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

[meiam]

I enjoyed her being around for an hour or two but it's hard for me to shake the feeling this is Day's Original DA character(DO NOT STEAL) and she's friends with someone at Bioware and that's the big reason she's even here at all. The character is this wierd mix of Qunari believer who you can have discussions with the Qun about and Snarky geeky action girl Assasin.......and Im not exactly sure it works. I'm not saying a character like that can't work but OTOH I'm not sure it works here.

Hopefully you like that mix cause she's more or less a prototype for a character in inquisition.

Fenris isn't super interesting because the most interesting aspect about him is his mark superpower, which is also something he understandably hate, so you can't really explore it.

 

[thebobmaster]

Hopefully you like that mix cause she's more or less a prototype for a character in inquisition.

Are you referring to Sera? Because the last part about "snarky action girl assassin" sounds like Sera.

I do not like Sera much at all.

 

[meiam]

Are you referring to Sera? Because the last part about "snarky action girl assassin" sounds like Sera.

I do not like Sera much at all.

lol I was actually referring to iron bull, I had literally forgotten Sera even existed in that game... I did not like Sera much at all either.

 

[Gordon_4]

lol I was actually referring to iron bull, I had literally forgotten Sera even existed in that game... I did not like Sera much at all either.

Iron Bull is infinitely more interesting and fun than Tallis. By leaps and bounds.

 

[Dalisclock]

Legacy

I'll say this, I do appreciate that DA2 went with fewer but better DLCs then DAO. While DAO had a ton of them, it felt like most of them weren't really worth the time or were meh at best and these feel more concentrated in the good stuff.

Much like Mark of the Asassin before it, Legacy takes Hawke outside of Kirkwall again, this time to a remote area with an ancient set of ruins. Apparently the Carta has been trying to attack/kidnapp both of the Hawke Siblings and Varric directs them to the area as the source of the attacks. It doesn't take long to realize that something much more sinister is at play here, deeply tied to the Ruins. The carta dwarves have been sent by someone named Corypheus, and you're forced to fight deeper into these ancient ruins, which include a tower that goes from deep underground into the sky. Through the course of the DLC you end up going up and down this town fighting darkspawn, carta and demons, and there's some new enemies as well. There's also a fun boss fight where you have one warrior demon and 4 mage demons supporting him so you have to be strategic which ones you kill first to have a chance of winning. The fact one is called "The Healer" gives you a clue you should probably take that guy down ASAP, for example, because as any gamer knows, killing the medic first just makes sense.

There's a lot going on here and some interesting lore to boot. Basically, Malcom Hawke, the father of the Hawke family, was deeply involved with the grey wardens a while ago. Corypheus, for his part, was a primeval entity sealed within the tower a long, long, long time ago and much like an old one, he has the ability to call the dark spawn while he's asleep to get them to try to release him. Even worse, while he's been sealed down here, the seals are weaking and won't last forever. Apparently Malcom Hawke used Blood Magic to strengthen the seal and needless to say, it's kinda rough on Hawke to learn that. Even it's even more fun considering i brought Carver with me for once so both kids could learn their dad was into crazy blood magic shit.

The big reveals don't come until near the end though. There are grey wardens down here, one of whom apparently has been down here for a very, very long time and is....was one of the earlier Warden Commanders, now kinda ghoulified but he hasn't died. He went down for his calling, but apparently if you live long enough the Darkspawn stop trying to kill you because they see you as one of their own. And apparently don't really die. But even better, there's a force of Grey Wardens down here looking for Corypheus so they can free him and use him as a weapon against the blight. If he's in your party, Anders and the old ghoulified Warden both point out they can hear him calling much like an Archdemon, to the point it drives Anders to attack you at one point(and only one point). It confirms that the Wardens can and have been brainwashed by Corypheus's calling, which is basically the big reason he was locked away to begin with. At one point you're tasked with joining the Wardens to help them free Corypheus or saying that's a really bad idea, at which point they try to kill you. Presumably events play out in a similar way if you choose to side with them somehow.

The Final reveal is when you finally reach Corypheus and break the last seal holding him in place and you find out something you've probably suspected a while now if you know what was going on with Awakening. Much like the Architect from Awakening, Corypheus was also one of the Tevinter Magisters of old, apparently one of the same few that breached the golden city and kicked off the blights. He talks like the Imperium is still around and seems to have no idea what's going on, like he'd just woken up from a nap only to realize 1000+ years have come and gone and man is cranky about it. He's arguably the hardest fight in the entire game so far, which took me like 5 tries to beat. Mostly because he creates a fire pinwheel that kills you fast if you aren't in one of the few safe spots when it passes, but also because he throws up obstacles to make it harder to avoid the fire pinwheel each time he creates one. And while Hawke was fine, it's VERY easy for one of the others to get caught on the obstacles just long enough to get fried if the pathfinding breaks for a moment. So yeah, it's only hard for bullshit reasons and not because he's a particularly well done boss.

Anyway, the implications of this are kinda fascinating. At this point, it's not established that not only have at least two of the original Darkspawn/Magisters survived, but they can basically control grey wardens the same way they can control darkspawn and man is this a really bad thing to hear. It basically feels like the Warden Commander got off lucky in Awakening for that not to happen, but apparently the Architect wasn't interested in doing so, not that he couldn't. Also, there's the fact that the Wardens reasoning is "We want to free Corypheus to use him as a weapon againest the blight" while clearing being under the influence of Corypheus is hitting awfully close to Cerebus in Mass Effect 2 and 3 where TIM has almost the exact same line of reasoning for the Reapers....and it ends just as poorly there as well.

We also know that at least part of the creation myth is true, though he does say something interesting.

The City. It was supposed to be golden! It was supposed to be ours!"

The fact they got kicked out could account for the 2nd bit, but the first part is interesting. So was the city already black when they arrived? Or did it turn black as they arrrived? I didn't really care much about the myth before but having someone who was at the center of it say something like that feels like it raises some interesting theological implications.

