About Dragon Age II's story...

[Shoggoth2588]

While I liked the Varric framing device, I can't agree that the piddling around was justified in DA2 when it was justified in the other part 2's mentioned by the OP. You know what those other part 2's don't have in common with DA2? They all had an overarching plot from 1 to 3 with clearly defined good and bad guys. Mass Effect has The Reapers (and xenophobic overtones), Gears have The Locust (and Lambent too I guess), Halo has The Covenant and, Star Wars has The Empire and, Sith. Dragon Age: Origins could have easily been a stand-alone entry. The big-bad dies at the end and all is well in the Kingdom (depending on how you played I guess). Dragon Age 2 was kind of like Fable 3: We thought we had the big bad figured out (IE: The Arishok) but once he was taken care of we discovered that there was still more to do in our little city. In terms of scope it never felt like world changing stuff and the way the Chantry V. Mage thing was played out left a lot to be desired (my opinion). Yes, there were always overtones of tension between mages and, the Chantry but considering you could always play as a free malificar (I could have mixed up terms) it never felt like the threat against the mages by the Chantry was really sincere.

 

[DracoSuave]

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.

Again, it's very clearly explained why he has to.

His first motivation is, well, Ferelden refugees get the short end of the stick in Kirkwall, and he doesn't want his mother living in squalor. He wants her to be able to live in comfort, and not with their uncle who is an ass.

Later, he finds his uncle (who is an ass) sold the deed to the house. However, it is discovered that the deed never belonged to his uncle (who is an ass), it was bequeathed to his mother. So, -legally-, he can get the house back for his mother.

The problem is that his uncle (who is an ass) informs him that Kirkwall establishment won't allow it to go through unless he he has influence and money. Thus his initial 'get money so mom doesn't live with Uncle Ass anymore' has a definitive solution beyond get money.

You start Act 1 with the plan:

Step 1: Finance Deep Roads Expedition
Step 2: Go on expedition, reap benefit
Step 3: ????
Step 4: PROFIT!

But going through Act 1 solidifies the Step 3 into 'Get house back using influence and money.'

It's not bad storytelling when the hero doesn't have the ENTIRE plan during the exposition.

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?

Every quest in Act 1 has repercussions and effects in future acts. Every single one. It seems like a random 'Let's escort this Qunari mage for the Chantry woman' quest that has nothing to do with the plot... but it actually is there to set up the primary conflict of Act 2.

Act 2, by the way, is generally accepted to be excellent.

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 suppose but am I wrong for thinking you're still in Act 1? It's the longest act, but what it does is establish your place, and its job (like every Act 1) is to set the stage for future Acts. The story of Act 1 is very simply 'Do odd jobs, make money, fund expedition' but every single one of those jobs is potentially important.

You're complaining they're not telling a story by letting you participate... but the entire Act 1 IS letting you participate in the story elements that set up later conflicts, rather than dropping 'btw here's a monster rawr' bombs later on.

The conflict with the Qunari should NOT be a surprise, because it's something you've interacted with in multiple ways during Act 1. The conflict between the Mages and Templars pervades so much of Act 1 that I'm surprised people don't notice it.

The fault with Act 1 isn't that you're not a part of the storytelling... it's that you're not keyed to -remember- it. A simple escort mission for a Qunari mage makes you go 'Well that was something different and unrelated to anything', and you might not remember it until Act 2 when the characters involved in it rise to central antagonistic forces. You probably don't think twice about that job you took on the Chantry board to deal with blood mages... until the survivors of your actions come back and kidnap your loved ones during Act 3... which becomes a very central point of the Mages vs Templar arc.

It's ALL related, and it fits together well... you just have to pay attention to the 'unrelated' things because it's ALL tied together.

 

[Fappy]

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.)

Pretty much this. Though I always had a problem with how act 2 played out. I still don't understand how so few Qunari were able to make it all the way to the King (or whatever he was) and kill him. There had to be an entire legion of mages and templars to make sure that didn't happen.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

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.

