14 DAY TRIAL // Dragon Age 2 brings quite a lot of improvements over its predecessor, Dragon Age: Origins.
We've already talked about how much better playing as a mage is in the new title, and how the dialog wheel, even if it can be a bit confusing, is a step forward over the list of phrases from the first game.
Now, we're talking about another big change brought forth by Dragon Age 2: the addition of a voice to Hawke, the main character of the game.
Dragon Age: Origins featured a silent protagonist, who only uttered a few witty remarks when responding to commands.
This decision was motivated by the amount of customization offered by the game in choosing your own origin: you could either be a human, elf or dwarf, each coming from different backgrounds like noble or urban ones, not to mention the fact that you could choose your gender.
This, according to BioWare, would've required a huge amount of work in terms of voice acting, which wouldn't have paid off.
In the second game, however, things aren't as customizable because you play as Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall, who can either be a male or female.
As such, BioWare decided to give the hero or heroine a proper voice.
The acting is spot on no matter the gender, but the female Hawke does manage to really convey all of the different tones you can choose, as opposed to the male Hawke, who struggles a bit with the snarky tone, at least from my experience.
As you can imagine, with such a change, many were quick to criticize it, complaining that the sacrificing of customization options in order for a voice to be present wasn't fair, breaking the immersion for serious fans of role-playing games.
Critics do need to remember, however, that we're just guiding Hawke to his eventual outcome, that of becoming the Champion of Kirkwall, so he's not just an empty vessel acting on our behalf, like in Origins.
Giving the main hero a voice can sometimes work against the goal of the developers, but, in Dragon Age 2, it manages to make Hawke and his/her adventures that much more memorable.