Dalisclock plays through the Dragon Age Trilogy and makes a lot of running commentary along the way. Spoilers abound.

[Dalisclock]

I got Sten's sword back, doing his quest and finally getting him to open up. He is an interesting character ONCE he starts talking to you and I appreciate that his behavior does fit his personality in this regard, its just that until that point he's the guy who bitches whenever you aren't making a direct line from A->Z and refuses to talk about WHY he's so annoyed all the time. Explaining that to the Qunari, everyone and everything has a place and the best thing in life is to be in your place(be it merchant or soldier or leader) and find contentment to doing that role the best you can helps explain his attitude a lot and why he's irritated by me doing side quests because it's not a direct head on attack of the problem at hand. Sure, it's an extremely stratified society and a very very black and white societal mindset and there's a lot of issues with that to be discussed but it is interesting nonetheless. Also, hearing sten talk about liking cookies is cute. Still not taking him on missions except when I have to because Sten dies too fast most of the time, but it was fun to do the "Hey, this big angry guy wants his sword back. Maybe you want to help us out or I won't be able to stop him from breaking you in half....literally" thing.

Oh, and good thing I did the DLC for Lelianna because I got attacked by assassins' in the forest and it looks like Majolaine put out a hit on her former "Co-worker". So looks like I got to follow that up. Also Lelianna is sad because apparently she had the hots for my female city elf and so did Alister and it turns out.....I like them both of Alister is more endearing to me at this points so I had to let Lelianna down. I don't think suggesting a threesome would have been warmly received somehow....at least not by alister at any rate.

Finally starting the Dalish Elves. Cool, I get Racism from humans and now from the Dalish elves because apparently City elves are the equivalent of collaborators or some such. Yeah, I know living out in the woods like hippy nomads isn't super cool but living in the elf ghettos ain't exactly fun either buddy. Interestingly, some of the conversation options talking to the Dalish seem to think I'm a human because I don't seem to have any(or very few options) to point out "Hey, I'm a alienage elf, dude" and argue with some of the points that they're bringing up.

I'm gonna digress just a bit here. I know I've harped on this on other games, but I do kind of appreciate you can occasionally refer decision to the appropriate decision maker in the room. For example, the fate of Jowen can be deferred to Arl Emon who is the one most directly affected by everything that happened at Redcliffe because he is the person in charge here and asking me, the guy who wandered in off the street to clean up the mess, shouldn't be asked to make major decisions when there's someone who outranks me in the room who should be making said decisions. There's an actual power structure IN PLACE here that should be functioning which a lot of video games like to ignore in favor of "You decide, Commander/Warden/etc". And yes, part of this is inspired by Woolie and Pat discussing the genophage in Mass Effect and it's wierd Shephard and only Shephard gets to make this decision rather then the galactic power structure.

I know video games like to give you the illusion of power by letting you decide the fate of people/nations/such but sometimes it feels weirdly ridiculous. The Walking Dead season 2 has you play as a 10 year old child but adults seem to want you to make decisions because you're the PC and that's the sole reason you get to make decisions certain things despite everyone else being adults and not you. Or any fiction where character in a military command structure give you decisions that should be made by someone MUCH HIGHER RANKED then you and instead of letting you pass that up to them, you're told to just make the decisions yourself as a frontline pilot or junior officer because the game can't decide if you're a lower ranked person who fights or a higher ranked person who orders so they just go "WHY NOT BOTH?"

Dragon age seems to be averting this a bit, at least the decisions you're generally avoiding this because you're the senior on the scene and you are effectively the Grey Warden in Ferelden because of Ostagar and everything is in Chaos(the Mage tower is leaderless when you arrive because Irving is MIA and the Senior Templar has just enough manpower to hold the lobby until reinforcements arrive).

