Dragon Age General Discussion

Nooo, I forgot about that. Why would Hawke go back? His family is gone, most of his friends have left, the thin Veil makes it hard for mages to live there, and his husband is wanted there. But hey, Varric's there, so of course he has to go back!

They mentioned Hawke went to Weisshaupt and the city was in the leaks, so I'm concerned we'll get a repeat of NPC Hawke.

I don't know, I feel like DA2 already tried to push templars as a valid side to choose, they just failed even more than in 3. Like we even have the same story beats - look, the evil mage that does something unforgivable (Quentin and Alexius), oh look the mage leader sucks and makes things worse (Orsino and Fiona), look at the blood magic, look at the good templars, they just need better leaders (Emeric and Barris).

You would have loved to romance Barris

Oh my I revived this thread XD

Davrin's boobs Listen, I wanted at least my inquisitor to get on his knees and propose and the bull lift him up. Didn't even need marriage. 

I really hope they don't retcon Leliana because it honestly felt like the game was pushing her as the right choice anyway. Since while I supported also Cassandra, I couldn't like say no to the both besties when they ask me, but the game still favored Leliana. Vivienne I imagine is super low amount of people who chose her, and I can see Vivienne just making her own thing be the canon anyway because maybe her time as Divine was shorter.

I really do hope we move on from the whole conflict of Templar vs Mages though, like you all been discussing, it just doesn't feel very well executed, mainly because I just don't understand what they are trying to tell with it. Like I'm pro mage because the treatment they get is unfair, no matter what, but the game just can't stop making all the mages in the plot questionable or just villains. I feel the last two games want to question my view on them. I hope that since you can both stop the red templars from being a thing and/or convince Cullen to stop the lyrium and he creates a place for templars to move on from that role, we just move on from said conflict too. So, I feel regardless of Divine they can just push them as separate, they moved on from the conflict. Is just weird because the conflict is created in a very rushed way in act 3 of DA2 and then on DAI is rushed put in at the beginning too and then it got to a point I just didn't care. I'm glad at least Dorian is the one mage that isn't iffy in the game, but I do have my problems with the fact he's Tevinter and trying to do the "not all Tevinter is bad", when I would argue the way they told us about Tevinter, sounded even worse with the whole slave stuff and Dorian sounded defensive about that. (Which I'm glad the Netflix animation didn't ignore the slave bit at least)

Rouccoco Oh yeah the way they handled Hawke regarding Anders was rough. Don't get me wrong, I was against Anders actions and had to kill him, but it was a painful moment for my Hawke, he wouldn't still talk about him in that way, he had to confront a friend. There were much better neutral ways to also speak of it, like say "Anders was too far gone by a spirit" or something along those lines, instead of calling him a monster. Hawke was also too aggressive about the whole grey wardens thing, seemed weird for my mage Hawke to basically want the wardens on check, as if that's not an issue happening to the mages. They should have avoided Hawke being confrontational about anything, we just needed him/her to be a hero tagging along.

farferello I do worry about their handling of the inquisitor moving forward, although I do think the inquisitor is pretty neutral than Hawke, who was much more emotionally charged, so I hope they just keep the inquisitor that way. I think the inquisitor being an advisor like say Josephine would be good, she in general was probably the least focused on a side of anything, just simply focused on what favored the task at hand. Or perhaps be like Morrigan, wish I thought was surprisingly handled well the fact my hero of Ferelden didn't end on good terms with her, but she admits regretting that. She didn't come out with rage about any past thing. Mind you I'll allow the inquisitor to piss off and mock the ungrateful people of the exalted council XD. 

Has for Hawke going back to Kirkwall, it definitely is problematic depending on how you ended things there. Is also just hard to imagine things are okay now, the place was literally on fire when we last were there. The only reason I would want him to go back "SOMETIMES" is because of the estate, it holds a lot of memories for him there, and if it is still there then that's fine, but I doubt Hawke just stays. Plus, the ending of Dragon Age Absolution pretty much makes it even more unsafe. Speaking of this, I'm trying to write a fan fiction follow up aftermath of trespasser for my inquisitor, since dreadwolf is probably a time jump anyway, but I'm not sure where my Inquisitor is meant to move out to now. He got offered a "nice place" in Kirkwall, but just the thought of going there is insanity to me lol. And a "canon" story already covered skyhold was put in care by some people and then those people got killed or something and I think Solas took the place? IDK, but it sucks Skyhold gets wasted like that, unless they make Solas take over it as his evil palace. Which I mean, I admit it would be cool to just fight in Skyhold as a way to revisit it.

 But yeah the ending with Solas is another moment of giving reason why something or someone is problematic, in these case elves. And if the message is, there is some evil but not all, they haven't been very good at that with mages. Cory, Anders, Solas, Vivienne, plus all the other bunch of mages we find in the stories, plus the whole Tevinter thing. DA2 being the worst if your hawke isn't a mage to prove there's a "heroic" one. I don't know but perhaps the best thing I enjoyed from Inquisition was when it put aside all those conflicts and differences and everyone just focused on a main cause of kill the bad guy. Plus, all the touching moments with companions, helping them grow and getting some small chances (wish there was more) to establish your inquisitor evolve as well on what "the herald of andraste" means. Is also why the whole empress celene thing I really enjoy the spy thrill of it and the comp interactions but I didn't care for "CHOOSE A SIDE" again, so I just made them all 3 works together, I was like nah I had enough of this sides drama XD, you all work together for me for now, and then you all can kill each other if you want later. My brain can only handle so much "they all bad" when I want to just smooch and hug companions and dance like a king like I never will. XD

Same, my Warden/Hawke/Inquisitor I use for World Imports have all been mages and I really need for the games to recognize that every time someone starts shooting their mouth off about mages. A mage stopped the fifth blight, a mage stopped the Qunari invasion of Kirkwall and stopped a psychopathic Templar from slaughtering the place. A mage fixed the giant hole in the sky along with the asshole that caused it.

