I Missed Sm Content My First Play Through - Tumblr Posts
Okay but I'm forgiving the themes and narrative for being all over the place because that's exactly the point of the game! Despite the game being about Hawke doing their thing in Kirkwall and suffering the consequences; the story is being told from the pov of Varric -who is an unreliable narrator which I think is an amazing device to use to cover up plot holes or missing content. Because if you find something is lacking in the story, "it's because Varrics telling the story and driving the narrative" yk? But anyways yeah, love DA2, there are so many things wrong with DAI in the story that can't be excused because there's nothing to cover up or fill the plot holes with yk?
i dont think i will ever be over dragon age 2. like. bioware made an epic fantasy story about a chosen one having to save a country and stop the apocalypse and then they made the second installment of the series be about the sociopolitical climate in ONE city through the lens of a family of refugees fleeing from the war of the first game and just. made it about political tensions and class dynamics and the influences of living in a church-mandated state and the growing tension over an occupied piece of the city and political killings and interpersonal conflict and power and its story is ENTIRELY character-driven. it has easily the most iconic set of companion characters. the premise of living through a story told over the course of ten years and knowing from the start that something really bad will happen in the end was so fresh and exciting. the fact that the acts really built on top of each other andhow much the city changed over time. and the game was so mature in terms of the topic of fighting against oppression in so many ways (im usually generous and say that the short development time left some things a bit wanting), and as much as some people say that the game treats mages and templars as being equally bad, i don't think that that is actually true about the game and it very earnestly tries to grapple with some pretty complex political dynamics.
and then the game completely flopped financially and was almost universally hated for its queer themes and its sympathy for "terrorism" and a lot of the things that stemmed from basically having no production time at all and then the studio just made another epic fantasy story about a chosen one that has to save the world from the apocalypse