 

[Gordon_4]

I got Sten's sword back, doing his quest and finally getting him to open up. He is an interesting character ONCE he starts talking to you and I appreciate that his behavior does fit his personality in this regard, its just that until that point he's the guy who bitches whenever you aren't making a direct line from A->Z and refuses to talk about WHY he's so annoyed all the time. Explaining that to the Qunari, everyone and everything has a place and the best thing in life is to be in your place(be it merchant or soldier or leader) and find contentment to doing that role the best you can helps explain his attitude a lot and why he's irritated by me doing side quests because it's not a direct head on attack of the problem at hand. Sure, it's an extremely stratified society and a very very black and white societal mindset and there's a lot of issues with that to be discussed but it is interesting nonetheless. Also, hearing sten talk about liking cookies is cute. Still not taking him on missions except when I have to because Sten dies too fast most of the time, but it was fun to do the "Hey, this big angry guy wants his sword back. Maybe you want to help us out or I won't be able to stop him from breaking you in half....literally" thing.

Oh, and good thing I did the DLC for Leliana because I got attacked by assassins' in the forest and it looks like Majorline put out a hit on her former "Co-worker". So looks like I got to follow that up. Also Lelina is sad because apparently she had the hots for my female city elf and so did Alister and it turns out.....I like them both of Alister is more endearing to me at this points so I had to let Leliana down. I don't think suggesting a threesome would have been warmly recieved somehow....at least not by alister at any rate.

Finally starting the Dalish Elves. Cool, I get Racism from humans and now from the Dalish elves because apparently City elves are the equilvent of collaborators or some such. Yeah, I know living out in the woods like hippy nomads isn't super cool but living in the elf ghettos ain't exactly fun either buddy. Interestingly, some of the conversation options talking to the Dalish seem to think I'm a human because I don't seem to have any(or very few options) to point out "Hey, I'm a alienage elf, dude" and argue with some of the points that they're bringing up.

I'm gonna digress just a bit here. I know I've harped on this on other games, but I do kind of appreciate you can occasionally refer decision to the appropriate decision maker in the room. For example, the fate of Jowen can be deferred to Arl Emon who is the one most directly affected by everything that happened at Redcliffe because he is the person in charge here and asking me, the guy who wandered in off the street to clean up the mess, shouldn't be asked to make major decisions when there's someone who outranks me in the room who should be making said decisions. There's an actual power structure IN PLACE here that should be functioning which a lot of video games like to ignore in favor of "You decide, Commander/Warden/etc". And yes, part of this is inspired by Woolie and Pat discussing the genophage in Mass Effect and it's wierd Shephard and only Shephard gets to make this decision rather then the galactic power structure.

I know video games like to give you the illusion of power by letting you decide the fate of people/nations/such but sometimes it feels weirdly ridiculous. The Walking Dead season 2 has you play as a 10 year old child but adults seem to want you to make decisions because you're the PC and that's the sole reason you get to make decisions certain things despite everyone else being adults and not you. Or any fiction where character in a military command structure give you decisions that should be made by someone MUCH HIGHER RANKED then you and instead of letting you pass that up to them, you're told to just make the decisions yourself as a frontline pilot or junior officer because the game can't decide if you're a lower ranked person who fights or a higher ranked person who orders so they just go "WHY NOT BOTH?"

Dragon age seems to be averting this a bit, at least the decisions you're generally avoiding this because you're the senior on the scene and you are effectively the Grey Warden in Ferelden because of Ostagar and everything is in Chaos(the Mage tower is leaderless when you arrive because Irving is MIA and the Senior Templar has just enough manpower to hold the lobby until reinforcements arrive).

Point of order; the curing of the Genophage was discussed at high level: Shepard was granted diplomatic powers by Admiral Hackett in the message formalising their reinstatement. The summit was also attended by the Turian Primarch and Salarian Dalatrass as well as Wrex (because who lets Wreave be leader, honestly?) and the Asari refused to attend. Shepard was dispatched to enforce the decision, they did not make it.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Point of order; the curing of the Genophage was discussed at high level: Shepard was granted diplomatic powers by Admiral Hackett in the message formalising their reinstatement. The summit was also attended by the Turian Primarch and Salarian Dalatrass as well as Wrex (because who lets Wreave be leader, honestly?) and the Asari refused to attend. Shepard was dispatched to enforce the decision, they did not make it.

Also, as a Spectre, Shepard is expected to Get Shit Done and file the paperwork afterward.

