When Dragon Age 2 was released last March, it sparked a lot of complaints and controversy amongst the fandom. Within several weeks, the game went from being the highly anticipated sequel of the highly successful "Dragon Age: Origins", to a common find on the "previously enjoyed" racks at stores. Forums erupted with complaints, mostly focused around the much smaller scope of Dragon Age 2 when compared to the abundant quests, large world and expansive plot line of Origins.
Considering that all of Dragon Age 2 takes place within the City of Kirkwall and the surrounding mountain of Sundermount, it is true that the game is - at least geographically - much less expansive than Origins, which took place across the entire kingdom of Ferelden. The game also got rid of elements such as the Chanter's Board and the Mage's Collective, which allowed for an incredibly large amount of quests. However, it is foolish to assume that a smaller scale means less quality; rather then being inferior, Dragon Age 2 is simply a different type of game. Many great games take place within a smaller setting; the critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham Asylum took place entirely within Arkham island, and the classic Silent Hill series was completely contained within the town of Silent Hill. Saying that a game is flawed because it is less expansive is not an accurate statement, as a smaller setting can often add a lot to a game, which I will argue is the case with Dragon Age 2.
One of the most prominent ways in which a smaller setting can benefit a game is in the intimacy it can create for plot and characters. In Origins, once your Warden's origin story is complete, he or she as an individual becomes more or less irrelevant, and the plot becomes driven by your companions. Although you can make dialogue choices, and establish a romance with another character, the actual story of the Warden as a person more or less vanishes, and he/she becomes a sort of "stand in" for the generic hero. Even the companions' individual stories are mostly retold through dialogue, rather than actually shown: with the exception of Alistair, Loghain and Morrigan, everyone's major storylines happen before they even meet the Warden, or during the quest in which they meet the Warden, and once they join the party nothing else really happens to them at all. Their individual storylines are sacrificed in order to make room for the story of the Blight, and the large-scale "save the world" story takes precedence.
Dragon Age 2, on the other hand, avoids a large-scale story until the very end, focusing instead on showing the journeys of individual characters. The Champion is shown growing from a poor refugee into the Champion of Kirkwall, experiencing great loss, family conflicts and complex relationships with every character he/she meets. You get to know the champion's family intimately: not just in an origins story at the beginning of the game like in Origins, but throughout the entire game. Characters in the game are also constantly growing and encountering new events in their lives; the player gets to see Merrill's constant attempts to learn more about her people and the consequences of her actions, Fenris' constant longing for revenge, Isabella's quests for freedom and forgiveness, Aveline's longing for acceptance and stability, and many others. Although it is true that the game lacks the quantity of quests that were present in Origins, it makes up for this in quality; short, generic and uninvolving quests from the Chanter's Board may have given the player something to do, bur Dragon Age 2 makes every quest count, and makes sure that the player gets a substantial dose of plot, character and emotion from each quest that they complete. A solid example of how sometimes a smaller scale can be better: the lack of an overarching, far-reaching, 'save the world' meta-plot allows for more intimate, meaningful "micro-plots" that really draw the player into the game.
Ultimately, however, I would like to stress that this argument should not have been necessary in the first place, as the fandom's choice to judge Dragon Age 2 strictly on how it measured up to Dragon Age: Origins is ridiculous. A game should be judged on its own merit, rather than in comparison to other games in the same series. The expectation for Dragon Age 2 to be the exact same type of game as its predecessor is a bad way to go into a game, as the player becomes too distracted by what is missing or different to realize all the great things about the game that they are playing. Every Final Fantasy game (with the exception of X-2 and XIII-2) has been significantly different from the one that came before it. The second Zelda game was a side-scroller, completely changing the overhead action-adventure gameplay of its predecessor. Games have proven time and time again that sequels can be incredibly different from their predecessors, while still being amazing games in their own right. Therefore, gamers should spend less time complaining that Dragon Age 2 is too small-scale when compared to Origins, and more time discovering all that is great about it- especially considering that many of these great things stem from the fact that it is on a smaller scale.
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