Dalisclock plays through the Dragon Age Trilogy and makes a lot of running commentary along the way. Spoilers abound.
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Because Kirkwall’s Templars are all as observant as Stormtroopers.
It’s the single biggest ‘WTF’ of the game that simply has no explanation or handwave. Origins you had carte blanche as Grey Warden but here? I got nothing. Act 2 kind of allows a very thin explanation that Act 3 reinforces a little but even then it’s a single plywood plank stuck on with chewing gum. I suppose Varric being the narrator means he’s exaggerating Hawke or Bethany’s visible cues as Mages and during the day most fighting is in Lowtown or in secluded spaces or well outside the City and since you leave no survivors……
But still, massively obvious spot where gameplay and story had a head on collision.
There second map of the outside area of Kirkwall, use the bottom icon to switch between day/night/outside. The alienage is part of low town (or w/e its called, same location as Gamlen house), its tuck in the corner toward the bottom, look for the big tree.
Fight aren't very interesting unless you play at high difficulty level, but using the DLC stuff mean you don't have to balance finance between financing the expedition and buying gear for yourself, which I think is a fun part of the game. Still visit shop since there's a bunch of unique stuff you can buy (companion upgrade, bonus skill/stat point)
Yeah nobody realizing your a mage is pretty weak, there's even a few fight where you have templar as friendly NPC and never comment on it. There might be a figleaf conversation at some point where Varric says he's using his connection to keep your status secret (or maybe that's a conversation with Bethany or another mage companion?).
That conversation is mainly in relation to Anders and Merrill. Bethany has the good sense to keep a low profile because her dad taught her to.
For some wierd reason I just imagined that all the Templars are too busy staring at Varrics amazing chest the whole time and thus keep missing the fact you're a mage. Which is probably how Varric would tell the story anyway.
Yeah...there's a reason I prefer keeping Hawke as a warrior/rogue. S/he is simply too visible and active to get away with being an apostate. ...Plus, I think that it encourages more fence-sitting towards Templar/Mage tensions, as it makes Hawke a bit more tangential but still intimately tied to it through Bethany. Ie: "Magic is scary, but if the templars go too far, my little sister pays the price!"
I think it's because I did RogueWarden in Origins that I wanted to do MageHawke here. Also so I didn't have to suffer through the fade thrice in the base game, but yeah, it's gonna be interesting when the whole Templar/Mage thing kicks into gear later on. Then again, I've picking mostly sarcastic answers for Hawke thus far because after playing Warden as something akin to a good character I wanted to play Snarky Mage this time around.
No idea what I'll do when I hit Inquistion in a few weeks/months. I'll figure out when I get near the end of DA2
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Fun fact; if you choose warrior/rogue Hawke then Varric exaggerates the size of Bethany’s bust in the intro. And when Cassandra calls him out on his bullshit, it’s normal.
I haven't seen Anders again yet but I heard he's much more of an asshole in DA2 then in Awakening.
Yeah about that...
I will say I respect they tried to do something quite unique with him.
I'm afraid I was spoiled about that particular bit of plot a long time ago. I do appreciate everyone trying not to spoil it for me though. Sadly the internet already did that....I don't fucking know how long ago and since for a long time I'd kind of given up on the idea of ever finishing Origins, let along playing through the series, I wasn't avoiding spoilers. If there's the one thing I know about the plot of DA2, it's that Anders(or more precisely Justice/Anders) apparently is a big believer in the Propaganda of the Deed.
Suffice it to say I've been paying attention to Anders to see how well that is foreshadowed and there's a little bit when Justice and Anders are together in the party during Awakening, where Justice is arguing with Anders about how poorly the mages are treated.
To be fair, a lot of games I learn the twists before ever playing them and like 90% of the time I don't feel like it diminished my enjoyment of them. I think to really do that the twist really needs to redefine everything I've seen up until that point rather than being something that could have been reasonably extrapolated from the plot and character beats up to that point. So Naked Snake being Big Boss doesn't really matter much because you could have easily figured that out from context and just paying attention. It's cool for sure but it doesn't make a big difference if you knew it ahead of time.
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So I met Anders finally and, he seems like an alright chap, I guess. Not quite as interesting as he was in Awakening but okay. I do find it interesting that between him and one of the side quests in the alienage involves helping Mages not get beat down by Templars they seem to talk about it like you don't know any of this. And playing another class that might make sense but I'm very clearly a mage and there's bits where it feels like "Dude, I'm a fucking mage. I'm standing right in front of you" and it's kinda of annoying now it's not acknowledged or only barely so. Also, as others have alluded to, he seems to have decided to host the spirit of Justice from Awakening, though it hasn't been discussed yet. There's merely a visual clue when you first meet him.