 

[meiam]

Finally starting the Dalish Elves. Cool, I get Racism from humans and now from the Dalish elves because apparently City elves are the equilvent of collaborators or some such. Yeah, I know living out in the woods like hippy nomads isn't super cool but living in the elf ghettos ain't exactly fun either buddy. Interestingly, some of the conversation options talking to the Dalish seem to think I'm a human because I don't seem to have any(or very few options) to point out "Hey, I'm a alienage elf, dude" and argue with some of the points that they're bringing up.

City elves are seen as people who've given up in some way, by not keeping the tradition up its like they agreed that the elves lost the war while the forest one are keeping the resistance going (-ish). Forest elves tend to look down on them but there's no outright hostility.

Character race ultimately rarely come up, can't really fault them for that, they already made a bunch of different starting chapter, expecting them to add a ton of new voiceline for every race would make the workload astronomical, I do miss when VA was the exception rather than the norm because it meant there were a lot more room for this.

Qunari are a lot more developed in DA2 (and somewhat retconned) and its probably the best part of the game (although its awkwardly the middle chapter and followed by the much weaker templar V mage arc). Its interesting because the writer can present the society as truly alien and can show the good the bad and the ugly without feeling like they overplay their hand (ie the mage templar part). I think they mostly succeed in making a society thats different but believable, although DAI kinda walk back a lot of it.

 

[Dalisclock]

Qunari are a lot more developed in DA2 (and somewhat retconned) and its probably the best part of the game (although its awkwardly the middle chapter and followed by the much weaker templar V mage arc). Its interesting because the writer can present the society as truly alien and can show the good the bad and the ugly without feeling like they overplay their hand (ie the mage templar part). I think they mostly succeed in making a society thats different but believable, although DAI kinda walk back a lot of it.

Considering I'm very likely(if I don't take a short break between games) that I'm gonna do all three games one right after the other, I'll probably notice pretty quickly what they changed between games and I will comment on it as I notice it.

 

[Dalisclock]

Point of order; the curing of the Genophage was discussed at high level: Shepard was granted diplomatic powers by Admiral Hackett in the message formalising their reinstatement. The summit was also attended by the Turian Primarch and Salarian Dalatrass as well as Wrex (because who lets Wreave be leader, honestly?) and the Asari refused to attend. Shepard was dispatched to enforce the decision, they did not make it.

Fair enough. I was going off memories of the last time i played but I realized that was....quite a bit ago and confronted with this new correction I concede the point and drop my objection.

I think I need to play ME again now that I have the legendary edition of the trilogy. But not now. Dragon Age comes first and I got plenty of that left. Origins + Awakening(rest of the DLC seem to be pretty short) + DA2 + DA2 DLC(which seem to be another 15 hours or so) + Inquisition + Inquisition DLCs. Pack a lunch, we gonna be here a while.

 

[Dalisclock]

When we last left our adventuring party, they were headed into the vast Brazilian forests of Ferelden.....wait a second *Checks notes*. That was Brecillian forest. Gonna have to recalculate my route and adjust the logistics tables, carry the three...... Anyway, what I was saying was the next stop was to go meet the Hobo Elves, or as they like to be called, the Dalish. Unlike the other big groups I need to recruit, these ones aren't totally in the middle of a cluster. They do, however, have a werewolf problem in the local woods, because of course the do. So I get sent to break the curse by killing their leader Winterfang.

The forest isn't as big as it seems because few of the maps in this game are really that big, they just make you twist and turn a lot to force you into more combat encounters and force the path to fill more space, so it's not that hard to eventually reach the werewolves. Interestingly, some of the more chatty ones show up and tell me to fuck off before trying to kill me. Knowing if you can talk you probably should, I tried to get them to tell me what was going on but no dice. So lots of dead werewolves along the path, along with some angry ents as well, who I proudly chopped down for firewood because if the trees are gonna throw down, I'm game.

There's a cool little encounter in one part of the woods where you find a pristine inviting campsite just sitting there and it looks a bit sus, but if you try to walk away, you feel tired and overwhelming want to sit down and rest there, which is all a prelude to it being a trap set by a demon to lure and kill travelers. In fact, it's possible to realize it's a trap, somehow pick the wrong dialogue options and then start the combat with most of your party dead(Wynne was the only one to fight in these attempts for some reason). Also, lots of bones once the illusion was lifted. So that's kinda cool.

