"I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin's death as George Zimmerman was,"
-Geraldo Rivera
I had some pretty nasty things to say to and about Geraldo today. And I stand by them. But, for the sake of argument, let's pretend The 'Stache is right. Let's even give George Zimmerman the benefit of the doubt, and assume that if Trayvon Martin hadn't been wearing a hoodie that particular night, Zimmerman would have gone the rest of his life without killing anyone for any reason. Where does that leave us? Well, Trayvon Martin would still be alive, which would be awesome. And George Zimmerman wouldn't be known worldwide as a racist and a murderer, which would be nice for him, no doubt.
It doesn't matter. If every hooded sweatshirt in the world went up in a puff of smoke tomorrow, racists would just find another symbol to hang their hate and fear upon. Blaming the victim, advising people to dress a particular way as 'a sensible precaution', it's all an excuse. Each and every healthy, sane, adult human being has both the capacity and the responsibility to govern their own behavior. Anyone who commits murder is a murderer, even if they construct a narrative where they were defending their community from a gang-banger. Anyone who commits rape is a rapist, no matter how much skin their victim was showing. The ability to override instinct and emotion with rational thought is one of the characteristics that separates humans from animals. I don't know about you, but I don't think it would be a good idea to arm tigers and turn them loose on the streets, even if you did somehow mangage to give them opposable thumbs & teach them to roar in English.
Excusing murder by blaming the victim is clearly immoral, but the other (more insidious) danger in Geraldo's philosophy is that it creates an illusion of safety. It sounds reasonable enough...
"Don't dress like a gangsta, and you won't get gunned down by a twitchy vigilante posing as a Concerned Citizen."
"Don't wear miniskirts and you won't be kidnapped by a pervo and chained up in his basement."
Straightforward, practical, pragmatic advice, right? The main thing is that you'll be safe. Of course, the next kid in a hoodie is a goner, and the girl in the knee-length skirt got the Buffalo Bill treatment because there weren't any miniskirted targets available, but at least you're safe. Oh, sure, the twitchy vigilante and the serial rapist are still out there running around, and maybe next week they'll decide to go after anyone wearing denim, or wool socks, or whatever, but you'll probably be OK. The odds are in your favor, at least in the short term. Shame about your daughter, though. Did they ever find her body?
There was a time when your ancestors thought that painting themselves blue and walking backwards around a campfire, or some such foolishness, would keep them safe. So they wasted a lot of time doing that instead of developing the germ theory of disease or something similarly sensible. And when it didn't work, they blamed the crazy old lady who lived in the hut just outside the village and burned her alive. Ah, the good ol' days.
About ten years ago, I was talking to a psychologist. During our conversation, she asked me if I felt any anxiety in the wake of the (then-recent) 9/11 attack. I was legitimately confused by this question. Why would an event that had happened nearly a year before, in another city, to people I had never met, concern me in any meaningful way? Or, more precisely, why should that particular event spook me? I had spent roughly 30 years of my life inundated with daily reports of bombings, highjackings, carjackings, plane crashes, shipwrecks, muggings, rape, murder, arson, you name it. Shit happens. Sometimes rocks fall from the sky and kill you. That's just how the world works. Slowly, it dawned on me that there are people in the world who do not understand this. Apparently, some of this woman's clients were numbered among those people. They believed that terrorist attacks only happened in other countries, to other people. Merely having had the good sense to be born in America granted them special immunity. Armed with my new knowledge, I looked at the world around me and slowly realized there are a lot of people out there who honestly believe they are perfectly safe. People who legitimately think it is possible for anyone to ever be entirely secure. People who consider themselves rational adults, living in a Never-Never Land of their own imagining.
Here is the truth:
We're living in the Really Real World.
You are not safe.
I grew up as a tall, strong, white, middle-class boy in an affluent suburb. I have spent my entire life being about as safe as anyone can possibly be outside of a monastery made of eiderdown and life preservers.
I have never been safe.
Money won't make you safe.
Power won't make you safe.
Influence won't make you safe.
Clothes won't make you safe.
Armor won't make you safe.
Weapons won't make you safe.
Walls won't make you safe.
Gates won't make you safe.
Iron bars won't make you safe.
The Church won't make you safe.
The GOP won't make you safe.
Rick Santorum won't make you safe.
FOX News won't make you safe.
Geraldo won't make you safe.
Hate won't make you safe.
Fear won't make you safe.
Violence won't make you safe.
Being born with white skin won't make you safe.
Murdering children won't make you safe.
Lies won't make you safe.
The truth won't make you safe, either, but at least you'll be in a position to distinguish rational precautions from pure superstition. Not even precautions will make you safe. But they just might make you a little bit safer.
And the truth is, Trayvon Martin's hoodie never pulled any triggers.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Friday, July 22, 2011
Don't cross the streams! That would be... bad.
