Dragon Age shows a great deal of promise but I've always seen it as an under-performer- that is, a work which doesn't do as much as it could have with its own raw materials.
The setting and lore are remarkably fleshed out. It's amazing the level of thought they put into giving just about everything in the game some sort of cultural or historical context. That, to me, is the saving grace of the series. But every other element of the game is saddled with some sort of shortcoming.
The first game's combat was very poorly balanced, both in terms of the encounters you face and the various classes (and those classes' various expressions.) On top of that, combat was often quite luck-based, inelegant, and dull. There is a lot of it, very little of it is meaningful, and it over-pads the game greatly.
The characters are complex and interesting just as often as they are shallow and aggravating. Loghain was an excellent villain for being both an over-the-line paranoiac too obsessed with his delusions to stop Ferelden from being burned right out from under him by a genuine threat
and an earnest patriot who acts- misguidedly- out of genuine concern for a nation he has poured his whole life into defending. But he and characters of his quality are dragged down by one-note characters like Alistair (Say it with me: "But I don't
want to be a king!"). Alistair has his redeeming qualities, though. Other characters don't, particularly Morrigan, who is the trifecta of bad character qualities: She's flat as a wall ("Puppies? Delicious!"), is the textbook definition of the stupid, pointless variety of evil that BioWare has- as above- proven it can rise above, and is simply annoying to have around. Perhaps worst of all, thanks to the game's companion system mechanics, you are
penalized for not being as Chaotic Stupid as she is if you choose to keep her around.
The writing is similarly bipolar, being brilliant and dumbfounding in equal measure. Look no further than the Landsmeet for an extraordinarily complex event that, regardless of how you play through it, tenders some of the most impressive writing BioWare has given us- and, consequently, some of the best around today. Similarly, the Cult of Andraste is very well-handled, owing largely to the important position it takes in the extensive lore mentioned above. That the developers never pass overt judgment on the Cult or even ultimately validate or dispel their beliefs was a bold choice, but one that pays off and adds a lot to the setting. Meanwhile, we have terrible events like... well,
anything involving Morrigan, sadly, and the ridiculously arbitrary and indelicate road cone choice about slaying the Archdemon. Some quirks of the writing are just mystifying, though; the game throws a lot of blatantly-obvious 'trap' encounters at you, and to this day I can't figure out if they were doing it as a joke or if they really were just being a bunch of dicks. Either they failed miserably or succeeded miserably, due to the encounters' inevitably being some of the least fun in a game whose strong suit was not combat. They were certainly aware of the overabundance of traps, too: one encounter gives you the option to 'spring a trap of [your] own, for once.' I really have to wonder, if they knew there were so many aggravating trap encounters in the game,
why didn't they fix it instead of lampshading it?
The most disappointing part of the game, though, is the setting. For all the to-do it gave about being something new and original, Dragon Age is one of the most faithful recreations of Tolkien's Middle Earth I've seen in a long time. What's worse is how half-heartedly they attempt to make each little facet of the game original via subversion. There are elves, but they're all either ghetto-bound cityfolk or holier-than-thou, forest-secluded xenophobes... ie, exactly like all other elves, ever. There are dwarves, but dwarf society is a brutal caste system helmed by selfish, backstabbing autocrats. Humans were always dicks in fantasy, so they're just
bigger dicks in Dragon Age, what with invading Heaven and chasing off God. Same with the orcs and dragons, under their unwieldy new titles 'Darkspawn' and 'Archdemon.' These things would all be fine on their own, but it's all made so cheap and obvious by how straight they play every little detail they didn't subvert (or
pervert, depending on your opinion of their changes). Yes, it's all decidedly bleaker, in that whole 'Hot Topic' sort of way, but at the end of the day, they're still traipsing around Middle Earth, gathering dwarves, mages, elves (or werewolves
), and lamentably-stubborn humans to band together and fight the orcs and their pure-evil leader.
Pardon me for the sentiment, but isn't the process of taking a familiar setting and attempting to court a more mature audience by throwing a varnish of blood and pessimism over it one of the most tired and outmoded techniques in all entertainment media today? A technique that receives constant antipathy from almost anyone aware enough of the craft to take notice of it, this website very strongly included? Why would BioWare, of all developers, think that the 'darker and edgier' schtick (still?) had any merit, or that the most enduring and ubiquitous fantasy setting there is was an apt recipient?
The first Dragon Age carried a lot of unfulfilled promise. But it did carry a lot of promise, and there was plenty of ore in the slag. I haven't played Dragon Age II yet, but I hear a lot has changed, especially concerning the combat, which was my main point of contention with the first title. I'm always interested in what BioWare does; they are essentially the only purveyor of their variety of product, making it rather fortunate for devotees that they possess both the talent and the passion for making stellar product. Even when they fall short of their own mark, they still stand above the bulk, and it's always interesting regardless.
