#84: Dragon Age 2: Pacing and Plot Structure

Some time ago, I played Dragon Age: Origins. Back then, I expressed issues with how it was paced, citing The Fade and The Deep Roads in particular as two segments of bad filler content. Recently, I have revisited the franchise with Dragon Age 2. Despite being in the same series, the two have quite different forms of pacing. Because of their differences, I think that taking a moment to compare the two of them and their structures should be interesting.

With Origins, the plot structure was modular. After the initial tutorial missions, the player is given free reign to take on the four plot branches that compose the middle of the game in any order they choose. Each of these modules has its own plot and locations, separate from the rest aside from one or two instances. At the end of the game, the player's actions in these individual segments will be reflected back in the form of how each faction thinks of them and how much they are willing to help in the grand finale. The result is a fairly free-form gaming experience, within limits.

This structure allows Origins to give each module its own feel, but there is a drawback to this classic role-playing approach. When these sections can be so thoroughly quarantined from the others, it grants the developers freedom to make each part longer than it should be. In particular, the designers have the leeway to create overly long exploration and dungeon locations. Dragon Age: Origins had this problem in spades. Often, any single area could take several hours to complete, more-so if the player is going for total completion. Players could spend entire game sessions feeling that nothing was accomplished in that time. Obvious padding like The Fade and The Deep Roads, during the Circle Tower and Orzammar scenarios respectively, are chief examples of how this structure permitted Bioware to do this.

On the other hand, Dragon Age 2 manages to skirt that pitfall with its narrative structure, yet introduces new ones all the same. Rather than expand on Origin's modularity, DA2 takes a different approach. Players spend all of Dragon Age 2 in the city of Kirkwall, watching it develop over the course of years. Each of the game's three acts details key events of a particular year in Kirkwall's history through the eyes of Hawke, the game's customizable, yet constant, protagonist. With a distinct beginning, middle, and end, these acts serve as the way Bioware chosen to divide the story.

What is neat about this structure is that it forces a more focused plot. Since any given act has to feed into its successors, it cannot afford to tarry around with plot points that may never be touched on again in the future. Gradually, they all, by necessity, get woven together as the story progresses. Combined with the obvious signs of a limited development cycle, this focus carried on into the dungeon-crawling as well. While a single area could take hours in Origins, DA2 takes a more succinct approach. Locations will rarely, if ever, take over a half-hour to complete, which gives a much greater sense of accomplishment when checking the quest log after a long session. Individual plot elements and their handling can be debated on, but there is no denying that the plot structure for Dragon Age 2 lends to a faster pacing than its predecessor.

Having said that, pacing is in more than just a game's narrative structure. Combat also tends to have its own tempo in RPGs like Dragon Age. Origins in particular had a slower, more methodical system. Enemies tended to have a fairly high amount of health, so even fights against small parties could take some time. Unfortunately for Bioware, since skill and equipment setups mattered significantly more than tactical planning mid-battle, conflicts were often decided from the outset.

Rather than go the route of its direct predecessor, Dragon Age 2 takes inspiration from its contemporaries, most notably the likes of Mass Effect 2. As with Origins, equipment and skill setups are important to one's quality of life when going up against enemies. The difference here is that the moment-to-moment action has become equally as important, with an emphasis on faster combat. It can still be said that the player will steamroll most encounters in the game, but it feels more smooth than than of the previous game in the franchise, largely due to its accelerated pace.

Even if the overall combat's pace is improved, there is problem that adversely affects it: Foes have a strong tendency to spawn in waves. When playing Dragon Age: Origins, the types and number of enemies in a given location was usually set in stone. Because players could see what they were about to fight, they could better plan their attack. Even if a single target took some time to beat down, it was possible to guess how long it will take to win.