There's also the whole bit about Kirkwall possibly being designed as a giant Blood Magic Altar for some horrible purpose and with this guy being imprisoned.....well, probably not very far away, one can only imagine the two are related. It's hard to think it's a coincidence that "Massive Blood Magic altar" and "Tearing the Veil conquer the golden city" probably fairly close to each other.

 

[Dalisclock]

Did the first main quest of Act 3 "On the Loose" which is where a couple of mages escaped from the gallows and you have to help the Templars hunt them down for Meredith. One of them goes quietly after getting his rocks off at the Hanged Man, while the other two end up pulling a Blood Mage and turning into a Demon Respectively and.....honestly, it's really hard for me to want to support either side. Like if every other mage turns into a demon or does Skeevy Blood Magic(and I got jumped by a blood mage with some others in the street during this quest), it's hard to say the Templars don't have a valid point keeping a very close eye on them. OTOH, Meredith is a fucking dick and the High Chantry Lady whose supposedly Meredith's Boss isn't doing much of anything. She speaks of keeping Balance but when pressed it's very Waffly on what she's actually doing other then "Please. Stop. No." in the most deadpan voice imaginable. I get she probably can't do much about Meredith if the Templars turn againest her but at the same time.......beating down the mages doesn't seem to be helping either because they're just getting more desperate. i could go further but this'll get really real world political really fast so I'll stop here.

On the lighter side. King Alistair showed up in Kirkwall and while it's pure uncut fanservice for the DAO people playing, it's still a nice little cameo and appreciated even if you could skip it with no loss to the narrative or characterization. It is kinda cool to bring Aveline and Anders to that meeting, since Anders was a Warden like Alister and will bring it up while Avaline fought at Ostagar. Speaking of which, there's a quick bit where Avaline finds out she's been declared dead in Ferelden because they FINALLY finished tallying the caulsties from Ostaga.....Seven years later. I mean, I get it, it's a medieval fantasy world and there was a civil war and a blight, but I would have thought they would have just declared everyone they couldn't find the body of(which being a fight against the darkspawn, probably most of them) MIA or KIA like a year after the blight ended or something and called it good. Not like Aveline plans to go back to Ferelden at this point(maybe it's different if you rivaled her and didn't help her marry) but it's still kinda weird. IDK how they actually did it in the olden days so maybe they just declared you dead if nobody had seen you in 7 years or something, barring the fact you might have fled the country.

Anders side mission, Justice, isn't particularly interesting from a gameplay POV but man is it from a foreshadowing viewpoint. So Anders asks you to find some "potion ingredients" he needs and you can prod and ask over and over what he really needs these for and he's very, very insistent that you don't need to know and it's better he doesn't tell you, until the point he flat out claims you don't support mages unless you help him by....*Checks Notes*...Distracts the High Priest Lady in the Chantry while he sneaks around to do....SOMETHING that he still won't tell you about afterward. Even if I didn't know that he's basically planting a bomb somewhere(I have no clue where in his mage robes he was hiding something destructive enough to blow up the chantry, which apparently is equivalent to a small nuke), he's acting so SUS about the whole thing he might as well just fucking tell me at this point. I considered not helping him but considering I already know this happens per the plot, apparently nothing I do will prevent this so I might as well go along and see how this all goes down. And I imagine this is meant to have some moral uncertainty about it but if I'm effectively railroaded it seems like it doesn't matter one way or another. IDK I kind of which it had been written different where anders wasn't being so obvious about this and he was sneaking around while I was doing something else that seemed more important, rather then this weaksauce "Go talk to them about mages while I'm totally not planting a bomb over here" route they went with.

 

[meiam]

IDK how they actually did it in the olden days so maybe they just declared you dead if nobody had seen you in 7 years or something, barring the fact you might have fled the country.

I imagine it much like that today, there's some accounting side to things, like what to do with the person possession and any terrain they might own. At some point they just assume the person is dead and redistribute the goods cause no point in letting everything crumble.

I always wondered if act 3 was particularly affected by the rushed development cycle because its really not that great. It's pretty much impossible to support either the templar or mage but you're never given much of a chance to state that. The game tries really hard to make supporting both side a possibility, but to do that it has to make sure neither side ever really gets a "win". Hence why even when you save mage and they are under no danger whatsoever they still turn to blood magic, which kinda break everything down.

 

[Gordon_4]

Did the first main quest of Act 3 "On the Loose" which is where a couple of mages escaped from the gallows and you have to help the Templars hunt them down for Meredith. One of them goes quietly after getting his rocks off at the Hanged Man, while the other two end up pulling a Blood Mage and turning into a Demon Respectively and.....honestly, it's really hard for me to want to support either side. Like if every other mage turns into a demon or does Skeevy Blood Magic(and I got jumped by a blood mage with some others in the street during this quest), it's hard to say the Templars don't have a valid point keeping a very close eye on them. OTOH, Meredith is a fucking dick and the High Chantry Lady whose supposedly Meredith's Boss isn't doing much of anything. She speaks of keeping Balance but when pressed it's very Waffly on what she's actually doing other then "Please. Stop. No." in the most deadpan voice imaginable. I get she probably can't do much about Meredith if the Templars turn againest her but at the same time.......beating down the mages doesn't seem to be helping either because they're just getting more desperate. i could go further but this'll get really real world political really fast so I'll stop here.

On the lighter side. King Alistair showed up in Kirkwall and while it's pure uncut fanservice for the DAO people playing, it's still a nice little cameo and appreciated even if you could skip it with no loss to the narrative or characterization. It is kinda cool to bring Aveline and Anders to that meeting, since Anders was a Warden like Alister and will bring it up while Avaline fought at Ostagar. Speaking of which, there's a quick bit where Avaline finds out she's been declared dead in Ferelden because they FINALLY finished tallying the caulsties from Ostaga.....Seven years later. I mean, I get it, it's a medieval fantasy world and there was a civil war and a blight, but I would have thought they would have just declared everyone they couldn't find the body of(which being a fight against the darkspawn, probably most of them) MIA or KIA like a year after the blight ended or something and called it good. Not like Aveline plans to go back to Ferelden at this point(maybe it's different if you rivaled her and didn't help her marry) but it's still kinda weird. IDK how they actually did it in the olden days so maybe they just declared you dead if nobody had seen you in 7 years or something, barring the fact you might have fled the country.

