Review: Dragon Age: Until We Sleep #3

Well, here we are at the end of Until We Sleep, and… I still honestly don’t know how I feel about it. It started off strong, but then the second issue just utterly underwhelmed me, which brings us here. This final issue does conclude the mini-series quite nicely, and it’s definitely a far sight better than the previous issue, so for those reasons alone I’m rather relieved. It’s just…overall, I can’t decide if I’m pleased or annoyed that I read the mini-series, and that’s the toughest sort of review to write.

I have a weird relationship with Dragon Age. I hate them as games, to be perfectly honest (seriously, I rage quit Dragon Age my first playthrough because the battle system was so atrocious, and I dozed through the battle encounters in Dragon Age: II – when they weren’t glitching, that is), but I really, utterly, completely and totally adored the characters. So, you’d think character-centric comics would be right up my alley, wouldn’t you? They should be about everything I loved regarding the series, minus the annoying button-mashing-oh-god-dammit-Alistair-you’re-already-dead-again aspect of actually playing the games. And yet, they aren’t, as these reviews increasingly show.

With this final issue, I’m beginning to get why. The pacing overall is just not good, for starters, but it’s more than that. Yeah, the story gets rushed – the game felt like that too at times, so maybe they’re just trying to be accurate. I’m not necessarily reading for the story, though; I’m reading because, as I said before, I really like the characters they’ve created… but therein rests the problem. There’s no consistency. Some panels, characters look like themselves, act like themselves, and feel as they should. Then suddenly they don’t, and you have no idea who you’re dealing with anymore.

This one was a bit better, because Alistair really shone through (for the first few pages, anyway), and Varric’s narration was on-point as always. That’s probably my biggest compliment for the series; Varric’s narration always sounds like Varric, and thus makes for my favorite bits from the series overall. Alistair and Varric actually felt like themselves for most of this issue, but then Isabela felt like she wasn’t there at all, which is really damn annoying.

The resolution of the overarching conflict (finding King Maric) is well enough. It was a touching moment, it made insightful commentary (you can’t live in a dream just because reality is no longer what you wish it), and, well, it concluded. It all just felt a little underwhelming, and it had a bit of a downer final page (a well-done one, to their credit, but a downer all the same). The whole thing actually feels a bit like when I finished Dragon Age: II; it left me thinking, “That’s really it, isn’t it.”

So… I don’t really know how to advise you, dear reader. If you’re an avid Dragon Age fan, you’re probably going to pick this up no matter what I have to say, and you’re probably going to be a bit disappointed but satisfied enough to not resent spending money on it.  I wouldn’t call it an “essential addition to the Dragon Age canon” as the Dark Horse page does, because really, if it’s incredibly vital, it’ll be mentioned in Dragon Age 3, but it’s entertaining enough for $3.99 if you’ve already picked up Issues #1 and #2. It just leaves you feeling a bit conflicted; as a fan of the characters and the series you want to like it, but it’s just not particularly good or bad: it just is.

… if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon read The World of Thedas, because that actually satisfies my world-building, information-craving hunger and doesn’t leave me going, “Was that even worth bothering with?”

Jeni “Science Whyzard” Hackett wishes that something Dragon Age-related would actually do its characters justice. Speaking of Justice, she rather likes Anders, although she thinks she mentioned that in one of these bylines already. The segue was just too perfect to ignore. You can find her on twitter under the name @allonsyjeni, email her at jeni.is.a.geek@gmail.com, or find her on tumblr at hellomynameisgeek.