We here at Gozer the Gozerian are eager to supply all of your end-of-the-world needs. Please choose the form of your ultimate destroyer:
A) Rain of Frogs
B) Plague of Locusts
C) Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man
D) Hello Kitty Slave Leia
A) Rain of Frogs
B) Plague of Locusts
C) Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man
D) Hello Kitty Slave Leia
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Things Which Shouldn't Be In Question, Part I
A few things have come up in my Internet surfing over the past few days which some people apparently believe are open to interpretation. They are not.
1) Cheesecake is awesome. This is a fact. Even bad cheesecake is better than no cheesecake at all.
2) Nala is a Disney Princess. I've heard tales of epic flamewars on this subject, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. If Cinderella & Belle can become 'Disney Princesses' simply by marrying royalty, so can Nala.
3) [Spoiler Alert] Spike Spiegel dies at the end of Cowboy Bebop. I hear there are people who think he might have survived, but it just didn't happen. He's on a narrative express train to 'Tragically Deceased' throughout the entire series. By the end of Session #26, Julia is dead, Mao & Annie are dead, Vicious cuts him practically in half before HE dies. Spike's two reasons to live (True Love & Vengeance) have reached their conclusions. His catchphrase is "I've been seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other." He doesn't claim to see a future. He no longer has a reason to go on, psychologically or narratively. He gets his final moment of badass wit, then he keels over. Doves fly by from out of nowhere. Indoors. Immediately after a noisy gunbattle and massive explosion which should have scared off every bird within a mile. If John Woo has ever taught us anything, it is that Inappropriate Doves = Dead Dude. A boys' choir starts singing in Latin. This is not subtle symbolism we're dealing with here. He is an ex-Spike.
I'm glad we got that cleared up.
1) Cheesecake is awesome. This is a fact. Even bad cheesecake is better than no cheesecake at all.
2) Nala is a Disney Princess. I've heard tales of epic flamewars on this subject, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. If Cinderella & Belle can become 'Disney Princesses' simply by marrying royalty, so can Nala.
3) [Spoiler Alert] Spike Spiegel dies at the end of Cowboy Bebop. I hear there are people who think he might have survived, but it just didn't happen. He's on a narrative express train to 'Tragically Deceased' throughout the entire series. By the end of Session #26, Julia is dead, Mao & Annie are dead, Vicious cuts him practically in half before HE dies. Spike's two reasons to live (True Love & Vengeance) have reached their conclusions. His catchphrase is "I've been seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other." He doesn't claim to see a future. He no longer has a reason to go on, psychologically or narratively. He gets his final moment of badass wit, then he keels over. Doves fly by from out of nowhere. Indoors. Immediately after a noisy gunbattle and massive explosion which should have scared off every bird within a mile. If John Woo has ever taught us anything, it is that Inappropriate Doves = Dead Dude. A boys' choir starts singing in Latin. This is not subtle symbolism we're dealing with here. He is an ex-Spike.
I'm glad we got that cleared up.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
More Dragon Age ramblings that only one person will read
So, as soon as I complete my three-hour rant about all the things in Dragon Age II that piss me off, I download this week's War Rocket Ajax podcast, which features Chris Sims and Colleen Coover raving about how much they love the game. Of course, neither of them appears to have played all the way through it when the show was recorded last Thursday. I'd be interested to hear their impressions upon completing the game.
Still, it did remind me that there was a reason I devoted as much time to this game over the past 2 weeks as I would have to a full-time job. For all my carping, I really did enjoy it, and I may even play through it again someday. I still haven't fully explored all of the skill tree options for the various classes. I think, in the end, my dissatisfaction with the game springs from a phenomenon I've noted in other media, which I call the 'Uncanny Valley of Quality'. The standard definition of the Uncanny Valley is the phenomenon where the closer a depiction of a human being gets to realism, the creepier it looks. So, cartoons can be cute despite being extremely warped depictions of humanity, but audiences ran screaming from showings of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The Uncanny Valley of Quality is similar, in that the closer something comes to your personal definition of perfection, the more disappointing the inevitable shortfalls seem. Or, to borrow a phrase from Jeremy Clarkson: "It would be better... If it was worse."
I felt the same way about Robert Rodriguez' adaptation of Sin City. And about Edgar Wright's adaptation of Scott Pilgrim. And even about Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. All three films are, in their own ways, brilliantly ambitious (and nearly successful) attempts to translate the unique aesthetic of a classic novel (whether graphic or prose) into another medium. And all are fundamentally flawed in ways that ultimately undermined my enjoyment of the movie. I walked out of each of those films wishing that the director had aimed just a little lower, at a target he might actually have been able to hit. Which doesn't make them bad films, or mean that I didn't enjoy watching them. But that enjoyment will always be bittersweet. And, if I've learned anything from playing DA2 three times in two weeks, it's that repeated exposure tends to emphasize the bitter over the sweet.
