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

Asita

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Sigrun's personal quest apparently doesn't trigger if you've started either the "Law and Order" or the Smuggler quest. Not finish, START. At least there's a fan patch workaround but it still shouldn't be required and this game came out 12 years ago for god's sake.
Bruh. For the sake of illustration, Skyrim came out 11 years ago. You know what is still (at least by NexusMod's count) one of the most endorsed mods of the last few weeks? The "legendary edition patch" (an effort to patch out all the bugs in the base game and its dlc). Notably, this includes things like this where the devs forgot to replace placeholder UVWs with the actual UVWs packaged in the game files. Patching well after release is - at best - a very recent trend and at worst the exception rather than the rule. More often than not, they focus on newer projects once the old one is deemed 'good enough'.
 
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Bruh. For the sake of illustration, Skyrim came out 11 years ago. You know what is still (at least by NexusMod's count) one of the most endorsed mods of the last few weeks? The "legendary edition patch" (an effort to patch out all the bugs in the base game and its dlc). Notably, this includes things like this where the devs forgot to replace placeholder UVWs with the actual UVWs packaged in the game files. Patching well after release is - at best - a very recent trend and at worst the exception rather than the rule. More often than not, they focus on newer projects once the old one is deemed 'good enough'.
I know that ship has sailed now, but I mean, couldn't they have just patched it in 2011? Awakening had a lot of work put into it, far more then most of the other DLC thus far and 2nd only to Origins itself. But then the companion quest bugs out IF, by some chance, you accept one of the first quests your offered when you go to visit the one city in the entire province. Or were they so Rushed to get Dragon Age 2 out the the door that......

Nevermind, I just figured it out.
 

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Not too much progress since the last post. I am finally starting to see some payoff from the part of the game that involves rebuilding the keep after the attack at the beginning and trying to prevent such a thing from happening again. After giving the dwarf a ton of cash a while ago and arraigning for him to get some granite samples, suddenly I come back to the keep to find the walls and gate repaired and looking really spiffy. Interestingly, this coincided with me managed to seal the basement off from the deep roads(which it seemed to connect right into). It was mentioned the darkspawn pretty much showed up out of nowhere and overwhelmed the defenses, so hopefully that won't happen again, and the walls being repaired should make it easier for the defenders in case of a hypothetical second attack. I'm pretty sure there's something coming near the end of the game, because this is all feeling like prep for the suicide mission in ME2. It feels like the work I do now will eventually make a difference the next time the keep is assaulted/besieged. At least I hope all of this stuff will eventually pay off and I'm not just doing this for the XP.

I spent a bit of time upgrading my runes to make the upcoming fights easier. While you could find and buy some runes in the base game, Awakening allows you to craft runes, and with enough time, effort and cash(granted, some runes can make you cash quite easily), you can craft runes up to "PARAGON" class, which gives some pretty hefty bonuses. The downside is that each level requires roughly 2 of the previous level of the same type of rune, and basic math mean dictates you have to make a lot of lower level runes to get the high level ones, and have to have the etching for every level in between. OTOH, making enemy groups disappear in a matter of seconds feels really, really nice.

I don't have much left in the way of side quests at this time, mostly collection quests. I still need to get the Keep blacksmith special ore to make special armor and weapons for the guards, and there's a crazy dwarf that keeps making me bombs in exchange for lyrium dust. So really, it's pretty much to the point I just need to finish the main quests and be done.

On unrelated note, I JUST realized the TAB key on the PC highlights the interactable parts of the screen. So I have to wonder how much I missed in the base game because of this.
 
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On unrelated note, I JUST realized the TAB key on the PC highlights the interactable parts of the screen. So I have to wonder how much I missed in the base game because of this.
Oh, yeah that is quite a handy tool.

Of course, the consequence is that now you will doubtlessly be running around with one finger on the TAB key at all times...