Anders side mission, Justice, isn't particularly interesting from a gameplay POV but man is it from a foreshadowing viewpoint. So Anders asks you to find some "potion ingredients" he needs and you can prod and ask over and over what he really needs these for and he's very, very insistent that you don't need to know and it's better he doesn't tell you, until the point he flat out claims you don't support mages unless you help him by....*Checks Notes*...Distracts the High Priest Lady in the Chantry while he sneaks around to do....SOMETHING that he still won't tell you about afterward. Even if I didn't know that he's basically planting a bomb somewhere(I have no clue where in his mage robes he was hiding something destructive enough to blow up the chantry, which apparently is equivalent to a small nuke), he's acting so SUS about the whole thing he might as well just fucking tell me at this point. I considered not helping him but considering I already know this happens per the plot, apparently nothing I do will prevent this so I might as well go along and see how this all goes down. And I imagine this is meant to have some moral uncertainty about it but if I'm effectively railroaded it seems like it doesn't matter one way or another. IDK I kind of which it had been written different where anders wasn't being so obvious about this and he was sneaking around while I was doing something else that seemed more important, rather then this weaksauce "Go talk to them about mages while I'm totally not planting a bomb over here" route they went with.

You don’t actually have to do Anders’ final quest. After my first play through I never did again.

 

[Dalisclock]

You don’t actually have to do Anders’ final quest. After my first play through I never did again.

I imagine you didn't, but at the same time, apparently he plants his bomb anyway, so you being there or not changes nothing, so if nothing else doing the quest gets you the narrative beats(and something to skip on the next run if you want).

 

[Dalisclock]

And Dragon Age 2 is finished.

So before I get to all the juicy stuff, I'll quickly run through the remaining subplots and plot points because it's the law and I'm too.....pretty(yeah, we'll go with that) to go to prison. Among the final companion quests I do are Varric's quest where I go help unhaunt his brothers mansion which is very haunted. It's a spoopy walk through all the usual spoopy haunted house tropes (Flying objects, spoopy sounds, pictures of Richard Nixon wearing a thong on the walls) till eventually a red golem spawns in and I kill him. He turns into a piece of red lyrium which apparently was part of the idol from the deep roads that Crazy brother kept and helped make him go cra cra. Varric demands to keep it and after making a compelling argument it drove his brother round the bend and he's already starting to act pretty nutso, yeah, we're throwing that thing in the nearest bottomless pit filled with Atari ET cartridges so they'll never be found. I kinda forget exactly what's done with it....oh, I give it to Sandal and that's safe because ENCHANTMENT! Yes, let's give the special boy with the disturbingly high body count the piece of the artifact of doom. That'll go well and can't possibly backfire.

After that, I help Merril with her evil mirror that she's still obsessed with and she says she needs to summon a demon to make it work and...godammanit Merrill, what part of "Summon a demon to fix a creepy ancient mirror" doesn't sound like a terrible idea to you? I went along with it because Merrill got all angry about this and ok, I''ll help enable your terrible life choices because I love your weird persistent naivete and you're the only blood mage who somehow hasn't gone complete kill crazy yet despite at least 7 years of indulging in the stuff. It ends as well as I except and I want to be sad about what happens at the end but.....I mean, I expected this to end badly, just somehow merrill didn't so it doesn't really hit hard for me. Poor kid, though.

Okay, with that out of the way, the full steam ahead on the endgame. There's not too much left at this point. One mission has you running around chasing after Mages and Templars that have been sneaking out at night to do...something, and every time you find a group they all attempt to murder you together. This happens a couple times until you find their final base outside of town. Also, they kidnapped Carver because why fucking not I guess? It makes no real different and it doesn't seem like he's in any real danger. When you meet the final group they all go "Oh, the Champion" and it's explained the Templars and Mages want to kick Meredith to the curb, but none of them bothered to explain that before or wouldn't let you help them so violence was the only option. Here it looks like you can maybe help them out because fuck that Templar *****, when one of the mages goes "Fuck you Champion, you must die now" despite me not wanting to fight and then all of them, despite not wanting to fight be a minute ago and a couple clearly being sympathetic to me, decide to try to murder me anyway. And then the real templars show up and clean up the mess after Carver was rescued.

This is about the point I'm started to notice the writing seems a bit...choppy, for lack of another word. Like it feels like we're all on the same page but one mage has a chip on her shoulder so everything turns into a throw down because of course it does. And it only gets worse from there. I get summoned to hightown near the chantry to find Orsino and Meredith bitching at each other in the middle of the plaza, when Anders shows up and declares he's had enough of everyone's shit and detonate the magic nuke he somehow planted in the Chantry without anyone noticing(because an apostate mage can just wander off and plant a bomb....you know what, whatever. A WIZARD DID IT!). The High Chanter dies in the explosion and Meredith loses her fucking shit right then and there, invoking the Rite of Annulment and all Mages must die, which forces me to pick a side.

So part of this is that I'm a mage and while I've killed scores of people in kirkwall, pretty much all of them were trying to kill me first and thus had it fucking coming or something like that, I'm inclined to pick the mages. Despite the mages having a massive problem with blood magic and abominations(and Meredith points this out as part of her casus belli), the fact the Meredith just flat out declared every fucking mage in the city has to die now is just way over the fucking line and makes it impossible to support her, despite the fact she otherwise has a lot of good points. Yes, there's a serious goddamn problem in Kirkwall (and a terrorist action to boot) but Anders took responsibility in front of everyone, it's pointed out he's an apostate and not part of the circle so there should be no guilt by association there. At least to a reasonable person, which Meredith is clearly not at this point. But even weirder is instead of instantly killing Anders, who is offering no resistance at this point and practically asks you to kill him, Meredith just lets you decide what to do with him and walks away. Seriously Meredith, the perpetrator is RIGHT FUCKING THERE, DEAD TO RIGHTS, you know here's not part of the circle(and the head mage has condemned him publicly in front of you) and your answer is Mage Genocide but just let Anders live if Hawke decides? What kind of fucked up train of logic is that?

