Recordkeeping: Dragon Age: Origins, Awakening, and DA2 - COMPLETE

[xyzzysqrl]

I've come to the uncomfortable conclusion that there may be TOO MUCH Dragon Age Origins. There's about six pieces of story-based DLC, which contributes, but I'm talking about just the main, base game. It feels like it stretches on just a FEW hours past the point where I'm bloody sick of it. You can only be asked to make "who lives and who dies" choices so many times in one game before you just start rolling your eyes and going "WHATEVER".

That's why a pack of werewolves ate the forest elves, by the way. At some point I stopped giving a crap about non-urban elves (like my character) and decided the wolves could make a better go at civilization. I understand they're doing okay with it.

It's also a game that's tricky about freedoms. At first it looks like you can go anywhere, except if you try to go to the WRONG anywhere, the difficulty curve smacks you down. So you can go anywhere but you really SHOULD go to places in a particular order unmentioned anywhere. Fun.

But I went through that and all the DLC, and then I turned my attention to Dragon Age 2. It is... really hard to overstate fan reaction to Dragon Age 2. If you go by internet reaction, this game murders puppies. It is singlehandedly responsible for everything fans dislike about Bioware, it's a pandering mess with a terrible plot, it has an abrupt nonsense ending...

...which is why it surprised me when Dragon Age 2 turned out to be my favorite character-driven RPG in a long while. The writing in this one SPARKLED. Bioware actually got the moral dilemma thing they keep trying to do RIGHT by not offering "black/white" morality but "gray/gray" morality where NOBODY'S right, the points are made up and you're left staring at the screen going "BUT HOW DO I CHOOSE -EITHER- OF THESE?!"

I'm certainly not praising the combat. Next time I play, it'll be with this mod that makes combat a one-hit-one-kill festival of overpoweredness in favor of the player. I'm praising the characters, the worldbuilding, the single city they built up over the near-decade-long plotline.

So while I got a little tired of DA:O by the end of it, I genuinely loved Dragon Age 2. I'm hoping Inquisition is at least as good. I'll start that Monday night, I think.

...and I guess, later, I need to get on replaying the Mass Effect series. This experience has given me confidence that I'll probably love Mass Effect 3, too.

Comments

[soulshrapnel.livejournal.com]

Ooh. I have friends who are playing DA:I... They really like it. But they are mostly talking about it in terms of which characters your character gets to have a romance plotline with so idk if that's your thing or not :)

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I ended up not doing romance with anybody because you're everybody's boss, and at some point in each relationship plotline they bring it up and say 'please stop'. It's really kind of creepy.

[xyzzysqrl]

I'm pretty sure this is a barrier I can overcome.

[soulshrapnel.livejournal.com]

whaaat o_O

[xyzzysqrl]

That is 2000% my thing. I'm still lamenting that I wanted to have a romance in DA2 with the awesome pirate lady, but the angsty elf was like "I HAVE A MYSTERIOUS BACKSTORY AND COOL TATTOOS" and my interest-o-meter went "HEY YA HOW YA DOIN'?" and suddenly it was elf kissing time.

[soulshrapnel.livejournal.com]

Okay then in that case that is excellent and I look forward to reading your recaps :D

[xyzzysqrl]

Nah, this is really all I'm doing write-up wise for these. The Dragon Age games are so dang big that if I tried to blog them properly I would curl up in a ball forever about a quarter of the way in.

Maybe if I decide to play a proper Japanese dating game. I've kinda had my eyes on a few.

[soulshrapnel.livejournal.com]

LOL, fair enough! Happy fictional-character-dating either way!!

[dang-bunni.livejournal.com]

I liked Mass Effect 3. I didn't like it as much as 1, which is still my fave of the series, but it was pretty good!

I did, however, use the DLC gun that works like the guns in ME1 instead of the ME2 guns. (Heat meter instead of ammo!)

I was 'meh' about the ending, but that wasn't enough to make me dislike the game as a whole. And the ending itself wasn't nearly as annoying as all the internet whining about the ending.

I strongly suggest the Citadel Station DLC in ME3. It's just a lot of fun. Also the Leviathan DLC, because it explains a lot of backstory.

(I never finished DA:O. I can't remember why. I think there was something about the camera that irked me. There's probably a mod for it now, tho.)