All of the things which Sims, Coover and other reviewers I've read enjoyed about DA2 (the addition of a third set of conversational options, the more personal focus of the story, the urban setting, the fast-paced combat, the increased emphasis on the setting and world-building) were things that I enjoyed. Many of them represent legitimate improvements over the first Dragon Age game. But the best things about Dragon Age: Origins (the 'Origins' themselves which allowed you some choice about who your character was and how they came to be thrust into the epic struggle, the ability to at least control the order of the scripted events, the possibility of alternate outcomes based on your choices at key points in the game, the sheer length and scope of the story) were small details forgotten in the developers' race for power and glory.
The problem is not that Dragon Age II is a bad game. It's actually quite a good game on its own merits. The problem is that it's not really a sequel to Dragon Age: Origins. It's a series of checked-off boxes on a list of 'elements that gamers expect of a modern fantasy action RPG'. Honestly, any company could have churned out exactly the same game, with a few name changes, and I wouldn't have associated it with Dragon Age at all. The most I would have thought would be, "Clearly someone's trying to cash in on the success of BioWare's Mass Effect franchise."
To me, that's a huge missed opportunity.
Still, they'll inevitably release an expansion for the game, along with various downloadable content packs. Perhaps one of them will include some provision for alternate endings or other meaningful choices you can make. A man can dream...
Still, it did remind me that there was a reason I devoted as much time to this game over the past 2 weeks as I would have to a full-time job. For all my carping, I really did enjoy it, and I may even play through it again someday. I still haven't fully explored all of the skill tree options for the various classes. I think, in the end, my dissatisfaction with the game springs from a phenomenon I've noted in other media, which I call the 'Uncanny Valley of Quality'. The standard definition of the Uncanny Valley is the phenomenon where the closer a depiction of a human being gets to realism, the creepier it looks. So, cartoons can be cute despite being extremely warped depictions of humanity, but audiences ran screaming from showings of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The Uncanny Valley of Quality is similar, in that the closer something comes to your personal definition of perfection, the more disappointing the inevitable shortfalls seem. Or, to borrow a phrase from Jeremy Clarkson: "It would be better... If it was worse."
I felt the same way about Robert Rodriguez' adaptation of Sin City. And about Edgar Wright's adaptation of Scott Pilgrim. And even about Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. All three films are, in their own ways, brilliantly ambitious (and nearly successful) attempts to translate the unique aesthetic of a classic novel (whether graphic or prose) into another medium. And all are fundamentally flawed in ways that ultimately undermined my enjoyment of the movie. I walked out of each of those films wishing that the director had aimed just a little lower, at a target he might actually have been able to hit. Which doesn't make them bad films, or mean that I didn't enjoy watching them. But that enjoyment will always be bittersweet. And, if I've learned anything from playing DA2 three times in two weeks, it's that repeated exposure tends to emphasize the bitter over the sweet.
All of the things which Sims, Coover and other reviewers I've read enjoyed about DA2 (the addition of a third set of conversational options, the more personal focus of the story, the urban setting, the fast-paced combat, the increased emphasis on the setting and world-building) were things that I enjoyed. Many of them represent legitimate improvements over the first Dragon Age game. But the best things about Dragon Age: Origins (the 'Origins' themselves which allowed you some choice about who your character was and how they came to be thrust into the epic struggle, the ability to at least control the order of the scripted events, the possibility of alternate outcomes based on your choices at key points in the game, the sheer length and scope of the story) were small details forgotten in the developers' race for power and glory.
The problem is not that Dragon Age II is a bad game. It's actually quite a good game on its own merits. The problem is that it's not really a sequel to Dragon Age: Origins. It's a series of checked-off boxes on a list of 'elements that gamers expect of a modern fantasy action RPG'. Honestly, any company could have churned out exactly the same game, with a few name changes, and I wouldn't have associated it with Dragon Age at all. The most I would have thought would be, "Clearly someone's trying to cash in on the success of BioWare's Mass Effect franchise."
To me, that's a huge missed opportunity.
Still, they'll inevitably release an expansion for the game, along with various downloadable content packs. Perhaps one of them will include some provision for alternate endings or other meaningful choices you can make. A man can dream...
Well, so much for plan 'A'
As you may have guessed, I almost immediately defaulted on my intention to update my blog daily. What I did instead was play nearly 100 hours of Dragon Age II. Having played through the game three times, once for each of the three character classes, I feel like I'm in a position to offer some commentary. Spoilers ahoy.