Also, I'm gonna be pedantic for a moment and point out that Meredith does not have the Authority on her own to actually invoke the Rite of Annulment but actually has to get someone else permission(at least in DAO that's how it worked at the circle tower). Granted, that someone else was probably killed when the Chantry blew up and Meredith clearly doesn't care either way but still.

Anders for his own part. He knows what he did, he takes full responsibility and knows he made things worse because "Now there can be no compromise" and in that he's right. He's gone full fanatical zealot and he's ready to accept death now that he's done what he set out to do. I respect the fact he's owning his atrocity and willing to let himself be killed right then and there now that it can't be undone, despite the awfulness of the act. I like Anders as a character which makes it worse when I decide to shank his ass, because of aforementioned terrorism which basically started a religious war. It's possibly the hardest choice I had to made in the game and doesn't matter much at this point but the fact his act was beyond the pale outweighed my like of him as a character.

The next twenty or so minutes is a bunch of fighting demons and mages and templars, almost all of whom try to kill me on site(and half the mages I meet go full abomination the moment I see them). It's a slog through the streets to the Gallows and I turn the difficulty down to easy for the first time in the game to make the fights go faster because at this point I'm just ready to be done with all of this. Orsino is at the Gallows and gives me a few minutes to talk with everyone one last time and switch out gear before the big fight commences. It's a nice bioware moment despite the fact it's basically everyone standing in a line waiting for me to talk to them because bioware still hasn't invented a sitting or leaning animation for times they characters are just chilling(Awakening had the same issue when you were in the throne room of the vigil).

The battle starts and a bunch of Templars rush in, first murdering a bunch of mages in a cutscene and then getting mowed down with little issue in game due to spells and chokepoints. Of course, at this point Orsino decides this decisive first victory has driven him to such despair he IMMEDIATELY starts using Blood Magic and becomes a Harvester demon, which IDK how that fucking works Lorewise and...seriously Orsino? I went to bat for you. We were winning for the moment. So after the pointless boss fight(apparently this was supposed to only happen if you fought for the mages but someone at Bioware went...FUCK IT, TOSS IT IN!) I fight my way out of the Gallows, at which point I'm getting super fucking tired of yet more mook fights because I just want to be done with all of this and it just feels like (more) busy work.

The fight with Meredith is a lot more interesting. She's waiting nearby with a small army of Templars, most of whom abandon her and call her out of her increasingly erratic and insane behavior. Of course, she's not having this, pulling out a big glowly evil looking sword and declares she will kill all of them and defend the city(or what little will be left of it) herself. So remember the whole evil looking idol found in the deep roads that Varric's brother ran off with and then vanished? It was implied Meredith bought it after that and went more and more nanners. Not that we ever see her prior to getting the idol so it's hard to compare but yeah, turning it into a big scary ass red sword and wanting to murder everyone is pretty bad.

So in what I can only assume is a product of the games rushed dev cycle, the army of templars basically vanishes at this point leaving my group to fight Meredith. Which has her doing crazy ass ninja flips and bringing the statues around the plaza to life. And it's really cool and one of the most interesting fights in the entire game, which is one of the few redeeming bits of the entire endgame. And after all that is done, Meredith...turns into a red lyrium statue...thing because that shit is whack, you know? The small Templar Army shows up again and lets Hawke leave and we cut back to Cassandra finishing her questioning of Varric.

There's a few more tidbits here. Apparently things really went to shit afterward, with Kirkwall setting off a Civil War across Thedas and even the Templars have gone Rogue. Varric gets to go free and Cassandra meets with some more Seekers and Leliana, talk about how both the Hero of Ferelden and Hawke have vanished. All hinting that shit is going down, no doubt a massive bit of foreshadowing to inquisition. Also, I can imagine this exchange happening offscreen

Leliania: That took a while.
Cassandra: The Dwarf talked for 12 fucking hours nonstop.
Leliana: Surely you learned a lot then?
Cassandra: All I learned was that every warehouse in Kirkwall looks exactly the same and is filled with 127 bandits.
Leliana: ......Merde!

 

[Dalisclock]

So in Summary,

Dragon Age 2 ended up being a lot better then I expected and I'm glad I didn't skip over like I'd originally thought about doing. The sense of tight companionship with all(most of, at least) Hawkes crew is really nice and the sense of really building a life in one city over the better course of a decade is a cool premise and generally works. Needless to say, the time skips don't always work in the favor of this and it's too bad the game didn't have more time for polish to really make the city feel different between time periods.

The feels like Mass Effect 2 in a lot of ways, where the companion quests are pretty good overall and a number of side quests get follow up in each act, where people you met in act 1 will show up again in act 2 and 3. While there's build up through the game for the three main plots, generally each act settles for one main plot thread which is then more or less resolved. While this works fairly well in Acts 1 and 2, Act 3 suffers a fair bit and feels a bit rushed no doubt due to the 18 month dev cycle. The DLCs provide some nice side stories, with Legacy apparently being tied to Inquisition and at least one more DLC was cut entirely. Apparently some of the planned plotlines that had to be cut from DA2 were worked into Dragon Age Inquisition.

Obviously the biggest issue from the dev cycle was the sheer repetition of some of the content. There's 1 warehouse map, 1 cave map, 1 map sewer map, etc. The same maps are used over and over again and the enemy encounters are not only frequent but it's fairly easy to spot when they'll occur, especially after the 10th run through a given map. It makes sense practically, like with stage plays you have to make a lot of use from limited sets, but in a PC game it feels a bit off and tiresome after a while and it made the game feel longer then it probably should have felt. It's a fair bit shorter then DAO but strangely still padded despite that. So in some ways it's too long and too short.

