I would agree with all of this. There were a few things I struggled with when I first played DA2. The first combat I entered watching the animations, felt like I was watching an old Chinese Kung Fu flick on fast forward.
I mean, the combat animations are a massive improvement from Origins IMO, but I can certainly see why it might have been surprising.
The art direction threw me off as well. In the first game, your Qun companion look like a large somewhat oddly shaped man. In DA2 they became huge bull men and I couldn't help but think, "Where did this come from?".
You may be surprised to learn, where it came from was the original concept art. Qunari were always intended to be large bull men, but they couldn’t get the head models to work with helmets in Origins.
Flemeth looked like harmless old lady in DA - that was kind of the point. In DA2 she looked like the human form of a demon queen.
Yeah, that was an odd change, but I loved it. She also had very little involvement in DA2.
It wasn't that any of it looked bad, but it was a pretty big disconnect for me. Also, I couldn't see any reason for it.
I think the fairly obvious reason is to establish a recognizable visual identity for the series. Origins’ visual style was incredibly generic, indistinguishable from any medieval-esque European fantasy. Which I understand a lot of people liked about it, but I also understand why, when it became clear that the IP had legs as a series, they would want to make more visually distinctive. They may have gone a
little too far with the elves, though personally I really liked how alien they looked.
The character of Hawke was okay, but I was a little bummed that we didn't get the customization options that the first game had.
Yeah, I struggled
hard with that at first, but once I understood what the game was trying to do and resolved to meet it on its own terms, I fell in love with the character. Particularly “purple” female Hawke, although my preference now is to gradually shift from “blue” to “red” over the course of the three acts.
The scope of the game was smaller. If you're going to zoom in on single location (City of Kirkwall), then make me care about that location - the game never did.
The smaller scope and personal stakes are my favorite thing about the game, and I
adore Kirkwall.
I felt like the entire Qun arc could have been skipped and little would changed. The Red Lyrium was interesting, but I found everything else completely forgettable.
Act 2 is kind of a weird tangent that doesn’t really connect well to Acts 1 and 3. Product of the incredibly rushed dev cycle. But, it did at least flesh out the Qunari and their relationship with Thedas and Magic.
I liked the story of Inquisition, but I wish it leaned more into the Inquisition itself. It gets talked about a lot, but the gameplay didn't go there enough. I liked having to pick various options about things from your advisors, and I wished it had gone there more often. Thematically, it seemed to want to address weighty matters like the ancient elves and their gods and the attitudes of the entire human religion, but too often the gameplay was, "Here's your D&D party, go and kill some orcs".
Yeah, the whole commanding a military aspect was something the devs really wanted to make happen, but never quite manifested. Which is too bad, since it sounded like it would have been really cool, had they managed to execute on the concept better.