I love the comparison; Dragon Age II had a much more personal story than the other RPG of Bioware (Mass Effect) which is focused on saving the entire galaxy because you are their only hope. Both stories are good, both are seen in every media imaginable, they're just different.

But I found the repeating environments kind of disappointing. Does it make sense that giant monsters, runaway mages and bands of thieves would use the same cave system? Certainly. But they didn't put any sort of imprint on the space; no new scaffolding, defenses or tunnels, not even litter or markings on the wall. It made it feel like they were just arriving there when you were, not that you were invading their home.

And I found that placement did a fair amount in some of my battles. Aveline would try and take off up the stairs to attack people, leaving the ranged characters open to assault, which means that area-denial spells needed to be used, etc. I recall one instance where I had to try and storm some cave scaffolding which archers and mages were shooting at us from; where I positioned Merrill to pin them down and Anders to keep me healthy matter a lot, and it took several tries to get it right.

 

[Casual Shinji]

When you tell a fantasy/action story you need an overarching something-or-other to draw the audience in and to give them an assesment of where they are in the story.

Disjointing the story on purpose makes the audience unable to connect to the overal experience, because there's no main emotional journey or goal for the protagonist to achieve. Like it or not, pacing is important in telling a story. And just because it's disjointed on purpose doesn't make it any better, in fact, it makes it worse.

This is also excluding the fact that it's a role playing game which gives the audience zero input in how the story plays out. The ending is a perfect example of this; No matter which side you choose, you have to kill fucking everyone.

 

[Bostur]

@Draco

I'm not sure which act I was in when I gave up. It might have been act I. I gave up in the first boss fight in the Deep Roads because it felt like a poor copy of something from WoW. ;-)

At that point I had fought thousands of trash enemies with poor AI for no reason at all. I had 'explored' the same few linear dungeons over and over again for no reason at all, one was about a child kidnapper, another about dwarven explosives. I had collected and sold trash items worth 1 copper. I had turned in quests about delivering somebody's random body to some random relative. I had gotten a taste of interesting plots that were immediately abandoned by the game. (Why didn't we get to play through Hawke's time as an indentured servant? That could be interesting) I had experienced how the Anders character got completely raped, I loved him as comic relief in Awakening, I hated him in DA2. I had struggled with a nonsensical dialogue system that made Hawke say something completely different than what I intended.

All this had taken me 20 slow, dull hours. Admittedly I could probably have played it more efficiently if I cared. The only reason I managed to play that long was because I believed the game had to get better, they simply couldn't have messed up the sequel to Dragon Age that much.

After having played DA:O I swore that I would buy every single sequel to that game, even if they made 10 of them. Because DA:O was simply that great. Not in my wildest dreams would I have expected such a fuck up.

At the point in the Deep Roads where I finally gave up and uninstalled almost in a fit of rage, I hadn't encountered the least bit of a coherent story.


About the motivation, why didn't Hawke spend his 40G to buy a nice house for his mum? 40G is a fortune, it's enough to finance a fancy treasure hunting expedition. Problem solved.

 

[Woodsey]

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.

If you're going to set it in one environment, it needs to be much more reactive to your decisions. It barely changes in 10 years. I think they hang up some flags and change the time of day.

 

[Canadish]

The argument comes down to this for me;

The Pitch

Hyper focus on 1 character race, background and story,
His/her family and their believable troubles over time,
An evolving city, set over a period of 10 years.
GREAT IDEA.

The Reality

14 months of development time,
Cut content resold as DLC,
Hidden DRM,
Plot holes and Retcons everywhere,
Killing solves everything,
Your choices from the last game and this one are ignored
WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?

And that's just a quick bullet point list. I'm ignoring the copy-paste dungeons, horrible art direction, drab city that doesn't change, the lies about everything from the Devs and marketing, cast of nut case characters, false "user" reviews, locking users out of the game, DLC extravaganza, hyperactive MMO combat system, sexualisation of female characters, obnoxious developer comments when confronted, and of the course: the abysmal "Anime Power Lazers" battle at the ending.