At the end of the forest is the werewolves lair, which is of course in the middle of a big creepy temple because why the hell not at this point. And when you're not fighting werewolves, you're fighting skellyboys and occasionally spidyboys on a good old fashion dungeon crawl. Also there's a dragon and a undead mage boss, because I don't know. I guess FROM has spoiled me a bit for expecting the enemies to more or less fit the dungeon to an extent, so when there's a dragon just hanging out in the temple for no apparent reason other then they needed a mini-boss, then I guess I just have to deal with it.

As an aside, I know DA2 got a lot of crap for re-used environments, but honestly, it's hard not to say the same about this game either to some extent. There's a lot of reused textures and similar floor plans: The tower in Ostagar, the circle tower and parts of the fade also feel like remixed tower all feel very similar. Each of the creepy abandoned temples so far feels like every other creepy abandoned temple for the most part. Caves feel almost indistinguishable. So far the big castles/palaces/mansions feel like variations of the same big house. I'm not looking forward to the deep roads because the few times I visited the deep roads before in the origins felt very, very samey. And by god, most of the random encounters on the map feel like variations of the same rural outdoors map with the imperial highway being off to the side. And Mass Effect had this to an extent as well ,though you could brush that off a bit with colonies being prefab and it was mostly side missions affected. I know that trying to make unique assets takes time and resources but I've also seen better and more interesting level designs in other games too so it's hard not to hit bioware for this.

Back to woods, at the bottom of the EVIL ANCIENT TEMPLE I finally catch up with the werewolves again and this time they want to Parley for realsies, which I've been trying to do the last couple of times but they weren't interested despite trying to talk to me before attacking. Make up your minds, seriously. They finally send me directly to their leader, Winterfang and man, we could have avoided me cutting my way through a dozen or so of your buddies if we'd just done this earlier. But hey, your loss, not mine. Turns out the Dalish leader was responsible for the curse in the first place, which is convenient since he sent me to kill all the werewolves to cover his tracks. And while I could have sided with the werewolves and could have sided with the elves to murderize each other, there's a fairly easy to get third option where winterfang and the Dalish leader die and lift the curse, so the werewolf problem is solved and the guy responsible....well, I guess he redeemed himself or something. The werewolves sounded like they weren't having a fun time being werewolves for sure and really didn't want to be, to the extent it's like having transformational rabies.

So three out of four factions recruited. Whoop Whoop. Cleaned up some more of the side quests. Did Lilianna's personal quest which was a quick call-back to her DLC and little else and no, totally not creepy she's keeping tabs on her ex-girlfriend like that. Some of the sidequests are pretty vague, as in "FInd X in Place and tell them something". A couple invovvle finding Randos in Denerim, which has it's own map of locations to visit but it feels like that's not unlike saying "Hey, go find joe in New York City!" "Want to narrow it down a bit? NYC is pretty big and a lot of people live there" "NO! Just find them!"

I'm not even sure if some of the blackstone/mage collective sidequests are even worth more then some gold or experience, but generally I'm doing them as I find them and not going out of my way for the most part.

 

[thestor]

Threesomes are possible but require certain, miss-able, steps be taken with some characters, a guide is probably for the best.

Now that you mention it, the environments were rather samey, it didn't bother me then, guess I wasn't used to anything better. And I found the dialogues engrossing.

 

[Dalisclock]

Threesomes are possible but require certain, miss-able, steps be taken with some characters, a guide is probably for the best.

Now that you mention it, the environments were rather samey, it didn't bother me then, guess I wasn't used to anything better. And I found the dialogues engrossing.

Oh, the writing is good for sure, it's what bioware used to do best. And the characters are particularly well realized for the most part. It's just a shame the environments feel so bland most of the time.

I didn't notice when first played the game back when it dropped but playing now it hasn't aged very well in that regard.

 

[meiam]

DA2 2 reuse environment are on a whole other level, its not just that they use the same asset, they literally use the exact same dungeon over and over again. It's really confusing the first few time it happens because you think some quest are connected when they aren't.

