Wham Episode / Dragon Age

• Dragon Age: Origins has the Battle of Ostagar. Beforehand, it seemed like a fairly normal high fantasy story where the armies of Ferelden were going to triumph over the evil Darkspawn. Then, Loghain betrays the king and plunges Ferelden into hopeless civil war, leaving it helpless against the Darkspawn.
  • The Joining was a Wham too, for a few reasons - The nature of the Joining itself, the temporary player characters (who you've been with long enough to have developed a care for how they fare) develop a bad case of dead, one courtesy of the Joining and the other courtesy of Duncan curb-stomping him.
    • Same thing in Awakening, where one of the companions you start the initial quest with dies in the Joining.
  • The Reveal that a Grey Warden must sacrifice his/her life and soul to permanently end a Blight, and the deal Morrigan offers as a loophole. This is when it becomes painfully clear that a truly happy ending isn't going to happen — victory will have a price.
    • Unless you managed to turn Loghain - though in that case, you'd have gotten an early bit of Wham from Alistair leaving your group, taking his equipment with him.
• Dragon Age II has a few of these, but really, what else can you say but: Anders plants a bomb in the Chantry and murders not only everyone inside it but also at least a few people in nearby buildings too (Word of God says the death toll is around a hundred), all just to remove the only thing that kept the conflict between the mages and the Templars from turning violent. As the status quo is unacceptable, he thinks its better for the mages to die trying to destroy the Templars than to slowly be killed or made tranquil one by one. This really hits double hard if your Hawke is in a romance with him.
  • Isabela's quests at the end of Act 2. The Qunari have been in the city for all these years because Isabela stole a sacred relic from them and they know the thief is still somewhere in the city. When they find out that the thief is a companion of the unofficial representative the city has sent to negotiate with them, relations turn sour quickly and the Arishok decides the time for a discrete search is over and he has to take control of the city himself.
  • One of the worst is the quest "All That Remains," in which you discover that Hawke's mother has been abducted by a serial killer because she looks like his dead wife, whom he's trying to recreate through stitching women together through necromancy. Leandra provides the face. The game's especially brutal about giving you hope that she's still alive, right until the climax of the quest in the killer's lair. This quest also leads to another Wham Episode late in the game, when First Enchanter Orsino uses the research of the serial killer—who, in the Templar ending, it's revealed that he'd been secretly colluding with—to become a Harvester monster to fight off Meredith's Templars.
  • While the Legacy DLC was somewhat unremarkable for most of it, the end drop a massive lore bomb, by introducing and awakening Corypheus, one of the ancient magisters who invaded the Golden City and became the first Darkspawn. This also provided a first look at the main antagonist of Inquisition.
  • Merrill's final companion quest (ignoring the later conversation quest unlocked at 100% friendship/rivalry) arguably qualifies. After spending the greater part of a decade partnering with a demon to try to fix an ancient mirror to reclaim centuries of lost knowledge and culture taken away from her people, she learns that Marethari, her mentor from her old clan, allowed the demon to possess her to protect Merrill, and you must now kill her to destroy it once and for all. On top of that, unless you pick the right dialogue choice, the rest of her clan will attack your party out of outrage at their keeper's death, forcing you to kill them. The mirror doesn't even get fixed.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition:
  • "In Your Heart Shall Burn" drastically changes the scope of the story from closing the Breach to eliminating the Big Bad: You finally manage to close the Breach for good, only for the Elder One's forces to attack Haven. The Mages or Templar (which ever faction you didn't side with), have joined the Elder One. The Elder One is revealed to be Corypheus from the previous game's Legacy DLC. Corypheus reveals that he created the Mark and therefore it is not divine. Corypheus destroys Haven, but Solas brings the Inquisition to the fortress of Skyhold. Lastly, the Herald is made the Inquisitor.
  • "Here Lies the Abyss", the conclusion of the Grey Warden arc, consists of a massive siege on Adamant Fortress before the Inquisitor, their companions, Hawke, and a Grey Warden ally take a trip to the Fade. There it is revealed that Divine Justinia V saved the Inquisitor as opposed to Andraste, the Orlesian Wardens have a hand over her death, and in the end the player needs to choose either Hawke or Stroud/Alistair/Loghain to stay behind in the Fade in a Heroic Sacrifice to let the others escape.
  • "Revelations" is a particular whammy among the companion quests. Your Grey Warden companion, Blackwall, left the Inquisition in the middle of the game. Doing this quest reveals that he is not a Grey Warden at all. He is actually Thom Rainier, a cocky and amoral man who ordered the slaughter of a lord and his family and was the one who was responsible for the Callier Massacre four years ago, then abandoned his men to take the fall while he went into hiding. He was recruited by the real Blackwall and would have taken part of the Joining had not the real Blackwall died protecting the conscript. Knowing that he was on the run from his crimes and there was no way he could prove that he didn't kill Blackwall, he impersonated the deceased Grey Warden while undergoing his Heel–Face Turn. He left the Inquisition because one of his men is about to be executed, and he can't bear himself escaping his crimes for so long anymore. Thus he reveals his impersonation right in front of everyone and admits his involvement at the massacre. Depending on the player's choices, you will lose him for good.
  • "Well, Shit", Varric's character quest, reveals that lyrium is alive. And red lyrium has the Blight. Combining the two together and it explains why it cause insanity to those who contacted to it and why Corypheus manage to control the Wardens.
  • The Trespasser DLC is basically one giant Wham Episode from start to finish. Taking place a few years after the game's ending, it includes some lovely lore and story revelations that was tackled back at main campaign's "What Pride Had Wrought". First, the elven gods worshiped by the Dalish were actually all warring tyrannical mages who took lowlier elves as slaves and the vallaslin in the past was actually slave markings; that Fen'Harel, the "Dread Wolf" remembered as an amoral Trickster God who imprisoned the other gods in Dalish tradition, was actually a rebel who liberated these slaves; the Veil that separates the physical world from the Fade was actually created by Fen'Harel to imprison these false gods (sans Mythal, who was killed by her fellow gods, and avenging her was one of the reasons why Fen'Harel imprisoned those gods) at great cost to the elven people; and that Fen'Harel survives today as no other than your vanished former companion Solas, who now wishes to undo what he did and destroy the Veil to restore the elves to their former glory, at the cost of the likely destruction of everybody else. Outside it, if the player did choose the Qunari alliance over saving the Chargers back in the main campaign, Iron Bull would reveal that he was spying the Inquisitor under the Viddasala's orders and would attack them, irrespective whether the player romanced him or has high approval with him. And if Cullen was encouraged to take lyrium again instead of continuing his rehabilitation, he would finally succumb to the drug's debilitating effects, forcing Harding to Mercy Kill him.