For the uninitiated, Dragon Age II is a computer role-playing game developed by BioWare and published by EA Games. It is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the sequel to Dragon Age: Origins. In Dragon Age II, you are thrust into the role of 'Hawke', a refugee fleeing from the Blight of Ferelden to the neighboring city-state of Kirkwall, where you are destined to become one of the city's most prominent citizens and acknowledged 'Champion'. The game is divided into four distinct acts:: the intro/tutorial in which you flee Ferelden and arrive in Kirkwall, followed by 3 longer chapters which chart your rise to prominence over the ensuing decade. These acts are bookended and interrupted by occasional cutscenes in which one of your sidekicks, the talespinning Dwarven rogue Varric, narrates your adventures to a mysterious and highly skeptical woman known only as 'the Seeker'.
Act One is fairly straightforward fantasy fare. You're a penniless refugee looking to make your fortune, so you sign up for an expedition to raid an ancient Dwarven ruin for treasure, meeting and recruiting your various companions along the way. After the usual round of spelunking and dragon fights, followed by a 'shocking betrayal' by the sketchy leader of the expedition, you return to Kirkwall covered in glory and loot.
Act Two finds you, three years later, having leveraged your new-found wealth into a position of comfortable prosperity amongst the city's minor nobility. This section of the story is dominated by political maneuvering between the Viscount of Kirkwall and the various factions in the city. You also become involved in tracking down a serial killer and provide security for a local mining operation, amongst other distractions. This is both the most interesting part of the story, and one of the most frustrating. Honestly, BioWare might have done better to scrap the earlier portions of the game entirely, and make a game focusing entirely on the politicall, civic and commercial life of Kirkwall. I'm sure they felt it was necessary to start you off in Ferelden in order to provide SOME continuity from the previous game, but it results in a disjointed and unsatisfying story.
After you resolve the assorted plotlines in Act Two, you're jumped ahead another three years to Act Three, which is the endgame. You have a chance to resolve all of the dangling subplots regarding your various friends and family members, and are then thrust into the conflict that ultimately drives the whole game: the ongoing dispute between the Templars and the Circle of Magi. Within the context of the Dragon Age setting, mages are people who have the ability to access the realm of dreams & spirits (the Fade) while they're awake. On the one hand, this gives them the ability to perform magic, which is good! On the other hand, it makes them extremely susceptible to demonic possession, which is bad! There is also the ever-present temptation to use evilbadnasty Blood Magic to achieve greater power. The Templars are a knightly order that is charged to police the magi and do what they can to both prevent and punish any transgressions on their part. While the Templars and the Circle theoretically are supposed to work together to protect mages from themselves, the reality rarely lives up to that ideal. Kirkwall hosts a particularly thorny iteration of this always-tense relationship, starting with Knight-Commander Meredith of the Templars, who is... extremely zealous... in her commitment to preventing and punishing. In any case, stuff happens, you're forced to pick sides between Meredith and First Enchanter Orsino, you fight the other one, then the one you sided with turns evil for no particular reason, and you fight them as well. Varric and the Seeker wrap up their story-time and there's a bit of setup for the inevitable sequel. The End.
Like a lot good-but-not-great games/stories, Dragon Age II is sufficiently good that its numerous flaws are extremely irritating. In a lesser game, most of these flaws would be greeted with a shrug, or overshadowed by other, more fundamental flaws. In a better game, most of them would have been eliminated. In particular, it suffers in comparison to Dragon Age: Origins, a less-polished but much meatier game. In approximately the same number of hours it took me to play Origins once, I played DA2 two-and-a-half times. To a large extent, this disparity in content is a function of the fully-voiced main character. In DA2, money and time was spent on voice actors and programming resources to produce six versions of every conversation your character engages in (3 male, 3 female). In the first game, that money and time, and those actors and programmers, were available to create more supporting characters and more missions for you to go on. I suspect there was also an element of cash-grabbing involved. The first Dragon Age game was clearly the fulfillment of a grand vision. This game is the next installment in a successful franchise. I suspect it was designed to meet a budget, and a publication schedule, and with a lot of focus group input. But even within those constraints, a lot of what gave the first Dragon Age game its unique savor was jettisoned. While the plot of Origins was fairly linear overall, you had a great deal of freedom in when and how you met your pre-determined goals, and you could make some meaningful choices that would be reflected in the outcome of the game. In DA2, the rails are right out there in the open for you to see. What little control you have over the plot is almost entirely cosmetic. Just about the only meaningful decisions you can make lie in how you manage your relationships with your companions, and even then you have to work pretty hard to alter the outcome of any events in which they are involved. Essentially, the most you can do is alter their opinion of you enough to trigger one of two powers which is based on their friendship/rivalry meter, or chase a useful ally off, only to have them show up and do whatever they were going to do to advance the plot anyway. Every major plot point is scripted. If you decide to help Anders, he betrays you. If you decide not to help him, he goes ahead and does The Bad Thing on his own. If you kick him out of the party, he turns up automagically at the key moment to stab you in the face. There are a good half-dozen missions which you are required to go on in order to advance the plot, in which you race to save someone from deadly peril or prevent some terrible event, only to show up Seconds Too Late in a cutscene where your only 'choice' is in how bitterly you protest your predestined fate. Even the grand denoument of the game, in which you must choose a side in the conflict between Meredith and Orsino. boils down to 'would you like to fight your way through the hordes of demons and abominations before or after you fight Orsino?'
Which, inexorably, leads us to the primary flaw with Dragon Age II... the plot. If you can't affect the outcome of the story, the story had better be pretty damned good. This one is... pretty OK, I guess? I've certainly read worse fantasy novels. I've definitely sat through worse movies. The developers should at least be commended for having corrected the biggest flaw with Dragon Age Origins: the villains. In the first game, you're up against two major villains: the Darkspawn and Teyrn Loghain. The Darkspawn are a horde of mindless, speechless, motivation-less zombies, and Loghain is allegedly a brilliant strategist and subtle politician who makes a series of apocalyptically stupid decisions despite having all of the relevant data readily available to him at all times. Neither of these is really a compelling antagonist. Even the Archdemon who leads the Darkspawn horde and is the final boss battle of the game is... Some dragon? The third one you encounter over the course of the game, at that? Very anticlimactic. Dragon Age II is better-served in the villain department. In Bartrand, Quentin, the Arishok, Knight-Commander Meredith and Firxt Enchanter Orsino, you are pitted against a series of fully-realized characters who have reasons for what they do. They aren't always 'good' or 'valid' reasons, but they are consistent with the established characterization of each antagonist. Bartrand is never portrayed as anything other than greedy, self-centered and short-sighted. So, when he does something ill-advised, you think, "Well, that's what Bartrand would do." Meredith acts like a paranoid megalomaniac. This is because she IS a paranoid megalomaniac, and everyone knows it. Much of the middle portion of the game is taken up with people attempting to maneuver around her or get her recalled by her superiors, because no one dares face her directly. When she finally loses it, you know it was a long time coming.
But, alas, a few acceptable villains do not save the story. For one thing, there are your trusty 'companions'. There are 7 of them (8 if you buy the 'Exiled Prince' DLC). I would rate 2 of them (Varric and Avelline) as 'trustworthy'. Of the others, Fenris manages to be both sullen and emo at all times, and will turn on you if you side with the mages. Isabella is responsible for one of the major catastrophes the game forces on you, and frequently makes herself unavailable for several missions at a stretch. Whichever one of your siblings survives the intro (either Carver or Bethany) leaves you, one way or another, at the end of Act One and may or may not return at the end of Act Three. Merrill is dumber than a box of hammers, but at least she's willful and stubborn. I don't know if it's possible to drive her away, but there were times when I desperately wanted to. Anders is a terrorist who becomes directly involved in the escalation of the Templar/Circle dispute into open warfare, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it. As near as I can tell, Sebastian's only function is to allow you to roll up a rogue and play the All Archery Squad. And to be a sanctimonious prig. In some of the only meaningful decisions you make over the course of the game, you can end the game with all of your sidekicks available, or as few as four of them. Having all of them makes the final boss fight with Meredith marginally easier. I leave it to you to decide whether the agony of listening to Anders and Fenris bitch and moan at you for 20-odd hours is worth it.
Ultimately, though, the biggest failing in the Dragon Age II plot is the plot itself. I commented to a friend of mine after my first playthrough, "It's basically Marvel's Civil War event retold in the Dragon Age setting." The game's developers bend over backwards to provide a 'balanced' view of both sides in the final conflict, both with points for and against them. The problem, just as it was in Civil War, is that even when both sides are in the wrong, inevitably one side is more wrong. Ben Franklin said it best. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." And that's the problem with Meredith's position. She's too crazy to see it, but there is literally no way to stamp out blood magic and demonic possession. Magery is an inherited condition. Even killing every mage in existence won't do it, as there'll just be new ones born tomorrow, and they will be (understandably) reluctant to reveal themselves to you. If you get on her good side, Meredith will tell you her tale of woe, about how her sister was a mage, and her parents hid her from the Circle, and she fell prey to a demon and wiped out half their town before the Templars caught her. Which is awful, of course. No one wants that. But Meredith has turned herself into Batman, or tried to, and she's not up to the task. Outside of the pages of a superhero comic, no one could be. Meredith repeatedly asks some variant on the question, "What do we tell the victims of an apostate mage's crimes? Shall we tell them we could have stopped him, but chose not to abrogate his freedom?" And my answer (which was never available in the dialogue options) is, "Yes. Of course." This may sound callous, but shit happens, and people die. It is a mad, bad, dangerous world. People kill each other all the time without magical powers or demonic mind control. No one gets to live forever. As attractive as the notion of 'proactively stopping evil/crime/death/misfortune/terrorism before it happens' sounds, it cannot be achieved, and all you can accomplish is to create more and worse problems. As Meredith amply demonstrates, by progressively tightening her grip until even loyal mages resort to desperate measures to defend themselves, or just to escape her jurisdiction. The whole 'liberty v. security' theme has been cropping up a lot in the media over the past decade. No doubt this is a response to 9/11 and the 'War on Terror'. I've mentioned Civil War, but I could also compare DAII to the Star Wars prequels or Joss Whedon's Serenity. Or Battlestar Galactica. Perhaps the most interesting comparison, though, is to Dune. Meredith finds herself in much the same position as Paul Atreides: uniquely qualified to predict a castastrophe, but her every attempt to prevent it only makes it worse. Paul eventually accepted it and moved on. Meredith allows it to literally destroy her.