Still, it is much better than than Dragon Age Inquisition's incarnation of the feature, that sends out a radar-like pulse which highlights nearby interactable objects, and pings if one is nearby. Then you end up running around, glowing and pinging, looking for Elfroot number 3894 to add to your collection. This is an open-world game with respawning crafting components by the way, so get used to that!
 
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Oh, yeah that is quite a handy tool.

Of course, the consequence is that now you will doubtlessly be running around with one finger on the TAB key at all times...

Still, it is much better than than Dragon Age Inquisition's incarnation of the feature, that sends out a radar-like pulse which highlights nearby interactable objects, and pings if one is nearby. Then you end up running around, glowing and pinging, looking for Elfroot number 3894 to add to your collection. This is an open-world game with respawning crafting components by the way, so get used to that!
Honestly I think it’s exaggerated. You pick up what you need to do your upgrades and keep yourself in potions. And doing that is reasonably simple between the mission table and some other things.
 
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Oh, yeah that is quite a handy tool.

Of course, the consequence is that now you will doubtlessly be running around with one finger on the TAB key at all times...

Still, it is much better than than Dragon Age Inquisition's incarnation of the feature, that sends out a radar-like pulse which highlights nearby interactable objects, and pings if one is nearby. Then you end up running around, glowing and pinging, looking for Elfroot number 3894 to add to your collection. This is an open-world game with respawning crafting components by the way, so get used to that!

It has helped with the "find 8 statues" quest in the forest, which I'm not really into but OTOH I've found 7 so far so I might as well grab #8 for the xp and cash.

Dragon Age has a small problem with pixel hunting because interactable objects often blend in with the environment, so the feature is welcome.
 
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2 main quests down, 1 more to go?

Did the silverite mine in the forest, which is is a standard dungeon with the gimmick of you walk into an obvious trap like 3 feet into the mine when you step on a totally "innocent" looking floor pattern, get knocked out and wake up with all your stuff taken from you and you have to fight your way out, using equipment you scavenge from chests and enemies. You know, why the hell not? It's a classic video game scenario but eventually you find the chest that has all your shit and you can rearm again. There's even some good stuff in the mine itself.

However, there appears to a a viscous and still unpatched bug here where you can lose certain pieces of equipment forever(as in they won't show up in the treasure chest). Apparently the only sure way to avoid it is unequip everything before you walk into the mines so it all shows up in the chest later. Which honestly isn't awful but it requires you to either realize there's a bug beforehand or realize what happened once you get your stuff back and hopefully have a save before you entered the mines.

Goddamnit Bioware, Sigrun is annoying but this is a MAIN FUCKING QUEST!
 
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meiam

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2 main quests down, 1 more to go?

Did the silverite mine in the forest, which is is a standard dungeon with the gimmick of you walk into an obvious trap like 3 feet into the mine when you step on a totally "innocent" looking floor pattern, get knocked out and wake up with all your stuff taken from you and you have to fight your way out, using equipment you scavenge from chests and enemies. You know, why the hell not? It's a classic video game scenario but eventually you find the chest that has all your shit and you can rearm again. There's even some good stuff in the mine itself.

However, there appears to a a viscous and still unpatched bug here where you can lose certain pieces of equipment forever(as in they won't show up in the treasure chest). Apparently the only sure way to avoid it is unequip everything before you walk into the mines so it all shows up on the chest later. Which honestly isn't awful but it requires you to either realize there's a bug beforehand or realize what happened once you get your stuff back and hopefully have a save before you entered the mines.

Goddamnit Bioware, Sigrun is annoying but this is a MAIN FUCKING QUEST!
To bring it back to skyrim again, there's the same issue with a main quest doing the same things. I understand why they like doing quest where you lose all equipment, but its just not worth the risk of bug imo.
 
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FInished the Blackmarsh and I'm gonna say I greatly enjoyed the section. It's essentially a spooky village in a swamp that was burned down long ago and every so often you get rushed by werewolves from out of nowhere. Blighted Werewolves, which are even fucking worse then the normal kind. Also tears in the fade all over the place, which act as impassable barriers and in general are something I haven't seen so far. The point of the quest is tracking a lead on a missing Grey Warden called Kristoff, but eventually you find him and he's pretty dead.

