About Dragon Age II's story...

[RJ 17]

I was watching some old ZP videos when I came across his review for DA2. And let me start by saying that I agree with nearly everything he has to say about it. The combat is shody, the come-in-waves format is just outright annoying, and the repetativeness of the dungeons is just insultingly sad. What I don't agree with, however, is his perception of the story. This is an argument I've heard many times: "There's no real focus, you're just piddling around for a few in-game years going from one major event to the next."

Nevermind the fact that statement isn't true seeing as how the mage vs. templar tension plays as a back-drop throughout the entire story which culminates at the very end of the game in the climactic battle, the very complaint of "you're just piddling around" is actually the entire point of the story. Yes, the entire game is supposed to be "A Day in the Life of Hawke." It is the story of how Hawke came to Kirkwall as a refuge, restored her family's name of nobility, became the city's Champion, and was one of the key figures in an event that sparked a world-wide mage rebellion. There's no evil mastermind wringing his hands as he plots Hawke's downfall, there's not supposed to be. The vast majority of the actual story is you essentially palling around with your friends all day.

Personally I really enjoyed the story and thought it was a fantastic narrative as framed by Varric's telling the tale to The Seeker. And if you just didn't like the tale, that's fine. I'm just saying don't fault the story for being what it is: a sequel. A link between games 1 and 3 centered around character developement with something major happening at the end. It was the same with Mass Effect 2, it was the same with Gears of War 2, and it was the same with Halo 2. The point is that DA2 is what it is: a sequel, and it follows the sequel formula like many franchises before it. I mean look at Empire Strikes Back, this is actually a perfect example as some say that it's the best of the original trilogy and some say it's the worst. All that really happens in Empire is Luke piddling around with Yoda and the gang on the Falcon piddling around with the Empire. All that happens is we get to see character developement in Luke's jedi training and the blossoming relationship between Han and Leia. Then it all comes to an end with Han getting frozen and everyone finding out that Vader is Luke's father after a lightsaber fight.

In the end I still say that DA2 was, as a whole, a disappointment. There are PLENTY of faults to point at it, all I'm saying is that "lack of a story" is not one of them.

 

[Kahldris71]

Well im going to have to disagree with you, "lack of story" is a pretty massive problem and one that ive argued on countless occasions, i loved the first game, the second one sucked and i dont feel like typing out a novel again like i did in another thread about this so im just going to link you to an escapist article and say. Pretty much that.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/firstperson/9353-When-Dragon-Age-II-Fell-Apart

 

[Zhukov]

No.

I enjoyed the game and I am happy defend many aspects of it, but the story isn't one.

The Varric framing device is nice and occasionally used cleverly, but the whole thing is disjointed and poorly paced. A lot of the main elements are only introduced two-thirds of the way into the game. The time-skips are needless and don't have any weight, Kirkwall is always still the same and the characters rarely act as if any time has passed. The Qunari business in the second act is completely incidental to the main story (which is funny, because it's also the best part of the game. Arishock was boss.)

 

[RJ 17]

Well im going to have to disagree with you, "lack of story" is a pretty massive problem and one that ive argued on countless occasions, i loved the first game, the second one sucked and i dont feel like typing out a novel again like i did in another thread about this so im just going to link you to an escapist article and say. Pretty much that.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/firstperson/9353-When-Dragon-Age-II-Fell-Apart

I actually typed out a novel myself on the 2nd page of that same article agreeing with pretty much everything the article said and eve going so far as to point out some other obvious plot-holes involving Anders and the mages in general. However that's just the game's story being much more linear then you would believe, and not an argument for "lack of story", such as this one:

No.

I enjoyed the game and I am happy defend many aspects of it, but the story isn't one.

The Varric framing device is nice and occasionally used cleverly, but the whole thing is disjointed and poorly paced. A lot of the main elements are only introduced two-thirds of the way into the game. The time-skips are needless and don't have any weight, Kirkwall is always still the same and the characters rarely act as if any time has passed. The Qunari business in the second act is completely incidental to the main story (which is funny, because it's also the best part of the game. Arishock was boss.)

Again i point out that the game is supposed to be disjounted.

1: Again, the story itself boils down to "This is how Hawke went from being a refuge to being the most important person in the city and a central figure at the start of a world-wide mage rebellion." Hawke spends what, 10 years in Kirkwall when all is said and done? Obviously not every day of every year is going to have Hawke running around the city putting out fires (despite how much the parts you actually play might have you believe). It just focuses around the major points in Hawke's rise.

2: The Qunari section most specifically had a crucial part to play in the story...it IS how Hawke becomes Champion of Kirkwall, after all. This gives him/her the authority and political clout to actually have some say in the final chapter which brings the Mage vs Templar tensions to a boil. Otherwise Hawke would still just be "random noble #17" and no one would give a crap about what he/she thinks. It thrusts Hawke into the role of literally being one of the 4 most important people in the city.

