Adventures in Thedas (Dragon Age Thread)

[Jubal]

I have finished Dragon Age 2! I quite enjoyed it, I don't really see why it's supposed to be "the bad one" in the series (ofc still not having played inquisition). I might have played through differently with hindsight but it was a perfectly reasonable game overall.

I should probably take a break before starting Inquisition, but 2 seems to point to Inquisition much more than Origins pointed to 2 - the ending has a certain cliffhanger-ness to it.

[Clockwork]

Yeah it's tied favourite with origin for me! You get a different game playing as a male Hawke with regards to quite a few things and there's different dialogue options and actions for rogue vs warrior vs mage as well.

Did you play the DLC? To me it has some of the absolute best moments of DA2

[Jubal]

I played both Legacy and Mark of the Assassin, yeah.

Legacy started too slowly for me, there were just a few more bits of wading through the Carta than the whole situation warranted. Once the plot got going it was reasonably interesting though.

Mark of the Assassin I enjoyed. I didn't hugely like Tallis as a character and it created an odd continuity glitch where I met Leliana at a party, then Leliana turned up in Kirkwall in the main plot like a week later and the game assumed we didn't know each other. Other than that though... I really liked the setup, the battles were good fun, the main plot worked well, and most miraculously they managed to construct a sneak mechanic game section that I didn't absolutely hate which is a huge rarity in games, I usually can't stand sneak mechanics.

I think my main regret from my playthrough is that I didn't adapt until well through the game to the fact that conversation now works through cutscenes much more so you can be less proactive with it, and that means e.g. it's much easier to miss out on romance options (I'd have had my Hawke romance Isabella but waited too late to make a move and then accidentally started a romance with Merrill in act 3).

But yes, I'm still thinking I would like to start Inquisition sooner rather than later, but I'm also in a permanent panic about other things I've not done lately which is staying my hand a bit. My friend Jas is doing quite a lot of streaming Inquisition lately (ElkieSelkie on Twitch) and one of these days we're planning for me to go and guest bard which might be fun.

[Phoenixguard09]

Inquisition is pretty good. I preferred most of the Inquisition companions to those in DA2. For what it's worth, it is also a very pretty game.

Personally, I think I preferred the gameplay of DA2 to the others. Inquisition is pretty damn simple, and while DA2 certainly is more simplistic in that way than Origins was, at least it was fast paced and felt somewhat interesting. Despite (or perhaps because of) all the flashy lights in Inquisition, the combat had a tendency to feel bland for me. Obviously, others' mileage may vary.

The companions in Inquisition are generally very good.

[Jubal]

Right, now playing inqusition, also created a split thread for Thedas chat.

So, my Inquisitor is called Hamilcar, a male human fighter: I'm playing him as a decent chap, and "chap" is absolutely the right term in that he's... nice but in a slightly slick upper class sort of way. In some ways I guess he's possibly the least nice of my characters so far though he's still basically a good guy and trying to work for the most humane outcomes possible: I'm running him as someone who is a bit ambivalent about the whole Herald of Andraste thing but does actually quite like the chessmaster bits of playing politics. He's a good general and a good fast talker but not necessarily a good soldier, and is someone who isn't necessarily at ease with the rather odd collection of people he's ended up pulling together around him. (By contrast to how I saw my other characters, Rusudan Hawke was much more of a firm peace-loving idealist with more actual close friends, and my Warden Carekh Brosca was someone from an especially rough upbringing who was actually really very sweet at heart).

I think I'll get Hamilcar to romance Josephine - the politically ambitious but basically good hearted thing seems to make that a good fit. I chose to ally with the Mages in act 1, I think Hamilcar is probably a bit ambivalent about full freedom for mages he sees it as a lesser evil and will generally favour freedom as a cause overall (as a Marcher he's sort of naturally rhetorically aligned that way).

I'm now into Act 2 and at the stage again where the map is totally clogged up with quests and I'm not sure what to do next... we'll see

[Clockwork]

I played both Legacy and Mark of the Assassin, yeah.

Legacy started too slowly for me, there were just a few more bits of wading through the Carta than the whole situation warranted. Once the plot got going it was reasonably interesting though.

Mark of the Assassin I enjoyed. I didn't hugely like Tallis as a character and it created an odd continuity glitch where I met Leliana at a party, then Leliana turned up in Kirkwall in the main plot like a week later and the game assumed we didn't know each other. Other than that though... I really liked the setup, the battles were good fun, the main plot worked well, and most miraculously they managed to construct a sneak mechanic game section that I didn't absolutely hate which is a huge rarity in games, I usually can't stand sneak mechanics.

I think my main regret from my playthrough is that I didn't adapt until well through the game to the fact that conversation now works through cutscenes much more so you can be less proactive with it, and that means e.g. it's much easier to miss out on romance options (I'd have had my Hawke romance Isabella but waited too late to make a move and then accidentally started a romance with Merrill in act 3).

But yes, I'm still thinking I would like to start Inquisition sooner rather than later, but I'm also in a permanent panic about other things I've not done lately which is staying my hand a bit. My friend Jas is doing quite a lot of streaming Inquisition lately (ElkieSelkie on Twitch) and one of these days we're planning for me to go and guest bard which might be fun.

Ah that's great, I LOVED Legacy, I felt like it had perfect dynamics with regards to combat encounters and the lore-weaving throughout was great, one thing I think they could have done though is create more tension at the start, as you say the carta bit is slow and I always sort of felt like it intended to feel creepier and more sinister than it ended up being.

Mark of the assassin was the one I could take or leave though. I get that they wanted a Felicia Day tie in but aside from that I can't really say it added much to the narrative. Hawke seemed about the same before and after s/he went to the grounds. The inside the castle bit was so good though! Sneaking like you say and also for me the puzzles aspect of DA is a really nice homage to where the games come from.

I too accidentally romanced Merrill, I think maybe she defaults to that unless you explicitly tell her no, no way, no how.

How much symbolism did you find in DA2 and did it annoy you, I know for a lot of people it was too umm, contemporary(?) I think for a swords and magic game but I'm on the fence about it.

[Jubal]

Yeah, Mark of the Assassin isn't per se a huge narrative arc, it's a fun little adventure story though and I thought there were some nice touches, I liked little things like the tossing coins in the fountain game. Also getting to an environment that was mostly green rather than mostly brown was quite nice visually considering how most of DA2's areas look. It's sort of a pity I've played these games relatively late and therefore pre-spoilered on some major stuff, because

Spoiler

Corypheus appearing in Inquisition

would have given legacy a MUCH bigger payoff if I hadn't seen it coming.

Also, I'm surprised that Accidental Merrill is more of a thing than just me. Maybe there's also something about how the queuing of romance cutscenes works in there.

As for symbolism... yeah there's quite a lot but I sort of expect that in big storyline RPGs? Anything that has a proper core plot tends to fall into that. Skyrim's backdrop is concerns over nationalism and imperialism, the first Witcher game deals with fears over genetic modification, fascism and anarchism, and DA2's concerns - authoritarian outside religio-political movements, terrorism, control over law enforcement, etc - likewise deal with a lot of contemporary anxieties among the sorts of people who write and play games. It's just a bit inevitable, I think, that a game that tries to get the players to consider moral questions will end up framing those much like the moral questions of contemporary society. So I'd say I was quite relaxed about that.

I actually get more annoyed about big aesthetic shifts in the games, I'm not a fan of the C18th formal dress codes that randomly turn up in Inquisition for example. Though that's partly me feeling that C15-16 (which is really what DA aesthetic averages out to) formal wear was fantastically silly and I'm sad they didn't include it. But there's definitely a feeling for me that Origins felt very pseudomedieval in its look, DA2 a bit more early modern, but then Inquisition feels a bit aesthetically all over the place.

[Jubal]

Well yesterday I played through what is my new least favourite single quest in any major RPG I've played to date. Like, I remember some sections of some games that have been frustrating in the past (I guess Sagani's companion quest in Pillars of Eternity does run this one for its money on dislike), but it's rare for me to actually feel significantly more miserable after playing a game, not because the game was trying to poke at my emotions but simply because the experience of playing was just that bad. I genuinely considered whether it was worth getting through the remaining 60 minutes of the quest in order to access the remaining 60 hours of the whole game.