Also the fact you can't Romance Varric for some reason I don't understand. 0/10, would not play again. You know what you did, Bioware.

But overall a good experience, despite a number of rough edges. I'll be moving on to DA Inquisition soon enough and we'll see how that goes. This thread is currently 18 pages and 351 posts(most of which are probably me going on at length) to cover 2 games and about....100 or so hours of gameplay, DLCS included. I'm curious to see how long this thing is after the whole thing is said and done. DAI is supposed to be the longest but then again, how much of that content is worth banging on about as I have?

 

[thebobmaster]

I agree about DA2 overall. Even when I first played it about a year after its release, my overall reaction was "People were too hard on this game." The repeating environments were definitely a problem, but I loved how the story felt like it had lower stakes. You have Bioware game after game about saving the world/galaxy/universe...and then here comes this game that's basically about being a small fish in a big pond trying to keep shit from falling apart to the best of your ability.

Also, this is the only Bioware game I can think of where I didn't dislike any of the party members (except maybe Sebastian, but only because I haven't actually played through any version of DA 2 with him available). Even Carver was...a bit annoying, but I felt like he was annoying in that "little brother" way that was almost endearing. Varric and Aveline alone made putting up with his annoying quirks worthwhile, anyways.

 

[meiam]

I think DA2 bad reputation stem mostly from its initial impression which aren't that great (imo a lot of opinion you hear are actually just people who played the first couple of hours). You're not on some grandiose quest, you're just some refugee, you quickly realize every environment is constantly recycled and initial character aren't that interesting, ie family and Aveline (who started out uninteresting but is actually quite unique in that she has a canon love interest). Gameplay is so so, they've improved on some things from DA1, more interesting talent trees and fun synergy between class, but the encounter are pretty mediocre overall with just wave after wave of spawning enemy. Of the main stories, 1 doesn't have much of one since its mostly side quest, 2 is interesting but feel inconsequential and 3 is rushed and disappointing. Thankfully the characters can carry out the narrative by themselves (hello ME2), but a better main story would have really helped (doesn't need to be grand and epic, but more interesting and integrated into the setting). They tried to make that the templar V mage, but it just doesn't work because of how silly both side are and the ending is just dumb.

DAI is much longer, but mostly because its made up of semi open wold area with a bunch of little errand to do in them (ie assasin creed) but there's not that much that happen in most of them. I was really disapointed in it, but mostly because they severly dumbed down the gameplay, which made questing in these massive area mind numbingly boring, the game is also really easy even on the highest setting, which to me start a cascade of problem since I stop carring about gear/experience/money and so on. So maybe you'll like it better (although I also think the story is really weak and the cast is very meh). I did buy it at some point (was practically free) so I guess in some way I expect I'll try it again someday and maybe my opinion will change.

 

[Asita]

But overall a good experience, despite a number of rough edges. I'll be moving on to DA Inquisition soon enough and we'll see how that goes. This thread is currently 18 pages and 351 posts(most of which are probably me going on at length) to cover 2 games and about....100 or so hours of gameplay, DLCS included. I'm curious to see how long this thing is after the whole thing is said and done. DAI is supposed to be the longest but then again, how much of that content is worth banging on about as I have?

...Depends on how much of a completionist you are. Short version being "Defy that pavlovian need to do everything before you leave an area, because there's so much padding in those huge maps..."

Speaking of padding, there is one mod I would be remiss not to recommend for Inquisition: Complete War Table Operations (or a similar mod to reduce/eliminate the War Table wait times). Because the war table was just bad game design meant to artificially extend playtime by tossing in long periods of waiting (read: up to 24 hours, real time). I consider this one about as essential a Quality of Life improvement for Inquisition as SkyUI is for Skyrim.

 

[Dalisclock]

...Depends on how much of a completionist you are. Short version being "Defy that pavlovian need to do everything before you leave an area, because there's so much padding in those huge maps..."

Speaking of padding, there is one mod I would be remiss not to recommend for Inquisition: Complete War Table Operations (or a similar mod to reduce/eliminate the War Table wait times). Because the war table was just bad game design meant to artificially extend playtime by tossing in long periods of waiting (read: up to 24 hours, real time). I consider this one about as essential a Quality of Life improvement for Inquisition as SkyUI is for Skyrim.

I'm gonna grab a couple mods for QoL purposes for sure. There's one for quicker looting which....yeah, I'm grabbing that one too. I wanted to get into the game and see how it's going first.

Also, this is the only Bioware game I can think of where I didn't dislike any of the party members (except maybe Sebastian, but only because I haven't actually played through any version of DA 2 with him available). Even Carver was...a bit annoying, but I felt like he was annoying in that "little brother" way that was almost endearing. Varric and Aveline alone made putting up with his annoying quirks worthwhile, anyways.

I didn't really care much about Sebastian one way or another. His character is fine but not terribly interesting and he's a little sanctimonious considering his role in the chantry. I'd much rather have Varric and/or Avaline in my party, both of whom are more interesting to have around. It's especially fun having Aveline along with the more roguish types like Isabella where it's clear Aveline knows about Isabella being a Pirate Scoundrel but puts up with her anyway because they're all friends of Hawke.

 

[Dalisclock]

Dragon Age Inquisition.

Before I get into this, I messed around with the Dragon Age Keep a bit. It turns out the Origin Server for DAO doesn't work anymore or something, but I could upload my data from DA2 into the keep(which apparently doesn't carry over DOA decisions despite the fact I imported my DAO save to DA2). So despite uploading i pretty much ran through the entire tapestry trying to align it as closely with my decisions so far. A couple minor ones I totally didn't fucking remember who these people were or what I did so I spitballed and I doubt they matter much.

Once I was done I hit the play button and was treated to Varric narrating a summary of all the major beats of the last two games and that was nice. It was like 15 min long but it was nice to get that quick refresher and also get a quick catch up on why there's a conclave going on. Basically most of the mages declared independence, the Templars purged a couple circles and the Pope Divine tried to restrain the Templars and they decided they weren't having it so went AWOL. And it seems somewhere along the line someone(I forget who) proposed a peace conference/conclave at the Temple of Andraste near the former Cultist center of Haven which the game flat out starts out at.