3: If you REALLY want there to be a central focus to the story, then as I mentioned: it revolves around the Mage and Templar confrontation. That's the entire reason The Seeker is interrogating Varric to begin with: she wants to know everything about The Champion so she can hopefully find Hawke and bring an end to the mage rebellion that has apparently spread across the entire world. You catch a glimpse of Meredith in the opening moments of the 2nd chapter (in which you're trying to raise money for the Deep Roads). Various side-quests also tell how the mage's here aren't exactly happy and the templars are all a bunch of pricks. Chapter 3 focuses on the Qunari, but again side-quests reveal that the mage vs templar situation is growing steadily worse with more and more mages going renegade. And finally chapter 4 is quite literally when things blow up between the mages and templars.

So again, if you just didn't like the story for whatever reason, that's fine, and that seems to be the case from both of your comments. But like my OP said: you can't simply argue that the game DIDN'T have a story just because you evidently didn't see one. That's like reading Dracula and saying "What's the big deal? It's just a bunch of letters and journal entries."

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Personally I really liked the story. I actually cared about the tragedies that befell hawkes family, that is rare for me in a videogame! I didn't give a shite about da's wooden characters.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Depends on your preference, if you like city rat / family drama then DA2 no doubt holds a better story in that regard, I personally don't buy a game called Dragon Age for family drama predominantly because there was that first game that led me to believe this franchise was actually about an age of dragons.

At best I can call DA2 a $20 expansion pack, even tho it only had about 1/4 of the content the first one brought.

 

[Bayushi_Kouya]

I'm with the OP here. DA:O felt wooden and by-the-numbers in terms of Western RPGs, There was some effort put into differentiating it from the pack -- the drunken asshole dwarf actually has a reason for being being a drunken asshole, rather than 'it's culturally appropriate' -- but by and large I couldn't possibly have cared less about whether or not anyone in DA:O lived or died. They were all just along for the ride, and their motivations, especially once the Warden gets to Orzammar, start to get real flimsy.

DA2, OTOH, really got my attention because it was something different. Here was a game where the other members of my party were not standing straight as a board in a camp somewhere, waiting patiently for me to come over and talk to them or upgrade their equipment. They can dress themselves in the morning and have day jobs when they're not out adventuring with me. They have personalities, hopes and desires, beliefs and tendencies, even if some of them are patently absurd (Fenris, Anders). I think the principle problem is that people were expecting yet another version of Lord of the Rings, and they got Deadwood instead.

What's more, I LIKE the repetitive map spaces in DA2. You're playing a guy who lives in a city and goes adventuring in it, there should be some repetition. All this carping about 'recycled maps' strikes me as people complaining because they were presented with something different. How often does a map really matter, in DA games? It never did to me for any of my playthroughs. Once in a blue moon I could use a bottleneck to my advantage, but very rarely could I ever use placement or movement denial effects to change the course of a battle. They might as well have all occurred on a flat plane.

 

[LongAndShort]

I liked the story myself. Except for the fact that it's near impossible in my mind to side with the Templars at the end. Acts of terrorism do not justify genocide, unless you're a psychotic monster (as Meridith turned out to be), and I wasn't a monster.
Mind you I've had much the same problem with the civil war quest in Skyrim. You've the choice between the all-inclusive empire end racist skinheads and murderers in the Stormcloaks.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I thought the story was about on par with the first one. Biowares games don't exactly excel in the story department, you can pretty much guess the entire story from the first 15 minutes.

 

[darthzew]

I really liked the story in DA2. It wasn't perfect, not by a longshot, but I thought it was a very nice departure from the "Bioware model." The more times I play through DA2 (on a third run through now,) the more I find myself liking it.

 

[spartandude]

Ive said this many times before and will say it many times again

just because it works the way the devoloper intended doesnt automatically make it good. to paraphrase another ZP episode, you can smear dog shit on your face to make an ironic statement all you want but at the end of the day you still smell like ass

 

[Bostur]

Maybe the story was meant to go nowhere, but it didn't result in an interesting experience for me. I think it started well, Varric as a narrator was a good idea. But after spending 20 hours in the game with the story going nowhere I finally gave up. We get introduced to plot points constantly, but instead of making us care about them and focusing on them, the game just abandons them. Or it skids past them in a superficial manner.

Is the game about Hawke? About the Templar/Mage conflict? About the Qunari? Or was it simply an elaborate scheme made out by Varric to become the most popular bard ever? I have no idea, it almost felt like a remake of the old TV-series "Soap".

Several times I noticed interesting opportunities open up. I Expected the game to elaborate on those, but no it simply went on with a different topic.

