the gaming muse

Sequels can get really messy.  A balance must be kept between making appropriate changes and keeping in line with the series.  Two audiences must be considered: fans, who may be sensitive to the minutest changes; and new consumers, who will hopefully become fans with time.

Needless to say, this can get complicated.  The worst sort of vitriol and nastiness can spew from spurned fans, and there is only one sequel in the world which deserves such un-constructive criticism:  Devil May Cry 2.

You’ll notice that Dragon Age 2 is not that game, and for good reason. 

While there are a lot of changes made to the game, each was made with a purpose in mind.  Most of them were done to keep the story from being hindered by gameplay, and that’s a reason I can get behind.  While certainly not perfect, Dragon Age 2 is definitely enjoyable and a worthy addition to any RPG collection.

In the following, I’ll discuss the reasoning behind said changes, and also the aspects which do deserve some vitriolic feedback.

GAMEPLAY

Many a complaint has been lobbed against gameplay in this game, and some of it is understandable.  Coming into DA2 expecting an experience like DAO will certainly be disappointing, but that does not bad gameplay make.

In fact, this game has some pretty fantastic gameplay, even when compared to the original.  Combat is much more fluid and dynamic, and classes seem to make a bigger difference than they did in DAO.  On top of that, combat is more engaging, less ‘press button, wait for action, repeat’, and much more fun to watch.  The way characters flip around and flash about is fascinating.

The limiting of exploration to one town, while contrary to the typical way RPGs work, is fitting to the game itself.  The whole story is centered upon this town and the downward spiral is it trapped in, and the player is trapped as well.  Being able to travel out of town a great deal would lessen the importance of the town, and the trapped feeling as well – if everything goes downhill, the player can just leave. 

For the most part, the side-quests of the game are interesting.  There are some inane quests which are so thin and unimportant they hardly count as quests, such as finding an item somewhere and eventually taking it to someone.  Little quests like these I often did on accident, not even realizing I’d found anything important, or that I’d talked to someone and handed it over.  These ‘fluff’ quests added nothing to the experience, and could’ve been cut to make way for meatier adventures.

It did feel as if the game had less side-quests than usual, which might have something to do with the restricted exploration, but this wasn’t a deal breaker.  What quests there were (other than the pithy ones) were captivating and thrilling to complete, and offered pretty good rewards besides.

While many bemoan the loss of some of DAO’s aspects, there are aspects which DA2 both kept and improved upon.  One of which is the choice system.  In DA2, the player’s choices impact the story much more, and feel more important; and the inclusion of a rivalry system is a very nice touch as well.  Instead of having to kiss up to characters to get them to stay on your side, the player is able to disagree and fight with team members without losing them in terms of loyalty.

I may have been imagining it, but it seemed to me that character’s choices influenced the way their Hawke spoke and what they said, even outside of those choices.  For example, a player who picks a lot of sarcastic options will have a Hawke who speaks sarcastically even when the player is choosing a nice or mean option.  From my experience, it seems as if the character’s tone and words change based on which of the three the player picks most… which is pretty cool.

STORY

What this game does with its narrative is mind blowing.  This is a game which repeatedly forces the player into horrible situations and gives them the idea they might be able to make things better, when really, things are only going to get worse.  The dark events which lead to the story’s third arc cannot be avoid or changed no matter how good a person Hawke is or what they do.  By giving the player agency and a semblance of hope, the emotional impact of the story is heightened.

While there are certainly issues with the plot, it’s easy to tell the story had some thought put into it.  It’s heart-wrenchingly emotional.  The game attempts to tear players at the seams by pulling them in multiple directions, and in doing so, creates a realistic narrative.  There is never a completely evil or completely good person.  The game manages to make all its characters, antagonists and protagonists, flawed and real in such a way that the story takes on a deeper, more tangible meaning.

This also makes it hit home much harder, since it becomes difficult for the player to ever truly hate an enemy, since they often understand their motives and thought processes.  The Arishok is one such sympathetic enemy, and even Meredith has reasons for her choices and becomes a somewhat sympathetic character.

Within the party itself, the game manages to represent every aspect of the ‘issue’ so to speak, through the characterizations and choices of each party member.  Anders and Fenris, for example, are opposite sides of the same coin, each with strong convictions; neither is wrong, but only one can be accommodated.  The player is forced to take in both their stories and then choose who to side with.  This is another realistic aspect of the story:  you can never please everyone.  Choices must be made, and not everyone will agree with what you choose.

Overall, this game did a good job of showing multiple viewpoints and aspects of each issue without ever really siding with anyone, and instead allowing the player to interpret what they’ve been shown and choose for themselves.  While flawed, DA2 is a great experiment in how video games might approach large societal conflicts and address them in ways that makes the player focus on them and think about them constantly.

The way the story is told – through multiple acts, by a narrator who has already lived through these events, and with side quests which elaborate on the main plot – allows the player to best feel the foreshadowing and tension of knowing something bad is on the way, and the frustration of being unable to stop it.  This is the story’s best aspect: the feeling of helplessness impressed upon the player despite the fact that they have so much power both within the story and within gameplay.  DA2 gives the player choice throughout, and yet, in the most important moments, makes them helpless to change anything.