Now if you didn't do the Keep, apparently you get none of that because it just jumps straight into shit from the moment you hit the Start button. In fact, the game so far tells you very little of what happened before. The main menu is a bunch of dudes marching to the Conclave and when you start, there's a green flash and the whole thing explodes, because apparently Anders set another bomb when nobody was looking, being the 5d chessmaster he clearly was.

And then it goes to the character creation screen which is.....interesting. You have sliders but a number of options have a box and the particular characteristic changes where on the X/Y axis you are. Also there's like 2 voice options available, I suspect per gender but it might be per race and I wasn't fond of either of them but they're fine. So messed around with that for a while. The new character models are generally better looking but look a bit glossy at times and I'm still getting used to it. It was especially weird when making your dude(ete) trying to make the face look decent and i say that as someone who normally just changes the hair style/color and maybe eye color before calling it good. Especially in Souls-likes where half the time you aren't gonna see your face.

Unlike in DA2, you can pick races again. Elves and Dwarves are back alongside the humans and now Qunari are an option as well. And after poking for a bit I decided to do a Qunari Mage lady because I've done an elf, a human and considering the Qunari were a big thing in DA2, I figured why not? Also I like the idea of the chosen one being a big Qunari Amazon lady because I know half of Thedas, including the Chantry, will shit bricks the moment they hear a fucking Qunari is claiming to be the Herald of Andraste. Yeah, I know the game was written around a Human but I get to be a human IRL and I want something different in my video games, like the ability to shoot fire at people who call me an Ox-man and tell them I was chosen by God and I WILL ex-communicate their sorry sanctimonious asses. Also I imagine the game doesn't have much specific stuff for non-humans regardless so I might as well make my own RP.

Warning: Semantic/Lore Rant incoming. Skip next paragraph if you don't care about stupid sematic shit.

On a side note, there is the wierdness that technically the Qunari is not a Qunari. since the Qunari are the followers of the Qun aka a religion, not the race of Big Horny boys/girls(I know, Phrasing). And the little character card flat out states you were never a follower of the Qun because your Horny Parents left to live elsewhere, so the Horny character(no I will not stop) became a random Merc who was apparently meant as security for the conclave. So yeah, technically you can't play a Qunari but since Bioware hasn't explained the name of the Horny race and so many of them are Qunari there's this weird conflation that technically shouldn't exist. OTOH, other races can also follow the Qun so the distinction there is also blurred. So you get some weird moments where you can be called Qunari and you can even refer to yourself as much despite not being one, though I guess after a while it became convenient to just go along with it other then try to explain the different to every person you meet or something. On a related note, Lucasfilm, tell us the name of Yoda's race, Goddammanit. We know there's more then one of them!

Thank you for attending my TED talk. Feel free to throw money at your screen if you feel entertained/informed.

Okay, with all that out of the way, onto the actual game. Conclave/Temple exploded in a big Green BOOM and with a character made, there's a bit where everything is green and you follow a glowing green person to the stop of a mountain before waking up in the real world again and taken prisoner by the the seekers, who accuse you of causing all of this, by the virtue of being the apparent so sole survivor and having a glowing green hand. Which honestly is really circumstantial but this is also a world where people can be blood mages and possessed by demons at the drop of a hat so I suppose they have a point. Leliana and Cassandra are here and demand you try to do something with your glowing hand, so Cassandra escorts you while Leliana heads off to deal with other stuff and meets up with you later. Which is fine even if very clear nobody is really sure what to do so apparently we're going with the "throw the prisoner at the glowly green thing and see if that does anything" plan, which to be fair leaves something to be desired.

It's unclear exactly how much time has passed between the explosion and waking up in custody but enough time has passed for the Seekers and whatever people they could scrounge up to establish an ad hoc base. Also apparently there are a bunch of glowing green fade rifts popping up and growing at a disturbing rate, a result of killing a bunch of people in a horrible way, but apparently even worse then normally happens in Thedas. It's wierd because Blowing up the Chantry in Kirkwall caused a bunch of demons to leak through and Kirkwall is established to already have a very weak veil, so much it barely exists, and yet this shit didn't happen there, so maybe this is a special green explosion? I mean, something crazy is going on to literally break the sky open because massacres aren't exactly rare in this setting and the fact the seekers are really, really concerned about this is telling.

The opening hour is a toturial and considering some of the controls and UI has been changed up with the new engine(Frostbite, I think) it is kinda needed. Space no longer pauses the game because it's now used for a really weaksauce jump which....I guess it's used somewhere other then jump over tiny fences. Targeting is different and feels wierd now. The tatical mode has returned but I'm not super thrilled with how it works right now. Walking feels slower and if you can speed up the walking speed I don't know how to do it. Pickups have to be noticed with a tiny little sonar ping and looting takes a second and.....Yeah, this is gonna get modded. I liked being able to insta-loot and I don't know why the changed it. Also I liked just having all the lootable bits highlighted in previous games. I keep wondering if this game works better with a controller instead of KB and Mouse because It feels like I need to keep clicking to attack now unless I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I need to rebind the controls or something.

Along the way I meet up with an elf named Solas who looks like an egg with ears and my favorite hairy chested dwarf Varric and learn my green hand can close green fade rifts, which comes in handy when I reach the big one at the center what used to be the Temple of Andraste, which disturbingly surrounded by Red Lyrium, which I already know is both bad fucking news and why the fuck it is here at the surface when previously it was deep, deep underground in a thiag everyone had apparently forgotten on purpose(likely for that very reason). At least Varric is nice enough to remind everyone not to touch the damn stuff. After an annoying battle where I fight a pride demon while trying to seal the rift, partially because I accidently opened the console commands somehow, left the game to get rid of it and then couldn't get the game open again for 30 fucking minutes of wandering why the game wouldn't open at all, finally beat the damn thing and closed the rift. Oh, and there was a spoopy booming voice and the Divine being held captive in the rift before it closed. So that's fun.

