LO1- Game analysis: Dragon age 2

For Dragon age 2 I will be using the criteria to analyse how the developers have managed to create their intended gaming experience.
Dragon age 2 is considered a fantasy adventure RPG because of it’s content. There is over 50 hours of gameplay if you choose to explore all of the world via side-quests quests and theres both treasure and collectibles for those that do. This offers consumers a wide site of exploration during their playthrough, however other adventure games can be more open-world as well as offering more ‘loot’ to the player. For instance the Witcher 3, also an RPG, which has far more open world exploration in store for the player. The Mass effect trilogy is very similar to Dragon age when it comes to genre and that is a critically acclaimed series of it’s kind.

In Dragon age you play as Hawke, a fe/male fighter of whom will be either a mage, warrior or rogue depending on the players decision. They move to the city Kirkwall after the destruction of their home and must work their way up in the city via the help of their companions and gaining notoriety from main quests. The action RPG gameplay allows you to switch between these companions and use their classes to fight, you also have the option to be more tactical and chose each characters move before beginning an attack. Dragon age is a lot about your relationship with your companions, because of the narrative you will try and build this up as much as possible to get more out of the gaming experience. The story connects with the target audience (teenagers) as it takes place in a world of magic and intrigue, whilst the characters may all be older than the target audience they are all very different- players relate to at least one of them on some level and root for this companion.

Bioware started by building cartoon animatic to get feel for game before actually beginning to make the Dragon age levels and characters using 3D modelling.When they started properly developing the game they used the Dragon age engine they had built. In order to enhance the gameplay Bioware made sure the combat was faster and more responsive in comparison to Dragon age: Origins; as well as stepping up the graphics for players. The dialogue system from Origins was replaced by the ‘’wheel’’ so the players knew what effect their speech was going to have. The quest system makes players more interested in achieving tasks as they will be awarded with equipment for their character for doing so and be able to advance through the game.

The characters are relevant to the target audience as they manage to have dialogue that the player can both empathise with and laugh at. Each of them has a different personality and backstory; there will be at least one that teenagers playing will relate to. As it is a fantasy adventure not every companion is human; there are other races such as elves or dwarves! Your companions are a very important factor of Dragon age, as it is an RPG the way you communicate with them will affect whether they like you or not which can have repercussions. Overall they are very strong characters, when speaking to each one of them you will be able to notice a difference in the way they prefer you to act around them to get a higher friendship which gives you a great sense of their personalities.

The challenge of the game is to complete both main story and side quests in order to gain approval with your companions and rise to a higher position within the city of Kirkwall. This challenge is very engaging as the game spans over a decade, because of this the player feels as though they know each character better as well as the city of Kirkwall and few locations surrounding it. The combat within the game is key to the games success as it is fast paced and considered a ‘step up’ from the prequel. It manages to engage with the narrative because of the three different classes evident within battles, for instance you may choose a mage as your protagonists class. A mage plays differently to a rogue or warrior as well as being treated differently within the world and narrative. Throughout the game your character will level up and gain more abilities to keep the player interested in testing these out.

The target audience of the game are teenagers (15-18 years old) as its more of a fantasy game yet still contains themes which can be hard hitting at times with a series of fantastical characters to explore. It doesn’t have as much realism as other games might and the story has the opportunity to be slightly less developed as the fantasy nature of the genre tends to take over, because of this mature adults would be less interested in playing it. Other games targeting a similar audience are the mass effect and Bioshock trilogies, Dragon age 2 has been reviewed as not having as ingenious of a story line as either of these video games but still makes to do well targeting it’s desired audience within its combat and character development.

This game is available for Xbox 360, PS3, Microsoft windows and Mac OS X. I’d say that Dragon age 2 is better suited to Xbox 360 and PS3 as the remotes have triggers on them that can be used for combat. As well as this, using console controllers means you can make more drastic changes on the control system so the gameplay is more suited to you.