Went outside of town and realized there's both an out of town map and a map of both night and day for the city itself, which is.....interesting for sure. Effectively it's 2 maps repeating but with night and day and then the outdoorsy stuff. But anyway, met the Dalish elves outside of town, whom I'm finally getting used to their look though now all the dalish are now Irish, it seems and.....why not I guess? Dwarves end up being Scottish quite a lot for reasons so the elves might as well be Irish. Is there any reason for dwarves to be scottish aside from the LOTR movies started that? Anyway, now I have an Elven mage buddy to come on adventures with me with her socially awkward Blood mage thing.
Edit: Upon taking another look Merril's VA is Welsh, so maybe the other Dalish also have Welsh VA and I honestly have a really hard time distinguishing the Welsh accent from the Irish one. That's on me, but I felt I should acknowledge it.
Did the locket quest Flemeth gave me and then it turns out Flemeth was in the Locket so she could come to kirkwall so she could give a cryptic warning that's surely sequel baiting(though unclear if it was meant for DAI or something else, aside from "CHANGE IS COMING!" which is so incredibly generic as to be pointless) before flying off. There's also some references to Morrigan, except Hawke doesn't know who that is so it's pretty much just there for the player's benefit, which feels kinda wierd TBH.
Flemeth:"So my daughter Morrigan...."
Hawke: "Who?"
Flemeth: "My daughter. You wouldn't know her but was really important in the last game"
Hawke: "What game are you talking about?"
*Hawke looks around confused*
Flemeth: "You don't need to understand"
Though generally the quests are fine and generally interesting if not anything amazing in terms of writing. There's also Aveline's quest where it turns out there might be probably definitely is some corruption among the guards which could be interesting.
So far not feeling guilty for melting most of the opposition using the nice shit I got in the spare room because these battles aren't really interesting and they're a ton of them and the only reason I care about them at all is because I need more XP to buy better abilities. If the combat can't be interesting at least it can be short and it is nice watching entire groups just melt within seconds. Especially since I spent many hours in Origins struggling through battles, some of which I'd have to reload several times until I hit that place where I could reasonably expect not to die very much and I'm not keen to go back to that "Everything kills you fast and you have to fucking struggle to get back to that sweet spot". Fuck that, I'm more then happy to flow straight back into the murder zone.
Serves you right DA2, you started me off with that teaser where I could massacre entire groups in seconds and then gave me gear to help me get back there quickly, so hell yes I'm gonna do it. If you wanted these to be actual skill tests, you could have made them smaller groups with better control and balancing but since it's "Throw wave after wave of mooks at the PC" I'm gonna play "Mow down wave after wave of mooks until they die in the most efficient way possible".
Went outside of town and realized there's both an out of town map and a map of both night and day for the city itself, which is.....interesting for sure. Effectively it's 2 maps repeating but with night and day and then the outdoorsy stuff. But anyway, met the Dalish elves outside of town, whom I'm finally getting used to their look though now all the dalish are now Irish, it seems and.....why not I guess? Dwarves end up being Scottish quite a lot for reasons so the elves might as well be Irish. Is there any reason for dwarves to be scottish aside from the LOTR movies started that? Anyway, now I have an Elven mage buddy to come on adventures with me with her socially awkward Blood mage thing.
Edit: Upon taking another look Merril's VA is Welsh, so maybe the other Dalish also have Welsh VA and I honestly have a really hard time distinguishing the Welsh accent from the Irish one. That's on me, but I felt I should acknowledge it.
Did the locket quest Flemeth gave me and then it turns out Flemeth was in the Locket so she could come to kirkwall so she could give a cryptic warning that's surely sequel baiting(though unclear if it was meant for DAI or something else, aside from "CHANGE IS COMING!" which is so incredibly generic as to be pointless) before flying off. There's also some references to Morrigan, except Hawke doesn't know who that is so it's pretty much just there for the player's benefit, which feels kinda wierd TBH.
Flemeth:"So my daughter Morrigan...."
Hawke: "Who?"
Flemeth: "My daughter. You wouldn't know her but was really important in the last game"
Hawke: "What game are you talking about?"
*Hawke looks around confused*
Flemeth: "You don't need to understand"
Though generally the quests are fine and generally interesting if not anything amazing in terms of writing. There's also Aveline's quest where it turns out t
So far not feeling guilty for melting most of the opposition using the nice shit I got in the spare room because these battles aren't really interesting and they're a ton of them and the only reason I care about them at all is because I need more XP to buy better abilities. If the combat can't be interesting at least it can be short and it is nice watching entire groups just melt within seconds. Especially since I spent many hours in Origins struggling through battles, some of which I'd have to reload several times until I hit that place where I could reasonably expect not to die very much and I'm not keen to go back to that "Everything kills you fast and you have to fucking struggle to get back to that sweet spot". Fuck that, I'm more then happy to flow straight back into the murder zone.
