Dragon Age: Disappointment

I'm really not a fan of the direction Bioware is taking Dragon Age 2. Here's the latest trailer.

The first Dragon Age was a matter of origins. The player chooses what race his or her character is and his or her background. These choices become defining parts of the player's experience. City Elves are the targets of racism and oppression. Mages are treated with fear and suspicion. These elements remain throughout the game. Dragon Age 2, however, forces both a race and background on the player. Instead of developing a random character, one that is just another person in a world of characters, Dragon Age 2 forces players to develop a preexisting character, Hawke. As Hawke, the player can make all the moral decisions that make BioWare games so good. But, there is no denying that the gaming experience will be substantially different from the original.

I have no problem with game developers taking their games in new directions, but this isn't a new direction. We've seen this format before and it was developed by none other than BioWare. The Mass Effect series asks the player to become the human agent Shepard. When playing Mass Effect, the player cannot escape the reality that Shepard is not wholly his or her character. The game tells the player that Shepard is important and indispensable. In the context of Mass Effect, that's a good thing. But Dragon Age: Origins created the feeling, albeit a false one, that the character the player created was their own. That character was not special because the game said so, but because playing as the character made him special. The best thing for Bioware to do would have been to double down on that feeling. They should have made the character even more open to individualization. Then Dragon Age would've secured its status as another good Bioware series instead of Mass Effect's little brother.