Reexamining DA2: Mark of the Assassin

"I suppose nothing ever goes as we plan, does it"
(Pretty much the story of this chick's life.)

So I just finished playing the Mark of the Assassin DLC and was very pleasantly surprised. The dialogue was witty, the conversations weren't awkward (much), there was actual playier choice involved, and what was said in dialogue actually kinda mattered.  Like the core game, MotA made a few shoutouts/references to Dragon Age: Origins, but unlike some (not all!) of the ones in DA2 they didn't feel forced. Sometimes the reference, as seen with Bann Teagan's cameo, didn't even mention the previous game. Those were perhaps my favorite since they knew players would make the connection all on thier own. There were also a number of major fights that actually involved some level of strategy to win.  The final fight was a challenge, but it wasn't an unfair one.  A lot of fighting was involved with this DLC, but I never felt like the devs were throwing enemies in there just for the heck of it.  In fact, for the most part, there were not a lot of spawning enemies.  If I saw fifteen bad guys, then I was fighting fifteen bad guys.  I cannot express how much I hate the spawning enemies in Dragon Age 2.  I really, really hate it.  When you have wave after wave of enemies coming after you, sometimes with the "big" character (chief, commander, etc) not showing up until the second or third wave, the amount of strategy the player can actually employ is limited.  When, however, you know that all the baddies onscreen are all you are going to see, then the player can actually plan out which moves they will make.  Who will they take out first? Who will the PC focus on?  Which group of characters will best utilize each companion's skill set? I really miss that part of Dragon Age: Origins.  In DA:O, the only spawning of bad guys you saw happened during major boss fights.  At that point, waves of them were scripted to appear in between boss attacks. That kind of "spawning" is pretty much par for the course, and once a wave happened, that was all you had until after the Boss attacked again.  

I know I've been hating an awful lot on Dragon Age 2 even though I said that i was going to give it a fair go.  I'm still trying  to give it a fair play, but it's so hard when things like spawning enemies annoy me to no end. Mark of the Assassin is proof that the DA2 devs could have done so much better.  In MotA there were new environments and interesting things to see.  There were only one or two non-doors, but that is no more than you would expect in any other game.  The doors weren't blocked to make a reused map "new", they were blocked b/c they were just dummy doors.  Nothing to see there.  Combat was interesting, and I actually enjoyed it rather than dreaded it. The story was perhaps a bit contrived, but not enough to warrant censure, and certainly no  more than the genre normally allows.  The main puzzle made you think, but was not impossible.  I normally could do with out them, but this were a nice change of pace. I will mention that there is a very poorly done stealth sequence in-game, but players have an option to forego stealth in lieu of all out bloodshed.  I did give the stealth portion an honest to God effort, but it was more headache than it was worth.

Perhaps the best thing though, is that the companions finally ceased all their moaning and groaning. With a rescue-from-prison sequence, we also witnessed a brief return of the companion buddy comedy from DA:O's Fort Drakon. (In fact, come to think of it, about 50% of this DLC reminded me of the Fort Drakon story arc). Fenris stopped whining about mages and how hard life is.  Anders almost stopped moaning about the Chantry and the Templars. Gloriously, the one time he did make a snide comment, Tallis called him out on it. Even better, however, was the fact that Anders and Fenris actually sorta kinda got along!  There was one moment where Anders actually deferred to Fenris for an answer about [some plot centric thing], and disregarded Tallis (even though she knew more about it) because he didn't trust her. 

I also really liked the way this DLC used the Varric storytelling ploy to bookend its narrative.  Despite the fact that he is the one telling DA2's tale, the game very rarely reminds us of this fact.  In fact, it reminds us of it so little that the first time I played DA2 I was a little shocked to see Varric pop up in between game chapters. I do have to hand it to the devs thought.  When Dragon Age 2 does acknowledge Varric's storytelling role, they do so to great effect.  

So all in all, I really liked Mark of the Assassin.  I won't say it's the best thing I've ever played, but it is a far cry better than anything else I've seen in Dragon Age 2 so far. Despite my general hate for DLC, this one was actually well worth the money I paid. MotA shows that the DA2 team was capable of so much more than what they presented in the core title.  I just wish they'd taken advantage of that fact before hand, and not waited until a  DLC release to show their hand.

Find some Mark of the Assassin comment-as-I-go tweets after the jump.

Reexamining Dragon Age 2: Introduction

Cerian Hawke, rogue extraordinaire

I have a confession to make. I actually purchased Dragon Age 2. (It was on sale for roughly $4.00 over at GameFly a few months back.)  and then, in another fit of madness, I actually purchased both The Exiled Prince and Mark of the Assassin DLC. Exiled Prince was Day One DLC which introduced Sebastian Vale, a new recruitable companion.  Sebastian is so well integrated into gameplay, dialogue, and party banter that I think those calling TEP "cut content" certainly have more than a leg to stand on.  Mark of the Assassin is not integrated into the existing game, but instead acts as an additional chapter to the story.  Tallis, this DLC's recruitable, is restricted only to MotA gameplay.

Since my first play through was both incomplete, and on a PS3, my purchase of DA2 seemed like the perfect opportunity to give this game a second chance.  After a few hours in game, my opinions are mixed. Right after purchasing DA2, I sunk a good 20-30 hours into it as a warrior.  Frustration finally got the best of me, and Hawke barely made it to the second chapter boss.  Last weekend, on a whim, I started all over.  Playing this time as a rogue, the experience has still been frustrating at times, but after 15 hours I am still not losing my hair like last time.  In the following weeks (while I continue putting off discussing Jade Empire until I have a better feel for its world) I will be readdressing both the good and bad of Dragon Age 2 in real time. 

Why I'm doing this:

First of all, I have yet to actually finish the game.  The first time I played I got stuck at the second chapter boss.  The second time I gave up after frustration with mechanics overwhelmed my desire to complete the title.  This time I would like to actually beat the game.  Having experienced the title as both a mage and warrior, playing as a rogue gives me a chance to re-experience the game through new eyes. 

Second of all, time doesn't heal all wounds but it can certainly help mend them.  The first time I played DA2, it was out of morbid curiosity.  Passionately in love with Dragon Age: Origins, I had read the overwhelming negative fan reactions to DA2 and thus expected little from the title.  Even with low expectations I found the game terribly underwhelming and was rather shocked by a number of the design decisions.  It all pretty much ended in resentment.  The second time I played, it was with a host of balancing mods and that too ended in resentment.  More than anything I was disappointed in the fact that even mods could not fix what I perceived to be broken beyond repair.  This time however, I have entered into the title knowing what I face. Instead of trying to mod the game's "brokenness" away, I am being open minded about the experience.  I accept the fact that Dragon Age 2 is not what we all hoped it would all be pre-release, and I am making a genuine effort to experience it for what it is, instead of insisting it be something it isn't. I can't promise my thoughts will be terribly Earth shattering, but putting them here is a conscious effort to reinforce the non-gut-reaction approach to this playthrough.

What this series will be:

The goal of this blog series is to record my current impressions of the game in real time. The last time I took a look at Dragon Age 2 it was well after the fact, and the formatting (condensing my whole experience into a couple posts) was not conducive to really addressing the way I felt about the game. This time the posts will address oddities, the good, and the bad as I encounter them.  There is no predetermined number of posts, nor is there a predetermined text limit. 

How I am playing:

I will not be roleplaying here, but I will be roleplaying in game.  While some meta gaming is necessary to overcome game mechanics I am already aware of, I am making a conscious choice to eliminate meta gaming in the story.  I have caught myself about to make some meta plot decisions, but caught them before they actually happened. Hawke replies in conversations as she, the character, would reply. as such, she is a mix between peace keeping, kind, sarcastic, and hard nosed   She does not knowingly curry friendship or rivalry with anyone. through dialogue since that would require me, as the player, to know when and where companions will give a plus or minus to disposition. While a few mods are installed, mainly one that re-skinned Merrill's robe and changed Aveline's appearance, they are pretty much aesthetically based.  I have resisted the temptation to utilize balancing or lock bash mods.

Who Hawke is:
Cerian Hawke is a rogue who feels a little detached emotionally from her family members.  Always at odds to her brother, she felt Carter's loss when they were fleeing Lothering, but has since mourned and moved on.  While she understands her mother's and sister's grief, she secretly wishes they would move on as well.

Cerian feels affection for her sister, but resents the fact that she has spent her whole life covering for Bethany.  It's not that  Hawke has any love for the Templars, and she can certainly understand why her family fears the Circle, but Cerian feel like her own potential has been stiffed in the process of keeping her sister safe.  After all, should she demonstrate her true potential as a soldier, Hawke might draw undesired attention to her family ... and thus may potentially expose Bethany as an apostate.  With the move to Kirkwall, Hawke's mother has withdrawn into herself.  Learning about her lost inheritance and losing Carter was just too much to deal with.  This has left Cerian to take up the reigns as family matriarch, and she is relishing in the roll.  With everyone in the family looking to her for safety and financial security, Hawke finally has a chance to use martial skills, which she developed while in the service of King Cailin, to their full extent in defense of her family and her new home. This renders the burden of her sister's safety less stifling. It should be noted that after resenting Bethany's apostate status all her life, Hawke has rather ironically begun to fall romantically in love with an apostate.  Cerian finds this trick of fate to be rather (darkly) humorous.