SPOILERS

When Anders’ enacts his plan and the Chantry goes up, and Hawke and everyone else stand there in shock, that is a moment when the player is completely helpless, controlled by the events of the game.  They are then forced to decide the fate of someone they may care deeply about – as a friend, or more – and to decide the fate of a very large group of people, and in doing so, may lose some of their closest friends. 

The player is forced to make a choice which will affect their family, friends, lover, the people of the city, and the course of the future.  The heavy weight of this moment weighs on them like a bag of bricks.  They have a choice… but what the hell kind of choice is that?

END SPOILERS

That is what makes this narrative so powerful – the gravitas, the deathly serious tone, and the difficult choices placed before players.  DA2 takes on a great deal of meaning by forcing players to face a series of tragic events which can’t be stopped, and also giving them the ability to make choices which affect those trapped within the tragedy.

ART AND MUSIC 

This game is gorgeous, but it is also repetitive.

While every visual aspect of the game is well designed, the fact that most of these areas are reused is very dull.  Only the enjoyment of the experience occurring within that environment makes the player forget they’ve been there more than half a dozen times.

But for the most part, the artistic aspects of this game are fantastic and greatly improve upon its predecessor.  Characters have body language, environments have life to them, and races actually look like different races instead of vaguely human looking beings of various heights.  The soundtrack adds to the emotional pull of the already heady storyline, and being able to really see the emotions that characters in feel in their motions and their eyes deepens the connection between player and character.

The graphics are pristine and the soundtrack heavenly, but that body language is the real gem.  DAO was so stiff and lifeless sometimes, that relating to characters and their experiences was somewhat difficult.  The inclusion of body language and facial expressions in this game: makes the characters more realistic; makes the player feel the emotional impact more; and simply looks amazing.

DIVERSITY

When it comes to some issues, Dragon Age 2 shines.  Others, not so much.

This title does wonderfully by its female cast; they are all well developed and well characterized, and many of them are in positions of power, or command a great deal of power themselves.

Fantasy video games have a bad habit of slipping female characters into mage roles, and mage roles only.  Dragon Age Origins was guilty of this.  But in 2, only one of the three female team members is a mage, and the other two both wield blades of some kind.  Aveline and Isabela both take on combat roles rarely given to females in fantasy games – Aveline, especially.

Better yet, the game has positive portrayals of certain types of women who are often demonized, ignored, or otherwise handled badly within gaming.  Those types are:  the masculine woman, the feminine woman, and the sexually active woman.

Aveline is the masculine woman; battle hardened, muscular, practical, and a great leader, Aveline is quite the unique character.  Outside of Hawke’s family, she’s the first person to join Hawke.  Even better, what occurs between Aveline and her husband in the beginning of the game flips a situation which has occurred multiple times in video games and other media.

Every played Final Fantasy IV?  When the player meets Edward, he is with the love of his life.  Not moments after these characters are met, more of the plot unfolds, and his love dies in his arms.  After her death, Edward joins the main character’s team.

How about Alan Wake?  Though it is less of a direct comparison, this is another game where, soon after the female love interest is met, she is taken away.  In this case, her disappearance is the event which spurs the plot forward.   In most games, female characters dying or otherwise being taken from their husbands/boyfriends/love interests is an overused plot point to give the male character more development and depth… at the expense of a female character. 

Dragon Age 2 is the first game I’ve ever seen do the exact opposite.  Aveline’s husband is sacrificed to further her story, and she doesn’t spend the whole game mourning him.  Furthermore, Aveline quickly gains a very powerful leadership role in Kirkwall society, and one that is typically not given to females, that of Guard Captain. 

But the best part is the optional quest in which Aveline ends up marrying one of her guardsmen, Donnic.  There are a million and one wonderful things about this, the least of which is just how adorable the both of them are.  Aveline and Donnic’s relationship in the game fights quite a few harmful ideas:

•  The idea of masculine women as unattractive or undesirable
•  The idea that wives can’t earn more/have higher level jobs than their husbands
•  More vaguely, the figure of the tragic widow

The way the romance is handled and who it is with makes it very refreshing.  The player sees Aveline and Donnic interacting professionally on the job, and nothing harmful or problematic is said about their relationship in terms of the power dynamics.  Nothing is ever inferred about her personality, nor are cruel jokes made.  All around, Aveline’s relationship with Donnic is one of the healthier aspects of this game.

Also, games don’t often show female characters losing husbands, but even less often are widows shown to fall in love again and remarry.  The fact that Dragon Age 2 both shows Aveline moving on after her first husband’s death, and also marrying a man society would say shouldn’t marry her is very positive. 

Merrill, too, fights some harmful ideas and stereotypes.  She takes on the role of the feminine woman; she has some of the personality traits that many people consider “bad” traits, and also associate with feminine women, like absentmindedness, clumsiness, and naivety.  Women who are feminine are usually stereotyped and looked down upon as unintelligent and foolish, neither of which Merrill is.

