The name’s Hawke

So, I played Dragon Age II for about 12 hours Tuesday (barely scratched the surface, mind you) and I can’t wait to get back into it. “But why? How can you want to play that dumbed-down piece of crap, didn’t you see the demo?” Yes, angry Dragon Age: Origins fan, of course I did, yet I didn’t put much stock into it because of what I suspected all along: the playable demo is a hastily-cobbled-together port of the console versions’. Let me just take this opportunity to hand BioWare a big SHAME ON YOU for that blunder… Not only did it succeed in turning many PC gamers off of Dragon Age II (like an anti-promotion), it may also have done some serious damage to the credibility of game demos in general! When your free preview of a game is so unrepresentative of the final product, why even release it at all? Let’s go through some of the points of contention that myself and others may have had with the Dragon Age II demo.

The graphics suck.

This is probably the biggest gripe people had with the demo -- the PC version looked the same as the console versions. That’s really bad when said consoles are now more than 5 years old… However, that is because the graphical options were limited in the PC demo, with no high-resolution textures and no DirectX 11 features available. Again, why they decided to use this as a promotional tool for the game is beyond me, but what’s done is done. You all will be happy to hear that both of those things are remedied in the full version (see screenshots), though you have to download a hi-res texture pack separately and DX11 performance can be a bit sketchy. Some say that using the recently-released beta drivers from both NVIDIA and AMD help with the latter somewhat, but hopefully BioWare will have a proper fix for it soon.

Combat has been dumbed down.

Everybody saw the fast-paced action in the previews of the game and feared that the tactical combat of the first game had been streamlined or removed completely. Well, that is simply not the case. While it’s true that you cannot zoom out to an overhead, almost RTS-like camera angle in Dragon Age II, the same depth of tactical options and control remains. The only difference is that they’ve improved party AI behavior to the point that you do not have to rely on micro-management as much if you prefer to focus on your own character. This is achieved in part by the tactics menu (not limited to 7 slots as it was in the demo) automatically updating itself with abilities you unlock. But for those exceptionally difficult battles, you can still assume control of each party member, pause the action to assign orders to everybody, and coordinate what are called “cross-class combos.”

The interface is too consoley.

We get somewhat of a mixed bag in this department. As seen in the demo, the PC version’s HUD is a pretty good size, with the entire bottom of the screen acting as a quickbar for shortcuts to abilities or items. Thankfully, the radial pause menu from the demo is gone in the full version and has been replaced with a list. However, the inventory, character sheet, and quest journal are all much too small, even in the full version of the game. Literally, they barely cover 1/3 of the screen at 1920x1200, plus they still use a larger, console-friendly font. Hopefully we will see some kind of UI mod in the near future because that’s just ridiculous.

As for the rest of the game, yeah, it’s pretty awesome. Being a fan of the silent protagonist, I was wary of the switch to a fully-voiced Hawke with a [mostly] pre-determined personality, but I actually like it. It’s so much more fun to deliver the sarcastic dialogue when you can hear it out loud. And despite the lack of an Origins backstory, the character progression (in terms of story, not leveling up) is palpable and gratifying: you start out as a penniless refugee working for smugglers or mercenaries, trying to earn enough coin just to buy your way into the city because your degenerate uncle gambled away your inheritance. Before you know it, you’ve built a reputation for getting things done and you eventually amass fortune enough to restore your family to its former glory. In many ways, I think that’s better than simply choosing to start out with inherent renown (or insignificance) and being identified that way for the rest of the game.

So far, I’ve spent all my time questing in and around Kirkwall, which is a massive city-state in the Free Marches. Instead of a regional map, you have a map of the city with different districts and points of interest to go to (somewhat like that of Denerim in Origins), including the option to visit them at night. Frankly, I’m getting kind of tired of bouncing around the same handful of locations for the few dozen quests I’ve done so far, so I hope there are other places to see. There should be plenty of time for that, as I’m expecting a similar length of playthrough as the last Dragon Age, around 50-60 hours. It’s pretty crazy to think about the fact that, in the time I’ve spent playing already, I could have beaten the campaigns for Bulletstorm AND Call of Duty: Black Ops…. It’s so nice to get your money’s worth from a game. As such, you can expect the full review of Dragon Age II to land sometime next week, after I finish this beast. See you then!