Serves you right DA2, you started me off with that teaser where I could massacre entire groups in seconds and then gave me gear to help me get back there quickly, so hell yes I'm gonna do it. If you wanted these to be actual skill tests, you could have made them smaller groups with better control and balancing but since it's "Throw wave after wave of mooks at the PC" I'm gonna play "Mow down wave after wave of mooks until they die in the most efficient way possible".
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Merrill is a sweetheart, but she’s also very dim. Bless her.
And if you think you’re OP now, wait until you can start putting Runes in your gear.
Yeah, the "I saw someone get mugged outside my house. It was fascinating" bit was.......that was a bit special.
Playing a mage in Dragon Age 2 is a strange experience.
You are a nobody. You are an apostate. Templars are everywhere, and you interract with them all of the time. But there is no concern over whether or not the Templars will discover who/what you are, and try to hunt you down. You really have to come up with your own headcanon reason as to why this is the case, because the game really doesn't do a good job of explaining this, itself.
Its great that being a mage can really put you at the centre of this story, but it is a shame that the game only really recognises that you are a mage when it is convenient for it, and just completely ignores it the rest of the time. Case in point, you can literally fight a battle in view of/alongside a group of templars, and not a single one will confront you about being a mage.
But again, 18 months.
Still in Act 1, banging out side quests. Notably Anders quest where he's trying to help his buddy, who it turns out has been made Tranquil(which is kinda spoiled by the quest name "Tranquility"). The setup is an obvious trap and it totally is, wherein I end up killing a bunch of ambushing Templars in the Chantry, which should make me public enemy #1 but for some reason I'm still allowed to walk the streets and do magic in public(in front of templars even) and nobody so much as questions it. I know I already harped on this but this is particularly egregious. Also, am I the baddies? (I probably am).
Speaking of which, talking to Anders at the end of that quest and talking about his spiritual freakout reveales he and Justice have basically merged at this point, so he's not really the same Anders from Awakening and it neatly explains his change in personality but also the change in VA(not that the change in VA is really a big deal or really noticable). With that in mind, him becoming a fanatic or a zealot makes more sense if he's posessed(or co-habitating) with the spriit of Justice(or Vengeance).
Doing the side quest I've noticed a number of them seem to invovle people going missing and I can't help but think these are all related in some way, I'm curious to see if this is going somewhere. I've also noticed the Qunari are notable presence in the city and are a bit more fleshed out then they were in the last game. More specifically, most of the Qunari are basically dicks, both based on codex entries and what's shown on screen. There's a quest about a Quanri mage being held by the chantry, Hawke agrees to escort him outside the city and it's basically a big set up that results in him killing himself if you let him. And yeah, the Qunari are weird to be be sure. I guess it makes sense since the Qun involves single-minded dedication to purpose and role which would lend itself to zealotry and be intolerant of other ways of thought.
I also did a quest for Sebastian but apparently I can't recruit him yet(he is a DLC character though).
Speaking of which, talking to Anders at the end of that quest and talking about his spiritual freakout reveales he and Justice have basically merged at this point, so he's not really the same Anders from Awakening and it neatly explains his change in personality but also the change in VA(not that the change in VA is really a big deal or really noticable). With that in mind, him becoming a fanatic or a zealot makes more sense if he's posessed(or co-habitating) with the spriit of Justice(or Vengeance).
Doing the side quest I've noticed a number of them seem to invovle people going missing and I can't help but think these are all related in some way, I'm curious to see if this is going somewhere. I've also noticed the Qunari are notable presence in the city and are a bit more fleshed out then they were in the last game. More specifically, most of the Qunari are basically dicks, both based on codex entries and what's shown on screen. There's a quest about a Quanri mage being held by the chantry, Hawke agrees to escort him outside the city and it's basically a big set up that results in him killing himself if you let him. And yeah, the Qunari are weird to be be sure. I guess it makes sense since the Qun involves single-minded dedication to purpose and role which would lend itself to zealotry and be intolerant of other ways of thought.
I also did a quest for Sebastian but apparently I can't recruit him yet(he is a DLC character though).
Yeah, but it also kinda decides the mage/templar conflict for you. "Gee, the templars think mages are too dangerous and not controlled enough even within the Circles? Surely my apostate who is the living embodiment of how a mage can be a celebrated member of society without the - already present - Sword of Damocles hanging over her head is right with them on that!"
Yeah, it feels like not putting any restrictions in a mage PC at all feels like a bit of a narrative misstep on biowares part. Not only does it create a wierd plot hole but it makes it hard to ever want to choose the Templars when your ass is allegedly on the line and the only reason they aren't harassing you is seemingly because they don't see you.
The first game got a pass because you're a warden and any mages in your party generally fell under your protective "legal" umbrella. Or because you could generally just kill them much better then they could kill you.
18 months.
Yeah but OTOH your mage is about the only one who, when face with the slightest inconvenience, doesn't turn to blood magic.