Dragon Age 2
Mar. 17th, 2011 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrI've been feeling blah and antisocial recently for various reasons and DA2 has been a very effective way to fill in the time. This post isn't spoilery but the comments probably will be.
Overall: I didn't like all the changes from Origins, and parts felt rushed/sparse but I did really enjoy it.
I played a male rogue who has sympathy towards mages and non-humans and tends to think the best approach is to stay calm, act compassionately and keep your head down. He ended up being a little bit of a wishy washy hypocrite.
Here is a picture of the giant-boobed sexy pirate love interest Isabella, my PC Stefan Hawke (a man in armour with the darkest skin tone and black braids) and his brooding white haired pretty boy elf ex-slave boyfriend Fenris.
I liked pretty much all the practical changes, especially the simplified combat and trash can where you can throw stuff you intend to sell. The combat was really satisfying, lots of very dramatic explosions of blood :D I only had to use cheats on one battle compared to using them for almost all of Origins. (I caved and used them on or or two others when I could tell I was going to lose and was feeling impatient, but I'm pretty sure I could have beaten those on a retry)
The fact that your family's appearance changes to match yours was great most of the time but was utterly contradicted for me in one really key scene.
It's one person's story, and less epic but over a longer period of time. It went way too quickly in parts, and on the whole I didn't feel as emotionally engaged, the beginning especially was way less involving than say the (vaguely similar) Cousland Origin.
I liked the choices and the variety of consequences individually but they felt like variations on a theme. On the whole the scope was MUCH smaller, which had good and bad sides. One bad side is that the combination of map reuse with seeing the same places over three time periods rather than travelling to different locations meant I got VERY SICK of certain maps and didn't feel like I was seeing any new places or people. On the plus side by the end it all felt a lot more personal and familiar. Not sure how it will hold up to replaying. Some of the moral quandries about stuff like mercy killing go to an ableist place, imo.
I think the new elves are pretty and interestingly alien looking, whatever anyone else says :P I can see why they were made Welsh/Irish but it does soften the effect of them as a metaphor for various more recently oppressed indigenous populations.
I'm not a huge fan of the way the Qunari were changed to be more Noble Warrior Race-y, complete with body paint. Both because of unfortunate implications and because it felt less interesting than what we saw of Sten. Still, the contrast between Kirkwall, the Qunari and the Imperium is interesting and prevents overgeneralisations like "all mages are oppressed".
The connection to the Origins/Awakening save I uploaded felt fairly tenuous, afaict they didn't have ANY specific Brosca/dwarf mentions (and no lady dwarves at all!) though the couple of cameos were nice if short.
There were a number of varied and complex female characters (several of them over 40!), but the gender dynamic was still creepy sometimes, with all the giant boobs and women in refrigerators. I imagine it would feel a bit less weird with a female Hawke, but for example the "lol, Isabella is such a slut" thing got old.
Slavery is used a lot as a source of angst and drama in a way that felt a bit exploitative to me (though it's definitely portrayed as wrong!)
I really liked all the companions (Anders irritated me, but in the end that made for an interesting story) but felt they didn't get enough dialogue. I actually liked the romance scenes being staggered (after running out of romance dialogue relatively early on in Origins) and the way that there were a smaller number of gifts which could only be used on one person but always triggered dialogue, using gifts in Origins felt a bit like using a cheat code. But I wish there was a bunch of separate platonic conversations you could have at any time, including on the road. I loved that they had little scenes showing the relationships between the companions.
I romanced Fenris and I after a rocky start I really enjoyed it. I am SUCH a sucker for that kind of tortured woobie when the text doesn't imply that it's ok for them to be a jerk, or that anyone who dislikes or disagrees with them is a big meanie (this usually only happens when said woobie is female). Plus, so pretty :D The fact that he's an ex slave was a bit iffy, but afaict he's most successfully romanced (or befriended) when you give him space and let him come to his own decisions and it didn't feel as creepy as it could easily have.
I played almost all of Act 3 a second time to avoid a bug which messed up the romance (I had to change a choice in his companion sidequest even though all the walkthroughs etc said that choice made no difference) I actually thought the not-quite-romance in my first playthrough was a more interesting story, but I knew if I didn't see all the dialogue etc I'd be too tempted to romance him again in my second playthrough :D
I really liked that the romance didn't feel like a set of hurdles to cross to get to have sex and then I'd "won". Also: everyone is bisexual, huzzah!
Some advice:
Overall: I didn't like all the changes from Origins, and parts felt rushed/sparse but I did really enjoy it.
I played a male rogue who has sympathy towards mages and non-humans and tends to think the best approach is to stay calm, act compassionately and keep your head down. He ended up being a little bit of a wishy washy hypocrite.
Here is a picture of the giant-boobed sexy pirate love interest Isabella, my PC Stefan Hawke (a man in armour with the darkest skin tone and black braids) and his brooding white haired pretty boy elf ex-slave boyfriend Fenris.
I liked pretty much all the practical changes, especially the simplified combat and trash can where you can throw stuff you intend to sell. The combat was really satisfying, lots of very dramatic explosions of blood :D I only had to use cheats on one battle compared to using them for almost all of Origins. (I caved and used them on or or two others when I could tell I was going to lose and was feeling impatient, but I'm pretty sure I could have beaten those on a retry)
The fact that your family's appearance changes to match yours was great most of the time but was utterly contradicted for me in one really key scene.
It's one person's story, and less epic but over a longer period of time. It went way too quickly in parts, and on the whole I didn't feel as emotionally engaged, the beginning especially was way less involving than say the (vaguely similar) Cousland Origin.