Anyway, I wake up some time later and find out the breach has stabilized instead of growing out of control as it was before, so progress I guess. I walk out the door to find everyone is standing around in awe of me saying I'm the chosen one and route me to the chantry, where Cassandra and Leliana are arguing with some Chantry dude about putting me back in irons and sending me to Orlais to endure French food, Corrupt nobles and.....decent healthcare? The two seekers tell him to fuck off, he does and then they bring up reforming the inquisition, which I think has been brought up all of once prior to this in a codex entry in DA2 and is only explained as the precuser to the Chantry and the Templars. With that, there's a quick montage of people being trained, Haven being turned into an armed camp and messages being sent to one place I assume to be Val Rouyx and the other presumably being Denerim, since I believe we're currently on the border of Ferelden and Orlais, in the Frostback Moutains and Orlais has been mentioned several times so far like they have Jurisdiction or something. I know Orlais is nearby at any rate.

So yeah, I know that was a lot but I felt compelled to talk about all the new stuff here. So, mixed feelings so far but lets see where all of this goes. I hope they go into more detail soon about what the deal with the Inquisition is and why I'm qualified to be leading it(other then a magic glowing hand) because I think for most people the term "Inqusition" either has the negative connotation of Church abuses and religious tyranny(deserved or not) during the middle ages and/or a culturally omnipresent comedy sketch which I'm sure I'll be referencing at some point while talking about this game and I'm sure as shit Bioware is aware of that.

 

[meiam]

The character race is very rarely commented on in the game, like DA1. This make the choice of letting the player pick the Qunari race a bit strange since it a pretty big difference, although they sorta retcon that there's plenty of Qunari race people living outside the Qu and having perfectly normal life.

Letting the player call the shoot just because they have the glowing hand is just typical game logic, it makes no sense but people probably wouldn't like it if they were starting at the bottom of the ladder and climbing up, so your the boss, it's probably an overcorrection to DA2 middling reception. Calling it inquisition is probably because you mostly fight demon, as opposed to darkspawn or such. It's a bit of a weird choice irl. But story wise its sanctioned by the church and everything irl that was sanctioned by the church turned out to be either quite crappy or outright horrific, so what can you do?

 

[Gordon_4]

Dragon Age Inquisition.

Before I get into this, I messed around with the Dragon Age Keep a bit. It turns out the Origin Server for DAO doesn't work anymore or something, but I could upload my data from DA2 into the keep(which apparently doesn't carry over DOA decisions despite the fact I imported my DAO save to DA2). So despite uploading i pretty much ran through the entire tapestry trying to align it as closely with my decisions so far. A couple minor ones I totally didn't fucking remember who these people were or what I did so I spitballed and I doubt they matter much.

Once I was done I hit the play button and was treated to Varric narrating a summary of all the major beats of the last two games and that was nice. It was like 15 min long but it was nice to get that quick refresher and also get a quick catch up on why there's a conclave going on. Basically most of the mages declared independence, the Templars purged a couple circles and the Pope Divine tried to restrain the Templars and they decided they weren't having it so went AWOL. And it seems somewhere along the line someone(I forget who) proposed a peace conference/conclave at the Temple of Andraste near the former Cultist center of Haven which the game flat out starts out at.

Now if you didn't do the Keep, apparently you get none of that because it just jumps straight into shit from the moment you hit the Start button. In fact, the game so far tells you very little of what happened before. The main menu is a bunch of dudes marching to the Conclave and when you start, there's a green flash and the whole thing explodes, because apparently Anders set another bomb when nobody was looking, being the 5d chessmaster he clearly was.

And then it goes to the character creation screen which is.....interesting. You have sliders but a number of options have a box and the particular characteristic changes where on the X/Y axis you are. Also there's like 2 voice options available, I suspect per gender but it might be per race and I wasn't fond of either of them but they're fine. So messed around with that for a while. The new character models are generally better looking but look a bit glossy at times and I'm still getting used to it. It was especially weird when making your dude(ete) trying to make the face look decent and i say that as someone who normally just changes the hair style/color and maybe eye color before calling it good. Especially in Souls-likes where half the time you aren't gonna see your face.

Unlike in DA2, you can pick races again. Elves and Dwarves are back alongside the humans and now Qunari are an option as well. And after poking for a bit I decided to do a Qunari Mage lady because I've done an elf, a human and considering the Qunari were a big thing in DA2, I figured why not? Also I like the idea of the chosen one being a big Qunari Amazon lady because I know half of Thedas, including the Chantry, will shit bricks the moment they hear a fucking Qunari is claiming to be the Herald of Andraste. Yeah, I know the game was written around a Human but I get to be a human IRL and I want something different in my video games, like the ability to shoot fire at people who call me an Ox-man and tell them I was chosen by God and I WILL ex-communicate their sorry sanctimonious asses. Also I imagine the game doesn't have much specific stuff for non-humans regardless so I might as well make my own RP.

Warning: Semantic/Lore Rant incoming. Skip next paragraph if you don't care about stupid sematic shit.

On a side note, there is the wierdness that technically the Qunari is not a Qunari. since the Qunari are the followers of the Qun aka a religion, not the race of Big Horny boys/girls(I know, Phrasing). And the little character card flat out states you were never a follower of the Qun because your Horny Parents left to live elsewhere, so the Horny character(no I will not stop) became a random Merc who was apparently meant as security for the conclave. So yeah, technically you can't play a Qunari but since Bioware hasn't explained the name of the Horny race and so many of them are Qunari there's this weird conflation that technically shouldn't exist. OTOH, other races can also follow the Qun so the distinction there is also blurred. So you get some weird moments where you can be called Qunari and you can even refer to yourself as much despite not being one, though I guess after a while it became convenient to just go along with it other then try to explain the different to every person you meet or something. On a related note, Lucasfilm, tell us the name of Yoda's race, Goddammanit. We know there's more then one of them!

Thank you for attending my TED talk. Feel free to throw money at your screen if you feel entertained/informed.