Of course, the quest doesn't end there. A intelligent Darkspawn called The First confronts you and sends you into the fade, but ends up there himself along with you(and then runs off) Unlike the circle tower version from the main game, this one is a version of the village that is unburned and apparently a snapshot of .what the village was at some point in the past. It's bright and sunny but with the occasional floating(in the air) boat. It turns out the baroness who once ruled the area started using the local children for blood magic and the villagers burned down her house, causing her to pull everyone into the fade with her. They've been stuck here for who knows how long with her(one of them hearing the town in the real world is overgrown is shocked how long it must have been, because apparently time works differently in the fade). It's far more interesting then the piss filter recycled tower bits from the main game and far shorter to boot.

When you reach the town proper, there's a spectral knight called Justice banging on the gate with an angry crowd, preparing to attack the baroness head on. After a short fight she returns you to the real world, but interestingly enough, she ended up there herself and Justice came along for the ride. Justice, being a spirit, ended up in the body of Kristoff and he's quite disturbed and confused at first, apparently not knowing how to return to the fade and uses the word "trapped" more then once. More discussions reveals that Justice is a Spirit native to the fade, not unlike the demons, but hasn't given into base desire and that's why he's NOT a demon(he's very insistent on this pont).

He is willing to continue inhabiting the body of the grey warden(which is kind of rotting and a bit off putting to look at) so he's basically undead Kristoff and seems to have some of Kristoff's memories as well. And man does this get awkward when you return to the vigil and it turns out Kristoff's wife is there waiting for him. It's a very interesting addition(not to mention the only dedicated tank character) having a character that really is alien to the world but also willing to be a warden due to the pursuit of Justice in that manner.

Anyway, finishing up the quest involves meeting the Baroness one more time outside her abandoned real world house and she's shocked she can exist in the real world without a body, which is even more interesting when she transforms into a huge Pride Demon and you have to fight her. Unclear if she was always one or got possessed by one while in the fade, but either way all the fade tears apparently made it possible for her/it to exist in the real world, which is disturbing. She goes off on a little spiel about wanting to conquer the world but then she got murdered to death by me and my crew so it wasn't to be. There's enough power hungry jerks here already without having to import them.

So I don't think there's much left to go. There seems to be some kind of brewing plot with two factions of Darkspawn: The cold calculating Architect and the frankly disgusting Mother(an intelligent Broodmother....."intelligent" but possibly even more disgusting then the normal types) and apparently they're fighting a civil war of some sort because I don't know right now. It mean, it makes the Darkspawn a little more interesting then before but that's a pretty low bar considering they were pretty much just zombie orcs before, which are never particularly interesting.
 
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meiam

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So this touch on two point why I say the expansion almost feel non canon.

Justice introduce spirit and everything, but its barely relevant in 2 and never mentioned in inquisition. SImilarly, the darkspawn faction and the fact some are inteligent is also never touched on again, sadly. It's a shame cause they're cool aspect.
 

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So this touch on two point why I say the expansion almost feel non canon.

Justice introduce spirit and everything, but its barely relevant in 2 and never mentioned in inquisition. SImilarly, the darkspawn faction and the fact some are inteligent is also never touched on again, sadly. It's a shame cause they're cool aspect.
It'd be a shame if that was true because Awakening in some ways is better then the main game. Tighter, quicker to get to the point, has some interesting ideas(repairing the keep and fortifying it from further attack), etc. I enjoyed Origins but it feels rather padded in some places.
 
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Almost done but sadly didn't have time to finish the Expansion last night.