The werewolf v elf thing was fine, but I do wish there had beed another way where you could have used the curse to your advantages, like turn large part of your army into werewolf (or some companion). The next quest does much better in that regard.

 

[Dalisclock]

DA2 2 reuse environment are on a whole other level, its not just that they use the same asset, they literally use the exact same dungeon over and over again. It's really confusing the first few time it happens because you think some quest are connected when they aren't.

The werewolf v elf thing was fine, but I do wish there had beed another way where you could have used the curse to your advantages, like turn large part of your army into werewolf (or some companion). The next quest does much better in that regard.

Yeah, the Dalish vs. Werewolf arc felt a bit low key compared to Redcliffe and Mage Circle though honestly I was kind of fine with something that wasn't super complex after those two. I've the Ozrimer quest has a lot more going on.

 

[thestor]

It is interesting to have your assassin in the party and discuss destroying the Dalish with the Werewolves.

 

[Dalisclock]

It is interesting to have your assassin in the party and discuss destroying the Dalish with the Werewolves.

I didn't even think of bringing Zevron, though I really should have. I ended up bringing Liliana instead because I'd done more with her. Maybe I didn't realized Zevron was originally a Dalish or something? I also tend to get really comfortable with a party combination and then don't experiment much unless I'm having issues. That's why Alister is almost always in my party because I'm a Rogue and a tank is very useful. And Morrigan and Wynne are my Black/White mages respectively.

Then again, I'm playing a rogue and I have the Assasin tree so technically I am the assasin.

 

[thestor]

Sure, for gameplay, a certain group is usually the best. Some characters have special dialogue for certain encounters though. I guess best is to save before one where you can still alter your party. Most people probably don't like the game enough to play it several times to try out all origins and all classes / builds.

 

[Dalisclock]

Sure, for gameplay, a certain group is usually the best. Some characters have special dialogue for certain encounters though. I guess best is to save before one where you can still alter your party. Most people probably don't like the game enough to play it several times to try out all origins and all classes / builds.

It's a long enough game that I probably won't replay it for a bit, especially since I have DA2 and DA:I next in line. Who knows, in a year or so I might come back to this. DA2 is apparently a decent 30-40 hours but DA:I is apparently a LONG game, DLC included.

 

[thestor]

Did you pick a prestige class yet?

 

[Dalisclock]

Did you pick a prestige class yet?

I have Assasin and Bard for my main. Unless you meant something else.

 

[Dalisclock]

Did a sweep of the back alleys of Denerim to clean up some of the sidequests before heading to Dwarftown aka Orzammar. In one of the back allieys I ran across a corpse with a letter, which directed me to a house with some blood mages. And when it showed up on my map of the city, I went "Sure, why not, it's close by and probably will take a few minutes to visit and get everything" 90 MINUTES LATER i'm cover in the blood of Dead Mercs and Blood mages and while I got some experience and gold for my troubles I feel like I stumbled into a random dungeon crawl adventure but hey, a little "vacation" is nice now and then. I mean, a vacation for the corpses, not so much for me. I am NOT Cleaning the Bllllluuuuuuuuuuddddddddd from the hardwood and carpet. I mean, I guess it serves me right just blindly following a letter I found on a dead guy in a dark alley and expecting good things to come of it.

From there, headed out to Orzammar which seems to be having a bit of a power struggle the moment. It's been a bit since I played the Dwarf Noble Origin but apparently Prince Bhelen's plan to kill one of his brothers and frame the other brother(the dwarf PC) didn't go quite according to plan because him and lord harrowmont are currently feuding over who will become king and I guess the assembly is completely deadlocked....for apparently 100 or so votes. I don't know how you get that many stalemates in a legislative assembly but this isn't a detailed discussion on dwarven politics so we'll leave that here. Though it's made clearly really early on when you arrive that Dwarven politics are fucking brutal, if you hadn't already played the Dwarf Noble origin.