The quest in question was Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, a core, unskippable quest in Inqusition which hit all my least favourite things at once. Some light spoilers below, but not bad ones (I don't name any of the characters or tell you how the plot panned out) -

Spoiler

• Being on timers is stressful. It's not a bad mechanic all the time, but it should be used sparingly and pairs really badly with an exploration mechanic. Being on multiple timers for different things, including one you're not properly told about, is just armadillo.
  
• It's not like I should have to explore to find where the rooms are in the Winter Palace, it's practically the most famous building in the Empire. Could nobody have just, you know, drawn me a plan of the grand apartments or guest wing? What do I keep a spymaster for? Also some characters, including the one I'm dating, have literally been here before and could just tell me e.g. where the library is.
  
• Rules like "when the bell goes you have to get to the ballroom before the third bell or it's a faux pas" are things that the game actually should make explicit, especially when you're surrounded by characters who are experts on Orlesian culture and whose whole job at the ball is to ensure you know how to deal with the situation.
  
• Giving players optional sidequests to introduce mechanics, neither making it an obvious requirement that people should do them nor allowing them access back into the area where you got them, then introducing further quests that you needed those quests done to complete, is bad questline writing.
  
• Games should be wary, or at least very clear, about what dialogue options mean and the tone they set (DA2 was oddly better at this than Inquisition). People read words differently, and different words have subtly idiolect-different meanings. A quest where you can pick nominally perfectly reasonable dialogue options and get slapped with massive penalties for all of them is a bad quest.
  
• Also having the game penalise you among the surrounding crowd for things you say during a conversation where the LITERAL WHOLE POINT IS THAT YOU'RE TALKING WHILE DANCING SO PEOPLE DO NOT HEAR YOU is just infuriatingly silly.
  
• For all the "ooh politicking" you do not actually do a single meaningful bit of negotiating in the entire quest. Also as the game points out, the politicking people are so complacent they don't notice the multiple assassination plots in their midst. If my character had the capacity he'd be very disillusioned, you get the whole game building up how masterful and mysterious the Grand Game is and it turns out it's a bunch of armadillo rules made up by a group of people who when real politics happens turn out to have brought draughts to a chess tournament.
  
• Also a final boss battle which makes no sense at all, since whilst you're keeping the assassin busy the Empress can be being bundled away to safety by your troops. Even though I had to do it twice because I lost the first time, I'm pretty sure the entire squad of troops and large band of chevaliers left in the ballroom who had by this point noticed all the harlequin assassins would've been sufficient to keep the Empress safe. At which point, why is [insert The Real Killer here] fighting me outside? They should be running away OR trying to block my path with mooks whilst getting back into the ballroom to take pot-shots at the real target.
  
• The painfully C18-19 aesthetic is the sort of level of frippery that really makes me want to burn a building down, and yet I don't get that option.
  
• The dress uniforms are really bad and I feel especially sorry for Leliana, a woman whose hobby is nerding out about footwear, and Josephine, an aristocrat in her own right, that they're having to wear horrible coat and sash getups not the ballgowns they richly deserve. Also Iron Bull, my seven foot tall horned bodyguard, deserved a ballgown too. THAT would be a fashion statement.
  

And that's just some of the reasons I didn't like the quest. It was not fun. It was the opposite of fun. Sigh.

Also I got bored and doodled "if Iron Bull was a highland cow" as a sketch.

Spoiler

[Jubal]

And with that it is over. Whole game incl. all three DLCs. Was fun, can recommend, looking forward to whenever DA4 appears, etc

My key game choices overview:

Spoiler

Inquisitor: Hamilcar Trevelyan. Warrior, specialised in sword & shield + battlemaster, champion as his final specialisation.

Romance: Josephine

Companions: Got on well with basically everyone I think and they all survived. Sera's still a Jenny, Ranier is do-gooding around the place, Bull a tal-vashoth mercenary, Dorian returned to Tevinter, Varric is running Kirkwall, Vivienne has her own mage circle, Cole is humanified and on tour with Maryden the bard, Solas is, well, as per plot, Cass is reforming the seekers and helping Leliana who is Divine, Cullen has retired to help addict ex-Templars with his new pet dog, and Josie is running the family business.

