They Changed the Dining Room: Dragon Age II Analysis

It has been eight months since Dragon Age II was released by Bioware. Although it was a sequel to Dragon Age Origins; a game that obtained commercial and critical success; Dragon Age II was not greeted as well. The game still did get generally good reviews, but further readings indicate that not all was well in Ferelden.   

Dragon Age Origins hearkened back to Bioware’s old titles such as Baldur’s Gate that I played with unnerving obsession until my hand literally got cold and tingly. It was ratcheted up as a ‘dark fantasy’ where Elves were no longer beautiful and immortal; Dwarves were isolated and put off by surface races, and Humans were more prone to show their brutality towards others. Seeing the success of other dark fantasy games such as The Witcher, it was going to be interesting to see how Bioware would do it.

It was a mix of nostalgia and anticipation for a new computer role-playing game that I locked my gaze on the title for years. When I finally got to play it, it was 200+ hours over two playthroughs, one expansion, and dlc. It was a genuine old-new title. It had all the stuff I missed: the puzzles, party based tactical combat, the top-down camera, friendly fire for example. It had a few new wrinkles in the armor penalties, more emphasis on class specialization, increased aggro management—I didn’t mind these. I accepted them knowing Bioware couldn’t just one for one clone their old games. I suspected the overwhelming success of World of Warcraft influenced them as well. But ultimately, Dragon Age Origins was what I was waiting for, a long time.

When a sequel was announced, I thought ‘Great. They are finally coming back! Those old school rpgs that I haven’t played in years were being given the green light again. And who better than Bioware right?’ I spent a lot of time going through the Elder Scrolls games, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, a lot of hack and slashes. It was time I took a break from action-rpgs. I love them, but there is such as thing as too much of good thing.

When Dragon Age II was being hyped up as the next ‘action-rpg,’ I paused.

It has taken me this long to unpause and take the time to figure this out. The developer was steadfast in their belief that non-rpgers can love rpgs. I wasn’t so convinced. I had years of fun playing video rpgs since Ultima VI and Betrayal at Krondor, but spending time getting into the heady task of calculating initiative, figuring out what dice to use, allocating character statistics was intimidating when I started playing PnP DnD. I did have help though, I played the entirety of the Baldur’s Gate games and the Black Isle DnD games so I knew the basic mechanics of what to expect. But I also knew that you didn’t need to be a rules lawyer to play any of those video games.

With that, maybe Bioware was right. If you can play shooters, rts and strategy, puzzle games, chess, dance simulations, cooking games, board games, adventure games, text adventures, fighting games, flight simulators, online Microsoft Word tests from recruiters—you can damn well play an rpg.

So I decided to put it to the test. I realized this would be a difficult task because I would have to assume I know little of rpgs. I would need to use all the possible tools a new rpg player would need. Manual reading check, online help check, reading articles about rpgs check, in-game help check. What else?

I decided to be fair; I would play two builds simultaneously. One build would be built according to the advice I gathered about playing video rpgs from the Internet. My second build would reflect how I personally play video rpgs. I wanted both to stand in contrast to each other.

Another reason is that I wanted to test the system for its ‘grognard’ factor. Yes, Dragon Age II was billed as action RPG, but from my experience a lot of them lack the statistical mayhem old school rpgs have.

Even from playing the demo, you could see there were a lot of numbers. Much more than say for example, Mass Effect 2 or X-Men Legends. But you know if the game isn’t drowning in them…

More importantly, Dragon Age II had caused me no small amount of grief. I had a really bad experience with the Dragon Age II demo. I must have played it 8 times being a mage, rogue and warrior at least twice. I tried the demo with a hack to access the inventory, character generation, and difficulty settings; I tried the demo twice on console (PS3). There was something missing, something important.

I got into a discussion with a Gamasutra poster on a game developer’s blog about the current state of video rpgs, and my really bad feelings about Bioware and their new rpg direction. After some back and forth, the poster suggested to play the game and create a number of builds testing the system. The challenge was this:

‘Play around with the mechanics, the game, the difficulty, the inventory, whatever. See if you can retain the hardcore RPGers like you and me while bringing in a few people who didn't even know they liked RPGs.’

Fair enough—challenge accepted. But first, I had to set some ground rules about my project here.

 What I will not talk about

I created this list as I feel that the below wouldn’t matter if I were to analyze the gameplay. I realize that some of them definitely tweaked me, but I need to give this game a fair shake.

 What I will talk about

Now this list here consists of changes made to the gameplay system. Also I will eventually dedicate a section to Patch 1.03 as it warrants it own discussion.

 Dragon Age Rules Smackdown

Dragon Age II went under some rules changes. I have made comparisons between both games. These lists are not complete, but I wrote them from what I have experienced and gathered from the Dragon Age Wiki, the manuals, and the Bioware forums.

What DAO did

 What DAII does

Where I Ultimately Want To Go

Before we dive into the analysis, where I want to go with this article is to figure out how easy it is to learn an rpg. You have all these statistics and immediately, you need to figure out what to do with them. Does the game address this problem? It is one thing to upgrade a golfer in Tiger Woods PGA 12 and another to upgrade a warrior in Dragon Age. If this game was meant to be an introduction to the rpg, one must understand the stuff behind the moving parts. I have created a number of charts to help with this. It is much easier to document the observable, and make an analysis. I would like to make this a series as I play through various builds. Also I found that in doing these charts, it also helped my own understanding of gameplay rules.       

