Dragon Age 2

This weekend I completed this game amidst a curious reception of two years of angry reviews. I enjoyed the original Dragon Age, as I enjoyed the original Baldur's Gate series. Indeed, for me the party-based RPG trumps the action-roleplaying of the Elder Scrolls series (of which Diablo trumps the Elder Scrolls series too.) For me there is a story in Bioware games, and Dragon Age 2 is no exception.

Except, despite PC Gamer's 95% review, it was lambasted by many in the gaming community. Indeed, one popular (console) gaming website simply put "Dragon Age 2? Please" as its summary of the game, as if it was such a terrible inception of a great series that its failure should be apparent to all.

It wasn't to me.



However, having purchased this from Game in the high street, I must admit I did put it down for a year or so on the basis of such ill-feeling. However, having played it through to some completion in the past month or so, I feel well-placed to give some informed commentary on it.

Character interaction is linear. While other party-based RPGs allow you to tinker with the stats and appearance of your characters, this is not the case with DA2. Although initially this may seem limiting, meaningful character interaction requires certain limits to the variation of your characters. Yes, some of your character are inherently 'evil' and some are notoriously pious. Yet when they do or say something that goes against their grain, but for a plausible reason, it seems to mean something. That, too, the game does this through the medium of 2-3 lines of dialogue between each character is impressive. Complaints have been made about the inability to customise the look of each character's armour. I was not too worried.

Speech options are on a wheel of: diplomatic, blunt and witty. It would have admittedly been better to have these options randomised so, like Deus Ex: HR, you were forced to consider what would have been the best option for you at that time. However, like with some of the championship manager series, what you think is a correct tactic (and what might be an effective tactic in real life) may differ from what the designer thought was suitable. So, again, I was not too bothered by the limited speech options. Romancing different characters was controversial, so I'll let you work that out yourselves.

Quests that seemingly had little impact return later in the game. I received on letter in my in-game house from someone who I had saved on a whim earlier in the game on my rush to completing the main quest. It is my most rewarding experience of the quest. Like a teacher, there are many things done that make little to no impact on ourselves, or even to school life as a whole. However, to the person on the receiving end of those actions, it can be entirely significant.

Combat is excellent. I used to find it tedious, and completed the original Dragon Age with minimal use of my special abilities. I used to want to scrap the combat system and have a purely interaction/adventure based RPG. However, now I appreciate the combat for what it is - tactical (rather than strategic) hacking.

Without spoilers, each act has a different rhythm. Criticisms have been made of the pacing of them all, but I enjoyed them for different reasons. Yes, areas are recycled: the same warehouse is used for at least three different evil plots (it must have a really low rent...) But the quest indication bar and fact that there are 15 or so different areas means that, again, this didn't bother me too much.

The game is less gothic than the original Dragon Age. This did bother me somewhat. Near the end of the game, characters start grabbing swords as big as themselves. Speculation is rife was this was: appealing to popular graphical demands is probably one reason.

I got used to my character's fat face by the end of my quest. But the character generation screen only allows you the excellent bearded face of the original Hawke (the main character)or a Nordrick-inspired effort (google him.)

I'll happily defend the game, and give it a score near into the 90s as far as such scores go. It has great replay value. Its failings are, I think, largely political (in that it is console-friendly, and seems less open-ended than the original DA.) Perhaps the PC-Gamer review should have forseen these, but to those who love the RPG genre, it is superb. Now if I could just get this camera off the heads of my characters a little further...

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So much to write about...

I have a backlog of essays and thoughts I wish to publish to this blog. But suffice to say this is my thought for tonight: today out of necessity I have worked 14 hours with a 15 lunch break and a 25 minute dinner break. It is almost midnight, and I need to read before bed. I will wake up at 7:00am and be grateful that I am rested already, and that I do not have a ridiculous commute.

I have used my google docs and my years of electronic resource cataloguing to plan my lessons for this week. It still took me well over an hour (and most of these lessons I have resource collated already.) During this my gaming computer crashed resignedly. I waved goodbye to a fair number of saved games, and (painfully) my saved multiplayer battles on Shogun 2 and Empire TW (not least my defeat of a level 10 general.)

Fortunately, my work computer wasn't affected. For many years as a student, and as a cover and student teacher, I suffered the stress of a crash that meant I lost the work of my profession. That has yet to happen and, with my cloud computer and HD back-ups, is much less likely to happen again.

But I digress. There are a few games installed on my computer now, largely from my disks. One I want to play before sleep, even for a few moments, is DA2. It has been lambasted; unfairly so, I think. But I will not be able to play it for long, as I think that I need to equally read before sleep. I will not sleep more than 6 hours tonight, but I hope to get my rest in while I do. There is something in the party-based RPG game that stays with me until sleep.

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The Games Industry

This is a fragmented article written from a 15-5-1 plan (see my other website, www.thequillguy.com, for a guide to this plan.) I copied, foolishly, a table into this blog, and only took the details of the plan and not itself overall structure. Therefore, the paragraphs do not develop an overarching point, but they might be an interesting read in themselves:

Some of my pupils, and I, spend a lot of time gaming, and a lot of time at school. But the school curriculum does not acknowledge gaming. While literature is studied and esteemed, and rightly so, gaming is (for reasons I discussed before) still in its infancy as an art-form of credibility. And that itself is perhaps right, too (at least for the current time.) But while subject teachers of ICT are compelled to teach decontextualised application use rather than contextualise them in projects for real audiences, then students will increasingly be switched off from the possibilities of ICT.



Learning becomes (at times) necessarily dull, arduous and involves taking steps backwards - but it requires an element of enjoyment to spark curiosity. Games are, usually, enjoyable. Usually (perhaps a little too often) this is due to the ludic-manipulations of behavioural psychologists. That is, gamers return because they enjoy the achievements that games can give them more than the uncertain and (seemingly pointless) frustrations of school/work life. However, learning urges the person to strive for improvement: bigger, better, more (refined.) Some gaming doesn't seek for improvement, or at least the improvement of the gamer is, how to define it... not applicable for much more than the game.

By that I mean that games like World of Warcraft do not improve every player. That is not entirely accurate: I imagine there is an improvement in some players' communication skills under pressure (because imagine if you had to battle through a monster-infested dungeon for hours only to have the entire game risking upon organising yourself accurate within fifteen seconds intervals and with thirty other people.) Reflexes and memory are also practised. However, considering the hours pumped into the game (1600+ I hear by some players), I wonder if it could be more a catalyst for self-improvement?

Self-improvement is the cover of the game. WoW involves, essentially, a bunch of numbers (your hero, with their stats) attacking other numbers (monsters, with their stats) until they drop numbers (in the form of better weapons.) This formula is repeated until you use the biggest numbers to defeat the biggest numbers so you have the biggest numbers of them all. But how far are the players themselves improved? And are they bothered? I am.

This example, like gaming, hints at how gaming is increasingly becoming part of mainstream consciousness. COD and WoW are lambasted by some gamers. But they are responsible for how many gaming is more a mainstream hobby and, for some, a legitimate creative career.

Yet I looked recently at employment in the Games Industry with mixed feelings. With the projects I run - and my minor modding experience - I wonder what it would be like for those trying to establish themselves in such a profession. This was inspired by several students in my tutor group who have the mix of creativity and determination that I imagine is necessary to succeed. Two factors warn against such a career, though. The first is that compared to other art sector jobs the status of such a position is low. But I guess that isn't a consideration for the artist. And it is a project-based job, rather than a mapped career.

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