This is not the case in Dragon Age 2. In most engagements, players will clear out a given set of enemies only to find that another group has spawned in, ready to fight to the death. Typically, any one fight will be composed of three waves in total. Though individual foes, and sometimes enemy groups, can be felled quickly, the fact that more will inevitably appear immediately afterwards makes it more difficult to anticipate how long a given encounter will take to complete. As a result, even if a fight is not long, it can be made to feel long thanks to how many mooks participate in a single battle. Even if Dragon Age 2 is better paced than Origins, this misstep starts to agitate after playing for a long time.

In terms of both story and combat, Dragon Age 2 drastically improves on the pacing of the game that came before. Enhancing the original structure by focusing the overall plot line and streamlining the fighting resulted in a much smoother flow. Though certain elements like the ending and obvious, blatant reuse of assets can be rightfully criticized by detractors, Dragon Age 2 is certainly worth defending in how it gives the player a strong feeling of progress.

#72: Narrative Pacing: The Oddity of Games

It has been some time since I finished my adventures in the world of Dragon Age: Origins and its various DLC packs. To that end, I have been comparing my experiences with that game to others that I have played. What I was pondering through this introspection is the question of narrative pacing in the world of video games. As with most properties of storytelling, the general rules governing narrative pacing undergo changes when applied to this new realm of media. Since a lot of my problems in Dragon Age: Origins came from its pacing, and Awakening felt better because it improved said pacing, it would be pertinent to contemplate the topic in this week's post.

One of the things that stands out most to me with regards to video game pacing is how players are willing to wait a little longer for the plot to advance, in comparison to consumers of other media. In a book, if the plot was about solving a murder mystery, and then the author spent an entire chapter discussing the philosophical nature of crime scene investigation and criminology, people would wonder why that decision was made. While that information may certainly be tangentially related to the plot and interesting in and of itself, it would not be relevant to the mystery and the main plot of the book. Film also has this kind of problem. If a movie character in a spy movie was talking to another character, then some random bad guys step into the scene for the protagonist to beat up for five or ten minutes, followed by the protagonist resuming their conversation where they left off, the audience would be completely confused. They would think to themselves what the point of that detour was, why it took so long, and why it was not cut from the final product.

However, this is demonstrably not the case in video games. As players, we accept when a conversation in a video game is interrupted by an attack by random gang-bangers. In fact, that tends to be fairly normal as far as games are concerned. The reason is pretty obvious. People purchase video games so that they may play video games. It is okay for the story to briefly take the backseat, because more often than not it is not the reason players are sitting on their couch with a controller in hand. We can comfortably go dungeon crawling for about an hour or so without any advancement of the main plot until the end. The model of story->gameplay->story->gameplay has been a mainstay in gaming for as long as games began to focus on their narratives. Most other mediums would consider it weird for the plot to go so long without advancing in a meaningful way, but that is so common that it still remains a very ingrained model for game designers.

Less, but still fairly, common is when the story of a game takes a detour in order to prolong the length of a game and allow for more gameplay. These kinds of additions can be hit or miss, depending on their context. For example, Fort Frolic is one of the most loved segments of the original Bioshock game. In terms of the central conflict of Atlas vs. Andrew Ryan, nothing major is accomplished in Fort Frolic and the plot comes to an overall standstill. Having said that, both the environment Fort Frolic and the madness of its master, Sander Cohen, are so interesting that most players either would not notice or would not care. Though it adds nothing to the narrative, the game is richer for the existence of this content.

By contrast, The Fade in Dragon Age: Origins is one of the most reviled example of this going wrong, for good reason. While attempting to rescue the mages in the Circle Tower, the player party is ambushed by a Sloth Abomination and forced into a deep sleep. In the world of Dragon Age, a person's soul is in a spiritual realm called The Fade, home to both divine and demonic entities alike, when sleeping. This sets up a three hour segment where the protagonist needs to break out of The Fade, rescuing his/her other party members in the process. Like Fort Frolic, it does not serve any real purpose beyond adding length to the game. Unlike Fort Frolic, it is not interesting enough in its own right and drags too long to hold the attention of the player. Along with the Deep Roads, The Fade has a major negative impact on the pacing of the game. It is so reviled that there are mods whose sole purpose is to remove that one section from the game. Regardless of the rest of the game, the mere existence of this content does make Dragon Age: Origins lesser.