After arriving back at the Vigil and emptying out the useless shit from my inventory, I found a group of nobles complaining about the Darkspawn problem, which I've been trying to fix the whole time(except when running stupid errands for "orphans" and finding statues in the woods but anyways....) and this triggers the endgame, where the Darkspawn attack Aramanthine and you have to run off to save it, only to reach it and immediately be told the city is lost and the Keep is now under attack. Granted, that doesn't mean the city is actually lost or that there's nothing to be done here, because it's very much a binary choice. Stay in the city and help defend it from the Darkspawn or return to the Vigil and contribute to the defense there. The game seems to lean heavily on you going back to the Vigil by insisting "The city is lost and we need the keep" but I already spent 10 hours upgrading the keep and getting better equipment for the soldiers there. Not to mention a number of my party were left there to defend it.

Suffice it to say, Abandon the city and the city is screwed without a doubt. Protect the city and the Keep might survive if you did enough work beforehand. It really does feel like a dress rehearsal for the suicide mission in ME2 and Anders even uses the term verbatim. Especially where you can save everyone(or close to everyone) if you make the correct choices and put in the work beforehand.

So the city was saved and the keep is probably okay. There is a message from the keep at one point but the only news you get is "Not good" which honestly doesn't tell me much. What does "Not good" mean? Keep is under attack? Keep has fallen and everyone is dead? The guards ran out of beer to go with their chips? What?

It comes at a point you cant really do anything regardless because once the city is secured you're immediately sent to a new location to fight the Darkspawn in their lair and the keep is either going to stand or fall on it's own merits at that point. And so the last bit is a linear battle through a creepy dragon graveyard where different groups f Darkspawn are battling it out(of course you need to fight both of them). Also a high dragon for some reason because why not just toss another boss in there?

Eventually the Architect shows up and asks to explain himself, which I allowed him. Basically he explains he's responsible for making the Darkspawn intelligent and causing this whole mess because apparently it cuts them off from the voice of the old gods that compels them to burrow towards the old gods and cause blights. Which was not his intention. Apparently he wanted to end blights by letting darkspawn think and decide, but apparently it also caused the 5th blight in the process.

I am sympathetic to it's pleas, but OTOH, it's made a giant fucking mess of things every step of the way and most of the time it's servants have been just as dangerous as the normal Darkspawn. It claims it wanted to talk to the Wardens at Vigils keep which somehow got completely botched and turned into a slaughter. Even the disciple you meet at the top of the keep doesn't even attempt to talk, just murder you. If the Intelligent Darkspawn are meant to co-exist with everyone else, they're doing a really shit job at it considering they can't seem to understand the difference between "Talk to Grey Wardens" and "Murder Grey Wardens". And the mother's Darkspawn are worse. And while I haven't had a chance to chat with her yet, because I haven't gotten to the Mother(but that'll happen tonight for sure), honestly it's hard to ignore the fact because of what he did there's an insane Broodmother causing even more problems for everyone.

I guess the problem is that while in theory having intelligent darkspawn that were willing to co-exist would be a benefit to everyone, there hasn't been much of the "willingness to co-exist" on display and unfortunately, there was no way to discuss the problem of the Brood mothers with the Architect. You know, those things that birth more darkspawn, are apparently their only means to reproduction and involve kidnapping women to torture, rape, defile and mutate into darkspawn factories? Because I promise you that there's no fucking way anyone is tolerate that practice continuing, and it's debatable if anyone is going to tolerate the the bloodmothers even existing.

Basically, we're looking at something like the Krogan genophage situation again, where the only way to for Darkspawn to conceivably co-exist would be to cut off their means of reproduction more or less entirely, which I don't see the Darkspawn being okay with.

So yeah, I think everyone can guess my decision on allying with or killing the Architect. He might have prevented more blights. OTOH, he might have cocked it up yet again and caused the 6th one. Hell, apparently there's only 2 more of the old gods left aka two more possible blights and I have no idea what happens after the 7th blight happens or even if it's possible to do anything to weather them. Maybe it's buried in the codex somewhere.
 
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meiam

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Almost done but sadly didn't have time to finish the Expansion last night.