Analysis

I outlined a number of objectives for my first build—that of a person who is learning how to play an rpg. I decided on these:

1^st Build

Class: Rogue—dual wield specialization

Game Difficulty: Hard (I wanted to see if there was a differences between DAO Normal and DAII hard—I thought DAO Normal was a good challenge especially when fighting revenants, but playing DAO: Awakening at Normal was easy for me. I also read this.)

Objectives:

The first part of the game involves a tutorial whereby the game is ‘exaggerated.’ This allows players to experiment with a host of abilities against darkspawn. For rogues, you can experiment with the abilities backstab, evade, unforgiving chain, miasmic flask, and stealth.

Soon after, you create your character and begin the game in earnest. Hawke and company must reach Kirkwall. In this section, the player must engage in a number of fights with darkspawn bolters, grunts, and normal hurlocks—the final boss fight has one ogre. On arriving to Kirkwall, the player must find a way into the city itself and fights two battles consisting of human archers and warriors. Each group has one leader. This wraps up year 1. As a rogue, I ended up a level 4 rogue with 2 unspent abilities.

For build 1, my end statistics are:

So dexterity and cunning stand out. I have not addressed all the other statistics. The rationale is that the main statistics of dexterity and cunning must be within at least two points of each other. The low scores in all other statistics should be offset by the high dexterity and cunning—meaning this character kills and runs. This follows the advice of the manual and the advice given by Game Informer. I have 2 unspent abilities—the prevailing wisdom of Game Informer also cautions against spending abilities too quickly.   

The DPS table so far:

The bolded numbers were something I observed directly from playing the game. On Dexerity 14 and 19, allocating one point is not enough to offset the decrease—they normalize and increase after. The column, DIFF AttkDerived is the difference between Attk Derived values. So I am tracking the increases between dexterity values. So between dex 13 and 14; AttkDerived increased by a value of 3. Between dex 14 and 15; AttkDerived increases by a value of 4, and remains consistent until dex 19. I would need to play the game further to determine a connection between the two drops.

This is the table I use to track the level scaling in the game. As noted, on leveling up in the game, the player takes a small drop in Attack, Defense, and Armor numbers so the player must actively prop up the statistics that affect these scores. I’m thinking that the more the player doesn’t do this, the more underpowered the character could become. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem as the manual directly tells players to concentrate on these statistics during leveling.

My Alternate Build

I have a labeled game called Self-Build. This is to act in contrast to the above build by allowing me to build a character in whatever way I choose. This is based on the way I built my Dragon Age Origins character—which was to create a balanced character and cut down on the meta-gaming. It is also to prove that you don’t need to follow the advice of the min/maxers to be successful. In fact, creating a well rounded character was a goal of the Dragon Age II gameplay team.

My statistics so far:

I have tried to keep my statistics fairly even—there is still the emphasis on dexterity and cunning (something you learn in DAO about class specialization), but I have increased my willpower and constitution knowing I like to go full on offensive in combat and will take direct damage.

The Full Smash

Tracked levels from 1 to 4

The Story So Far

From playing through the introduction, the game does a reasonable job by using tool-tips and frequent pop-ups to ensure that players understand the basic mechanics of the game. One thing that I was curious about was that there was no mention of the ability to pause the combat. While it is in the manual, the in-game help doesn’t mention it—or I might have missed it. Not a critical misstep, but something worth noting regardless.   

As I do not have the required abilities, I have not been able to test the usefulness of cross class combos.

One notable change came with Patch 1.03. This is something I noticed immediately after patching the game in comparison to playing the demo.

One thing that stood out about the demo was the ‘lighting pace’ the characters and the enemies moved at. I was very used to the ‘methodical’ pace of Origins. The pace, at which the enemies and characters move with the patch, is noticeably slower to me.

Patch 1.03 also tweaked enemies in the following ways:

Concerning companions, I decided to base their leveling on what would be useful for them. As I previously played the demo, I knew Carver was going to eat it so I didn’t create a build strategy for him. For Bethany, I am concentrating on increasing her magic/willpower statistics. Being a mage, every other level I increase her constitution to increase her longevity. For Aveline, I am working on strength and constitution for now as she is a warrior class. It is not too different from my previous companion build strategy I used in DAO. 

At this point, I have had no difficulty in combat with my builds. I died once or twice due to initial bad setup and not paying attention to health. I managed to trigger a bunch of Kirkwall guards into helping me defeat a bunch of enemies by leading them all out into the open area to where the guards were standing. I also use long ranged weapons—while I am not pursuing any of the associated long range abilities, increased flexibility is what I’m after in terms of the personal tactics I found useful in similar games. I also flank when as often when I can.

Hopefully this article would help others gain insight into Dragon Age II on a novice level. I might not be able to explain every mechanic in the game, but I can at least show what is observable. I would like to be able to keep as objective as possible—keeping my opinions until the very end.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome.