Dragon Age: Awakening

[xvbones]

Don't buy it.

I'm not going to delve into gameplay or anything, if you've played DA: Origins and enjoyed it enough to consider the expansion, you already know how the game plays. Awakening has some new tricks you may have heard about and you may have been champing at the bit to get your hands on it.

It's 20 more hours of DA! Those incredible and incredibly written, witty, remarkable companions! The deeply satisfying tactical combat! The loot! The story!
And look! DA:A has even more and better! It's got tomes that will let you re-spec! Finally! More classes! Better skills! MORE BIGGER SWORDS!

This must be the best fucking xpac ever made.

I mean, there is no way they could possibly screw this up, right?

Well.

Unless they didn't get any of the superb writers or voice actors from Origins and didn't do enough QA so the finished product was overloaded with weird graphical glitches.

For the very first time in Bioware history, they have released a product with terrible writing.

The storyline of Awakening is an unnecessarily convoluted mess that picks up a number of years after the finale of Origins in the manner of a pre-teen fanfic author.

That's not even wild hyperbole, Awakening is exactly like bad fanfiction, incompetent tripe written by someone who just loved Origins and knew just how to 'improve' on it, in fact managing to deeply damage the original story, midichlorian-style.

Right away you will notice something is wrong when the game abruptly forgets everything it told you about the Joining ceremony in Origins - joining the Grey Wardens, that is - and suddenly pretends that everybody who follows you has to be a Grey Warden.

This despite that in Origins, you and Alistair are the only playable Wardens you'll have access to before the spoiler companion at the very end. In addition, whereas in Origins, the Joining had a high likelihood of killing the Warden-wanna-be, in Awakening everybody who drinks from the cup lives, period.

So, each new companion will, at some point, demand that you Wardenize them and if you refuse for any reason - like, say, that you didn't realize that you HAD to make them a Warden for them to stick with you or they want to be a Warden for all the wrong reasons - that's it. They will not join your party and you will not have access to that companion. Gone forever.

And the companions themselves are at best infinitely dull and at worst, downright infuriating.

The single most perfect example of the downslide in companions is the first one you'll meet, Anders.
Anders was clearly written with one goal in mind - "let's re-create Alistair, but instead of all that depth, complexity, wit and charm, let's just fill him up with WACKINESS!" Anders is so very tiresome and is such an obvious Marty Stu, it hurts to listen to him talk. And as he's the strongest and least psychotic caster in this xpac, you'll probably have him around more than any other companion, so you will get to listen to him talk quite a bit.

Other companions include a dwarf of the Legion of the Dead, who you would think would be fascinating and instead is so enormously boring it is painful to try to remember her name and the insufferable son of Arl Howe who is ANGRY at you for killing his dad and reminds of it whenever he can, right until the moment he abruptly declares you as the bestest best friend he's ever had. I think there was also a female warrior, but it could possibly have just been a potted plant with a sword and a shield taped to it.

As for the story itself... Well, okay, so, first off, forget everything Origins told you about the Darkspawn, now for some reason there's a mommy and a daddy Darkspawn and they don't get along. One of them wants to kill all the humans and the other one does not want to kill all the humans.
That's the story.
That's the entire story.
There is no intrigue, no tough moral choices and absolutely no depth. This is paint-by-numbers fantasy and you will see each new plot point coming a mile away.

In addition, Awakening is just not very challenging at all if you play it with an imported Origins toon - which you will want to do, as that is half the fucking point of this expansion.
Awakening is tuned for a level 17 starting character, whereas imports from Origins will likely be in their early 20s. This utterly demolishes the difficulty curve before you even begin the game, allowing you to breeze through absolutely every single encounter start to finish.

The missed potential is painful and more so because what it does get right, you will wish was part of Origins in the first place.
Runecrafting is interesting - albeit convoluted and a little wildly overpowered - and the changes to classes are on the whole pretty damn fantastic. Archers - frustratingly underpowered in Origins - become outright deadly in Awakening.
The new specializations are fittingly powerful and the new skills are - while occasionally afflicted with weird bugs - ridiculously strong.
The biggest, best addition? A relatively cheap tome that allows you to completely re-spec any character.
Sadly, and I do mean really sadly, all these changes are Awakening-only, the install alters absolutely nothing about Origins, which is a shame, because if it did it might be worth the cost.

Unfortunately, Awakening boils down to just more Dragon Age with better tricks, zero charm and piss-awful writing.

Skip this.
Just play DA:O again and save yourself the money.

 

[Wayneguard]

Don't forget that it re-locks your DA:O specializations... >_>

 

[xvbones]

Don't forget that it re-locks your DA:O specializations... >_>

Yeah, there were a lot of little irritations I just didn't want to get into - I read about that particular bit of bastardry, but it didn't happen to me. I figure it got fixed in a patch or just never happened on the PC version.

I mean, there really was a lot more i could have ranted about. Like this one point near the beginning where my toon hit a bizarre graphical glitch that locked his arms into "stealth DW ready to attack position" like a fucking He-Man action figure for about six hours - through gameplay, cutscene and dialogue.

More awkwardly hilarious than game-breaking, but just so disappointingly sloppy for a follow-up to such a great game.

 

[Flamezdudes]

I loved it, it's more Dragon Age. And please, it's just Awakening, it doesn't have an S at the end. Sorry for my attention to detail.

 

[xvbones]

I loved it, it's more Dragon Age. And please, it's just Awakening, it doesn't have an S at the end. Sorry for my attention to detail.

Oh, so you're right.

KK, i will edit.

edit - there we go.

 

[Kwatsu]

One thing Awakening does which is useful: if you didn't have a particular class specialisation in Origins, and you find a tome for it in Awakening, it actually unlocks that specialisation in old save games back in Origins. So you never got the Blood Mage specialisation in Origins? No problem, just buy that blood mage book, reload into Origins and there you go.

It might well be a bug, but it makes my Warden seem so powerful she can warp the VERY FABRIC OF TIME ITSELF.

 

[Baby Tea]

I enjoyed it.
It's not as 'epic' as DA, certainly, but it was a fun, engaging romp.
I don't regret my purchase.

And I also don't recall any glitches. At all.

 

[xvbones]

I enjoyed it.
It's not as 'epic' as DA, certainly, but it was a fun, engaging romp.
I don't regret my purchase.

And I also don't recall any glitches. At all.

I tripped over them left and right.

For example, using Unending Flurry on any enemy would cause them to mimic my motions precisely, making us look like we were doing a ridiculous dance.

This was in addition to not-infrequent crashes to desktop.


As for whether or not you enjoyed it, hey, I can't possibly argue that. If you liked it, you liked it. More power to you and I'm glad you didn't regret your purchase the way I have.

 

[Wayneguard]

I have it on xbox360. This may affect whether or not you encounter the gamebreaking bug.

 

[Toriver]

Right away you will notice something is wrong when the game abruptly forgets everything it told you about the Joining ceremony in Origins - joining the Grey Wardens, that is - and suddenly pretends that everybody who follows you has to be a Grey Warden. This despite that in Origins, you and Alistair are the only playable Wardens you'll have access to before the spoiler companion at the very end.

There's a reason for that. The Wardens were almost destroyed as an order in the last Blight and you, as the new Commander of the Wardens in Ferelden, have to rebuild the order. You need all the manpower you can get. So it makes sense that you'll bring your whole party into the order.

In addition, whereas in Origins, the Joining had a high likelihood of killing the Warden-wanna-be, in Awakening everybody who drinks from the cup lives, period.

Spoiler: Not everybody.

Mhairi is killed in her Joining after the first mission.

Also, it would be a big dick move to give all your party members a chance of death during the Joining. Imagine having to play through with just you because all your party members died in the Joining, even with the much talked-about lowered difficulty. You need a party, no matter how easy you think the game may be.

So, each new companion will, at some point, demand that you Wardenize them and if you refuse for any reason - like, say, that you didn't realize that you HAD to make them a Warden for them to stick with you or they want to be a Warden for all the wrong reasons - that's it. They will not join your party and you will not have access to that companion. Gone forever.

This is different than the above situation with the Joining in that its your own choice as to whether or not they join your party. At least you have the choice, compared to the game just saying NO if they die in the Joining and it's entirely out of your control. And I don't remember any character "demanding" Wardenization anyway. From what I remember, all the characters were surprised or reluctant to join. You're the one demanding, not them.

and the insufferable son of Arl Howe who is ANGRY at you for killing his dad and reminds of it whenever he can, right until the moment he abruptly declares you as the bestest best friend he's ever had.

You hit the nail on the head with Nathaniel, though. I did have a hard time believing that he wouldn't try anything against me the entire time he was a companion.

As for the story itself... Well, okay, so, first off, forget everything Origins told you about the Darkspawn, now for some reason there's a mommy and a daddy Darkspawn and they don't get along. One of them wants to kill all the humans and the other one does not want to kill all the humans.
That's the story.
That's the entire story.

What about you being the new Arl of Amaranthine and the plot with the nobles turning against you?
And I think they're trying to set up a storyline for a second full-length Dragon Age game. There is the question of how the Mother and the Father got to be how they were. After all, there were five Blights and Darkspawn before these two came about. What about those? Clearly something was different this time for a reason. Why? And can the now-intelligent Darkspawn ever find acceptance in the world? I find there's no more or less depth than the original game in this plot. If you're going to simplify the plot down like that, you can do the same thing for Origins. Big dragon and Darkspawn show up, everybody bickers about how to take care of it, they finally agree, you kill dragon and Darkspawn die.
That's the story.

There is no intrigue, no tough moral choices and absolutely no depth.

See the above point about the nobles. You have to make decisions to manage your new Arling properly. Now I wish they could have had more pressing consequences for some of those decisions, but you do have to make them.

Spoiler: There's also this choice near the end...

To save the city or save your Keep. If you got all the upgrades you can be a bit more confident that your keep will be safe, but it's certainly not cut-and-dry. Lots of people will die either way. It could be a tough decision for many.

In addition, Awakening is just not very challenging at all if you play it with an imported Origins toon - which you will want to do, as that is half the fucking point of this expansion.
Awakening is tuned for a level 17 starting character, whereas imports from Origins will likely be in their early 20s. This utterly demolishes the difficulty curve before you even begin the game, allowing you to breeze through absolutely every single encounter start to finish.

This was my big complaint about it. I agree with you wholeheartedly here. It was just too easy if you import a character. If they can construct the game so that you can raise or lower your difficulty at any time, they should have the ability to make two different default difficulties for an imported character as opposed to a brand new character.

On the graphical note, I think that is mainly a problem with the PC version. I didn't see any problem with the Xbox version either. I did see a few glitches in Origins, but nothing big.

Anyway, the review in general is well-written and thorough. You cover a lot of ground and provide plenty of examples without giving anything valuable away. Though I think the objectivity may be lacking. You even managed to be pessimistic when you were talking about what the game did right.

 

[xvbones]

There's a reason for that. The Wardens were almost destroyed as an order in the last Blight and you, as the new Commander of the Wardens in Ferelden, have to rebuild the order. You need all the manpower you can get. So it makes sense that you'll bring your whole party into the order.

I didn't buy it from them and I don't buy that here.
The Wardens still had large forces in other nations, and just 3 Wardens (You, Ali or the Spoiler Companion and French Guy) were enough to take down a fucking Archdemon the first time.
Shotgun recruiting is a terrible idea. Duncan actually researched each new Warden. He didn't just walk up to random folk with weapons and hand them a chalice, he researched them to ensure that each new Warden would be a good Warden..

This just seemed like the writer really liked Wardens.

Also, it would be a big dick move to give all your party members a chance of death during the Joining. Imagine having to play through with just you because all your party members died in the Joining, even with the much talked-about lowered difficulty. You need a party, no matter how easy you think the game may be.

Well, actually.

See, I turned Ohgren down to be a Warden, because he'd never needed to be one before and also fuck Ohgren. And then I turned down Maihiri, because she clearly did not understand any of the consequences of being a Warden, and only wanted in because OH MY GOD YOU GUYS ARE SOOOO COOOL.

I also turned down the crazy witch in the forest because I could not stand to listen to her voice.

I went through about half the game with a 3-man party, me, Howe's kid and Anders. On Hard. Two rogues and a mage. Never took a single injury.

The Legion of the Dead Dwarf I accepted in, because I honestly thought she was a warrior and was tired of doing all the tanking myself.
My party then became three rogues and a mage, a ludicrous, stupid party that was clearly destined for failure and we never took a single injury.

I remain unconvinced that I actually needed a party.

(granted, it should be made plain that this party in question was my Import from Origins, the one that wildly outleveled and overpowered the entire game before I even started.)

This is different than the above situation with the Joining in that its your own choice as to whether or not they join your party. At least you have the choice, compared to the game just saying NO if they die in the Joining and it's entirely out of your control. And I don't remember any character "demanding" Wardenization anyway. From what I remember, all the characters were surprised or reluctant to join. You're the one demanding, not them.

Ohgren does. Maihiri begs you to let her join. The forest witch lady crazy thing does, too, she angrily demands it.

It is like they do not even care that being a Warden means they will only live 30 more years, tops. It is like you never tell any of them that particular secret.

This is some Fist of the North Star shit right there. You have killed each member of your party and have never told them it is coming. They just won't feel it for 30 years.

You hit the nail on the head with Nathaniel, though. I did have a hard time believing that he wouldn't try anything against me the entire time he was a companion.

Oh, not me. I knew he was going to turn around and love the balls clean off of me and that the sudden shift would make no sense.

How about you being the new Arl of Amaranthine and the plot with the nobles turning against you?

You know, I nearly forgot about that obvious filler. Nothing comes of those scenes. You can skip right through them and miss nothing.

And I think they're trying to set up a storyline for a second full-length Dragon Age game. There is the question of how the Mother and the Father got to be how they were. After all, there were five Blights and Darkspawn before these two came about. What about those? Clearly something was different this time for a reason. Why? And can the now-intelligent Darkspawn ever find acceptance in the world? I find there's no more or less depth than the original game in this plot. If you're going to simplify the plot down like that, you can do the same thing for Origins. Big dragon and Darkspawn show up, everybody bickers about how to take care of it, they finally agree, you kill dragon and Darkspawn die.
That's the story.

They needed a better setup and an actual writing staff. I pray they ignore everything they did in this game, the whole way they presented the new way the Darkspawn works out of absolutely nowhere was like acid to my brain.

And you can't simplify DA:O so well, there legitimately is more to the game than just the dragon, the bickering and the dying.

There is political intrigue, there are tough moral dilemmas, there is a reason to pay attention.

See the above point about the nobles. You have to make decisions to manage your new Arling properly. Now I wish they could have had more pressing consequences for some of those decisions, but you do have to make them.

More pressing? How about any consequence?

I paid minimal attention to my choices in those sections and the only things that changed were which lines were recited at me in the fucking epilogue.

That is not consequence.

That is filler.

Spoiler

There's also this choice near the end...]To save the city or save your Keep. If you got all the upgrades you can be a bit more confident that your keep will be safe, but it's certainly not cut-and-dry. Lots of people will die either way. It could be a tough decision for many.

That 'choice' pissed me the fuck off.

Spoiler

If you choose to save the Keep, the town dies are you are a bad person. If you choose to save the Town... nothing bad happens to the Keep. In fact, you still[ have to go back and save the Keep exactly the same as if you'd chosen to let the town burn. This is NOT a moral dilemma, this is whether or not you liked the people in that town. I didn't. I let the town burn. Because I am a bad person.

Anyway, the review in general is well-written and thorough. You cover a lot of ground and provide plenty of examples without giving anything valuable away. Though I think the objectivity may be lacking. You even managed to be pessimistic when you were talking about what the game did right.

I am fucking impossible to please and I wear it as a badge of pride.

I remain convinced that we'd have a much better gaming landscape right now if only we were all far more difficult to please.

Make the fuckers work for your money.

 

[veloper]

I played only a short bit into DA:A, but I had a recruit die on a joining.

 

[IanBrazen]

The single most perfect example of the downslide in companions is the first one you'll meet, Anders.
Anders was clearly written with one goal in mind - "let's re-create Alistair, but instead of all that depth, complexity, wit and charm, let's just fill him up with WACKINESS!" Anders is so very tiresome and is such an obvious Marty Stu, it hurts to listen to him talk. And as he's the strongest and least psychotic caster in this xpac, you'll probably have him around more than any other companion, so you will get to listen to him talk quite a bit.

Oh yeah.
I spent like five minutes with anders and that was five minutes too long, I gave that ass to the templars the first chance I got.
The first time you see him he sets a darkspawn on fire then turns around and says to you "I didnt do it."
I just shook my head and said "im getting rid of you the first chance I get"

What REALLY pissed me off about this game was the fact that half the choices you make in origins get retconed out in awakening.
I was a human noble, and at the end of origins (with a lot clever dialogue) I convinced queen anora to marry me and I became the king of Ferelden.
However When I loaded up my character in awakening it turns out that Alaster staged a coup behind my back and he became the king, and because we are best buddy's I didn't seem to mind.

I was so pissed off that I returned the game the very next day.

GREAT REVIEW.
Your not kidding, this is like bad fan fiction.
Its a sequel on par with Highlander 2: the quickening.

 

[Ninjamedic]

Can someone tell me if you can use the new spells and specializations in Origins?

 

[xvbones]

Can someone tell me if you can use the new spells and specializations in Origins?

You can't. Everything from Awakening is Awakening-only, your Origins game gets zero benefit from the xpac.

I spent like five minutes with anders and that was five minutes too long, I gave that ass to the templars the first chance I got.
The first time you see him he sets a darkspawn on fire then turns around and says to you "I didnt do it."
I just shook my head and said "im getting rid of you the first chance I get"

Yeah, that's about Anders in a nutshell.

Occasionally, he will try to get serious, Alistair-style.

Whereas with Ali, the serious side made him look like a full and complete character, relatable and real, when Anders tries it it just makes him look schitzophrenic, like he has two entirely separate scripts for two entirely separate characters and swaps back and forth between them for no immediately discernible reason.

 

[WolfThomas]

You want easy? Learn the battlemage spell that causes a tornado of elemental damage around your character, I stopped even having to fight enemies towards the end, they'd die before they reached me.

I felt it was very rushed and unthought out, the only new character I really enjoyed was Justice because he was unique and I re-spected him to a DW warrior with a flaming keening in one hand, a lightening starfang in the other with the sentinel armour on. I did think Anders had potential with his sleaziness but would have been better if he was less an Alistair clone.

This game actually made me never want to play with my PC again, I realised his story was done and I needed to move on.

 

[Jdopus]

Right away you will notice something is wrong when the game abruptly forgets everything it told you about the Joining ceremony in Origins - joining the Grey Wardens, that is - and suddenly pretends that everybody who follows you has to be a Grey Warden.

This despite that in Origins, you and Alistair are the only playable Wardens you'll have access to before the spoiler companion at the very end. In addition, whereas in Origins, the Joining had a high likelihood of killing the Warden-wanna-be, in Awakening everybody who drinks from the cup lives, period.

So, each new companion will, at some point, demand that you Wardenize them and if you refuse for any reason - like, say, that you didn't realize that you HAD to make them a Warden for them to stick with you or they want to be a Warden for all the wrong reasons - that's it. They will not join your party and you will not have access to that companion. Gone forever.

Actually, I think throughout the whole thing I only made about two of my party members take the joining, actually three come to think of it, Oghren, Nathan and Anders, I was never forced to have the others undergo the joining as I recall correctly...although I might have said they could do it then never actually had them go through with the ceremomny.

Also, I read on the wiki that actually, every time a companion undergoes the ritual there's a chance they'll die, it didn't happen in the three rituals I had, bar the scripted companion death of the female warrior at the start, but I think they can indeed die.


I have to agree on the characters, on the back of the box it tells us a "favourite companion" will return and they give us Oghren? What the fuck? He was the worst developed character from the original game, why would they give us him of all the companions, he had the least personality and there was no reason to take him over Sten, at least Sten was interesting.

All the new characters... well, I think the main problem is that the game wasn't long enough to develop them as well as the original party were developed. Your relationships seemed rushed because there was a lot less play time, but regardless of the reasons for why they weren't as good they weren't up to the original standard.

Anders was a bad Alistair, Sigrun and Velanna were boring...I have to admit I didn't mind Nathaniel, although he was fairly depressing. Oh, and I never understood why people liked Justice, he seemed to me to be the same type of character as Shale, but again, less interesting.

 

[xvbones]

Actually, I think throughout the whole thing I only made about two of my party members take the joining, actually three come to think of it, Oghren, Nathan and Anders, I was never forced to have the others undergo the joining as I recall correctly...although I might have said they could do it then never actually had them go through with the ceremomny.

Also, I read on the wiki that actually, every time a companion undergoes the ritual there's a chance they'll die, it didn't happen in the three rituals I had, bar the scripted companion death of the female warrior at the start, but I think they can indeed die.

See, my recollection was of people saying 'SO HOW ABOUT IT, MAKE ME A WARDEN' and me saying "No, you have not thought this through or are Ohgren and fuck off because I hate you" and then going "FINE FU" and then vanishing from the game.

The scripted one that dies, I never saw that scripted event. I turned her down because I didn't even realize she was asking to be a part of my party. I swear, until I went looking up gifts on the wiki, I had not even realized she was meant to be anything other than a temporary party member, like any of the guys you travel with in your origin story.

I have to agree on the characters, on the back of the box it tells us a "favourite companion" will return and they give us Oghren? What the fuck? He was the worst developed character from the original game, why would they give us him of all the companions, he had the least personality and there was no reason to take him over Sten, at least Sten was interesting.

I am very pleased that I was not alone in this. I was advised that Ohgren was a 'fan favorite' and instructed that I had enjoyed his presence in Origins and would continue to do so in Awakening.

I did not let him touch the fucking chalice. He said "I am ready to kill all the Darkspawns again, gimme the cup." And I said "no fuck you go away."

And then he did and it was the best day ever, right until I realized that this snub meant I would need to roguetank pretty much forever from then.

Oh, and I never understood why people liked Justice, he seemed to me to be the same type of character as Shale, but again, less interesting.

This is just me, but Justice actually reminded me of a badly-written Wynne. All the arrogant, sanctimonious judgment but none of the grandmotherly charm.

(also, Shale is my favorite ever. she sounds exactly like my great-aunt. in every way.)

This game actually made me never want to play with my PC again, I realised his story was done and I needed to move on.

And that's terrible. That is the very last thing you want your xpac to do. Where I should have been re-invigorated in my rogue's continuing story, instead I just realized he must be tired and I should let him go back to sleep.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

DLC team needs work. Badly.

Pretend that was in the voice of the Gauntlet announcer.

At this point, I will never pay for Bioware DLC again.

They had 3 games of DLC to prove me wrong, but absolutely all of it for ME1, DA:O, and ME2 is terrible.

 

[xvbones]

DLC team needs work. Badly.

Pretend that was in the voice of the Gauntlet announcer.

At this point, I will never pay for Bioware DLC again.

They had 3 games of DLC to prove me wrong, but absolutely all of it for ME1, DA:O, and ME2 is terrible.

Shale was good DLC. Two zones (companion quest and her own zone), buncha swag and a persistent, well-written character that is fully integrated into the game.

That's honestly about it. Soldier's Peak is isn't very well written, but at least it comes with that storage chest. There's really almost nothing to do in Return to Ostagar. Five bucks isn't very expensive, but Darkspawn Chronicles and Return to Ostagar each offer considerably less than an hour of gameplay each, for 1/4 the cost of Awakening, which was 20-25 hours long.

DA DLC, apart from Shale, really feels too much like you're just outright buying the DLC rewards and that isn't a great feeling.