There is also the fact that gaming is a unique medium in that the skill of the player can also have a direct impact on the pacing. A skilled, or veteran player will have an easier time completing individual sections of a given game, resulting in an overall faster pace than a newcomer/novice player. Books and films have easier times in pacing themselves because they do not require such skill, thanks to their passive natures. The game has a tougher time because the mechanics need to be paced as much as the plot or any individual gameplay section needs to be. Even then, there always exists the possibility than a player will never finish a game because they just cannot complete a difficult mission. It is a unique challenge that I truly do not know how to overcome.

In the end, it is hard to determine if there is a specific pacing that can appeal to the most people. Like many things in life, it comes down to the individual to decide if a game's pacing is fit for them or not. Movies and books tend to have very specific formulas for the way they are paced, but that is something others have discussed before. Because each game is so radically different from the next, they call for different structures and styles. Each such structure requires its own unique pacing to best take advantage of that. I do not profess to have concrete answers as to how games should be paced or how developers should consider the type of game they are making when considering pacing. However, I do think it is an interesting question to ask after playing a game like Dragon Age: Origins.

Impressions #8: Dragon Age: Origins

Bioware and I have a very strained relationship. I want to love their games. However, their games have a tendency to do everything they can to irritate me. Though I enjoy their writing more often than not (which is NOT license to tell me how much you love/hate Mass Effect 3), there is almost always an odd quirk or two that comes up so often that it becomes a real issue. This is why it has taken me so long to actually sit down and take the time to play Dragon Age: Origins. Last year's Steam Summer Sale proved the ideal time to purchase the Ultimate Edition of the game, but I had never actually played it up until now. Having finished my playthrough of Origins, I have quite a bit to say about it.

Let us start with the thing that irritated me the most: the combat. I could not stand the combat in Dragon Age: Origins. Battles take place in real time. When the player party comes close enough to an enemy unit, battle starts instantly. Characters draw their weapons and attack enemies, either with skills that consume mana/stamina or weapon strikes. Tactics can be adjusted by either manipulating the step-by-step procedure each character follows, in a style similar to the gambits from Final Fantasy XII, or by pausing the game to tell them what to do manually. At the end of the fight, health, mana, and stamina is restored.

This seems simple enough on paper. However, even though I was playing on Easy, the system presented a number of issues to me. For example, there were a number of times where I found my allies near death. I paused the game to order them to drink a health potion. More frequently than I would have liked, these actions were interrupted by enemy attacks. That is not where I draw issue. What angered me is that when they get back up, they pretend as if the order to drink a health potion never happened and resume their combat routine. In the period it would take me to pause and reissue the order, the ally would typically get knocked down again. This would continue until they died.

On top of that, the combat even outside of circumstances like the one described above felt much like a chore. With few exceptions, encounters fell into one of two categories. One type of fight was so trivial that just allowing my characters to whack an enemy's shins until they die was more than enough to take care of them. The other type was tough enough that the player would need to pause almost after every single action so that new orders could be issued and time was not wasted. In either of these cases, it feels more often than not that the game's battle system should have been Turn-Based, rather than Real Time with Pause.

Turn-Based Combat would give players a greater ability to make tactical decisions than the Real Time with Pause system used in Dragon Age: Origins. This would also free them from the burden of constantly needing to stop and pause the game, switching between characters and fiddling with their orders in just the right way. It brings a much needed layer of precision into the gameplay, allowing players to more accurately plan and perform combat actions without forcing them to repeatedly halt the action. Real Time with Pause did not really work in Baldur's Gate and it does not work with Dragon Age either. I found that fighting became much more tedious in both games because of that system. Not to say that Real Time with Pause cannot work at all. Rather, I do not think it was a strong fit for Dragon Age.