All of which actually makes the game sound good, or at least thought-provoking. And I suppose it is. But it's intensely frustrating to sit through. It would be bad enough in a book, where it would be story happening to someone else. But in a role-playing game, you're a participant. Even when you're just along for the ride (as you so often are in this game), you feel like you're involved. And it's a damned shame you can't just punch that crazy bitch in the mouth and tell her to get over herself. Sure, you'd end up fighting her anyway, but it'd be SO much more satisfying.
For the uninitiated, Dragon Age II is a computer role-playing game developed by BioWare and published by EA Games. It is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the sequel to Dragon Age: Origins. In Dragon Age II, you are thrust into the role of 'Hawke', a refugee fleeing from the Blight of Ferelden to the neighboring city-state of Kirkwall, where you are destined to become one of the city's most prominent citizens and acknowledged 'Champion'. The game is divided into four distinct acts:: the intro/tutorial in which you flee Ferelden and arrive in Kirkwall, followed by 3 longer chapters which chart your rise to prominence over the ensuing decade. These acts are bookended and interrupted by occasional cutscenes in which one of your sidekicks, the talespinning Dwarven rogue Varric, narrates your adventures to a mysterious and highly skeptical woman known only as 'the Seeker'.
Act One is fairly straightforward fantasy fare. You're a penniless refugee looking to make your fortune, so you sign up for an expedition to raid an ancient Dwarven ruin for treasure, meeting and recruiting your various companions along the way. After the usual round of spelunking and dragon fights, followed by a 'shocking betrayal' by the sketchy leader of the expedition, you return to Kirkwall covered in glory and loot.
Act Two finds you, three years later, having leveraged your new-found wealth into a position of comfortable prosperity amongst the city's minor nobility. This section of the story is dominated by political maneuvering between the Viscount of Kirkwall and the various factions in the city. You also become involved in tracking down a serial killer and provide security for a local mining operation, amongst other distractions. This is both the most interesting part of the story, and one of the most frustrating. Honestly, BioWare might have done better to scrap the earlier portions of the game entirely, and make a game focusing entirely on the politicall, civic and commercial life of Kirkwall. I'm sure they felt it was necessary to start you off in Ferelden in order to provide SOME continuity from the previous game, but it results in a disjointed and unsatisfying story.
After you resolve the assorted plotlines in Act Two, you're jumped ahead another three years to Act Three, which is the endgame. You have a chance to resolve all of the dangling subplots regarding your various friends and family members, and are then thrust into the conflict that ultimately drives the whole game: the ongoing dispute between the Templars and the Circle of Magi. Within the context of the Dragon Age setting, mages are people who have the ability to access the realm of dreams & spirits (the Fade) while they're awake. On the one hand, this gives them the ability to perform magic, which is good! On the other hand, it makes them extremely susceptible to demonic possession, which is bad! There is also the ever-present temptation to use evilbadnasty Blood Magic to achieve greater power. The Templars are a knightly order that is charged to police the magi and do what they can to both prevent and punish any transgressions on their part. While the Templars and the Circle theoretically are supposed to work together to protect mages from themselves, the reality rarely lives up to that ideal. Kirkwall hosts a particularly thorny iteration of this always-tense relationship, starting with Knight-Commander Meredith of the Templars, who is... extremely zealous... in her commitment to preventing and punishing. In any case, stuff happens, you're forced to pick sides between Meredith and First Enchanter Orsino, you fight the other one, then the one you sided with turns evil for no particular reason, and you fight them as well. Varric and the Seeker wrap up their story-time and there's a bit of setup for the inevitable sequel. The End.