But of course the games never will because icky mages are bad m'kay.

Jaws of Hakkon was all over the map on that one. Like aside from Grandin that got possessed by a rage demon after his lover friend died, it was surprisingly positive. Until you got to the war table quests, and Cullen had to criticise the Avvar on every turn and you didn't have an option to push back. Inquisition really felt like it had multiple head writers, or writers that did not talk to each other.


How dare.


Which is weird, because DA2 had plenty of auto-dialogue, especially once you were locked into one of the 3 tones. They just needed to continue that in DAI.

At this point I'm kinda meh on the idea of cameos. Like Leliana and Morrigan turned out fine, but bw writers are so susceptible to just doing whatever people at events/cons tell them. Love Cullen? Bam, he's now a major character (despite being called as having "rapey vibes" by his DAO writer). Love Solas? Bam, he's dreamy and complex now. Love Varric? Bam, he'll narrate everything DA-related till the end of time. Hate Anders? Bam, evil mages in DAI wear his clothes and read his manifesto. Plus the romances thing like Lee mentioned. It's even more a problem now that BSN is gone and twitter is dying. If they mess up LGBT rep or romances in DAD or ME5, all we can do is scream into the void.

Well, if they weren't done with Cullen by the end of Trespasser then they definitely are now...

I liked Varric a lot in 2, but in Inquisition I got tired of him halfway through. Agreed on his friendship feeling unearned. They needed a franchise mascot, like Liara, so they pushed him hard and just assumed he's the "main friend." Wish they just did new companions each time with maybe some cameos. 15 years into the series, I don't need familiar faces to keep me hooked, I need to finally see more of Thedas.

So, I decided to go back to DA2 after the chats here and DAI Hawke not been to my liking. I went back to the Anders decision, because thankfully my 790 saves on saveaholic had that moment. And honestly, I think the main reason I did that choice is because Fenris and Aveline were in favor of me killing Anders and basically seemed like they would abandon me if I didn't, I had already messed up with Isabela in an early part of the game, so I was afraid I screwed up the game again. But I mean this is why I don't like doing my first run my main run cuz I always screw something up in panic of my main romance XD. But anyways I changed that decision and kept him alive this time, just made him run away since most of my party did not want him around anyway. And thankfully nothing bad happen in the end, they did stay. I also wanted to revert it because obviously DAI Hawke did not gimme what I wanted out of it. I wanted DAI Hawke to feel regret and pain from that decision, wanted an angst story arc for him since I thought I was stuck with it back then.

That said playing DA2 again even if just the end bit got me excited again, I really do think that's my favorite DA game. I got super invested instantly, and even the combat just feels much more fun than DAIs for me. My only main gripe still with the game's ending is Orsino. I joined and supported the mages and while he complained about Anders, he goes ahead and gives up and turns himself into a monster anyway. Granted, I now know they did this for gameplay reasons, but it is still stupid they went through with it. Meredith does make sense that she goes bad regardless and she does have a cool fight everyone should play but Orsino's really wasn't special to even warrant that. But man, I really missed these chars and their conflicts. I got excited seeing Hawke's brother again too and him standing by Hawke as a mage, beautiful. 

Anyways, I'll eventually do a full proper rerun of DA2 again, to also fix my Isabela screw up eventually, maybe even do a full romanced Anders path too. But one cool thing I find out during all this is that you can transfer over keep decision changes to existing saves on DAI PC, by using the save editor. Now there's a more direct way to do it but I didn't quite understand how to do it, but you can also just read your save in the save editor and scroll all the way down to a specific decision by scrolling down to DAO, DA2, and find which one you want to change. So, I did that for Anders and redo Hawke's intro scene, didn't really change much though the dialogue but at least I can see it in a different light. So, the save editor is on a DA discord but if I'm doing this right, you should be able to get it from here hopefully:

cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418233576794882058/525009479620624384/DAI_Plot_Flag_Editor.7z?ex=65677c2e&is=6555072e&hm=68a16963e43ec2dbabfbc96a2e52d52eea77dd5da8ce0614b6c68ee13714717b&

The process to import a save state is here whuffie.wordpress.com/2017/11/06/importing-a-world-state-in-an-existing-game-dragon-age-inquisition-p but if this doesn't work for you, you can just scroll manually on the save editor and flip the flags.

You can also just change flags for DAI decisions which is really handy if you want to experiment because playing through the whole game again is a slog I don't know if I can do for a good while lol, not until I get a better pc anyway. 

That sucks. I was excited about hearing more from Trevor Morris, especially after Trespasser. It felt like DA finally found its sound. With Zimmer I expect a generic feel again and anything he'll come up with will have no impact on DA5.