10 Video Game Sequels That Look WORSE Than What Came Before

6. Dragon Age 2

mass effect 2 3
Bioware

Dragon Age II was set up to be a grand sequel to the Bioware masterpiece that is Dragon Age: Origins. Bioware intended to fix what was wrong with Origins and improve on any weak points the first game may have had. And then EA gave them a short development window which forced a rushed and crunch-laden development.

While still a respectable game, Dragon Age II was missing much of what had made the first game so great. With a much smaller game world - restricted to only a single city, rather than a whole country, not to mention reused assets in multiple dungeons compacted by the fact that said assets were rather bland.

Ultimately the biggest flaw was that the level design seemed far less majestic and smaller-scale than the previous game. By making a smaller world they could have utilized tighter design to make things seem - well anything, really - more hectic and tense, more crowded...more value per meter, so to speak. But in the end it was just more of the same, and all of it was basically just uninspired brownness.

In this post: 
Mass Effect
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Author of Escort (Eternal Press, 2015), co-founder of Nic3Ntertainment, and developer behind The Sickle Upon Sekigahara (2020). Currently freelancing as a game developer and history consultant. Also tends to travel the eastern U.S. doing courses on History, Writing, and Japanese Poetry. You can find his portfolio at www.richardcshaffer.com.