It's Coming...

EA and BioWare have officially announced the sequel to one of my favorite RPGs of all time. It's supposed to come out around March of next year, and color me giddy. Can't wait for this. I am STILL playing the first one, about to complete my third complete play through (including Awakenings).


First impressions. I wish they'd allow me to bring back my Warden character from the first game. Instead, we have a new character, whose name is Hawke. Thankfully, Game Informer is confirming that you can still customize appearance and gender, though Hawke is a human and you cannot change that. This is disappointing, because I happen to enjoy the elf race in this storyline, and most of the characters I use for DAO are elves.

Also, there seems to be a general consensus that Hawke, either a static form or created form, is Morrigan's god-child. This would quite upset me. New the end of Dragon Age Origins, you have the choice to perform a ritual with Morrigan that saves the Wardens. Of course, you can choose not to perform this ritual as well. If BioWare starts off the second game by assuming you made the choice to perform the ritual, it essentially invalidates all the choices you made in the first game. Perhaps I'm spoiled by the fact that my choices moved between Mass Effect 1 and 2, but there is nothing quite like the undoing of everything I did to make me enthusiastic about a game.All that being said, the GI article linked above notes that Hawke was living in Lothering at the time of the Blight, which means that all that speculation is horse rubbish. Moving on.


We also know that Hawke will have full voice overs. This is excellent!! I always wondered why the Warden was so silent. I hope they also include a wider variety of facial expressions, as that would only add to the realism.

We also know that the art style is changing for DA2. I have high hopes, but I hope that they remember that this is a fantasy game and that the new art style still reflects that.

Finally, in a bit of a concerning move, there apparently is no big evil that needs to be destroyed in the game. Obviously, there will be some sort of conflict, as it is conflict that drives most stories, but the focus of the story will be Hawke. The game takes place over a decade, so it would seem you're given a lot of time to play with him, tweak his personality and relationships, etc. Hopefully there's a higher level cap (assuming leveling works the same way), as 25 levels spanning a decade seems a bit puny. Just my two cents.

I know it sounds like I'm down on this game, but really I'm just averse to change. I will approach this game with an open mind, mostly because I loved the first game so much, and pretty much anything BioWare creates is video game gold. I have no doubts, despite the changes here, that this game will rock my face off. I'll update further when I get my hands on the August issue of GI. Until then!