TL;DR: Shit Sucks. Avoid. Fuck Bioware for selling out.

 

[Fappy]

I had experienced how the Anders character got completely raped, I loved him as comic relief in Awakening, I hated him in DA2.

I feel the same way. He and Justice were some of the only reasons I gave two-shits about Awakening. They completely destroyed his character (and Justice for that matter) in DA2. Plus, he could die at the end of Awakening couldn't he? What's up with that?

 

[spartandude]

one thing id like to point out which really annoyed me.
after the deep roads bit the story jumps foward a few years, when ever hawke meets one of his friends or even his mother who he was living with they talk as though they havnt seen eachother at all in those years which i thought just felt un-natural

each story segment felt rather episodic that i would have paid £10 for each and that it would be in the same setting with a different main character

 

[skim172]

Dragon Age 2 had many strong elements of a story, but it never really put them together. That there is a logical thread of progression between scenes doesn't mean that it's a particularly strong one. "A Day in the Life" is a weak thread for a story, because while yes, it's realistic, we're looking for drama and fiction and all that jazz. Introduction, rising action, climax, denouement, basic plot elements - things that people's lives generally do not have.

The problem is that DA2 feels like three separate episodes that happen to feature the same characters. There's just not enough solid connection between the Deep Roads, Qunari, and Templar/Mage subplots to make this into a cohesive story. You could excise the first two thirds of the story and just have it be about Hawke arriving penniless in Kirkwall and forced into the spotlight through the Templar/Mage conflict. And to be honest, I suspect that that's how the story originally started out.

The cynic in me says that someone decided to explore releasing DA2 as an episodic franchise and make some big money out of it, and only later did they decide to repackage them as one. The three chunks are too neatly compartmentalized and divided; chronologically ordered, evenly spaced along a timeline, with few callbacks from one episode to a previous one, kind of like a TV show - not substantially significant to the plot, but reminds you that these are linked stories.

The "Rise of a Champion" might make for a good beginning - a good Act I. Act II would be betrayal or downfall - some kind of new challenge. DA2 as a whole, kind of feels like it's just the Act I of a bigger story - and the twist was introduced in the ending cinematic. I think it might easily have been possible to have condensed DA2 to just the Mage conflict and put that as the beginning of the next game.

Actually, you might not even need the Mage conflict. All you might need is a short prologue to the effect of "Hawke was a refugee from Fereldan who arrived in Kirkwall, a city in chaos. But in that strife and disorder, Hawke arose to power, and took on the name of the Champion." Dramatic flourish, fade to black, skip to the next cinematic, with all that stuff about the Chantry and the world falling into civil war.


I don't know if people remember, but before Assassin's Creed 2 was released, there was a somewhat bizarre attempt by Ubisoft to make a sort of web-based AC2 prequel short film - about Ezio's daddy. There were glimpses of some important stuff that would come up in AC2, but all it did, and all it was supposed to do, was just set the scene for the actual game.

And that's the feeling I get with DA2. It feels like it's just setting the scene for the sequel, and this happens to be just a very prolonged introduction of a new character.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

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.

Those analogies still don't work all that well. In nearly every single one of those sequels, there is still the overarching plot, the looming threat that the characters are still fighting. Mass Effect 2 just plain cannot be compared to Dragon Age 2. Mass Effect 2 had the continued threat of the Reapers, and from minute one of the game, you knew what Shepard's character goal to take out the Collectors, a new enemy that served as the Reaper's proxy. The threat and story is still the same, a continuation from Mass Effect 1. Same with Gears of War, same with Halo, same with Star Wars.

