Improbable Insights

Both Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 are Bioware creations, albeit by different development teams with clearly different goals. Dragon Age: Origins is touted as the spiritual successor to Bioware’s first major success, Baldur’s Gate. Mass Effect 2 is an action/RPG hybrid, building on the first game, but enhancing the action bits while streamlining the role-playing.

Both games offer extensive storylines, lots of spoken dialog and some excellent voice acting. Both also allow you to take your character in different directions. Once you get beyond those Bioware tropes, the two games diverge pretty significantly.

I’ve played through both games once, and working through second run-throughs on both games. Given that both games have been reviewed and discussed substantially, I’m going to narrow in on one aspect of the two games: how characters are developed. (Note: there may be spoilers ahead.)

The Character is You – or Is It?

First, let’s talk about the character you play.

Your character in Dragon Age is you. That is, you can customize the look and appearance, and play through any of several origin stories. But your character has no voiced dialog, even when responding to party members or other NPCs who have very distinct voices. I know players who actually read the dialog out loud, to give the character voice.

Mass Effect 2’s character, on the other hand, is Commander Shepherd. Both the male and female versions have voice dialog. (Jennifer Hale, as the female Shepherd, is particularly good.) That choice – using spoken dialog voiced by actors – might mean you have a little emotional distance from “your” Shepherd. On the other hand, you can certainly customize Shepherd’s facial appearance at the games beginning. So it’s something of a mix. I found myself pretty much making the decisions I might make with “my” character.

In both cases, as with any RPG, “your” character may not necessarily behave as you would in a similar situation. After all, it’s a game, so having a little fun by acting differently is part of the oeuvre of gaming.

Still, giving Shepherd a distinct voice does impact the game. Scenes with dialog or cut-scenes resonate differently – perhaps more like a TV show or movie – than the strong and silent type. In some ways, Dragon Age is a little like the Half Life series. Gordon Freeman in Half Life isn’t voiced by an actor. (In fact, Freeman has no dialog whatsoever, so you can only imagine the responses when people talk to you. Then again, Half Life and its sequels are not RPGs.)

The choices made by the two Bioware groups when it comes to the character voicing do create an interesting dichotomy. Mass Effect 2 does feel more cinematic. The cut scenes are much more extensive, the over-the-shoulder view feels a little more movie like, and the interactive scenes where Shepherd is talking, gives the feeling that you’re more “along for the ride” rather than being in the world.

By the same token, the lack of spoken voice for the player character in Dragon Age is at times disconcerting. I would have like a little more in-game emotional resonance, beyond talking to my computer.

Your Party

In both games, non-player characters have vast amounts of spoken dialog. Some players find this insufferable, and try to skip past as much of it as possible. Personally, I love the voices, if they’re well done, and listen to most of the dialog all the way through at least once.

The playable NPCs have much deeper individual storylines in Dragon Age. The options are richer, too – the characters in Dragon Age all seem imbued with very distinct personalities, and can even have emotional cycles – sometimes testy, sometimes receptive – depending on the situation.

In both games, you have to recruit party members, and then do an additional quest for each member if you want to unlock certain abilities. It’s another classic Bioware trope. However, the way those quests are structured in Dragon Age just feels more organic. Often, they pop up during conversation in a very naturalistic way.

Take Alistair in Dragon Age, for example. In some ways, he’s a key part of the story, yet you can also dispense with him if you like. He evolves over the course of the story, and can rise to become a good king – or not.

Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, clubs you over the head with these additional quests. They’re blatantly called “loyalty quests.” They often pop up in your quest log, even before you talk to the party member involved. Perhaps the most detailed quest is Tali’s return to the Quarian flotilla to face treason charges. Yet, Tali doesn’t really change (other than unlocking an ability.)

Then there’s romance.

The way love and romance is handled in Dragon Age is pretty simple: anything goes. That’s a little like real life, and you can happily be heterosexual, non-sexual or gay if you like. It’s still a little on the heavy handed side, but still feels more organic than the Mass Effect 2 romances, which often seem like a puzzle game inside the game. On top of that, none of the romances that count towards the romance achievement can be anything but heterosexual. So it all seems a little contrived and judgmental.

In-Game NPCs

The major NPCs you encounter which aren’t part of your party also seem more developed in Dragon Age. The deepest of these are the two contenders for the dwarven king you encounter, and the fallout from your choices are not so obvious at first.

On the other hand, your interactions with a number of NPCs have potentially far reaching impact in Mass Effect 3. I say “potentially,” because none of the Big Decisions in the original game really seemed to affect the sequel much. Whether you decided to come to the rescue of the council, or let them die had little impact in the overall gameplay. Some of the dialog changed, but there seem to be few repercussions overall. It would have been interesting, for example, if a darker path opened up because the alien races really do hate you for letting the council die.

Of course, there were some big decisions in Dragon Age as well. It will be interesting to see what fallout comes from your Big Decision regarding Morrigan, for example.

Final Thoughts

Both games are actually excellent, and many of the decisions regarding character development seemed to cater to the different styles. Dragon Age is very much a classic computer RPG, and the deeper characters and has a more organic feel. By the same token, not having voice for your character somehow makes the game seem like its missing something.

Mass Effect 2 is a streamlined action RPG, and the fairly shallow character development serves to move the story along in a more cinematic way. While some people may prefer one style over another, I had a blast with both – probably because the experiences were so different.