After arriving back at the Vigil and emptying out the useless shit from my inventory, I found a group of nobles complaining about the Darkspawn problem, which I've been trying to fix the whole time(except when running stupid errands for "orphans" and finding statues in the woods but anyways....) and this triggers the endgame, where the Darkspawn attack Aramanthine and you have to run off to save it, only to reach it and immediately be told the city is lost and the Keep is now under attack. Granted, that doesn't mean the city is actually lost or that there's nothing to be done here, because it's very much a binary choice. Stay in the city and help defend it from the Darkspawn or return to the Vigil and contribute to the defense there. The game seems to lean heavily on you going back to the Vigil by insisting "The city is lost and we need the keep" but I already spent 10 hours upgrading the keep and getting better equipment for the soldiers there. Not to mention a number of my party were left there to defend it.

Suffice it to say, Abandon the city and the city is screwed without a doubt. Protect the city and the Keep might survive if you did enough work beforehand. It really does feel like a dress rehearsal for the suicide mission in ME2 and Anders even uses the term verbatim. Especially where you can save everyone(or close to everyone) if you make the correct choices and put in the work beforehand.

So the city was saved and the keep is probably okay. There is a message from the keep at one point but the only news you get is "Not good" which honestly doesn't tell me much. What does "Not good" mean? Keep is under attack? Keep has fallen and everyone is dead? What?

It comes at a point you cant really do anything regardless because once the city is secured you're immediately sent to a new location to fight the Darkspawn in their lair and the keep is either going to stand or fall on it's own merits at that point. And so the last bit is a linear battle through a creepy dragon graveyard where different groups f Darkspawn are battling it out(of course you need to fight both of them). Also a high dragon for some reason because why not just toss another boss in there?

Eventually the Architect shows up and asks to explain himself, which I allowed him. Basically he explains he's responsible for making the Darkspawn intelligent and causing this whole mess because apparently it cuts them off from the voice of the old gods that compels them to burrow towards the old gods and cause blights. Which was not his intention. Apparently he wanted to end blights by letting darkspawn think and decide, but apparently it also caused the 5th blight in the process.

I am sympathetic to it's pleas, but OTOH, it's made a giant fucking mess of things every step of the way and most of the time it's servants have been just as dangerous as the normal Darkspawn. It claims it wanted to talk to the Wardens at Vigils keep which somehow got completely botched and turned into a slaughter. Even the disciple you meet at the top of the keep doesn't even attempt to talk, just murder you. If the Intelligent Darkspawn are meant to co-exist with everyone else, they're doing a really shit job at it considering they can't seem to understand the difference between "Talk to Grey Wardens" and "Murder Grey Wardens". And the mother's Darkspawn are worse. And while I haven't had a chance to chat with her yet, because I haven't gotten to the Mother(but that'll happen tonight for sure), honestly it's hard to ignore the fact because of what he did there's an insane Broodmother causing even more problems for everyone.

I guess the problem is that while in theory having intelligent darkspawn that were willing to co-exist would be a benefit to everyone, there hasn't been much of the "willingness to co-exist" on display and unfortunately, there was no way to discuss the problem of the Brood mothers with the Architect. You know, those things that birth more darkspawn, are apparently their only means to reproduction and involve kidnapping women to torture, rape, defile and mutate into darkspawn factories? Because I promise you that there's no fucking way anyone is tolerate that practice continuing, and it's debatable if anyone is going to tolerate the the bloodmothers even existing.

Basically, we're looking at something like the Krogan genophage situation again, where the only way to for Darkspawn to conceivably co-exist would be to cut off their means of reproduction more or less entirely, which I don't see the Darkspawn being okay with.

