Fathomless Riches by Richard Coles

Richard Coles' account of his journey from pop stardom with the Communards, and left-wing gay activism, to priesthood is fascinating and highly readable, although it ends rather abruptly, I feel.

One of the fascinations of the book is Coles' sideways take on religion and what is important. At one stage he says:

"I realised, too, that I was one of very few people in the Church of England to have gone to a Solemn High Mass at St Alban's Holborn and there experienced a classic Protestant conversion."

In many ways the book is like the classic Protestant conversion story: "I was the wickedest of sinners but now I'm saved!" Except that the standard Evangelical tale is of salvation from drink, drugs, women, crime, whatever. Coles tells of plenty of drugs and sex (gay), but that isn't his repentance story. His story is about being saved from self-centredness and hardness of heart. It's about treating people in an appalling way and coming to regret it. That is the sin from which he has been saved by Jesus:

"And then it was as if iron bands, constricting my chest, broke and fell away and I could breathe; and a shutter was flung open, and light flooded in and I could see. And I wept and wept."

For Coles it is people and how you treat them which matters, not issues of sexual morality.

A few months ago Richard Coles and Tim Minchin wrote a pair of articles for The Big Issue about faith and Christianity. Coles' article was about people and read as a simple and heartfelt call for care and respect, which he saw religion, at its best, as being able to provide. Minchin's article, on the other hand, was about ideas and read as bright and shiny and clever ... and ultimately shallow.

The other fascinating element of the book, for me, was his insider's view of the gay, left-wing activism of the late seventies and eighties. This overlaps with a film recently out on DVD, Pride, which tells of the unlikely alliance between miners and gay activists during the Thatcher-provoked miners' strike of 1984-5. I haven't seen that film yet, although I plan to, but Coles references it as he talks about LGSM - Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners - and the unlikely cross-cultural bonds they formed with the South Wales mining communities.

There is also a lot in the book about The Communards, of course, Coles' and Jimmy Somerville's highly successful, but short-lived, pop partnership. Interesting, because well told, but not really my preferred style of music, to say the least.

There is also a fair amount about the process of actually becoming a priest, then the book suddenly halts directly after his ordination. Nothing about being a priest, nor about how his calling and his sexuality work together. Maybe he is thinking about a volume 2, or maybe he just wanted the book to do what it says on the cover: How I Went From Pop To Pulpit.

Either way his penultimate paragraph is wonderfully evocative of what the Church of England is and how it works:

"I looked into people's faces, faces that had seen me at my best and my worst, at my most vulnerable and my most triumphant, at my sleaziest and my finest, and we went to the church hall for tea and cakes and speeches and presents and I ducked out for a moment and went into church, the new curate on his new patch, for the first time."

Dragon Age Inquisition Review

A couple of months ago I posted an initial impression of the computer role-playing game Dragon Age: Inquisition. I have since given the game quite a thorough going over, so here is my full review:-

Summary - 8/10

There is a decent game in here, with the usual Bioware strength in storytelling and characters, buried under a morass of dull side-quests and brain-dead combat.

Graphics – 7/10

These are highly detailed and look good on screenshots. Visual ‘realism’ doesn’t hang together as well when playing the game, and oddities and inconsistencies stand out against the more detailed and ‘realistic’ basic graphics.

There are a number of different areas in the DAI world, each with their own area style, which gives a good sense of environmental variety. Unfortunately blurring and mistiness spoil what should be the more dramatic vistas.

Facial detail is erratic: they seem to have gone to a lot of trouble with irises, yet the whites of the eyes often turn strangely pink/red during conversations and cutscenes. Hair quality is generally poor – on medium graphics quality it is very poor – and facial hair is worse.

Many character animations are poor. Female characters tend to stoop during conversations, Cassandra in particular looks as if she suffers from permanent stomach cramps. Meanwhile a female human Inquisitor stands with arms held away from her body like a penguin, whilst Cullen minces across the room to the War Table. These are all animations we see a lot.

There is a lot of clipping goes on: hair clipping ears, Solas’ thumbs clip his clothes in conversation, arms sometimes clip bodies, and so on. This is disappointing in a modern high-budget game.

