Dragon Age II Retrospective

With Inquisition only a few weeks away, the team at Zero1Gaming has slapped up a retrospective piece on Dragon Age II, the divisive sequel to BioWare’s excellent Dragon Age: Origins.  An excerpt, as usual:

There are some really awesome moments in Dragon Age II. Learning more about the Quanri and the Qun (and realising they are a thinly veiled metaphor for Islam) makes the world seem deeper and adds to the significant lore we were presented with in DA: Origins. I love the framing device of it all being a (story within a story) and the few times that Varric was exposed as an unreliable narrator puts the scope of the tale into perspective and explains some of the more over the top moments as him adding a little flavour to his telling of Hawke’s journey.

However, there felt like a definite lack of choice at moments, particularly at the end. Sure, you can chose to side with either the mages or the templars in the final battle, but no matter what you’ll end up fighting both because the First Enchanter is a blood mage and the Knight Captain is completely insane. Coming from a company that prides itself on allowing you to choose your path to glory, this was jarring and, as the credits rolled shortly after, left me feeling that the whole climax of the game was rushed.