Is Bioware losing its edge, or just selling out? Dragon Age 2, what have you done?

First there's Mass Effect. Yes, it can be entertaining. No, it isn't an RPG. Now Dragon Age, which suffered from either A) a serious lobotomy between Origins and #2, or B) was so rushed through production that they didn't bother making more than a handful of maps.



Rather than dumbing down the RPG for the console market, why not introduce the console market to what a really great RPG is? Take a look at the quality of this game:



1) Inventory system was basically scrapped, with most items given generic names. The Origins system was cluttered, but detailed. Rather than updating that system, they stripped it.

2) Party interactions are arbitrarily limited to houses now. This is not simply inconvenient, but it's an unnecessary step backward for the game. Gifts and such were novel ways to interact with others, and those interactions helped make Dragon Age Origins a standout game.

3) Maps. Good god. In DAO there were hundreds. In Baldur's Gate there were hundreds. All detailed and beautiful. I have an idea for DA2... why not just make 2-3 maps and use them over and over ad nauseum? The only possible excuse for this is rushed development and/or laziness. Period.

4) Character building: If you're going to force us to take one particular character, it had better be interesting. The amount of backstory that is given for Hawke is minimal, and the "hero" of Kirkwall is little more than an errand boy.

5) Quests. Really? Explore Kirkwall for 30 hours? No intrigue (think Baldur's Gate immersion), no illusion that what you're doing couldn't be done by 1000 other people. So many of the quests were poorly detailed by the (also dumbed down) codex system that I didn't really know what I was doing. I just ran the item to the person and got the gold/experience.



This game has some strong points. The menus and leveling system were more streamlined, and would have been awesome had I had them in DAO. The fact that the codex pops up when I get a new entry is nice (and it is far easier to find entries now), but unfortunately it rarely has anything interesting to say. I don't feel involved with the characters at all, as I have to basically take a journey across the map and out of the illusion of the game to have any conversation with them.



I haven't finished yet, but had I known at the outset how badly this would turn out I wouldn't have played at all. If I want a moronic half-RPG, I have lots of options. If I want good story and an immersive experience, I play Bioware. I have purchased every game they made, and I've spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours playing them. Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate 2, Dragon Age Origins, these are truly epic RPGs. Are those days done for the sake of the console crowd?Is Bioware losing its edge, or just selling out? Dragon Age 2, what have you done?
Since I play BioWare's games mainly for their storylines I thought Dragon Age II was a much better game than Origins. Origins has one of the weakest BioWare stories and I thought it was a bold move making DA2 a low fantasy game with political conflicts. The storyline is much more mature than Origins' save the world plot.