Sound & Music – 9/10

Sound effects are clear but hardly noticeable, which suggests they are done well. Basically things make the noises you expect them to.

Generally speaking, background music and ambient sounds are present but fairly minimal: they are there at the usual places but you don’t really notice them much.

The main character is voiced, with only two choices of voice for a given character type (British accent or US accent, for me). The main NPC characters are well voiced, with many old characters making a welcome return from earlier episodes. Minor characters are generally well-voiced too, although the dodgy French accent of those from Orlais becomes wearing after a while.

There is a really excellent musical interlude at (what I assume to be) the ending of the first chapter. It creates a genuinely moving and memorable moment. There are other moments where the music becomes more intense as the action or the drama does, with great effect.

There is a singer in the main tavern, singing a variety of songs (a far better variety of far better songs than Skyrim, say). I know the songs are good because I downloaded several of them separately. Unfortunately, in-game the sound in the taverns is poor, so you can’t really appreciate them (sadly unlike Skyrim where the tavern songs are positively obtrusive).

Ambient speech (the random comments made by people as you pass) varies from good to excellent. It frequently reflects actions you have taken: for example in the case of an early quest you get small family groups whose comments originally reflect adults claiming not to be hungry to encourage children to eat what little there is, which changes to comments about there being plenty for everyone “thanks to the inquisition”.

World Areas – 8/10

Dragon Age Inquisition is NOT open world, in spite of rumours to the contrary. It is the standard arrangement for such games of an overview map (accessible from a War Table or from the World Map) allowing movement between discreet game areas. Annoyingly, sometimes you need to use the War Table to get to an area, sometimes you have to use the World Map, and sometimes you can use either.

These game areas are big, far larger than anything in earlier Dragon Age episodes. As mentioned earlier they have a good variety of visual and auditory styles.

Extensive use is made of the environment to channel where the player can and cannot go, often extremely irritatingly. Extensive ranges of ten-foot high cliffs, which the game mechanics prevent you from going up, are as frustrating as they are geologically implausible.

Some of the environments have a range of difficulty levels within the same area; presumably the idea is that you have a reason to come back later. In the Hinterlands, for example, which is the first area you get to explore, there is a tunnel leading to an area where you can see a dragon in the distance. This dragon flies around for a bit then toasts your party if you hang around. That makes sense to me.

What doesn’t make sense in the same area is that different fade rifts – ‘tears’ through which demons come, which you are able to close once the demons are defeated – have very different difficulty levels, yet (as far as I can see) no visible difference between easy and hard. So the only warning you get that a particular rift is too hard for your party level is the ease with which the demons wipe you out.

Combat – 6/10

The basic combat mechanic/strategy seems to be that you hold down the fire button and press special move buttons as they become active. Attacks auto-target – sometimes to the target you are clicking over, sometimes not – and many special moves automatically jump to the selected target. It really is that mindless.

If you want to move yourself (eg to get a rogue behind an enemy ready for a backstab) and you haven’t got a special move to do it for you, then combat is very cumbersome, at least in normal mode. Similarly if you want to choose your own target(s). You can do it, using a combination of pausing and right-clicking, but the game works against you.

If you want to have your characters working together tactically, the game really works against you. NPCs retarget really quickly, and if you pause then swap characters it promptly unpauses and carries on combat.

There is a tactical combat mode which is supposed to help those who want a more thoughtful approach to combat. Unfortunately it is completely broken. It is meant to give you a top-down view of the battlefield on which you can issue orders to all your characters. The trouble is that, even in the open air, the camera is far too low, so you cannot see most of the battlefield. In principle you can move the camera around, but this is clunky on the flat, and the camera gets blocked or trapped by changes in elevation. In tunnels or enclosed spaces you cannot see anything useful at all.

Skill trees and AI options are dumbed down; even something is simple as issuing a command for all characters to 'hold' is ineffective as often as not.

Main Quest & Story – 9/10

The main storyline has parallels with that of Dragon Age Origins: the world is threatened with destruction, but before you save it you have to deal with loads of people who reckon this is a good time to focus on killing one another.