Okay, with all that out of the way, onto the actual game. Conclave/Temple exploded in a big Green BOOM and with a character made, there's a bit where everything is green and you follow a glowing green person to the stop of a mountain before waking up in the real world again and taken prisoner by the the seekers, who accuse you of causing all of this, by the virtue of being the apparent so sole survivor and having a glowing green hand. Which honestly is really circumstantial but this is also a world where people can be blood mages and possessed by demons at the drop of a hat so I suppose they have a point. Leliana and Cassandra are here and demand you try to do something with your glowing hand, so Cassandra escorts you while Leliana heads off to deal with other stuff and meets up with you later. Which is fine even if very clear nobody is really sure what to do so apparently we're going with the "throw the prisoner at the glowly green thing and see if that does anything" plan, which to be fair leaves something to be desired.

It's unclear exactly how much time has passed between the explosion and waking up in custody but enough time has passed for the Seekers and whatever people they could scrounge up to establish an ad hoc base. Also apparently there are a bunch of glowing green fade rifts popping up and growing at a disturbing rate, a result of killing a bunch of people in a horrible way, but apparently even worse then normally happens in Thedas. It's wierd because Blowing up the Chantry in Kirkwall caused a bunch of demons to leak through and Kirkwall is established to already have a very weak veil, so much it barely exists, and yet this shit didn't happen there, so maybe this is a special green explosion? I mean, something crazy is going on to literally break the sky open because massacres aren't exactly rare in this setting and the fact the seekers are really, really concerned about this is telling.

The opening hour is a toturial and considering some of the controls and UI has been changed up with the new engine(Frostbite, I think) it is kinda needed. Space no longer pauses the game because it's now used for a really weaksauce jump which....I guess it's used somewhere other then jump over tiny fences. Targeting is different and feels wierd now. The tatical mode has returned but I'm not super thrilled with how it works right now. Walking feels slower and if you can speed up the walking speed I don't know how to do it. Pickups have to be noticed with a tiny little sonar ping and looting takes a second and.....Yeah, this is gonna get modded. I liked being able to insta-loot and I don't know why the changed it. Also I liked just having all the lootable bits highlighted in previous games. I keep wondering if this game works better with a controller instead of KB and Mouse because It feels like I need to keep clicking to attack now unless I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I need to rebind the controls or something.

Along the way I meet up with an elf named Solas who looks like an egg with ears and my favorite hairy chested dwarf Varric and learn my green hand can close green fade rifts, which comes in handy when I reach the big one at the center what used to be the Temple of Andraste, which disturbingly surrounded by Red Lyrium, which I already know is both bad fucking news and why the fuck it is here at the surface when previously it was deep, deep underground in a thiag everyone had apparently forgotten on purpose(likely for that very reason). At least Varric is nice enough to remind everyone not to touch the damn stuff. After an annoying battle where I fight a pride demon while trying to seal the rift, partially because I accidently opened the console commands somehow, left the game to get rid of it and then couldn't get the game open again for 30 fucking minutes of wandering why the game wouldn't open at all, finally beat the damn thing and closed the rift. Oh, and there was a spoopy booming voice and the Divine being held captive in the rift before it closed. So that's fun.

Anyway, I wake up some time later and find out the breach has stabilized instead of growing out of control as it was before, so progress I guess. I walk out the door to find everyone is standing around in awe of me saying I'm the chosen one and route me to the chantry, where Cassandra and Leliana are arguing with some Chantry dude about putting me back in irons and sending me to Orlais to endure French food, Corrupt nobles and.....decent healthcare? The two seekers tell him to fuck off, he does and then they bring up reforming the inquisition, which I think has been brought up all of once prior to this in a codex entry in DA2 and is only explained as the precuser to the Chantry and the Templars. With that, there's a quick montage of people being trained, Haven being turned into an armed camp and messages being sent to one place I assume to be Val Rouyx and the other presumably being Denerim, since I believe we're currently on the border of Ferelden and Orlais, in the Frostback Moutains and Orlais has been mentioned several times so far like they have Jurisdiction or something. I know Orlais is nearby at any rate.

So yeah, I know that was a lot but I felt compelled to talk about all the new stuff here. So, mixed feelings so far but lets see where all of this goes. I hope they go into more detail soon about what the deal with the Inquisition is and why I'm qualified to be leading it(other then a magic glowing hand) because I think for most people the term "Inqusition" either has the negative connotation of Church abuses and religious tyranny(deserved or not) during the middle ages and/or a culturally omnipresent comedy sketch which I'm sure I'll be referencing at some point while talking about this game and I'm sure as shit Bioware is aware of that.

Well, look at it this way: both Mage and Templar have fallen to Chaos’ machinations. That’s why an Inquisition is needed.

As for the leader; gameplay wise yes you’re in charge but the primary drivers of the organisation are still Cassandra, Cullen, Lilliana and Josephine (who is just the sweetest thing and hilariously out of place).

Also yes, Inquisition plays much smoother with a controller since that’s what it was primarily designed around. Also I’d get very used to walking because controlling the horses you eventually get will make you want to beat that particular game designer like you’re a jockey in last place at the Derby.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Well, look at it this way: both Mage and Templar have fallen to Chaos’ machinations. That’s why an Inquisition is needed.

Praise the Emperor!

As for the leader; gameplay wise yes you’re in charge but the primary drivers of the organisation are still Cassandra, Cullen, Lilliana and Josephine (who is just the sweetest thing and hilariously out of place).

Josephine is the one left holding the bucket of making shit actually work.

 

[Gordon_4]

Praise the Emperor!




Josephine is the one left holding the bucket of making shit actually work.

Actually aside from Cassandra, the other three do fulfil important but distinct functions: Josephine is their diplomat so she's the one greasing palms, smoothing ruffled feathers and making contacts with all the right people. Cullen manages the main forces; drilling, arming, integrating, feeding, billetting: that is no small piece of work. And Lilliana of course handles intelligence, counter intelligence, and whatever passes for covert operations.