Act 1 Allies: Mages (allied not conscripted)

Orlais: Run jointly by Briala and Celene

Hawke: Survived, Stroud was left in the Fade.

Wardens: Joined the Inquisition

Drank from Mythal's well: Morrigan

New Divine: Leliana

Inquisition: Disbanded at the end

[Jubal]

Back in Thedas for a bit, finally going back and rectifying my never having played the Dragon Age: Origins DLCs.

I did Golems of Amgarrak first, which I wanted to enjoy more than I did: a deep roads expedition tale with golem work sounds good fun, but what Golems actually mostly becomes is a fairly linear adventure with some puzzle mechanics that don't make a ton of sense, a slightly minimalist story, and a general horror vibe. It was an interesting reminder of how much the horror elements and especially the body horror bits were important in Origins (and even DA2), because they're much, much more limited in Inquisition. Fantasy games struggle with horror vibes: the body horror bit in some ways is one of the horrors you can get to stick, because of the visual elements, but the sense of tension that I think they wanted for the whole thing never quite landed, perhaps in part because the puzzle mechanics made it feel like an odd puzzle box rather than a horrifying place of hauntedness. I will admit I just turned the settings down for the final boss fight of the DLC after dying once on Normal difficulty, I did not have the patience to try and approach that famously difficult fight in the way it was intended. Finally, the "oh god there were more" bit at the end, which is a good creepy final horror twist, didn't work because the horror hadn't quite landed for me: I felt annoyed at the sense of "oh you didn't really beat them look" rather than creeped out (the harvester, the core monster of the DLC, occupies an odd space in that sense in that it's meant to be the quick, creepy kind of horror monster but they also had to make it a tough combat opponent for the boss battle). Anyway, it was alright, the place was destroyed, nobody got anything much cool out of it, there's probably horrendous numbers of monsters down there still, the end.

Then I started Awakening which I'm enjoying a lot more thus far in that it actually feels like Dragon Age: my one downside is that I have two companions so far (Oghren and Anders) and I don't honestly like either of them, with the only companion I was starting to enjoy the company of being killed in a scripted scene. Also, everything in Awakening seems to involve terrifying sums of money so I hope the quests are suitably rewarding to allow one to get everything done. But I have plenty of side quests to look into and I'm enjoying having a new little bit of Thedas to poke around (and indeed rule) so we'll see where that ends up.



EDIT 27.07: Right, that's Awakening wrapped up. Thoughts:

First and foremost, I like Awakening and I wish more people were willing to make whole little RPGs of about this length. I would very much like more 10-20 hour, story focused CRPGs with strong characters and good decision arcs, and would happily pay good money for them. I genuinely don't know why this isn't more of a thing.

Second, as much as some of the Awakening characters annoy me, I think that's partly unfair to them, because two of them I'm badly disposed towards because of what I know they end up doing in the next game and a third I'm meh-disposed towards because of the previous one. It's possibly no accident that I ended up with my core party being the three most awakening-specific characters: I liked Nathaniel a lot, Velanna is yikes-level elf supremacist but otherwise alright, and Sigrun is a Very Good Dwarf and worked very well with my own character (both effectively shared the same origin/original home, so I liked that a lot).

Most of my frustrations with the game were technical, the game was pretty unstable and sometimes I was getting under an hour of gameplay between CTDs, but I guess it is an old engine.

There are a few mechanical issues too: Oghren's approval is way too hard to get up and I think he's one of the harder characters to divine what he wants, so I never finished his quest (I got to +75, I needed +76, I am a little bit mad about this). Also generally the gifts system is kinda fun but a bit of a mess in places/is hard to logically intuit. For example, Nathaniel likes "practical gifts" and Sigrun is "interested in the surface world", particularly talking about books and spyglasses, and Velanna likes "green things and elven things". But while Sigrun gets a whole cutscene for the spyglass gift, she'll be meh about a sextant because that's one of Nathaniel's 'practical' gifts, despite the two things being sort of obviously interlinked. And you can't give her the blank journal because Velanna needs it to write elven stories in, but you should give her the pot plant because it's a surface thing, Velanna won't want that despite it being objectively green and a plant. That said, it's not a bad system overall, just needs a bit more flexibility.