The story gameplay is mostly linear; the main option is whether you seek support from the mages or from the templars. Each has its own separate quest/area to gain that side’s support; the others form the main opponents in a later major battle.

It’s a well-balanced story, I think, with suitably major battles along the way and a satisfyingly epic ending. I like the use of an epilogue to highlight the consequences of some of the decisions you make along the way; although by and large I wasn’t that invested in most of those decisions or consequences.

The big problem with the main storyline is that it is spaced out by a need to gain ‘power’ in order to progress, and to level up your characters so they are strong enough for the next story area. You do this by going out into the various different areas on the War Table and World Map, and performing various tasks there: some meaningful and engaging, many not. Eventually you become ready to take on the next challenge and can re-engage with the story again. Since the storyline quests are flagged up as being terribly urgent when you first hear about them, these delays are quite immersion-breaking.

There appears to be a major storyline cop-out concerning Morrigan and her son (spoiler warning here, kind-of). At the end of Dragon Age Origins her pregnancy is left as a major hanging plotline, apparently heralding great mysteries to come. If you start with DAI’s default backstory, she wasn’t even pregnant, so there is no son. If you set up your own backstory then you can make it so that she does have a son, but it all seems to be a damp squib. Things are left open as to possible consequences in later episodes, but in DAI this non-event is a real disappointment.

Side Quests – 7/10

Each area has its own fairly major quest, and some have quests directly relating to the story quest and/or quests relating to one of the followers. These quests are often quite engaging. There are also various activities aimed at building up power, typically by closing fade rifts and claiming key points for the Inquisition.

In addition the main areas are all smothered in trivial quests. Some of these are the traditional ‘fetch’ quests: go from A to B to collect something, or talk to someone, then go back to A, possibly via C. Standard filler for cRPGs when the writers run out of ideas.

But the worst are the ‘collect’ quests. There are multi-area quests which want you to collect a hundred and odd ‘shards’ to unlock a series of doors, or sixty mosaic pieces, making up five mosaics, and so on. Probably the most annoying of these is a bottle collection quest which insists on triggering a ‘hidden object nearby’ indicator which is normally used for things which are important, so you can’t even just ignore that one. There is also a stack of such quests within each area: collect various minerals or herbs; collect locks to build prisons; collect intestines of creatures killed by dragons; and so on.

Follower quests are obtained by talking to the follower/advisor characters; presumably only if they don’t dislike you. The early quests often seem a bit trivial but as you go through the quest series it can become more engaging and even moving. Romanceable characters have additional quests to advance the romance.

Replayability – 7/10

There are basically two main routes through the storyline, and a player would typically only do a proportion of the character quests in one run-through, along with a single romance quest (out of eight). If the combat worked properly there would also be a number of different class and race options.

In practice, I have played through it once when I explored the available areas and got the hang of how to play the game reasonably efficiently and without too much frustration. I then went through a second time in hard mode choosing the alternate options and a very different romance (Sera rather than Cassandra). I started a third run-through to try a few different things but got bored part way through. The trouble is that whilst there is a lot of content in the game, too much of it is basically dull and/or repetitive.

The greatest problem for long term replayability is the lack of any modding tools. The game cries out for interesting quests to fill out the vast areas full of nothing much interesting, and the combat needs a total makeover. Not to mention more cosmetic mods such as decent hair, and a greater variety of customisation options.

Conclusion

Dragon Age Inquisition is an initially good-looking game, which ultimately disappoints. Whilst it is far better than Dragon Age II, it has none of the originality and replayability which made Dragon Age: Origins great.

Dragon Age Inquisition - Early Impressions

Dragon Age Inquisition (DAI) is the third instalment in the computer RPG Dragon Age series. Dragon Age: Origins, the first, was a brilliant game, Dragon Age II was pretty horrible - bad enough to seriously dent developer Bioware's previously excellent reputation - what about Inquisition?

My first impression of DAI was poor, but as I have played on it has got better and better.

A bit of history before I attempt to articulate why. Inquisition has its roots in two venerable approaches to computer RPG games, both of which have deep literary roots.