Dragon Age, however, could have been labeled be entirely different games. The plot of the first game has nothing to do with the plot of the second, save for a few minor references. And even then, the character motivation of the Warden to Hawke is also very different. The Warden's goal from the beginning was the defeat of the Archdemon. Cut to Hawke whose interest and motivation in the plot seems to change all the time. First it's to get his family to safety, then it's to make money (and THAT motivation seems to stick with him from then on, to the point where it seemed more like the REAL goal behind the game), everything else beyond that is the result of other people with other motivation telling him what to do! Hawke honestly only has any real motivation if you chose to play him as a mage, and even then, that's pretty flimsy. The two games virtually have nothing to do with each other other than taking place in the same universe.

In fact, calling it "Dragon Age 2" like calling the sequel to Mass Effect "Mass Effect 2" is actually very inaccurate. It's not a continuation. It's a different story all together. If Dragon Age 3 continues on from Dragon Age 2, it still wouldn't be a trilogy since the first Dragon Age's story was finished. And it's not like they couldn't have continued Origins' story. Awakening proved that! In fact, Awakening's story is probably more what people thought Dragon Age 2 was going to be like. Interestingly enough, Dragon Age 2 seems more like a spinoff than a numbered sequel. Dragon Age 2 is Dragon Age: Tales of Kirkwall or whatever. It's not at all a 2 game.

 

[zefiris]

DA2 has a story. Absolutely. It is not a problem that there's no "main villain". True.

The problem is that DA2's story is bad.The motivations make little sense, important details are completely glossed over, the most interesting questions aren't answered (example: Primal dwarf ruins), and the whole conflict is extremely forced.

The mage vs templer thing makes no sense. Made worse by every mage in the city being a blood mage, both mages and templers acting in ridiculously contrived ways (archmage monstering out for no reason and then fighting his biggest ally; the "rebel" mages being forced to fight me, and me being completely unable to sneak up to them, as the game forces me to walk right up to them and THEN forces me to fight them with no way to talk out of it)

The good part of the story is the Qunari bit. That's it. The rest is plainly awful, and not connected at all. The later IS a problem, because the game expects you to care for Current Big Issue, but makes no effort to make you care.

DA2 pretended that my choices mattered, then took my choices away whenever it could and railroaded me worse than a JRPG.
To be frank, I felt my choices in Etrian Odyssey III mattered more than my choices in Dragon Age 2. It's that bad.

That said, DA2 did two things right:
1)The Qunari were well done!
2)The companions were well done!

The companions sure felt more alive than in the previous game, I give the game that.

cause the game takes place in the same city, so of course you're going to be at the same location several times

So gamers are now defending complete lazyness. Wow.

*Nobody* is complaining that the same area is revisited. What people rightfully complain about is that every cave is the same. I don't know if you entered a cave in your life. I did, I live near a local mountainrange, and we have caves here and I have been in many of those. If you'd kidnap me and put me into any of the caves, I'd be able to easily tell you which one I'm in. They all look very different and distinctive. ALL have *completely* different layouts.

Skyrim managed to have lotsa different caves, and it had *more* of them. Sure, some mines were similar, but that's fine. No reason DA2 can't manage this feat but complete lazyness.

 

[RJ 17]

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

And like I've said many times and will say many more times: I'm not trying to prove that DA2's story was fantastic and that everyone should really like it, the only argument that I'm combatting here is the "there is no story". You may not like the story, you may have found it boring and confusing, but such is the case with EVERY story: some people like it, some people don't. All I'm saying is that there IS a story there.

-Snip-

As I just said above: I'm not defending the quality of the story as it is impossible to PROVE to someone else that they're opinion of not liking something is wrong. Whatever their reasons are, they still won't like it. I'm saying that DA 2 did have a story.

As for my comparisons, allow me to elaborate: many trilogies use the sequel as plot expansion and character developement. That's what the vast majority of DA2 is: developing the character of Hawke and his/her companions.

Halo 2 simply expanded the plot and led directly into Halo 3, the abruptness of the ending is why everyone hated it, but again: it still stuck to the tradition of having a sequel expand the plot.

Gears 2: again, character developement with Dom and his wife and more touches on Fenix and his father. The game ends with the Queen getting away, a final conflict that you know won't end the war, and again: expanding the plot with the introduction of the Lambent as a 3rd party in the war.

Mass Effect 2: Seeing as how the vast majority of the game is absolutely nothing but character developement focused around your crew (getting them to join you and doing their loyalty missions) while still expanding the plot, it too fits into a classic sequel mold.

As for DA 2 not continuing the storyline from DAO, that's because of what they clearly have in store for DA3. The epilogue for DAO says that The Warden ended up wandering off to have his/her own adventures in a story yet to be told. That's how DA2 ends: The Champion ends up wandering off to have his/her own adventures in a story yet to be told. Which is the signifigance of the ending when The Seeker releases Varric and steps outside only to be greeted by Leliana.
L: "And the Champion?"
S: "Gone, just like The Warden. It can't be a coincidence."
I thought this made it quite clear that BOTH The Warden and The Champion will turn up in DA3. I don't know what they have in store for DA3, but it is very likely we'll see the Grey Wardens back in action. As for the complaint about "There's no over-arching threat that ties the two games together." Well what did you expect? Another Blight? The Dark Spawn had been defeated and as such the great and evil peril that threatened the land had been stopped. And guess what DA2 set up: the climatic world-encompassing civil war between mages and templars. Pretty sure that's what DA3 is going to focus around. So if anything, you could say that DAO is the story that doesn't fit seeing as how the last 2 games (most likely) are focusing around mages being pissed off at the church.

But regardless of all that, again, I will not try to convince you that DA2's story was a good one (though I truly did enjoy it), all I'm saying is that for all of the problems that game has, "there is no story" is not one of them. All your complaints seem to be reasons as to why you didn't like the story and that's perfectly fine. I'm just saying that there is a full and complete story there for you to not like.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

The point is that DA2 is what it is: a sequel, and it follows the sequel formula like many franchises before it.

I'm sorry, but I had stop reading as soon as I read this, right here. Dragon Age 2 can use the same world, some characters from the last game and even mention the hero of the last game. But Dragon Age 2 is in no way a sequel. The game doesn't continue where Origins left off, it branches away from Origins to show us the story of some random person that no one even knew existed in Origins. The plot is in no way tied to Origins in any possible manner. Sure it'll reference it at several points, but neither of the games are at all related to one another in the way that a true sequel would be related to its prequel.

 

[Hyper-space]

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

Its not "lack of story", games (especially RPGs) do not need to dangle that old carrot stick of "Evil X is out to destroy/take over the world" just to arouse ones interest. If we want games to move forward, we need to go beyond the tired cliches of RPG-stories and onto something that has actual ambition.

Funny how everyone complains about cliches and stereotypes, yet jump down the throat of anyone who tries something else.

Oh and the point of that article has been rendered moot, the writer didn't take into account what had happened before the mission in question and how the rebellious Templars and Mages would perceive what occurred.

 

[RJ 17]

The point is that DA2 is what it is: a sequel, and it follows the sequel formula like many franchises before it.

I'm sorry, but I had stop reading as soon as I read this, right here. Dragon Age 2 can use the same world, some characters from the last game and even mention the hero of the last game. But Dragon Age 2 is in no way a sequel. The game doesn't continue where Origins left off, it branches away from Origins to show us the story of some random person that no one even knew existed in Origins. The plot is in no way tied to Origins in any possible manner. Sure it'll reference it at several points, but neither of the games are at all related to one another in the way that a true sequel would be related to its prequel.

Seems as though you fell into the same trap that I often fall into: not reading all the comments (which really can't be blamed, you've got a point and you wanna make it without reading a massive wall of text formed by various other people). However, allow me to point out where you're wrong in that there most specifically IS a tie-in to the events of the first game.