There were some continuity issues too, rather than running Sigrun or Velanna's areas to their end points I ended up doing bits of each in a piecemeal way, and this led to some dialogue issues where e.g. Velanna was at the Vigil joined the Wardens before the scene where she agrees to become a warden, and ended up giving spoilers for the end of her plot section because the game flagged it as already having occurred.

It also continues to be interesting to look at how the series has changed - Awakening isn't trying to be a horror module like Golems, but the darkspawn in it are absolutely horror creatures in a way I think is pretty rare in DA:I, especially the very too-many-teeth-quadrifoil mouth of the final monster. I feel like later titles have shied away from some of the heavier content too, there's one quest in Awakening that involves you discovering a suicide and there's nothing magical, no trickery, it's just a flat human tragedy. It's not exactly super well handled, either, it's very heavy content for a tiny sidequest that you just turn in by telling his wife without even a cutscene dialogue. So in some ways it's possibly good that there's less of that in later games, though also I think the slightly better depth of writing in Inquisition could handle some of this sort of thing better.

Some things I liked: court scenes, those are fun. Those and the closing-fade-gates section in Blackmarsh were actually interestingly reminiscent of Inquisition, so . The little side plot with the "orphans" in Amaranthine was also good, very much enjoy my light relief quests in RPGs. Kal'Hirol was well done, as well, as usual I would like to have some more dwarf stuff that isn't ruins, but if you're going to do yet another haunted dwarf ruin/abandoned thaig then this is one of my favourite ones because it was done in a way that felt like it highlighted what Dragon Age is trying to do with dwarf society very effectively. But please, developers, let me actually rebuild a thaig as a base in a Dragon Age game sometime and I will be very happy indeed, that would be fantastic.

In general I wish I rushed RPGs less than I tend to: I'd like to feel I could do a couple of runs and learn them properly rather than always ending up checking walkthroughs because I'm only going to do a single run and don't want to miss content. But at the same time, I'm relatively unlikely to rerun Awakening any time in the near future, so I'm glad I did get to see most of the stuff there even if I ended up spoilered on a couple of plot points. Awakening is definitely a campaign I would consider playing through again, honestly much more so than a lot of others because it's a lower time commitment and good fun.

[Jubal]

That's the rest of them!

So, in the order I played through the remaining four DLCs:

Witch Hunt - Sadly I'll mostly remember this DLC for how incredibly painful the Lights of Arlathan quest was, purely for game stability, it was crashing every minute or two and so became a massive grind. Conversely my favourite bit was running round the Mages' Tower Library, in which I absolutely did look at every single book they had available which was enjoyable. I did the Lights before the Shard section, but I don't think that makes much difference. The secondary characters were fun, and one of my main complaints is that there's no way to find out what happened to them at the end - especially because there's the question of that pseudo-foreshadowing of Finn never speaking to the statue again which AFAICT just goes totally unresolved. The end confrontation... is fine, and probably has a much more important tone for characters who romanced or absolutely hated Morrigan, but for Carekh, who was just a friendly little beardy man she hung around with and had demon sex with for healthcare reasons one time, it was a bit of a "Hi, thought I'd see how you're doing with the kid, no, you say I can't see him? That's a pity, I trust your judgement, take care now." Which is a sort of nice thing but also doesn't make for a high drama ending, so the end of the DLC in general felt a little flat.

Darkspawn Chronicles - Cool idea, naff execution. You're a hurlock now! That seems fun! The enthrall mechanics to build your party from the horde are cool, as are the codexes that tell you what happened in the alt-universe where your Warden never reached the joining or died during it. Sadly the main execution of the DLC is just a lot of battles stacked up on each other and is all very linear, with some pretty simple tactical puzzle gaming and occasional boss fights when you meet a named character. I'm not the first to observe this but it was kind of a missed opportunity to really tell us more about the Darkspawn and what life was like inside the horde - all the Archdemon gives you is tactical info. The end battle of this took several attempts because the Archdemon dies super fast. Honestly, this DLC sort of ends up being an anti-advert for the Darkspawn horde, whose leader gets easily shredded by three humans and a dog and who have to be continually rescued by the shrieks, the MVP weirdos who somehow do way more damage and opponent control than anyone else.