Merrill is in a very precarious position emotionally, and though she does make mistakes, none of them are due to her personality.  She does not trust the demon because she is naïve – she knows demons to be dangerous – she does so hoping to rekindle her people’s past.  Those who claim Merrill is idiotic and thoughtless forget the position she has been pushed into, and the desperate measures she is willing to take to reach her goals.  She knows trusting demons is a bad thing but she has no choice, and thus rationalizes her actions.

Merrill is a strong female character with a great deal of knowledge and ability at her command, and at the same time, she is silly, clumsy, and feminine.  This is fantastic because feminine characters are often characterized as useless and helpless, and Merrill is neither. 

Lastly, there’s Isabela, who fights what is arguably the worst and most harmful ideas of them all.  Isabela is the sexual woman, who knows who and what she wants and goes for it.  She is frank and straightforward about sex and her desires, and is a “lover in every port” kind of woman.  Rarely are females given this characterization, and when they are, they are usually damned for it, and called all sorts of horrid things.

The only time the game comments harshly on Isabela’s actions is when Aveline discusses it.  If both of these women are in the party together, conversations may occur where Aveline shows distaste for Isabela’s choices and calls her ‘slut’ or ‘whore’.  But this is not the same as the game condemning Isabela: in fact, through further conversations in the game, it is actually a way to show how Aveline changes her mind about Isabela.  Eventually, conversations between them reveal that they are much closer by the end of the game.

By displaying Isabela’s sex life in a healthy way, and not using her it as a negative plot point against her (as in, her having sex with someone leads to a bad consequence), the game presents a very healthy view of a sexually active woman.  The best part is that the game allows the player to romance her as well, which fights another harmful idea: that of women who sleep around being considered worthless and undesirable.

But this leads into another point, which is much less positive.  Isabela is the only woman of color in the main party, perhaps the only woman of color in the game.  While she is not stereotyped or characterized in a negative way, it is problematic that the only woman of color is also the most sexual woman in the story. 

As is shown with characters like Cynthia Velasquez (Silent Hill 4), Serena Valdivia (Alan Wake: American Nightmare), and Gloria (Devil May Cry 4), when sexuality is an important aspect of the character, they are much more likely to be women of color.  This plays into harmful stereotypes and the issue of fetishizing, and while Isabela is a positive character, the correlation is still there.

On the issue of racial diversity, this game fails horribly.  Walking around Kirkwall, the player sees a city that is comprised almost entirely of white people.  In the main cast, only Fenris and Isabela are people of color.  Add to this the fact that Bioware has been called out on it, and has reacted very badly, and this makes for an even greater disappointment.

Then there is the representation of the LGBT community.  The first three letters of the acronym are well represented.  The four romance options in the game are all bisexual, so that the player may romance them as either male Hawke or female Hawke.  This is fantastic, because it allows people of all sexualities to play out their fantasy romances with whomever they so choose.  These romances play out almost the exact same whether the romance is same-sex or straight. 

The last letter is represented, but there have been bumps.  Serendipity is a trans* character in the game, and there was a bit of a controversy over dialogue in one of the DLCs, and how it seemed to make Serendipity’s identity the butt of a joke.  Given that trans* people have been included in media only as fodder for harmful comedy for a long time, this is definitely a big mistake to make.   

But the issue existed due to overlooking an important aspect of gameplay – the choice of the player.  If the player chose to sleep with Serendipity in the first game, that is what makes up the joke: the fact that the player feels awkward meeting Serendipity with Seneschal Bran.  Without that choice, the scene becomes problematic.  But it is good to know that it wasn’t intentional.

(This is what I believe occurred… I know very little about said DLC and the controversy, so if I am mistaken on some aspect of it, please inform me.)

Dragon Age 2 wavers back and forth between good representation and bad.  There are aspects it does well, and aspects it needs to vastly improve on.  Hopefully, the next game will do so.

IN CONCLUSION

For many years, the development of video games has been gameplay centered, and in fact, for most of the industry’s history, gameplay has been the only aspect.  Technical limitations kept story on the back burner for a very long time.  But now, as the technology improves and the industry grows up, story is becoming more and more important.

While it is understandable that fans might be upset by the drastic switch in style from DAO to DA2, these changes were made in order to tell a vital story in the Dragon Age universe.  In fact, if more games considered sacrificing gameplay content for storytelling, the medium might expand and grow in new directions, and might start realizing that stories are valid aspects of games.

While imperfect, DA2 does some good things in terms of: the evolution of the Dragon Age series; the portrayal of queer characters and female characters; and the idea of story as being as important as gameplay.  These positive traits don’t make up for the gaffes of the game, but they should be remembered both as the series continues to evolve, and as the industry grows and changes.

I hope more developers start considering story as an integral part of gaming, instead of as an optional addition.  To read books on the subject, and interviews with developers, it’s as if there’s an industry wide consensus that story is unimportant.  This consensus seems to ignore the vast popularity of story based games like Bioware’s titles.  Hopefully, other developers will catch on soon.

To conclude, not everyone will like this game.  It’s far from perfect, and the series still has a ways to go towards improvement.  But what has been created so far is an intriguing world with some areas of strong diversity that few other games have.  Here’s to hoping that the world continues to develop, and that the diversity continues to expand to include those who’ve yet to be strongly represented.