I'll begin by saying that I really enjoyed Dragon Age : Origins, and that I am a longtime Bioware fan with a deep, deep love for all things Baldurs Gate and Mass Effect. I appreciate that ME was built in the age of consoles and I still love it despite its arguably simplistic gameplay as compared to the deep and fidgety RPGs of yore.
I suppose what I loved most about Dragon Age : Origins is that it genuinely came across like a spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate franchise, along with all of that series overcomplex statistics, inventory management, spell casting, etc. The kind of stuff you can nerd out over in the dull moments between plot expositions as you're running around from one samey looking dungeon corridor to the next.
Well, that's all gone in DA:II . And I mean - all of it.
I had been playing the game a good few hours and amassed a sizable collection of various breastplates, swords, axes, and boots. " Now would be a good time to stop and equip my companions with all this loot", thought I, smirking in anticipation of how godlike my crew would look after their upgrade. But for some strange reason, I noticed that my companions inventory screens were grayed out, and when I moused over a sword there was a small bit of text that said "only usable by Hawke". At first I thought it was just a restricted item or something, so I selected another and tried again. Same thing. And that's when it dawned on me - oh fuck I can't manage my companions inventories. This is a pretty bitter pill to swallow, as you are constantly being showered in goodies which are restricted to a certain class (ie. a warrior breastplate) and where before you could just donate them to any warrior in your party in need of an upgrade, now you are stuck with this deadweight . Worse, you can't sell them for more than a pittance (literally,a few pennies each) , I guess because Bioware figured that selling junk would make players too rich.
*Sigh*
Well, at least conversation choices are there - and the NPCs are a fun lot, if not quite as exciting as the DA:O crew. They retain their signature bickering which you can stop and listen to every few minutes for a chuckle. The interface is slick and refined (if skeletal), and the character models look noticeably improved from their DA:O counterparts, though the same basic models and textures seem to have been carried over which gives things abit of a recycled feel.
I would like to take a moment here to get one thing across : DA:II is not a bad game. But from the people who brought us Mass Effect and Dragon Age, it feels overwhelmingly lazy, and ill considered. It has this aura about it like it was designed by committee, and masterminded by businessmen - from the day one DLC which prepurchasers don't get, to the inventory being conveniently locked in the demo release to hide its bastardized featureset.
As I see an RPG, it is about freedom and choice. By removing so much of the choice (yes, even the fiddly overcomplex choice) from the game , Bioware has hampered much of what drew me to play the game in the first place. I didn't buy the game looking for visceral action, if I wanted that, i'd be playing Bulletstorm. Why they seem hell bent on creating "The world's most action oriented RPG" is beyond me. Baldur's Gate had action, sure - but it also had a great depth of choice. We could all forgive the clunky animations and slightly-too-lengthy battles because we were given the ability to micro manage every aspect of them. You were in control, you felt clever.
Dragon Age II is fun, and I'm going to finish it. But it makes me feel for all the world like a button mashing tool. Fingers crossed for Skyrim.
1 word mate: "Consoles" ;)
The problem is that I dont think that consoles are entirely to blame.
Before I was a PC gamer I was a console owner (with my last console being the glorious Dreamcast) and I can assure you that there tons of console games that are far from the dumbed down mess made to appeal the lowest common denominator possible that we see today.
I believe the problem is more spread out. As companies get bigger and budgets increase there's a bigger focus in revenue than in quality.
Let's not forget that all previous Splinter Cell titles were released on the original Xbox and yet Conviction remains to be an incredibly linear third person shooter that casually pretends to be a stealth game.
As corporations grow larger they lose focus in creativity, and simply try to increase profit as much as possible.
People are going to buy these games because they are not created for us, they are created for a new generation that doesn't have anything to compare this to, and that buys into the hype that is so easy to buy nowadays (mostly thanks to video game journalism having almost zero standards aside from a few decent indie ones like RPS).
And sadly this happens on both PC and consoles alike.
So yeah, the industry is ****** :P
note : Despite my claims to the contrary, I never finished Dragon Age 2. It got progressively worse in the second and third acts, and I just gave up and uninstalled it. Would not recommend anyone waste their money on it.