The first approach is the mixed party of adventurers on a quest, typically to save the world, dealing with various side-quests along the way. Think Lord of the Rings. The party typically contains a tough fighter/knight sort of person, a sneaky rogue who can open locks and attack people from behind, a wimpy intellectual magic user, and a religious healer who often also doubles as a second fighter. This mix goes back to the days of Dungeons and Dragons, a tabletop game played over many a weekend by people (including myself) back in the seventies and eighties. The great thing about this approach, particular with the 'group of friends around a table' background, is that interactions between party members became an important part of the tradition. Also the D&D background insists on an openness in gameplay - allowing many different playing styles and approaches to solving the problems encountered along the way. This provides a lot of replayability for this type of game, as you can play in several different ways, and make different decisions en-route which might significantly change the way the story unfolds.

Bioware developed the classic games in this tradition: Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. They moved on to other things and Neverwinter Nights II was developed by Obsidian, taking the gaming perspective from the old isometric top-down viewpoint to a more immersive 'over the shoulder' camera. I thought this was a great game and storyline, but badly marred by the game engine, which couldn't cope with the challenges of the new approach. Then there was a gap before Bioware returned to the genre with Dragon Age: Origins, which solved the camera problems (near enough) and provided a huge amount of replayability by having half-a-dozen different starting points - depending on your choice of main character - and by providing feedback at the end about the consequences of choices made along the way. To add the icing on the cake they also provided a modding tool - allowing people to create addons and extras to go with the game. The effect of this is to extend the lifetime significantly, as graphics can be improved and extra stories and quest series added in.

The second approach is the lone hero, an all-rounder who learns the skills s/he needs along the way. The greatest exponents of this approach to cRPGs are The Elder Scrolls series by Bethesda, whose most recent example is Skyrim. This approach forgoes character interactions, replacing them with a richer, more diverse set of questlines, and a more immersive approach to fighting. As well as the main 'saving the world' quest, the game world is more of a 'sandbox' filled with quests large and small. In a Bethesda game you can replay ignoring the main quest more or less entirely, instead focussing on becoming head of the mages guild, for example, or helping one side win the civil war which is the background to the gameworld, and so on. The more D&D-derived games retain a bit of a turn-at-a-time approach to combat, where you fight by clicking on a target and letting the game engine decide if and when you hit it. Skyrim and its predecessors work more on the basis that you swing a weapon and whatever it hits takes damage; a problem if you are not very accurate and hit a town guard, say. Bethesda's games always have a wow-factor in the graphics of their environments; being also moddable means that this can be kept up to date as time, and graphics technology, moves on.

One of Bioware's stated intentions with Dragon Age Inquisition was to add a more Skyrim-like vibe to the game, compared to previous games in the series, with a more open-world and immersive feel. I had been playing Skyrim a lot over the weeks before I got DAI and would say they failed. Indeed I felt their attempts just made the initial impression of the game seem cumbersome and rather naff.

For example the environmental graphics (hills and grass and sky and suchlike) are really quite good compared to earlier games in the series, but rather meh compared to Skyrim. Plus the way all the hills and trees and suchlike are laid out tends to get in the way of travelling - such practicalities seem less well thought out than in Skyrim. The game interface seems to be aimed primarily at console controllers, so using a PC with mouse and keyboard is that little bit less intuitive and convenient.

Fighting is better than Dragon Age II - where it was awful - but is still a clicky mess. If you try to fight in real-time, rather than overtly turn-by-turn, then the game seems to choose for you who you are attacking from nearby enemies, irrespective of which enemy you are actually trying to target, and you just click away - occasionally interrupted because the mouse pointer happens to be over some other control, like the inventory button - until the enemy is defeated. Little control and no real tactics. You can pause the game (although the pause button is inconveniently placed) to give commands to other party members, but they just seem to do what they are told for a few seconds then revert to their AI which, as a default, just attacks the same enemy as the main character. Party tactics - one of the strengths of the adventurer party approach - fly out of the window. There seem to be ways around this but the default approach is pretty much brain-dead.

One alternative is to use an old-style isometric top-down view, which seems to be more controllable. Unfortunately this doesn't give a good view of large monsters, nor of the rifts floating in mid-air. I hope there are ways around this with practice.

The game world is divided into something like a dozen different areas (thus far). Each area has a stack of individual quests which give you 'power' and 'influence' when you complete them. Said 'power' and 'influence' then go toward progressing the main story quest. The area quests are mostly of the 'go to location X, kill the enemies there, and collect Y' format. There are a few linked quest-lines which start to emerge as the game goes on, but in the early parts of DAI the rich storylines of  Dragon Age: Origins or Skyrim are notable by their absence.

The overarching story quest is controlled from a central area where you can talk to your companions (so far companion interactions are a lot less interesting than is usual in such games, but that seems to be slowly improving as the game goes on), send agents off to carry out investigations, which typically open up new quest lines and/or new areas, or travel yourself to one of the game areas. This is the part of the game which is relatively novel (at least within this genre) and which is growing on me.

In fact the game is a whole is steadily growing on me. As I get further on the characters and story are finally beginning to develop, and I am finding ways around the various issues and inconveniences. The graphics and music are not memorable but they're not aggravating either, and the game does have that imponderable "I'll just do this one next section before I stop" degree of addictiveness. If this continues DAI could prove to definitely be a good game overall, but given its many flaws I can't see myself ever considering it a great game.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The movie remake:  ✮✮✮✩✩

This is a pleasantly entertaining mid-Atlantic remake of the 2009 Scandinavian original, sticking quite well to the events of Stieg Larsson's best-selling novel but losing much of its roots, its soul and its social conscience. Note that the 18 certificate is justified: sexual violence is a key theme of the story.

I watched the original film of this a year or so back, and found it powerful but rather confusing. Still, I was impressed enough that I then got the book, which made a bit more sense, followed by the rest of the Millennium trilogy. Now that the new film is available on Lovefilm I thought I'd give it a go, to see what that was like.

The first problem that struck me was the main characters. Lisbeth Salander is an angry, violent and incredibly intelligent young woman, walled off from most meaningful personal contact after many years of abuse and betrayal. Rooney Mara plays her as weak and sulky; in an early scene of rape and revenge she comes across as being mostly interested in money.

The other main character, Mikael Blomkvist, is a middle-aged investigative journalist. He's reasonably fit for his age but a most unlikely hero. He's a rather passive, courteous, stubborn man; a foil in many ways for the many powerful and abusive men who also people the novel - and, of course, a massive contrast with the angry Lisbeth. Daniel Craig tries hard, but he really doesn't fit; when he backs down from confrontation it jars.

Then there's the storyline. Watching this film it looks as though the scriptwriter has been through the book (it's a thick book) and extracted the main events that make up the basic story. Then it seems he just strung them together in a way which made 'movie sense', leaving out the themes about corruption, about hacking, about sexual violence against women, and about right-wing politics. They've turned a powerful crusading novel into a slightly strange, and safely foreign, 'entertainment'.

The feel of the film is curiously rootless. It doesn't have the dark brooding buildup of pace we are becoming accustomed to from Scandinavian drama, but it also doesn't have the action or shape of a US movie, nor the quirkiness of something from the UK. The lighting is gloomy and most of the actors speak with a slight Scandinavian accent, but to be honest it could have been made anywhere.

All that said, the film was entertaining: a pleasant enough way to spend two and a half hours. So three stars it is. Also, I'm now rereading the book, and plan to rewatch the original Swedish film version again, so this film can't be all bad.

Harry Potter & The King's Cross

We went as a family to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (a mouthful of a name!) at the Showcase Cinema in Winnersh yesterday. It was, like all of the HP movies, a fun watch: well-paced, visually dramatic, disjointed in plot, variously wooden and/or OTT in acting, and overall very entertaining. As with the other more recent HP movies it was also very sad in parts: as JK Rowling has said, if you want to fight evil there is going to be a cost.

I understand there are people who watch the movies without having read the books ... how on earth they manage to follow the plot I can't imagine. Maybe they don't; they just go along for the exciting ride. As the second part of what is really one story, this film is more incomprehensible than most. It's a year or two now since I last read the books (and about 9 months since I saw 'Part 1'), and I was feeling a little lost at times. Still, the film moves on so fast that it doesn't matter.

NB: There are spoilers coming.

When I was reading the books, waiting for the final instalment, one of the puzzles was how the climax was going to work out. The parallels with the Jesus story were already obvious, so Harry was very likely to end up sacrificing himself. But surely Rowling wouldn't be able to pull off a resurrection. Amazingly, in the book she not only pulls a resurrection off, but she also makes it obvious that this is the only way the battle against great evil could possibly be won. And she hammers the parallel home by having Harry meet Dumbledore at King's Cross station. I thought it was a masterful piece of writing. But not the sort of thing they could do in film, surely.

In fact the film handles this remarkably well, I think. Harry learns that the only way Voldemort can be defeated is if Harry offers up his own life, to be killed by Voldemort, in the final 'victory' of evil. So Harry goes to his death and is duly murdered. He carries Voldemort's evil with him down to King's Cross, then returns leaving it behind. About as clear an imagery of 'dying to sin and rising to new life' as one can hope for. Rather than fudging this, the film made it even more explicit, emphasising the 'man born to die' aspect in Snape's final gift of his memories.

The most poignant character for me, in both book and film, is Severus Snape, the Judas figure. The book gives more depth and detail, but still the film shows well how this unpleasant figure is redeemed by love, and given the courage to do what had to be done. As Harry Potter says to his son, many years later:

"Albus Severus, you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew."

My finishing quote, though, is from Albus Dumbledore himself:

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living and above all, those who live without love."

Love Wins By Rob Bell

When the religious movers and shakers, the guys with the power and the influence, are vigorously driving people away from God with messages about how hateful and judgemental He is, what can you do about it? If you're Jesus, you walk around Galilee and Judea, teaching and healing in the name of God. If you're Rob Bell you write a book. Either way, the intent is to show that God really is a God of love and faithfulness. But in doing so, they also show up the haters as being far, far from God, and they will want their revenge.

The religious right in the US were out even before Love Wins was published - they didn't care what it said, they just wanted to attack Rob Bell. Here in the UK they're not so blatant, but I was interested to read in this month's Christianity magazine an article arguing that without Hell in the message churchgoers wouldn't be able to witness to Jesus. Curiously Greg Downes, the article's author, goes on to say that universalism - the idea that everybody will eventually be saved - only works if certain sections of Scripture are distorted or disregarded. The irony of this line is that Love Wins gives a lot of examples of Bible passages which Downes has to ignore or distort to dismiss the universalist position. Actually, I think Love Wins is probably the most overtly Scripture-based book that Bell has written.

Once you read the book, it is clear that Rob Bell is not proposing universalism anyway. What he is doing is pointing out that the Christian faith, the historical sweep of mainstream orthodox Christian thinking, is much broader than the bigots would have you think. Variants of universalism have been around a long time and are not necessarily anti-Biblical. The tension between salvation of a remnant and salvation of the whole world is a Scriptural tension: the range of passages is there and we have to accept that we are not God and we don't know everything. In the meantime we are called to be grace-full and loving in our differing interpretations.

For Bell it is God's love which has the last word, yet God's love allows the freedom to say 'no'. So he is not a universalist, but he does believe that God will give every chance He can for every person to respond by choosing life.

Bell's genius is that he writes very well and very clearly, in a modern open style which avoids the jargon and religious nonsense. He writes for anyone interested in living life better, free-er, deeper; for anyone who recognises a spiritual side to life, but needs more than the Pharisees with their blaring megaphones can offer.

This is very readable and interesting book: I don't agree with everything Bell says, but I do suggest you read it for yourself. I strongly recommend it.

Dragon Age II - Initial Impressions

Last year I enthused (twice) about Dragon Age: Origins, the computer fantasy role-playing game. In particular I enjoyed the story-telling and role-playing aspects: the game drew me in - much as a really good book does - and engaged me deeply. Late last year/early this year I've been trying to use the associated tools to do my own story-telling, through creating short mods. It's very difficult, but fascinating.

Last weekend Dragon Age II came out. Finally we would find out: a) if Bioware could repeat (or even improve upon) the excellent FRPG experience of DA:O; and b) what happens next. The first episode ends on a mystery: you've saved the world from the evil archdemon, but the witch Morrigan leaves carrying a kind of demon-spawn/dragon-spawn child. One of the add-on packs suggests that she somehow intends this for good, to oppose her mother Flemeth's evil plans, but we won't know until Bioware continue the story.

Having spent several hours playing the early sections of DAII (and having a daughter who has completed it all), I can tell you: a) no, it's not even close; and b) we still don't know, as DAII doesn't include Morrigan or her child.

DAII moves to a new character and a new area, which I think is good: from a Grey Warden roaming the countryside, and a small provincial town, in order to defeat an archdemon and save the world; to a refugee striving to make a new life in the big city. Settings are much bigger and more detailed, with a far wider pallette of scenery, rooms, walls, furniture, etc to play with. This is good at first, except that Bioware seem to use this new scenery repetitively. Because it is more distinctive and more detailed it is also more obvious when you come across the same complicated rock formation, or layout of wooden platforms, or strange tunnel shapes again and again and again. It's a good idea but badly applied.

The new game has new, much more interesting, animations for fighting, walking, etc. Some of the fighting ones are very impressive - such as the staff fighting, or the rogue somersaulting into attack - some of the walking and standing ones are less so - such as the main character's sister whose animations appear to be based on a streetwalker. Again, though, these good things have been applied badly. At the same time as making the fighting animations longer and more complex, they have also made them take less time. So the staff fighting moves completely lack any sense of weight or momentum, and the somersaults just make movement fiddly and unclear. Combat visuals that could and should have been awesome become simply awkward.

The quest structure, at least in the early phases of DAII, is similarly fiddly and uninvolving. In DA:O you basically had one big quest, broken down into six sub-quests, plus an assortment of small side-quests. Side quests associated with your companions might have a certain amount of depth, whilst the others were essentially trivial go-fights. In DAII, at the beginning you just follow the path fighting darkspawn every now and again. Then you get taken to the city of Kirkwall and you have to make a choice of who to work for for a year: mercenaries or thieves/smugglers. This seems like it should be an important choice but then the story skips that year and you are out on your own. There are a few small quests come from your old employers, but it doesn't really seem to make a difference. In part that is because the quests themselves don't seem to matter that much. There are basically three types of quest: those where you find some random object and take it back to its owner (whose location you magically know immediately); those where you fight your way through assorted opponents to a location; and those where you go to a location and several waves of nasties attack you. There are lots of these quests, none of them seeming of any particular importance except as a way to get money, in a quest mechanism which groups them by location rather then theme, making it all seem very artificial. I gather that the quests get better as you go further into the game, though.

Companions and their dialogue were a constant source of interest in DA:O; in DAII it is purely functional. They basically only talk to you if they want you to do something; even then they will only talk in specific places. Otherwise you just get a stock response floating above their head. When you do have conversations then your side of the conversation is dumbed down to (generally) a nice response, a flippant response and an aggressive response. These are carefully indicated by symbols and a two or three word summary, but they don't even tell you what your character will say if you click on one. Your character's lines are actually voiced in DAII, which they weren't in DA:O, but that is less of a benefit than it might be as I find the voice used rather irritating.

In summary then: my initial impression of Dragon Age II is that it looks fairly pretty (although less so than, say, 2006's Oblivion) but it fails to engage me. Whereas Dragon Age: Origins was really good at drawing me in and involving me in the characters and the story, Dragon Age II is more about pushing me away to follow as a disengaged observer. Some people consider character statistics and complex skill trees and the like key to CRPGs; I consider the role-playing aspect (which is the 'RP' in 'CRPG') most important: being drawn into the game through engaging character relations and an involving story, and being immersed in the game environment. DAII, at least in its early stages, specialises in de-immersing.

It's not a bad game, to be fair, just not a very good one: Bioware have simply cut too many corners and made too many compromises in Dragon Age II.

Note: 'FRPG' above abbreviates 'Fantasy Role Playing Game' - ie magic, swords, dragons, etc in a setting roughly based on medieval Northern Europe. 'CRPG' abbreviates 'Computer Role Playing Game'. So I guess you could say Dragon Age: Origins is a CFRPG, whilst Dragon Age II is a CFRPG ;-)

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Spoiler alert - if you haven't read the book and haven't seen the film yet, don't read the following, just go and see the film. If you haven't read any of the books or seen any of the films, then this film on its own might be somewhat confusing. Read the books first, then see this film.

From the opening scenes you can tell this film is going to take a different approach. The first six Harry Potter films had a serious case of 'quart into a pint pot' (more like 'gallon ...' for a couple). For the final book, though, they have chosen to split it into two parts; it makes a big difference.

Right near the beginning there is a marvellously poignant piece of visual imagery: Hermione uses her magic to make her parents forget all about her (for their safety), and the film shows family photographs with Hermione's picture slowly being faded out of each. Time is taken with each of the main characters to establish that loss and isolation are going to be big themes.

There are still action sequences, of course, and there is humour, and there is an intense three-way relationship at the heart of the film. But the backdrop is that the bad guys are winning, and Harry, Ron & Hermione are on their own.

At the start of the film the three have the Order of the Phoenix to help them. Then Hedwig dies, then Mad-Eye Moody. Then the Ministry of Magic falls, and the Weasleys' home is invaded. After that Harry, Hermione and Ron are alone: on the run, seeking out Voldemort's Horcruxes in the slight hope that once they're all destroyed he can be beaten. But they don't know where they are and, when they do find one, they don't even know how to destroy it. Instead the Horcrux in their possession just drags them down further.

Eventually even Ron goes away, leaving just Harry and Hermione wandering around various scenic but bleak parts of the UK. There is one beautiful scene: as the two reach rock bottom, Hermione is listening sadly to music on the radio, then Harry takes the Horcux off her for a moment and they dance together, in their tent in the middle of nowhere.

But the wandering isn't totally vain. Eventually they begin to find out about the 'deathly hallows': a cloak of invisibility, a stone of resurrection and an unbeatable wand. They also realise, through Harry's dream connection, that Voldement is seeking the wand. They are too busy running, though, to do anything about it. Nevertheless, Dumbledore's legacy leads Ron back to the others, so they are three again; part of the loss is restored - especially as in the process they retrieve a sword which is able to destroy the Horcux. But then they are captured. Dobbie the house elf is able to free them, but is killed as they escape. Harry buries Dobbie, then the film ends with Voldemort finding the unbeatable wand and revelling in its power.

In the book, Dumbledore is a central thread: his backstory, Harry's feelings of doubt and alienation, and the teenage Dumbledore's relationship with the dark wizard Grindelwald. None of this is in the film. On one level this makes a lot of sense, as it probably wouldn't have transferred well anyway (and I'm not at all convinced by Michael Gambon as Dumbledore anyway); on another level, though, it means you lose the 'dark night of the soul' element of Harry's wanderings, leaving a shallower result. Nevertheless, given the size of the book, I think this was a reasonable thread to leave out.

There are a couple of disappointing scenes later on in the film, as things start to move again. There is a very ominous, even scarey, scene in the book where Harry and Hermione walk into a trap baited by a dead Bathilda Bagshot in Godric's Hollow. In the film the scene is run-of-mill, with little tension, even when the trap is sprung - just a standard wand battle and escape.

Similarly, in the book the aftermath of Dobby's death is a deeply moving passage where Harry buries his body and magically carves a tombstone honouring Dobby, 'a free house elf'. In the film, Harry buries the body in sand and then the movie rushes on to show the final scene of Voldemort getting the wand. For my daughter, and I'm sure many others, Dobby's death was the saddest moment in the film, yet little was made of it. In a film lasting 146 minutes, would it have been so hard to spend an extra moment mourning the heroic Dobby?

That said, this remains an enjoyable film to watch. It's also very obviously only half the story, and I'm looking forward to the finale next spring.