egalitarian to me; the whole equality=bringing down others to a lower level thing. The rich need to be poor, the noble needs to be a peasant etc.
“I strongly suspected he would throw a political reference or two into it.”
I did too! But what a surprise it turned out to be! No political jabs and even a few lines here and there that I never thought Whedon would write! Avengers was a great movie, one of the better superhero flicks out there to be sure. And the money it made it’s first weekend, wow! Even whopping HP7 part 2?! Now that is something (poor Harry, he only had the title for a year 🙁 )
And yes, I hope Bioware gets it together with the next DA game, one can only pray.
FWIW: what I have heard about DA3 is that it will most likely take place in Orlais (devs said somewhere ‘french’…hint hint), mapwise it will be 4 to 5 times bigger than Ferelden, and it will be about “saving the world from it’s self”. Templars vs Mages again I’m sure. And Given that Orlais is home to the head of the western Chantry, things could get pretty interesting (or ugly…). And on top of that, seeing what happened at the end of Asunder, it may be rouge Templars/Seekers vs Mages. Maybe there will be factional division in the Templar organization, and I have no idea how the Chantry is going to fit in.
“I suspect Dragon Age was influenced more by D&D and the Wheel of Time”
Again I agree. At least on the D&D link, never really thought about WOT, but then again I’m new to the series and you’ve read them all. Same for Loghain, he never struck me as a Martin character, I think Shakespeare would be the closer of the two.
“I think this will be a separate post.”
You sacrificed him, didn’t you? 😉
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