So we get one of those good old standbys of RPG gaming, an election with two candidates who are equally popular so you need to be the one to decide who wins though I don't know how early you have to commit to one or the other or if you can play both sides for a while for MORE XP benefits. Unfortunately, I don't know much about either of them so I'm not really sure which one will be more beneficial to back. I know Bhelen is a backstabbing jerk for sure considering what he did to his brothers but then again that doesn't seem to be uncommon for Dwarven Politics, where the backstabbing is often quite literal and not just a figure of speech.

I'm sure I'll be playing around down here for a bit. I also think i found my last recruitable party members, Oghren, who seems to be a bit of an angry Lush, so we'll have to work on that. He's a bit too angry to be recruited right now though, and it sounds like he has good reasons to be despondent. Also, I am amused that the criers in the diamond district, who each shill for a different noble, start running out of ideas after a while and just start making up random stuff to yell "Lord Harrowmont is a bad man" and "Prince Bhelen is also a very bad man". Then again, I guess it gets boring yelling stuff from a street corner all day.

Stayed turned for a series of underground backstabby adventures.

 

[thestor]

Did a sweep of the back alleys of Denerim to clean up some of the sidequests before heading to Dwarftown aka Orzammar. In one of the back allieys I ran across a corpse with a letter, which directed me to a house with some blood mages. And when it showed up on my map of the city, I went "Sure, why not, it's close by and probably will take a few minutes to visit and get everything" 90 MINUTES LATER i'm cover in the blood of Dead Mercs and Blood mages and while I got some experience and gold for my troubles I feel like I stumbled into a random dungeon crawl adventure but hey, a little "vacation" is nice now and then. I mean, a vacation for the corpses, not so much for me. I am NOT Cleaning the Bllllluuuuuuuuuuddddddddd from the hardwood and carpet. I mean, I guess it serves me right just blindly following a letter I found on a dead guy in a dark alley and expecting good things to come of it.

Luck at it form the view of the Blood Mages. They had this big operation, right in the capital, a whole bunch of mages with a group of mercs at their disposal. Then, you find some clues by chance, and...

From there, headed out to Orzammar which seems to be having a bit of a power struggle the moment. It's been a bit since I played the Dwarf Noble Origin but apparently Prince Bhelen's plan to kill one of his brothers and frame the other brother(the dwarf PC) didn't go quite according to plan because him and lord harrowmont are currently feuding over who will become king and I guess the assembly is completely deadlocked....for apparently 100 or so votes. I don't know how you get that many stalemates in a legislative assembly but this isn't a detailed discussion on dwarven politics so we'll leave that here. Though it's made clearly really early on when you arrive that Dwarven politics are fucking brutal, if you hadn't already played the Dwarf Noble origin.

So we get one of those good old standbys of RPG gaming, an election with two candidates who are equally popular so you need to be the one to decide who wins though I don't know how early you have to commit to one or the other or if you can play both sides for a while for MORE XP benefits. Unfortunately, I don't know much about either of them so I'm not really sure which one will be more beneficial to back. I know Bhelen is a backstabbing jerk for sure considering what he did to his brothers but then again that doesn't seem to be uncommon for Dwarven Politics, where the backstabbing is often quite literal and not just a figure of speech.

I'm sure I'll be playing around down here for a bit. I also think i found my last recruitable party members, Oghren, who seems to be a bit of an angry Lush, so we'll have to work on that. He's a bit too angry to be recruited right now though, and it sounds like he has good reasons to be despondent. Also, I am amused that the criers in the diamond district, who each shill for a different noble, start running out of ideas after a while and just start making up random stuff to yell "Lord Harrowmont is a bad man" and "Prince Bhelen is also a very bad man". Then again, I guess it gets boring yelling stuff from a street corner all day.

Stayed turned for a series of underground backstabby adventures.

You can talk with many a dwarf about the situation, but yeah, the Dwarves have problems.

 

[Dalisclock]

Luck at it form the view of the Blood Mages. They had this big operation, right in the capital, a whole bunch of mages with a group of mercs at their disposal. Then, you find some clues by chance, and...

You can talk with many a dwarf about the situation, but yeah, the Dwarves have problems.

I know I'm far from the first person to point this out, but it does amuse me to think that when you show up, the enemies start wondering why Boss Music just started playing.

Everyone Blood Mage until the Walls start singing in Latin.