Dragon Age II Demo Thoughts

A week from this Tuesday, BioWare will release the first of its three planned 2011 releases, Dragon Age II, the sequel to their critically acclaimed (like that's surprising) 2009 RPG, Dragon Age: Origins. On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to download the demo that they put out for the game. So has it killed my anticipation or has it enhanced it?

I'm going to review this the same way I do my normal reviews, but of course keep in mind, this is just a demo and my thoughts may change when I play the full game.

STORY

For those of you who haven't been paying attention to news about Dragon Age II, the origin stories that you played through in Origins will be gone. You will play through as a human character who can be male or female. This human's name is Hawke.

Male Hawke and Lady Hawke

The story will be told in a very unique way that has, to my knowledge, never been attempted before. There's a framing device as a woman named Cassandra Pentaghast is interrogating a dwarf named Varric Tethras about "The Champion" aka Hawke. Varric is one of the companions and what you see in the game will be Varric's retelling of Hawke's tale and rise to power.

Varric Tethras

Cassandra Pentaghast

Framing devices like this have been done before in video games but I can't recall any where the story was fully interactive. The demo gives us the prologue showing Hawke's family fleeing Lothering as it's being destroyed by darkspawn (again play Origins if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about).

The prologue has gotten me VERY interested in seeing how this 10-year timeline will work and how the narration will be affected by the decisions that I make within the game. The writing was strong (big surprise *sarcasm*) and the characters were interesting.

GAMEPLAY AND DESIGN

When I first started playing Dragon Age II, I was really worried about the gameplay. The combat has been completely redone making it entirely real-time. I soon realized that everytime you want to do a basic attack, you have to press 'A' (on the 360 version at least). This really concerned me at first, but eventually I was having so much fun I didn't even think about it. When you really look at it, Dragon Age II has just as much depth as Origins, its combat is just faster. The tactics are still there and on harder difficulties will be MANDATORY.

The demo had all three classes available to play as with two playstyles for the warrior and rogue (only one for the mage). Each playstyle had different talents devoted to them and we'll definitely get more flexibility in the final product since we can't use the inventory in the demo.

Warrior, Rogue, or Mage?

The warrior's two playstyles were the two-handed sword and the sword-shield combo. These were probably my least favorite. They were fun and I'm definitely going to try them out, but they didn't quite hold up to the other classes and playstyles. The two-handed style focuses on heavy attacks while the shield style focuses on turning you into a wall that can essentially attack.

The rogue used bows which were fun and dual blades which plain KICKED ASS! When you're throwing 30 strikes every 15 seconds, a smile is going to come to your face. The bows, obviously, are based on different long-ranged attacks. The dual-bladed style will focus on quick strikes with one talent, for example, having you move quickly behind your opponent for a backstab.

But for my first playthrough, I'm probably going to go with the mage. First, from a gameplay standpoint, they are ridiculously fun to play. Raining fireballs from the sky (or CEILING), shooting a sheet of icicles at enemies, etc. was a blast. Just make sure to use your tougher party members to keep enemies off of you. From a story standpoint I'm curious to see the elements that will come up. In the Dragon Age universe, mages are generally despised, especially apostates (which Hawke is if a mage) and I'm curious how that will affect different relationships and story arcs.

Leveling up uses new talent trees and XP is given following the fights rather than right after killing each enemy. The character relationship system from Origins will also be done differently. Rather than being "approved of" or "disapproved of" it will use a "Friendship/Rivalry" system. Unfortunately in the demo I couldn't see any effects, but I have heard an example. If you have Friendship status with Varric, he will tell the story in a way that makes stronger, and with Rivalry it's the opposite.

Concern and worry over the gameplay waned very quickly and I have played the demo MANY times and have had fun every time. I'm anxious to see the depth behind the full game.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

Graphically the game isn't a huge leap over Origins. Some have said that it looks graphically but I don't know where they got that idea. That said, it's not the best looking game from what I can see. The facial animations are a little improved and I know the designs have changed for the different races but there hasn't been too much change.

Soundwise, the sound effects are similar and while there's some new music tracks, I heard repeats from Origins many times. It's still good and was well-placed in the situations that they were in so I'm not complaining.

Now for voice-acting. I played as both Male and Lady Hawke. Male Hawke is voiced by Nicholas Boulton and Lady Hawke is voiced by Jo Wyatt. They're both good, but like with Mass Effect I've got to say, that I feel that the voice actress is superior. It's not quite the same margin as Jennifer Hale being superior to Mark Meer as Shepard, but I still feel that the voice actress won out in the end.

As for the rest of the voice acting, some of it was a little iffy but definitely good in the end. Three really stood out though. First is Brian Bloom who voices Varric who does an outstanding job at playing the storyteller fitting with his character's path as a Dwarven rogue. I don't know who voices Cassandra but she also does an incredible job from what I've heard, giving her character an attitude of seriousness, anger, and a hint of desperation along with it.

For me though, the one who most stood out was Kate Mulgrew (aka Captain Janeway) as Flemeth. Yes Flemeth from Origins is back. Mulgrew gives Flemeth the same quality voice acting as in the first game but is even more compelling in this. She gives a much more mysterious tone to her voice which only furthers her status as one of the most mysterious and intriguing characters in the series. I'm very interested to see what her role in the grand scheme of things is, especially after the Witch Hunt DLC from Origins.

Flemeth: The Witch of the Wilds and 2-Minute Show Stealer

CONCLUSION

Dragon Age II is shaping up to be a must own. From all my different playthroughs of the demo, I enjoyed myself immensely and am eager to see the rest of the game. Graphically it didn't improve much on Origins but the story is sure to be excellent (its BioWare), the gameplay was fun, and the voice acting, while having a few weakspots, was strong especially a few notable examples.

Dragon Age II will be released on March 8th, so pre-order your copy and enjoy seeing Fereldan again and the rise of Hawke.