Why the Dragon Rage???

Dragon Age 2, the anticipated sequel to BioWare's 2009 surprise hit Dragon Age Origins, released a couple weeks ago to a firestorm of mixed reviews and fan rage. The major complaints seem kind of silly to me because they all boil down to one real complaint:

It's different.

I love(ed) DA:O. I played it through soup to nuts 3 times. I am 100+ hours in to the game through all my experiences with the game. I am certainly an old school RPG guy, hence my nerd-affair with a high quality AAA western RPG that is difficult, unforgiving, and decidedly unwelcoming to newbs. I liked the fact that the world, although kind of generic high fantasy, still had more than enough personality to keep me engaged and interested and that the voice acting was above average (not that it is difficult). The writing of course was top notch cause' it's BioWare. That's what they do. Of course the game had a lot of shortcomings, but us hardcore RPG nerds tend to see those as necessary as we are crumudeonly stuck in our hater-like ways.

Dragon Age 2 is a very different game from Dragon Age Origins. The combat is much faster paced, the interface looks a lot more minimalist, the art styhas chaged (although both games look like ass), and the story structure is a lot less "epic hero makes epic, heroic journey with his friends to save the world from an ancient evil because he is the one and ONLY one who can" and more struggle to survive. The game breaks a lot more old school tropes in favor of a more Grand Theft Fereldan (or Kirkwall) type feel which I for one also really like. There is still a lot of depth, resource management, tactical options, and fantastic writing, but is very decidedly different. On normal dificulty it also is not so punishingly arduous a task to get through basic encounters.

I really like that BioWare didn't push out another overpriced expansion pack. I like the differences in gameplay, the new art style, the minimal interface, and the REALLY intesne and fast-paced combat. It's a welcome change for the IP. If I wanted to play more DA:O I would play through it again. Now for full disclosure I haven't finished DA2 yet, but I am over 10 hours in, playing through my first playthrough on hard, and am having a lot of fun with the game.

We live in an industry now where the status quo is beaten in to us. People pay $60 like clockwork every year for a roster update in Madden, or a couple new maps in Call of Duty. Rift, despite being EXACTLY like WoW but not as good, is off to a strong start. Homefront sold incredibly well despite mediocre reviews and cloned game play. Hell, even my darling Starcraft 2 is very identical to it's 11 year old predecessor. It's not just that publishers and developers fear risk and change, but us as consumers are starting to fear it as well. The only place we are really seeing any innovation is in the indie and mobile gaming scenes and even there I feel like we are drowning in cartooney 2D platformers.

Fact is BioWare has done a lot to draw nerd-ire and flame recently, but releasing a poor followup to Dragon Age Origins is not one of them.


Fact: 4 out of 5 people get crushed by giant diamonds every day.