DA:O gave me more insight into the Templar/Mage conflict than DA2, and that was just a side dish in the first game.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

There's no evil mastermind wringing his hands as he plots Hawke's downfall, there's not supposed to be.
...
There are PLENTY of faults to point at it, all I'm saying is that "lack of a story" is not one of them.

I totally agree.

I find the argument of "there's no real story" absurd. It's sad that we HAVE to have some horrible fate hanging in the balance and the hero triumphantly saving the day in the end to make the masses feel that there's a story going on.

Many TV shows or comic book series use the storyline approach of "What strange misadventures are the gang going to get into this week?" and no one decries those of "having no real story." But a video game tries to go with that same style of storytelling and people say, "Nope, no story in that game."

Discrepancy much?

 

[Bostur]

There's no evil mastermind wringing his hands as he plots Hawke's downfall, there's not supposed to be.
...
There are PLENTY of faults to point at it, all I'm saying is that "lack of a story" is not one of them.

I totally agree.

I find the argument of "there's no real story" absurd. It's sad that we HAVE to have some horrible fate hanging in the balance and the hero triumphantly saving the day in the end to make the masses feel that there's a story going on.

Many TV shows or comic book series use the storyline approach of "What strange misadventures are the gang going to get into this week?" and no one decries those of "having no real story." But a video game tries to go with that same style of storytelling and people say, "Nope, no story in that game."

Discrepancy much?

I think people are refering to quality not quantity. DA2 has no story worth mentioning.

It's perfectly fine to use the story "The adventures of character X". As long as it is made in such a way that we care. In practice the story about killing the ancient evil is just the story of character X as well. The trick is we need to care about the character, and we need to notice some kind of development. The 'what' is not important, it's the 'why' that counts. Why does Hawke involve himself in the conflict with the Mages and the Templars? Why does Hawke go on an expedition to the Deep Roads? Why does Hawke involve himself in qunari politics? Those are important questions that DA2 completely fail to answer, but should have.

When I was a young lad there was a book called "Queen's Gambit" that was the rage. It's basically a story about a young girl playing chess. It's the most boring plot I can think of, but it was a great story. Not because it was about chess, but because the reader cared about the character.

 

[DracoSuave]

Why does Hawke involve himself in the conflict with the Mages and the Templars? Why does Hawke go on an expedition to the Deep Roads? Why does Hawke involve himself in qunari politics? Those are important questions that DA2 completely fail to answer, but should have.

But it answered all three.

He went into the Deep Roads because he needed the capital to restore his family name and reacquire his family estate. The insinuation is that they came away with a LOT more money than the 100 gold you end up with; all that money went into that house and all those nice things and bribery towards the establishment, all that stuff. Doing small favors for whoever wasn't going to make the money he needed.

This in turn made him a political force in Kirkwall, leading to:

He got involved with the Qunari because his previous dealings with the Arishok made him the only member of the upper class who could. This leads to escalation (tho not necessarily by his doing) which resulted in war in the streets. At that point... he's involved, as is everyone else. He is forced to oppose the Arishok and defeat him because he's the only one who can, and the alternative is the destruction of his home.

This made him the Champion.

Being the Champion, with the Viscount dead, makes him the most powerful man in Kirkwall. There are literally four forces in Kirkwall capable of swaying how it goes; the Templars, the Mages, the Chantry, and the Champion. When two are starting civil war involving blood magics, there's absolutely no way the Champion cannot get involved in the city he's the Champion of.

And, everything in Act 1 builds into Act 2. Everything in Acts 1 and 2 build into Act 3. It's the seemingly unrelated stuff you do in Act 1 that adds up to Act 3.

Do I think it could have been better? Yes... but it was an experiment and we cannot fault them for trying something different.

But to say they didn't explain it? That's the fault of the player for not paying attention to them saying exactly why things are going on.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

There are a lot of good things about the story in Dragon Age 2. The Qunari segment is extremely interesting. The Mage/Templar dynamic is a gold mine of political and social commentary. Some of the characterizations, particularly Varric, are strong. Having the game elapse over a period of many years is an interesting narrative device, and allows for some good character building moments.

The problem is that the game was rushed, and it all hangs together terribly. The pacing is atrocious, and there are missed opportunities all over the place. So it becomes very difficult to defend the game against people who are attacking the story, because you never really know what they're attacking. You may be defending a strength, and they may be attacking a glaring weakness.

I will say I prefer many of the story elements of DA2 to DA:O. DA:O was some of the most tiresome, time worn, black and white crap I've had to endure in quite some time. I'm done with evil hordes billowing out of underground dungeons. I'm done with that shit. But DA:O, while tired, at least had a coherent structure.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Why does Hawke involve himself in the conflict with the Mages and the Templars?

