Dragon Age Series - Retrospective

PopMatters is looking back to the Dragon Age games in a somewhat positive way. Here is a bit on Dragon Age 2:

All the little details that made up the grand world of Origins were replaced with a small, unchanging, and shallow world where a deeply personal—if disjointed—story was told. This game wasn’t about the last hope for the world; it was the story of a small group of people that (accidentally) put a revolution in place. Gone are the plethora of conversation options that put the player into a unique role of his or her own, now the player controlled Hawke, who fit into the role of paragon, renegade, or indecisive smartass when either of the other two extremes didn’t seem to fit. Hawke didn’t shape the world the way that the warden did, in fact, Hawke was just a set piece being swept up in all the other changes that the player had no control over. Unlike the warden, Hawke did not have several possible personalities. Hawke was just a bystander that benefited from the cultural hegemony. No matter what the player’s choice, Hawke would become wealthy, celebrated, and greatly respected, Hawke would be given extraordinary political influence, and everyone would agree that he deserved his laurels and none of that would mean a damn before the credits ended