I liked the choices and the variety of consequences individually but they felt like variations on a theme. On the whole the scope was MUCH smaller, which had good and bad sides. One bad side is that the combination of map reuse with seeing the same places over three time periods rather than travelling to different locations meant I got VERY SICK of certain maps and didn't feel like I was seeing any new places or people. On the plus side by the end it all felt a lot more personal and familiar. Not sure how it will hold up to replaying. Some of the moral quandries about stuff like mercy killing go to an ableist place, imo.
I think the new elves are pretty and interestingly alien looking, whatever anyone else says :P I can see why they were made Welsh/Irish but it does soften the effect of them as a metaphor for various more recently oppressed indigenous populations.
I'm not a huge fan of the way the Qunari were changed to be more Noble Warrior Race-y, complete with body paint. Both because of unfortunate implications and because it felt less interesting than what we saw of Sten. Still, the contrast between Kirkwall, the Qunari and the Imperium is interesting and prevents overgeneralisations like "all mages are oppressed".
The connection to the Origins/Awakening save I uploaded felt fairly tenuous, afaict they didn't have ANY specific Brosca/dwarf mentions (and no lady dwarves at all!) though the couple of cameos were nice if short.
There were a number of varied and complex female characters (several of them over 40!), but the gender dynamic was still creepy sometimes, with all the giant boobs and women in refrigerators. I imagine it would feel a bit less weird with a female Hawke, but for example the "lol, Isabella is such a slut" thing got old.
Slavery is used a lot as a source of angst and drama in a way that felt a bit exploitative to me (though it's definitely portrayed as wrong!)
I really liked all the companions (Anders irritated me, but in the end that made for an interesting story) but felt they didn't get enough dialogue. I actually liked the romance scenes being staggered (after running out of romance dialogue relatively early on in Origins) and the way that there were a smaller number of gifts which could only be used on one person but always triggered dialogue, using gifts in Origins felt a bit like using a cheat code. But I wish there was a bunch of separate platonic conversations you could have at any time, including on the road. I loved that they had little scenes showing the relationships between the companions.
I romanced Fenris and I after a rocky start I really enjoyed it. I am SUCH a sucker for that kind of tortured woobie when the text doesn't imply that it's ok for them to be a jerk, or that anyone who dislikes or disagrees with them is a big meanie (this usually only happens when said woobie is female). Plus, so pretty :D The fact that he's an ex slave was a bit iffy, but afaict he's most successfully romanced (or befriended) when you give him space and let him come to his own decisions and it didn't feel as creepy as it could easily have.
I played almost all of Act 3 a second time to avoid a bug which messed up the romance (I had to change a choice in his companion sidequest even though all the walkthroughs etc said that choice made no difference) I actually thought the not-quite-romance in my first playthrough was a more interesting story, but I knew if I didn't see all the dialogue etc I'd be too tempted to romance him again in my second playthrough :D
I really liked that the romance didn't feel like a set of hurdles to cross to get to have sex and then I'd "won". Also: everyone is bisexual, huzzah!
Some advice:
- if you play a rogue, learn mark of death and assassinate, it's so useful for bosses. Archery is too, when they have nasty melee attacks.
- When you have some spare gold go to the Black Emporium and buy a few vials of the stuff that lets you reassign your talents. There are some nasty bosses at the end of long dungeon crawls with no access to the world map, and it sucks to have to play them twice because you're missing that one useful talent. (Also, if that still isn't enough: know that cheats work differently in Steam and the usual instructions won't work :D)
- be really careful clicking any dialogue marked with a heart unless you want to romance that character, especially in Act 2. Yes, even if it's the only in character response.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 11:32 pm (UTC)# be really careful clicking any dialogue marked with a heart unless you want to romance that character, especially in Act 2. Yes, even if it's the only in character response.
This! I had surprise-insta-sex with Merrill when all I wanted to be was let her down gently D: whoa. Reload!
I am kind of surprised so many people so violently dislike Fenris. I imagine they played mages XD but he's really quite well written -- okay, he totally plays into my angrry!stoic!angsty!bishounen sweet spot (Garrus! Kratos [Tales of Symphonia]!) but he also has such an interesting development. I came for the pretty eyes and stayed for an (eventually committed, yay) respectful relationship :D Idk. He really captivated me in a way that I hadn't at all expected.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 12:22 pm (UTC)My husband was initially quite taken with Fenris(*) but ended up hating him. He was a mage romancing Merril and got really annoyed every time Fenris said anything that hurt her feelings, which he did a lot. At the end he had the option to persuade Fenris to come back to his side and chose not to just so he could watch him die.
Fenris is kind of a jerk, I can see how that puts people off :D I'm not 100% sure what buttons he's pushing for me, but I was UTTERLY SMITTEN by Morrigan in Origins who was also kind of a jerk, and Thane in ME2 who had the understated growly voiced self assured angst thing. But I also fell madly for Tali and Just Don't See Merril That Way, so who knows.
(*)He has a thing for brooding. Also assassins, so Thane was a shoe-in :)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 12:49 pm (UTC)My reasoning is that pretty much everyone who doesn't romance Fenris only gets the unadulterated asshole parts and misses out on the conversations fleshing out his character and most of his development. Which is a shame, but at least explains the rather glaring split between Fenris supporters and haters!
Also, I'm such a sucker for voices. Always have been. Fenris' is ...almost too over the top, but I still could never say no to that voice. (Thane, altho' v. attractively voiced, was too 'growly' for me. But then I've been pining for Garrus ever since ME1, so there was never a question.)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-30 01:41 am (UTC)Yes that definitely makes sense.
I'm a sucker for voices too. I may or may not have started watching Farscape thanks mostly to Claudia Black's VA work as Morrigan :)