Fanfiction, Personal Narrative, and What Dragon Age II Does Right

It probably isn’t fair to say that people have reached a consensus about Dragon Age II, but it does seem like the most fiery battles have more or less run their course by now (there’s that silly optimism again).

For those of you don’t keep up with gaming news, DAII was the 2011 sequel to 2009’s much beloved Dragon Age Origins. As you have likely surmised from those two dates, an 18 month development cycle wasn’t enough to really capture the scope of the first game’s epic fantasy (by which I mean there are like six environments, and you will see them a lot), leading to much hair pulling etc. It’s not all doom and gloom, though – DAII also has its small but passionate share of defenders. And with Dragon Age Inquisition coming up this fall, it seemed like a good time to throw my two cents into the ring. Plus, I spent the time I should’ve used going over Kill la Kill this week working on a new unified Origins/Awakening/DAII save file, and the editorial had to come from somewhere.

As is often prudent with divisive subjects, let me clear out a baseline: while I’m more than happy to acknowledge the lion’s share of mistakes the game makes, particularly in terms of some niggling glitches and the time-constraint damage to the gameplay (the ‘six rooms’ problem, the fact that there’s not so much a difficulty curve as an increased spamming of trash mobs); it’s still a game I’m quite madly fond of, and I find that the strengths shine all the more brightly in the face of the poor mechanics.