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