His sister is a mage (or he himself is a mage). What happens with the Circle of Kirkwall has grand potential to effect her (or himself). If the mages continue to act out of control, this will smear the reputation of all mages, includin his sister's (or his own). On the other hand, if the Templars become too aggressive, that could mean abduction to the Circle or death for his sister (or himself). Therein resides the underlying conflict of the whole game. Also, if he has any empathy for his sister (or he himself is a mage), it is likely that he will identify with Anders' plight of "mages should be free" at least a little bit.

Why does Hawke go on an expedition to the Deep Roads?

To get enough money to get his elderly mother, his sibling, and himself out of that stinkhole slum that the skeevy uncle lives in. "Taking care of a family" isn't a motivation you usually find in video games, but I was glad to see it here.

Why does Hawke involve himself in qunari politics?

Because after living there for several years and making a new home there, he would likely feel some sense of ownership for his adopted home and want to defend it from an uprising. Also, again, his family lives in Kirkwall. It can hardly be a safe place for his elderly mother and his sibling if there's an uprising.

Those are important questions that DA2 completely fail to answer, but should have.

I believe that I've provided adequete answers, but I accept that they are contingent on the player taking a sense of ownership over the Hawke family.

I think people are refering to quality not quantity. DA2 has no story worth mentioning. ... The 'what' is not important, it's the 'why' that counts.

And that's the crux of it all. 'Quality' is subjective. I DID feel that the 'why' was a addressed, and the end result was a story that was, I felt, quite worthwhile. I identified with it, I cared about the plight of Hawke and his family, and I took an interest in Kirkwall. At the same time, I accept that other players didn't. It'd just be nice if non-fans of Dragon Age II would say "I didn't like the story" or "I didn't care about the story" rather than pushing the idea that the story is absent.

 

[Bostur]

@DracoSuave It seems to me you are explaining the story in reverse. I think I played about halfway through and the only concrete motivation I noticed at that point was the financing of the Deep Road trip. It felt like reading 300 pages of a book that hadn't even started yet.

Hawke wants to clear his/her family name, and get the estate back. Fair enough that could work. Unfortunately we never see Hawke or his family during their prosperours times. We just hear the mother and sister whine about it, meaning we don't feel a personal loss. Hawke also has other leads that isn't explored for unknown reasons. It gets hinted at that their loss is part of a conspiracy, but the game never really follows up on that lead. This would seem simpler than going into the deep roads for money. More importantly I don't think we ever get much of an explanation of why exactly the money is needed. Some guys that we never meet or see needs to be bribed or something. It's all very foggy and theoretical. My reaction was that Hawke should spend the 40G to get a better house and become known in the community.

It's possible that the story makes sense in the end, I wouldn't know I couldn't bear to play through anymore random quests with no purpose. I'd prefer a story to make sense along the way as well. Otherwise it is a bit boring, wouldn't you agree?

But to say they didn't explain it? That's the fault of the player for not paying attention to them saying exactly why things are going on.

They did a whole lot of explaining. That might be one of the major faults. The story needed to explain itself constantly to make sense. But there was very little storytelling. Most of the important plot points gets explained to us by others. We aren't part of it at all. It's a bit like explaining why a joke is funny, that doesn't make it funny at all.

I don't blame Bioware for trying something different, in fact I wish they would have aimed higher in that regard. I blame them for doing a piss poor job at it. ;-)

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Well said OP.

I (much like another poster above) didn't find the repetition of the dungeons an issue - cause the game takes place in the same city, so of course you're going to be at the same location several times. I found myself getting familiar with the layouts, and able to use them to my advantage (there'd always be a chest in that shadow, there'd always be an ambush beyond that doorway, etc).

All the mines in the game having the same layout was a little silly, but it didn't actually bother me.

Also, I really loved the combat. It was like DA:O, but more refined. I also liked the fact that characters could (as someone said above) dress themselves - I felt less like their over-protective mom that way.

And I really enjoyed the story. It was nice to be the catalyst for change rather that some idiot reacting to it all the time.

 

[DustyDrB]

No.

I enjoyed the game and I am happy defend many aspects of it, but the story isn't one.

The Varric framing device is nice and occasionally used cleverly, but the whole thing is disjointed and poorly paced. A lot of the main elements are only introduced two-thirds of the way into the game. The time-skips are needless and don't have any weight, Kirkwall is always still the same and the characters rarely act as if any time has passed. The Qunari business in the second act is completely incidental to the main story (which is funny, because it's also the best part of the game. Arishock was boss.)

I agree. I wish the Qunari were the focus. It's also the part of game where your choices matter (whether you spoke to him about certain issues determines how much respect he has for you and can change how the encounter at the Keep plays out. And you can turn in Isabela to him, which is one of my favorite things to do in the game). I love Act II.

Act III? Total clusterfuck.