So yeah, I think everyone can guess my decision on allying with or killing the Architect. He might have prevented more blights. OTOH, he might have cocked it up yet again and caused the 6th one. Hell, apparently there's only 2 more of the old gods left aka two more possible blights and I have no idea what happens after the 7th blight happens or even if it's possible to do anything to weather them. Maybe it's buried in the codex somewhere.
So you kinda hint at it, but the old god and the darkspawn aren't quite the same. So even if all the old god are killed there's no guarantee the darkspawn will just vanish. Moreover if the problem of the 5th blight was caused by darkspawn not being under the thrall of the old god, there's a risk that killing all the old god will make things worse.
 
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So you kinda hint at it, but the old god and the darkspawn aren't quite the same. So even if all the old god are killed there's no guarantee the darkspawn will just vanish. Moreover if the problem of the 5th blight was caused by darkspawn not being under the thrall of the old god, there's a risk that killing all the old god will make things worse.
Yeah I took a look into that and apparently the answer to "What happens after the last Old God dies?" Is " nothing good". I haven't deep dove into this so there might be a counter argument I haven't seen yet but it sounds like the dragon age version of Ragnarok is implied
 
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So you kinda hint at it, but the old god and the darkspawn aren't quite the same. So even if all the old god are killed there's no guarantee the darkspawn will just vanish. Moreover if the problem of the 5th blight was caused by darkspawn not being under the thrall of the old god, there's a risk that killing all the old god will make things worse.
To clarify on that: The 5th Blight wasn't caused by Darkspawn not being under the thrall of the old god. The fifth blight was the one from the core game, which very much had an Archdemon leading the charge. Point of fact, a Blight is by its very nature defined by the presence of an Archdemon to coordinate the usually near-mindless hordes of darkspawn into a unified force. The Architect inadvertently caused the 5th Blight because while it has a goal of freeing the darkspawn from the call of the old gods, it doesn't know how to achieve that goal. So it has been attempting different methods...and one in particular backfired spectacularly, corrupting the very old god he was trying to ensure would never become an archdemon.
 

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Finished Awakenings and then plowed through Golems of Amgarrak. Yeah, it turns out I was really close to the end when I went to bed and if I'd known that I would have finished up the night before but whatever, it's done. The mother reveals she was driven mad from being cut off from the Song/Call of the old gods because the "Father's"(the Architect) meddling making her intelligent. Of course, I still had to kill her and then the expansion ends.

Sadly there's only a slideshow rather then allowing you to go back to the vigil and see how it fared, though it does give a pretty decent run down of what happened. Luckily my work paid off and both the city and the keep survived, as well as a it sounds like most if not all of my party members left at the vigil survived. Some of the ending slides are pretty entertaining, such as Oghen apparently taking on two Ogres at the same time and allowing the soldiers to regain the courtyard, passing out and waking up a week later to find out he was being lauded as a hero. Most importantly, it sounds like the Keep held for a solid week and even in the end never fell, leading to it being a fitting symbol of the revival of the grey wardens. Which is cool, I just wish more of it had been depicted visually but expansion.

Golems is definitely a step down but apparently was a cheap mini-adventure. It's basically a pure dungeon crawl to and through an abandoned dwarven thiag where an expedition disappeared and you're invited to help find them...with one other person and a fantasy rhino pet. It's fine. It's like an hour, maybe 2 hours long and both maps are recycled(one from the base game and one from awakening). There is a particular gimmick where the thiag map has colored states that are triggered by special buttons around the map and allow you to access objects that only exist in that world state, which also means you have to run around the map a few times to get everything(and allows them to spawn new enemies for each color). It's basically a cheap way for them to get more use out of a single map but it's not terribly interesting beyond that. At the end is a fight vs the harvester, which is a big fleshy monster thing and it's arguably one of the more difficult fights, even at high level. Apparently it's a really rough on the higher difficulties, considering the griping about it online.

Golems, like awakening, allows you to import a warden from elsewhere and it feels like it expects you to since if you create a new Warden you start at level 20, when the level cap is 35 and the encounters are generally pretty tough because you do not get any particularly good companions as part of the DLC. I ended the DLC at 34 with top tier gear and I still had to retry the harvester fight a couple times to beat it. But really that's it. It's a fight through the underground with a boss fight at the end. At least it's not a demo like "Tales of Orzammar " was having actual cutscenes and voice acting and something resembling a plot(not much of one, but it's got more then just some combat).

Last up is Witch Hunt and then I'll be officially done with the first Dragon Age. So basically I'll be done tonight and then probably move on the Dragon Age 2 ASAP.
 
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It's done. Finally, I've completed the expanded Dragon Age:Origins/Awakening universe game thingy with the completion of Witch Hunt. *Blows tiny trumpet*

So Witch Hunt is more remarkable then Golems but mostly because Golems isn't very interesting aside from a difficult final boss fight. Once again you can import a Warden from another DLC(presumably Awakening or Golems) and because of that my Warden finally reached the level cap of 35, though most things I fought died incredibly quickly. I think any of my characters died like a 2 or 3 times in the whole DLC. Also, Witch hunt has a plot, though arguably not much of one.

Basically, the setup is that you're trying to find Morrigan after her disappearing act at the end of Origins and show up at Flemeth's hut looking for her. Inside is a Dalish Elf named Ariane who is also chasing Morrigan, who stole a book from her clan. She joins forces with you and you end up scooting around Ferelden looking for a way to locate Morrigan. Along the way you meet Finn, a Circle Mage who takes an interest in your quest and also because there's a mage Spot open in the party to be filled. Oh, and last but not least, Doggo is back and he's still a very good boi! Yes he is!

The DLC actually gives you the map of ferelden back for the first time since the base game, and you run around visiting a number of places you've already been before assuming you played all the content before this. You go to the circle tower to do some research(and there's a brief "puzzle" where you run around the library looking for books to help you find an elven artifact) when leads you to the Cadash Thaig(which featured in the Stone Prisoner DLC as the finale to Shales quest) next to the ancient creepy temple from the Dalish Origin(which wasn't seen again in the base game) and finally the creepy dragon boneyard from Awakening. Hell, you find Morrigan in the same room the Mother boss fight was in in Awakening and it turns out the Magic Mirror that Morrigan is looking for was RIGHT THERE THE ENTIRE TIME.

When you find Morrigan at the end, there's isn't really much to it. I wasn't there to kill her though that was an option I was presented with. Instead I asked her what was going on and most of it was her being mad that I didn't go with the Old One Baby deal she offered. She then reveals Flemeth probably isn't dead and is something more then human cryptically as fuck, before saying she's going SOMEWHERE ELSE. I offered to go with me but nope, she wasn't having it, so presumably I could have gone with her if I'd done the baby deal? I guess I won't know. But she leaves and the whole thing ends on that sequel hook, which presumably gets followed up.....later? maybe? I've heard this series isn't really that good at following up a lot of the plot threads very well, preferring to shift focus with each game and I'm mentally preparing myself for that, realizing I should shift my expectations with DA2 and again with DAI.

It makes the whole thing kinda weird because while all the maps are recycled from the base game, unlike a lot of the other DLC maps they're used as the same places and not just "place that looks suspiciously like this place you visited in another context but never remarked upon" and it's clearly meant to be an epilogue to the entire experience, a tour down memory lane so to speak. And it does kinda feel like it's own adventure and not just something bolted together for extra cash like some of the other DLC, but unfortunatly, it's also way too short for this purpose.

The whole premise of traveling around the country trying to track morrigan is a good one and revisiting places you've been before to find new meaning and hidden secrets(Cadash Thiag is revealed to have once hosted Elven refugees long, long ago and some of their artifacts are still there) is cool. Hell, the new companions are interesting and have some fun dialogue, but at the same time, the DLC is like 2 hours long if you're going slow. There's not enough time to really get to know the new guys before the experience is over and there's not much in the way of side material either. If this DLC had been spread out a bit more like Awakening, say 5 or so hours of tracking Morrigan down, it might have had more impact.

