Triple-V Review: Dragon Age II

So, dear friends, remember that article that I posted way back in January about resolving to be patient with new releases? I think it applies here. Not that Dragon Age II is a bad game, but there is certainly room for improvement. I'll start with the good stuff.

Of Scrolls and Dragons

So in the past week, two of the major western RPGs of the year released some sort of material. Bethesda graced us with the first look at actual gameplay for Skyrim, the fifth installment in the Elder Scrolls series. And not long after that, Bioware released the demo for Dragon Age II. Now, completely ignoring the fact that DA2 comes out in less than a week, it was still a pretty good couple of weeks for us RPGers. Even Nintendo came out of their shell of secrecy and showed the people of the Game Developer's Conference (and subsequently the rest of the internet) a little footage from Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. 

Natural Laws of Fantasy Worlds

It's funny how often we assume that a world that is so unlike our own that it magic running rampant will follow the same laws. Sometimes it's done for the sake of clarity (an MMORPG set in a world where the calendar had more or less than 365 days would confuse and annoy us), or for accessibility (imagine if Wizards of the Coast had decided that their Eberron setting had 1/3rd Earth's gravity, or was a few hundred kilometers closer or further from their sun). But still, we often find that there are a few commonly accepted subversions of those laws, that occur in quite a few works. For example: