After the last bit of DLC, I was reticent to give the latest expansion to Dragon Age 2 a chance. But Tallis, the new character in the expansion is modeled after and voiced by Felicia Day(of the Guild, Dragon Age Redemption, Dollhouse, and Sarah Connor Chronicles fame.) Whom I love. So I figured I’d at least give it a chance. So I loaded up my main save, where Hawke is level 21 and jumped in; using the now standard system of clicking on a monument in your house.
The beginning of the expansion is great, you are able to pick whom ever you choose to play with as long as you have Tallis in your party. Which is good, considering even with respeccing Tallis there are moments where things can get a little crazy when fighting one of the new monster types. But the combat is the combat. It appears that the expansion scales to whatever level your at in the beginning. And if you are high level, your probably only going to get one or two levels of experience.
The entire expansion is very story driven and while some of it can seem a little madcap. I won’t go through the whole plot of the story here, because it is very important to your enjoyment of the expansion that you don’t know what happens. Unlike in the last expansion where so little happened I could have explained it inelegantly in one sentence. Tirelessly fighting through the same sets of corridors isn’t my favorite thing, especially when they are the same enemies. What I did like was that there was all ways a story beat. The close interaction between Tallis and Hawke makes the expansion seem very cinematic in the way that it is presented. Removing some of the weirdness that comes from having four people together all the time.
I wasn’t a big fan of the stealth section that occurs 3 quarters of the way through. While the castle, does get a bit annoying after a while, it’s not too bad. The new environments in the game are wonderful and I’m glad they didn’t recycle anything from the main game or last expansion. There is a mini-boss fight toward the beginning and then toward the end there is a very good boss fight that has some smart design. Much less esoteric than the last expansion.
As a whole the the expansion is great albeit a bit short at around(2-4 hours on Normal) and while I would have really loved to retain Tallis as a permanent member of my party in the rest of the game. I might have even played through the entire game again if there was more I could have learned about her. But as implied in the story a couple of times; I doubt this is the last we will see of Tallis. This is a story driven character vehicle. If you haven’t seen Dragon Age Redemption, go see it on Youtube. If you don’t like Felicia Day or Tallis your not going to like this. For around $10, you get a good story, a few new pieces of gear, 2 new types of monsters, and probably around 2 levels of experience. With all this in mind I give Mark of the Assassin a 8.5/10.
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