Dragon Age 2 is a stark contrast to the epic saga of Dragon Age: Origins.
Origins followed the saga of the last Grey Warden as he gathered an army to stop the darkspawn Blight. The story culminated with an epic battle against the Archdemon itself. While the story is formulaic, the implementation was top-notch. The overarching plot was epic in scope, and within that were 3 fleshed-out subplots where you had to win the allegiance of the factions which pledged their aid to the Grey Wardens during a darkspawn Blight. Add a large number of side-quests and some interesting companions, and you have DA:O.
DA2 eschewed the traditional fantasy epic to follow Hawke, a refugee, as he arrives in the city of Kirkwall and ascends to power over the course of a decade. The game focuses on a single city and the politics within that city, rather than the broad view of many factions and cultures that DA:O provided. This is not a bad thing! Not every person can be a world-saving hero, and I'd seriously worry for the world if it needed to be saved with great frequency. With proper implementation, a politically-focused tale can be just as compelling as the epic one.
The problem is, in fact, in the implementation. DA2's narrative is incoherent at best and the closest it comes to political intrigue is MAGE VS. TEMPLAR, PICK ONE!!! This perhaps wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't a blatant rip-off of one of DA:O's subplots.
Compounding the problem is the fact that neither faction is really sympathetic. In DA:O, every time I chose between factions, I had to think about it. Both sides had valid points, and reasons for doing what they did. In DA2, my decision was only based on which one I hated more. Templars are Nazi bastards who happily lobotomize any mage that looks at them funny. Mages are irresponsible assholes who use blood magic and summon demons every time you turn your back. A disproportionate number of quests involve retrieving runaway mages and deciding what to do with them--which is supposed to link back to the tension between mages and templars, but just makes you hate all of them with an intensity equal to one hundred suns.
You spend a lot of the game without any clear direction. Act 1: Go on an expedition. Act 2: Put down an uprising. Act 3: Kill leader of a nazi state. None of these plots have anything to do with one another, and the last boss doesn't really even become your enemy until 30 minutes before the game ends. Each act would be suitable episodes for backstory DLC, but as the narrative for a game, they're unfocused, disconnected, and entirely inadequate.
DA2 is characterized by minutiae. You're given many choices throughout the game, but ultimately none of the choices mean much. You can choose to take mages back to the circle, or set them free--but either way you end up having to hunt them down in a future chapter after they fled and turned to blood magic. Even when you make choices at major plot points, you're really just reacting to events as they unfold rather than driving them forward. You're a killing machine that happens to be at the right place at the right time. And while your actions do have something of an effect on the world, the simplest way of measuring your influence would be to imagine what things would be like had you not been there.
Act 1: Well, no one gave a rat's ass about your expedition to begin with, so no change to the city at all.
Act 2: You put down the leader of the opposition. Of course, the leader of the templars and the leader of the mages were right fucking behind you and could have put him down had you not been there.
Act 3: Well, thanks to GAYMAGE WHO WILL NOT BE NAMED, the battle that took place would have occurred anyway--you just happen to be there to kill the eventual victor. That IS a change, but the fallout of the events would have happened regardless.
What was the fallout? Mages across the world rebelled against the Templars, plunging everything into chaos. This was told as sort of an afterthought in the epilogue.
I've read once that one key to good story telling is to start the story as late as possible. In this case, that little blurb where the mages rebel and the world falls into chaos? That would be an interesting plot! That's where a hero is really needed.
The story of the DA2? It could have been some blurb about how it all started. In fact, the protagonist wasn't even really all that important, but it would have made for an interesting (short) DLC about the history of the MageWar, or whatever they decide to call it.
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