Reinstall: Dragon Age II

PC Gamer’s Chris Thursten has penned a fairly kind retrospective of Dragon Age II, a title that has few admirers and plenty of vocal detractors. Thursten argues that, despite its streamlined and disappointing combat, Dragon Age II’s characters are more interesting and realistic, thanks partly to the game’s focus on stories that are smaller in scale when compared to what BioWare had offered with the original title. Here’s a snippet:

This begins with the notion that Hawke is never entirely free of responsibility. After the death of one of your siblings (which one depends on the class you chose at character creation), the need to keep the surviving family together intensifies. You flee to Kirkwall, Hawke’s mother’s birthplace, and take mercenary contracts to pay off your deadbeat uncle’s debts and gain entry to the city. The first act is spent trying to scrape enough money together to fund an expedition that might lift the family out of poverty. You contend with your mother’s disappointment, and, if she survives, your mage sister’s need to stay hidden from the magicpolicing Templars that hold power in the city. If you yourself are a mage, you must deal with something pettier: your little brother’s anger at living in your shadow, his lack of purpose and desire to chart his own course through life.

These are novelistic flourishes, not epic ones. Dragon Age II’s greatest strength is the way it concerns itself with believable people, and the way it is comfortable telling stories about things that might not threaten the safety of the world but are very important to the people experiencing them. The result is a narrative that you will either find incredibly compelling or utterly lacking in drive this is a game that you either fall in love with to the exclusion of its faults or slink away from, disappointed.