Though I do dislike the combat, that was not my biggest complaint. The thing that bothered me most was the exploration of the various areas in the game. It is typical RPG fare. Players and their party explore dungeons/forests/towns, completing objectives. Along the way, they can find side quests, treasures, monsters, etc. Traps will also be scattered throughout dungeons for Rogue characters to find and disarm. Classic fantasy RPGs are the main source of inspiration, and it clearly shows.

Unfortunately, this is as much a negative as it is a positive. What I mean by that is that most of the dungeons in the game are far too long. Exploring an area just enough to get through the main story can easily take two or three hours, and that is just one area. Dragon Age: Origins is also infamous for areas that can take much longer than that, like the Fade or the Deep Roads. Unlike most other games I have played, I rarely feel like I have made any significant progress in a single session of Dragon Age. The game feels artificially long because of this. As a gamer, I feel that if a single dungeon takes more than one hour to clear its main quest objective, it is far too long. Anything of greater length than that, for a single dungeon, is disrespectful to my time.

The level design was also made worse in the most of the padding came in the form of unavoidable combat. Were it not for all the many, many fights that I would have to go through to get anything accomplished in Dragon Age: Origins, I might have had a more favorable impression of the battle system. Unfortunately, the game throws waves and waves of enemies at the player. Most exits to individual zones are blocked by foes. Even as a Rogue, it was impossible to sneak around them. However, that has nothing to do with my, or my character's, ability to sneak. Rather, it is thanks to the way the game registers combat. Being “in combat” or “out of combat” is determined purely by how close the player character is to an enemy. When I walked silently across enemy lines without their knowing, I was still “in combat” because they were close to me. Sadly, players cannot change zones while in combat. Even though they did not see me and I was not attacking anything, I was “in combat” and could not proceed without killing everyone in the room. This can be made even worse when the game fails to see that all enemies have been defeated, and takes too long to transition out of combat.

And all of this begs the question. If I disliked so many aspects of this game, why on Earth did I stick to it long enough to finish? To answer that hypothetical question: I did so because the story and lore of Dragon Age: Origins is really interesting. So much so that I compelled myself to push through the torturous parts of the game to get to the next section of story and dialog. Though a lot of the plot is predictable in its own Bioware-way, there are enough twists and surprises to keep the experience feeling fresh. As one can expect from the development studio, the ensemble cast of characters in the game are very well written and come off as believable people. Player interactions with these characters are interesting and change enough small details that the game feels unique to each individual player. Also, unlike The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Dragon Age: Origins makes the player feel like they are having an impact on the world and its people. The world reacts to events that happen in the game. NPCs even comment on and acknowledge past events and deed.

One of the most interesting ways this is accomplished is through the games various origin stories. Based on the player's starting gender, race, and character class, different origin story options are available to them. Rather than just be a wall of text, these origin stories serve as the start of the game, leading up to the point where the player character becomes the Grey Warden. I played as a Human Noble, and my origin story was reflected constantly throughout the game. I felt like the game tailored itself to my story and my character, which I have great respect for. The ending is also very different depending on the alliances forged and sides taken during the player's journey, taking the more positive aspects of old-school RPG design.

Ultimately though, I will probably never play through the other origin stories. Simply because that would imply that I have any interest in going through Dragon Age: Origins a second time. I enjoyed the story exactly enough to finish it one time. I could not possibly bear playing the game again. I see why it is a popular game among RPG enthusiasts. For better or worse, it is a love letter to the old school isometric RPGs brought into 3D space. In many ways, I like and have respect for it. However, the time commitment necessary to finish the game, and the annoyances generated by its combat systems, are simply too great for me to really say that I enjoyed the game. I hear Dragon Age 2 changed things around a bit. Maybe sometime in the future, I will attempt to play that game as well. First, I will need to finish the DLC modules for Origins because I hear Awakening is pretty good. Then, I will need to wash the taste out of my mouth with something more palatable.