As for DA 2 not continuing the storyline from DAO, that's because of what they clearly have in store for DA3. The epilogue for DAO says that The Warden ended up wandering off to have his/her own adventures in a story yet to be told. That's how DA2 ends: The Champion ends up wandering off to have his/her own adventures in a story yet to be told. Which is the signifigance of the ending when The Seeker releases Varric and steps outside only to be greeted by Leliana.
L: "And the Champion?"
S: "Gone, just like The Warden. It can't be a coincidence."
I thought this made it quite clear that BOTH The Warden and The Champion will turn up in DA3

A prime example of this comes in the form of Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Other than the story involving Jack and the gang from the first movie, it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot from the first movie. Again, following sequel format: develope characters, expand the plot, set up the 3rd installment.

Another way to look at it is "What if they just up and skipped the entire plot of DA2, making whatever they have in store for DA3 as being DA2 and giving us another game afterwords?" The problem with that is that the 3rd game has obviously been set up to revolve around the mage conflict...which begins with Hawke in the story of Kirkwall. So if we just skipped all that and you show up as the Warden in the middle of a mage civil war, you'd be left thinking "Huh? What the fuck? I go from kicking Dark Spawn ass and saving the world from a terrible threat to all of a sudden every mage in the world is pissed off and fighting against the church? Was there a book or something I didn't read that had how all this crap started?" So again I assert that DA2 does what a sequel is meant to do: drive the plot and set up the 3rd installment.

But in the end I must remind you that I am not making a defense of the DA2 stoy as being "good", my defense of the story is "it actually exists".

 

[Alfred Chicken]

Finally a space where I can express my love for Dragon Age 2! Despite all of the negative criticism this game got I really loved playing it and enjoyed it more as an experience than the first Dragon Age.

The main reason for this was the story. I really liked the way that the game narrowed it's focus to being a local hero, I felt like I was helping people out for their own sake rather than as a prelude to getting gold.
I've recently started replaying Oblivion and I was staring at some of the statues of past heroes in the towns and thought that they were rather like Hawke in DA2, people who did their community a great service. I could imagine myself as Hawke (not in terms of martial prowess but in terms of stepping up to help my town)much more than I could as the Dragon Born.
I'm not saying that I'd like all games to have this narrow focus but it's refreshing after playing the saviour of the world so many times.

I also really liked how morally ambiguous the conflict between the mages and templars and I ended up feeling like both sides had a point. Of course the game had it's flaws, the repeating dungeons was particularly egregious but I play RPGs for the story and this one sucked me in and made me think about my actions more than almost any other. To take a small example I ended up reaffirming my love for Anders at the end of the game but afterwards felt guilty about it because my motivation was to protect him more than because I really loved him.

 

[RJ 17]

-Snip-

Sorry for the double post, but this was posted while I was typing my previous response.

Apparently my OP didn't make it clear, as I've had to clarify this numerous times. There's a difference between arguments stating "The plot isn't good" for the various reasons that you listed and arguments stating "The plot doesn't exist" such as every chapter being about something completely different than the chapter before it, everything is all disjounted, and there's just no real sense of an over-arching plot.

I'm not going to argue against arguments stating "the plot isn't good" because, as I mentioned in my response to the article "When Dragon Age II" fell apart, I do agree with the vast majority of the plot holes. For example, why the hell don't you kill or turn in Anders the moment you have what you need from him? If you're sympathetic to the Templars, then he is an apostate mage who is clearly also an abomination and thus a danger to everyone around him and as such should be killed to arrested. If you're sympathetic to the mages, you should see that he's clearly a zealot and an abomination that will do absolutely nothing but hurt the mage's cause in the long run (and look what happens) and as such should be killed or arrested. For that matter it's very hard to feel sympathy towards the mages when damn near every one you find IS a renegade/blood mage/abomination. Yes, Meredith is a cruel ***** of a tyrant who everyone says is going crazy because she sees blood magic everywhere. Well it's hard to consider her crazy when there IS blood magic everywhere.

So yeah, I'm not defending the plot. I thought it was over-all enjoyable despite it's obvious flaws, but many people don't. So I repeat myself yet again: the only argument this topic is meant to contradict is the argument that DA2 doesn't have a real story/plot.