Like a lot good-but-not-great games/stories, Dragon Age II is sufficiently good that its numerous flaws are extremely irritating. In a lesser game, most of these flaws would be greeted with a shrug, or overshadowed by other, more fundamental flaws. In a better game, most of them would have been eliminated. In particular, it suffers in comparison to Dragon Age: Origins, a less-polished but much meatier game. In approximately the same number of hours it took me to play Origins once, I played DA2 two-and-a-half times. To a large extent, this disparity in content is a function of the fully-voiced main character. In DA2, money and time was spent on voice actors and programming resources to produce six versions of every conversation your character engages in (3 male, 3 female). In the first game, that money and time, and those actors and programmers, were available to create more supporting characters and more missions for you to go on. I suspect there was also an element of cash-grabbing involved. The first Dragon Age game was clearly the fulfillment of a grand vision. This game is the next installment in a successful franchise. I suspect it was designed to meet a budget, and a publication schedule, and with a lot of focus group input. But even within those constraints, a lot of what gave the first Dragon Age game its unique savor was jettisoned. While the plot of Origins was fairly linear overall, you had a great deal of freedom in when and how you met your pre-determined goals, and you could make some meaningful choices that would be reflected in the outcome of the game. In DA2, the rails are right out there in the open for you to see. What little control you have over the plot is almost entirely cosmetic. Just about the only meaningful decisions you can make lie in how you manage your relationships with your companions, and even then you have to work pretty hard to alter the outcome of any events in which they are involved. Essentially, the most you can do is alter their opinion of you enough to trigger one of two powers which is based on their friendship/rivalry meter, or chase a useful ally off, only to have them show up and do whatever they were going to do to advance the plot anyway. Every major plot point is scripted. If you decide to help Anders, he betrays you. If you decide not to help him, he goes ahead and does The Bad Thing on his own. If you kick him out of the party, he turns up automagically at the key moment to stab you in the face. There are a good half-dozen missions which you are required to go on in order to advance the plot, in which you race to save someone from deadly peril or prevent some terrible event, only to show up Seconds Too Late in a cutscene where your only 'choice' is in how bitterly you protest your predestined fate. Even the grand denoument of the game, in which you must choose a side in the conflict between Meredith and Orsino. boils down to 'would you like to fight your way through the hordes of demons and abominations before or after you fight Orsino?'
Which, inexorably, leads us to the primary flaw with Dragon Age II... the plot. If you can't affect the outcome of the story, the story had better be pretty damned good. This one is... pretty OK, I guess? I've certainly read worse fantasy novels. I've definitely sat through worse movies. The developers should at least be commended for having corrected the biggest flaw with Dragon Age Origins: the villains. In the first game, you're up against two major villains: the Darkspawn and Teyrn Loghain. The Darkspawn are a horde of mindless, speechless, motivation-less zombies, and Loghain is allegedly a brilliant strategist and subtle politician who makes a series of apocalyptically stupid decisions despite having all of the relevant data readily available to him at all times. Neither of these is really a compelling antagonist. Even the Archdemon who leads the Darkspawn horde and is the final boss battle of the game is... Some dragon? The third one you encounter over the course of the game, at that? Very anticlimactic. Dragon Age II is better-served in the villain department. In Bartrand, Quentin, the Arishok, Knight-Commander Meredith and Firxt Enchanter Orsino, you are pitted against a series of fully-realized characters who have reasons for what they do. They aren't always 'good' or 'valid' reasons, but they are consistent with the established characterization of each antagonist. Bartrand is never portrayed as anything other than greedy, self-centered and short-sighted. So, when he does something ill-advised, you think, "Well, that's what Bartrand would do." Meredith acts like a paranoid megalomaniac. This is because she IS a paranoid megalomaniac, and everyone knows it. Much of the middle portion of the game is taken up with people attempting to maneuver around her or get her recalled by her superiors, because no one dares face her directly. When she finally loses it, you know it was a long time coming.
But, alas, a few acceptable villains do not save the story. For one thing, there are your trusty 'companions'. There are 7 of them (8 if you buy the 'Exiled Prince' DLC). I would rate 2 of them (Varric and Avelline) as 'trustworthy'. Of the others, Fenris manages to be both sullen and emo at all times, and will turn on you if you side with the mages. Isabella is responsible for one of the major catastrophes the game forces on you, and frequently makes herself unavailable for several missions at a stretch. Whichever one of your siblings survives the intro (either Carver or Bethany) leaves you, one way or another, at the end of Act One and may or may not return at the end of Act Three. Merrill is dumber than a box of hammers, but at least she's willful and stubborn. I don't know if it's possible to drive her away, but there were times when I desperately wanted to. Anders is a terrorist who becomes directly involved in the escalation of the Templar/Circle dispute into open warfare, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it. As near as I can tell, Sebastian's only function is to allow you to roll up a rogue and play the All Archery Squad. And to be a sanctimonious prig. In some of the only meaningful decisions you make over the course of the game, you can end the game with all of your sidekicks available, or as few as four of them. Having all of them makes the final boss fight with Meredith marginally easier. I leave it to you to decide whether the agony of listening to Anders and Fenris bitch and moan at you for 20-odd hours is worth it.