It stands out because when you revisit the creepy temple from the Dalish Origin and meet Morrigan again, it feels like a LONG time has passed since last seeing either of those, especially since that area in the Dalish Origin was never revisited until now and Morrigan has been MIA for a good 20ish hours if you didn't just skip the DLC to get here. There's also the weirdness that this is basically a short "Remember all these things?" for like one or two relatively small loose ends from the base game while Awakening felt like a proper, if short(10 to 20 hours), sequel which tackled new issues like rebuilding the grey wardens and what if the darkspawn evolved to be more than mindless not-orcs. I felt like the crew from Awakening were a new family to replace the old one from Origins because I'd spent a lot of time with with(20 hours isn't a ton but it's not insignificant either).

So, that's basically it. I'm gonna move on to Dragon Age 2 in short order, but before I do, my next post is gonna be a quick recap of the the last....*Checks notes*....60-70 hours of gameplay over 2 pretty hefty chunks and a bunch of little gameplay tidbits that is the Ultimate edition of Dragon Age Origins.
 
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meiam

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I guess I won't know. But she leaves and the whole thing ends on that sequel hook, which presumably gets followed up.....later? maybe? I've heard this series isn't really that good at following up a lot of the plot threads very well, preferring to shift focus with each game and I'm mentally preparing myself for that, realizing I should shift my expectations with DA2 and again with DAI.
Pretty much every game is stand alone with a few cameo here and there from pass game. Problem is they try to let the player import their decision from pass game, but that means they can't re use the same setting since they would have to account for vastly different player choice. Even then they run into some problem here and there and will ret con some player choice regardless.

For example, Morrigan as a quick (and rather pointless) cameo in DA:I and that's it.
 
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Asita

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When you find Morrigan at the end, there's isn't really much to it. I wasn't there to kill her though that was an option I was presented with. Instead I asked her what was going on and most of it was her being mad that I didn't go with the Old One Baby deal she offered. She then reveals Flemeth probably isn't dead and is something more then human cryptically as fuck, before saying she's going SOMEWHERE ELSE. I offered to go with me but nope, she wasn't having it, so presumably I could have gone with her if I'd done the baby deal? I guess I won't know. But she leaves and the whole thing ends on that sequel hook, which presumably gets followed up.....later? maybe? I've heard this series isn't really that good at following up a lot of the plot threads very well, preferring to shift focus with each game and I'm mentally preparing myself for that, realizing I should shift my expectations with DA2 and again with DAI.
The long and short of it is that the narrative of Witch Hunt is basically designed around the assumption that you romanced Morrigan and had a child with her. It gives you more of a reason to seek her out, and her more of a reason to linger and wait for you (sentimentality that she is reluctant to acknowledge). It also gives her additional reason for using the mirror network (ie, raising the kid in a safe extradimensional pocket where Flemeth presumably can't reach them).

Moreover, the reunion caps off her 'softening' arc by getting her to finally admit that she does indeed care for you and wants you to continue to be part of her life. And that in turn caps off the Warden's story with you disappearing with her through that mysterious mirror.
 
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Dalisclock

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The long and short of it is that the narrative of Witch Hunt is basically designed around the assumption that you romanced Morrigan and had a child with her. It gives you more of a reason to seek her out, and her more of a reason to linger and wait for you (sentimentality that she is reluctant to acknowledge). It also gives her additional reason for using the mirror network (ie, raising the kid in a safe extradimensional pocket where Flemeth presumably can't reach them).

Moreover, the reunion caps off her 'softening' arc by getting her to finally admit that she does indeed care for you and wants you to continue to be part of her life. And that in turn caps off the Warden's story with you disappearing with her through that mysterious mirror.
Yeah, and I kinda wish they'd put in a tiny bit more work to give wardens with a different relationship with her more to chew on. I tried treating her as a friend and ally and she totally wasn't having it at all. It wouldn't take much, just adding more dialogue and having claudia black record a few more lines.