Why Dragon Age II Should Have Been a New IP

[Wolfenbarg]

Dragon Age is more of an anthology like Elder Scrolls than a single story like Mass Effect. If that were the case, they would have created an overall plight for the entire series to stop. Dragon Age 2 wouldn't be half the game it is without the lore of the Dragon Age universe. Had it been a new IP, the game wouldn't be out for another year or two, and then what would be the point? The game was rushed, yes, but your suggestion removes all possibility for innovation within a series that never promised to be what people have been expected due to the high bar Mass Effect 2 set.

 

[theriddlen]

Dragon Age as a new IP? No, because that would mean two bad Bioware IP's instead of one - that looks bad on statistics.

We need to bury DA as it is, forget about this failure and concentrate on wonderful games like Mass Effect.

 

[GotMalkAvian]

I would've rather DAII had been its own new IP instead of a sequel, too. The art redesigns are too jarring for me since I spent so much time with the first game, and the ties to events from the first game aren't really significant enough in my opinion to justify an entire game; DAII could've easily been separated into an Awakenings-style expansion game to tell the story of events going on elsewhere during the Warden's adventures and en entirely separate IP to tell the story of Hawke and his family regaining their place of prominence in Kirkwall.

 

[Saviordd1]

It can be argued that the world itself is what the developers wanted to explore further, but that doesn?t hold up. Take any element from Dragon Age?s world and I guarantee it (or at least something incredibly similar) appears in at least a dozen other fantasy stories. Origins was many things, original is not one of them. The game could easily be set in a different world, have all the same basic elements and lose nothing in the transition

In short: um, no, wrong

In detail: Nothing is truly unique anymore, but the dragon age universe IS the dragon age universe for the way its created and how the story and world meshes. Your argument makes no sense, you could say the same thing about star wars for gods sake with that argument "Take everything that made the series good, magical samurai, space ships, and sword battles and name it something else and it would be the same" As the guy above said, games are put in the same universe because they ARE that universe. Mages being imprisoned, the chantry, darkspawn, hated elves, all of this TOGETHER is a dragon age thing, putting it into a new game and calling it, i dont know, "Age Dragon" would just make it look like dragon age with a new title, it wouldn't save it.

 

[StriderShinryu]

The only thing I agree with is that Dragon Age 2 is something of a silly name given that the first is called Dragon Age: Origins. I'm not sure what a good subtitle for DA2 would have been but it just looks funny to me. *shrug*

The rest has been adequately covered here already, but on the subject of returning characters: There isn't 1 returning character. Yes only one playable character from the first makes another appearance as playable, but there are at least 8 characters from the first game that appear during the main gameplay in DA2 and at least a couple of others that are mentioned but never seen. Also there are two characters who appeared as NPCs in DA:O that join your party in DA2.

 

[Sylveria]

Bioware seems to have a really bad habit of trying to broaden the appeal of their sequels. It seems to happen with basically every game they've ever made and almost always is met with seething, fuming hatred by fans of the original.

But on topic, I've never played DA:O or DA2, but if it has changed as drastically as people seem to claim, yeah, they may as well have made it a different name or atleast not called it "2." It would have been easy to make it a spin-off (Dragon Age: Sagas, Legends, insert generic fantasy subtitle here?)or something of that nature and avoided a lot of the negative response. When a company throws a larger number on the end of the game, there's an expectation which Bioware has, apparently, not met in the minds of certain fans.

 

[Jack of Spades]

DA2 should have been a spin-off game, I bet Fallout:New Vegas would have as much flame as DA2 if Bethesda called it Fallout 4.

 

[Sylveria]

I can see maintaining and adapting the world, but to call it a sequel to Origins is extremely misleading given how much it really does and does not resemble the first.

Its not a sequel to Origins. You noticed that it's called Dragon Age 2, not Dragon Age: Origins 2?

Bloody hell people.

Wouldn't that make the title even more asinine? There is no "Dragon Age 1." Going by that, they may as well have called Dragon Age 2 Dragon Age 1 and made the real Dragon Age 2 as the next game x.x.

 

[370999]

May I ask OP, what do you consider the Final Fantsy games to be? As most of them seem to be completely seperate from each pother, in terms of lore.

 

[Krantos]

In short: um, no, wrong.

In short, you're about a week late. This thread has already more or less reached conclusion. If you have more to add, you'd be better off quoting on of the recent posts rather than going back to what I said on the very first page.