Ultimately, though, the biggest failing in the Dragon Age II plot is the plot itself. I commented to a friend of mine after my first playthrough, "It's basically Marvel's Civil War event retold in the Dragon Age setting." The game's developers bend over backwards to provide a 'balanced' view of both sides in the final conflict, both with points for and against them. The problem, just as it was in Civil War, is that even when both sides are in the wrong, inevitably one side is more wrong. Ben Franklin said it best. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." And that's the problem with Meredith's position. She's too crazy to see it, but there is literally no way to stamp out blood magic and demonic possession. Magery is an inherited condition. Even killing every mage in existence won't do it, as there'll just be new ones born tomorrow, and they will be (understandably) reluctant to reveal themselves to you. If you get on her good side, Meredith will tell you her tale of woe, about how her sister was a mage, and her parents hid her from the Circle, and she fell prey to a demon and wiped out half their town before the Templars caught her. Which is awful, of course. No one wants that. But Meredith has turned herself into Batman, or tried to, and she's not up to the task. Outside of the pages of a superhero comic, no one could be. Meredith repeatedly asks some variant on the question, "What do we tell the victims of an apostate mage's crimes? Shall we tell them we could have stopped him, but chose not to abrogate his freedom?" And my answer (which was never available in the dialogue options) is, "Yes. Of course." This may sound callous, but shit happens, and people die. It is a mad, bad, dangerous world. People kill each other all the time without magical powers or demonic mind control. No one gets to live forever. As attractive as the notion of 'proactively stopping evil/crime/death/misfortune/terrorism before it happens' sounds, it cannot be achieved, and all you can accomplish is to create more and worse problems. As Meredith amply demonstrates, by progressively tightening her grip until even loyal mages resort to desperate measures to defend themselves, or just to escape her jurisdiction. The whole 'liberty v. security' theme has been cropping up a lot in the media over the past decade. No doubt this is a response to 9/11 and the 'War on Terror'. I've mentioned Civil War, but I could also compare DAII to the Star Wars prequels or Joss Whedon's Serenity. Or Battlestar Galactica. Perhaps the most interesting comparison, though, is to Dune. Meredith finds herself in much the same position as Paul Atreides: uniquely qualified to predict a castastrophe, but her every attempt to prevent it only makes it worse. Paul eventually accepted it and moved on. Meredith allows it to literally destroy her.
All of which actually makes the game sound good, or at least thought-provoking. And I suppose it is. But it's intensely frustrating to sit through. It would be bad enough in a book, where it would be story happening to someone else. But in a role-playing game, you're a participant. Even when you're just along for the ride (as you so often are in this game), you feel like you're involved. And it's a damned shame you can't just punch that crazy bitch in the mouth and tell her to get over herself. Sure, you'd end up fighting her anyway, but it'd be SO much more satisfying.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Mission Statement
Many moons ago, I don't actually remember when or how, I stumbled across the blog of one Christopher J. Sims and thought, "Now there's a clever idea! I should start a blog and post every day in order to develop MY writing chops, too!"
So, I promptly took a nap and forgot about it.
About a year later, when New Year's Resolution time came around, I resolved to get right on that.
About a year after that, I made starting a blog my resolution again... "This time, for sure!"
About a year after that... Well, you get the picture.
So, it's been at least half a decade of inaction and can't-be-arsedness. But today is different. Today is not the same. This time, for the first time since I resolved to start a blog, I am unemployed. Which stark reality has thrown my usual, "Eh, whatever, maybe tomorrow..." mentality into sharp relief. I don't know where to start looking for work. I don't know how I'm gonna pay the bills with the economy the way it is. I don't even know if I'll qualify for unemployment yet. I have no plan. I am, in fact, screwed.
But I do know one thing. Chris Sims wrote something in his blog every day, and now he's a full-time writer. If he can do it, then I... Well, I probably can't. But it's better than sitting here feeling sorry for myself.
So, now I have a plan. Which is more than I had when I got up from my desk for the last time this morning.
So, I promptly took a nap and forgot about it.
About a year later, when New Year's Resolution time came around, I resolved to get right on that.
About a year after that, I made starting a blog my resolution again... "This time, for sure!"
About a year after that... Well, you get the picture.
So, it's been at least half a decade of inaction and can't-be-arsedness. But today is different. Today is not the same. This time, for the first time since I resolved to start a blog, I am unemployed. Which stark reality has thrown my usual, "Eh, whatever, maybe tomorrow..." mentality into sharp relief. I don't know where to start looking for work. I don't know how I'm gonna pay the bills with the economy the way it is. I don't even know if I'll qualify for unemployment yet. I have no plan. I am, in fact, screwed.
But I do know one thing. Chris Sims wrote something in his blog every day, and now he's a full-time writer. If he can do it, then I... Well, I probably can't. But it's better than sitting here feeling sorry for myself.
So, now I have a plan. Which is more than I had when I got up from my desk for the last time this morning.
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