5. Decisions Brought Forward From Previous Games Must Be Consistent
A key feature of Bioware's single-player games over the last 5 years has been the ability to import your existing game saves into the next title in the series, essentially carrying over all your actions and decisions from game to game, to form one continuous narrative arc. While this has worked to much success across the Mass Effect trilogy, Dragon Age 2 didn't fare quite as well. A key character who died in my original Dragon Age: Origins game, was actively referred to as still being alive in my Dragon Age 2 playthrough. Even more incredibly, a character whom I assassinated in Origins actually showed up in Dragon Age 2 and requested my party's help. This type of inconsistency not only makes no narrative sense, but it greatly dampens the immersive qualities of the game and rudely reminds the player that they are, in fact, only playing a video game. This would not be tolerated in a series of books or films, and it should not be tolerated in a series of video games. Dragon Age 3 has the chance to set things right and bring the multiple-game narrative flow that worked so well for Mass Effect into the Dragon Age series, setting the stage for future installments.