Leliana's Song - easily my favourite of these four, a good story well told and helps frame how Leliana got drawn from her former life into the chantry. Marjolaine is a well played lover-turned-villain and the headiness of Leliana's old life coupled with the betrayal and loss are all well played. The penultimate battle ended up being a pain, and also the game seemed to expect me to take more stealth and lockpicking options so there was an annoying sidequest I could never finish due to inability to open chests. The first section in the market is good, though I'd have preferred to not have the guards aggro so easily - if you start a fight even with zero guards in view, they still all go into aggressive mode. Nonetheless having that open section with mixed quests is really nice. The companion characters are limited but play their parts well, leaving the central drama to Leliana herself, who turns from capering, overambitious villain (you literally do a full-on murder or two in the opening segment, plus all the guards you take down) to realising that the Game isn't, well, a game, the hard way. And, pleasingly, by the end of the DLC it's not clear where she is: she's still not yet the faith-bound reborn heroine of Origins, let alone the weary but hopeful spymaster who will one day become the Divine. She's such a central character to the series that it was just nice having some more content about her, and this was good content played well.

A Tale of Orzammar - ending where it all began, below the earth, with a new Dwarf noble called Kokina being enmeshed in a scheme of Bhelen Aeducan's. Was a pity this was such a limited teaser with no voicing and no characterisation, there's a fun core idea and mini dungeon crawl but actually not much of interest to do and it's very linear indeed. I made an error by taking a warrior noble for this, a thief would at least get to open more chests. But yeah, it's not the kind of adventure that merits a re-play. Maybe Kokina will resurface sometime for something else, a dwarf tank called "Snail" (GE, k'ok'ina) appeals to me.

So, um, that's that, there is no more Dragon Age for me to play. Yet, Unless I replay a bit. Or are there any unofficial adventures for Origins? But there are probably other games to play first, anyway. I'll miss Thedas in the meantime though, the writing for Dragon Age and the decent class of voice acting does set it apart from a lot of other RPGs that don't lean into the character drama anywhere near as successfully.

[Jubal]

I played Veilguard!

I've noted major thoughts in a review elsewhere, so this will be more notes on my own playthrough.

My character, Enkidu Ingvellar (nicknamed "Rook" as every character in DAtV is), was a dwarf found as a baby by the necromantic order of the Mourn Watch, a group that tends to the many undead of Nevarra (where, unlike elsewhere, the practice is fairly accepted).

I tried to make him a bit of a romantic hero as compared to my politiciany Inquisitor, dorky chatty Hawke, and actually rather awkwardly sweet bard/ranger Carekh. This went OK, though I'd have liked to have more drama-y dialogue options in several cases. I had him romance Scout Harding, I didn't really feel I had another option having written a song on that exact topic after Inquisition.

Overall I liked the game, despite some frustrations with the lore and dialogues. And now it feels weird that it's going to be many years if ever before we get back to Thedas again...






My key plot decisions:

Spoiler

Saved Treviso at the expense of Minrathous. This was probably not a great choice, though the way it was presented in the game I felt I made a fair call. It's quite a big decision especially for Lucanis and Neve as companions. If I did another run I'd definitely try the save-Minrathous path.

I ultimately allied with the Warden-Commander at Weisshaupt, which I thought worked quite well on the whole.

Companions: I encouraged Harding to be herself, sent the gryphons to the Wardens (for Davrin), Taash ended up Qunari though I went Rivaini for her midgame decision (a "balanced" option is lacking which is a shame), I had Bellara keep the archive, Neve allied with the Threads (and I didn't get an option on that due to Minrathous' problems), Lucanis spared Ilario rather than imprisoning him (the lack of a "stab him in the eye" option was bizarre, they're assassins for god's sake), and Emmerich saved Manfred rather than becoming a lich.

Endgame: Davrin led the side time and sacrificed himself against Ghilan'nain, Neve became blighted but did survive at endgame. Everyone else did OK and survived.