Dragon Age

I have a very vivid memory of rage quiting after dying in the final battle for the third or fourth time. Now I can usually do it in one try, but when you have played the game as many times as I have it's just memory, not skill.

They're screwed by the fact that you can fundamentally change Orzammar (Bhelen/Harrowmont and the Golems along with other fuck darkspawn choices like the dwarf boon or siding with the Architect) so they're trying not to touch Orzammar with a ten foot pole because it can be a very different place in terms of society and in terms of how the darkspawn situation is going.

But they can totally retcon/change whatever you decide on in other points in the game except Orzammar.

Eh, Orzammar's not that hard to retcon anyway.

"Harrowmont died at some point in the last 10-20 years and was succeeded by a revolutionary who is basically a marginally shittier Bhelen."

Sure, it f*cks up the ending slides from Origins, but it's hardly the first time the sequels have told those to go to Hell.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Well, Harrowmont does end up dying, I believe, at least in certain scenarios.

Oh God! Natural light!

As far as I can find on the wiki, Harrowmont is alive by the time of Inquisition as long as he didn't die in Origins. The most significant thing he does is declare a Dwarf-Warden Paragon dead due to being MIA for so long.

What I meant was that I believe he dies in at least some ending slides in Origins, though the timing's vague enough that it seems like it could be any number of years.

Of course, they've already blatantly ignored a fair number of those already, so I don't think we need to be concerned about adhering to them.

Oh God! Natural light!

Origins was a mistake.

That's quite.... a statement to make. I thought every Dragon Age fan (at least those who played all of them) considered Origins as the best. May I ask you why you would think like that? ——Wow look at this guy. I didn't know kaalban was this much of a Ditz——

No wonder. Kind of suspected it, but my lack of recognizing sarcasm (or jokes) got the better of me.

edited 7th Jul '17 7:45:59 AM by kaalban

Everything that lives is designed to end.

I need to remember the Joking Mode trope next time. I don't actually think making the best game in the series was a mistake.

edited 7th Jul '17 7:15:24 AM by VeryMelon

Making the best game the first game, perhaps. Only way to go from the top is down.

PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/They

You could also just set the game during a disaster. If Harowmont is King the Darkspawn have worn the Dwarves down and are at the gates. If Behlin is King he grew envious of the success of ether the Warden or some other hero, and sent his entire army on an expedition and lost it. Now the Darkspawn have overrun the place. After you complete your quest the gains are retaken.

Or just do Kal Sharock.

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.

I really don't think Origins is the best <_<

Cute little animation Bioware did of a codex entry story.

And so, after what the game tells me is over two hundred hours of gameplay (which I guess makes sense, given that I've been playing it off and on for months) I've finally finished Inquisition and all of its DLC. The DLC, gameplay wise, was perhaps not as fun as the main game, but all three stories more than made up for it. Heck, going to the final battle of Trespasser, picking the three companions I felt my Qunari Inquisitor was closest to (romanced Cassandra, Sera and Varrick - though it was a very close between Varrick and Cole), and hearing their concern when it looks like he's about to die, but also their resolve for one final adventure. That final shot of everyone together was a good embodiment of how much I'm going to miss this story now that it's gone (but then, it was 200 hours, so I'm not doing it again...)

It was my first Dragon Age game, which led me to make some interesting decisions I might not have made : like, for example, leaving Hawke in the Fade with little hesitation because on its own it made a much better narrative for a singular story. In some ways, I'm glad I did come in this way: for many of the returning characters, I loved the way they were introduced - appearing to be one kind of character, and then surprising you with either hidden depths or outright turning out to be another kind of character entirely).

It's funny how, for most of the game, I played my Inquisitor as someone who would want to create the Inquisition as a lasting institution and new power in the world, but the events of Trespasser convinced me - or at least, me playing as the character I built up - that Walking the Earth dealing with the next crisis himself with his own web of contacts made for better closure.

Top hopes for the next game? Sutherland and company as supporting characters, or even Sutherland himself as a companion. The Inquisition showing up a la Hawke, of course, but specifically the way he shows up - the first shot of him has to be as he's shown in the ending slides, with only his cape and empty severed sleeve visible, then the camera pans up and he turns to the player character. And I definitely want them to follow up on the general way the world and many of its institutions split, shuffle and disperse by the end of the series - with so many factions that deciding "right" and "wrong" between them gets tricky.

And speaking of the player character, I doubt they will do this (after all, they didn't have the plots of either preceding game absorb this one), but I'd like for the next character to walk into the world created by the Inquisitor, but not necessarily have to take on the plot . Like, I want the divine adventure with Solas and the Elven "Gods" to be front and center, but at the same time I don't want the plot to be "the PC teams up with the Inquisitor, and together they take care of the Inquisitor's unfinished business!" But at the same time, I don't want the Solas plot to be shunted aside either. And on the other hand, I suppose the plot of this one is "the Inquisitor solves the problem of the DLC from the last game," and given that the threat of Fen'Harel is developed mostly in the DLC of this one...

But like I said, I'm sure Bioware will figure it out wonderfully. I like the way this world is constructed much more than I did Mass Effect, so all they need to do is keep up the good work.

So... does the game autosave after it's all over? You know, for the purposes of keeping one's decisions for the epilogue whenever the next Dragon Age game comes out?

Also, if I go to the Keep, am I syncing my game decisions with the site or overwriting the world my game of Inquisition takes place in? Neither the game nor the site itself feels entirely clear about that.

edited 20th Jul '17 11:09:01 PM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

It will if you've got an EA account and are logged into the Dragon Age Keep when you beat the game. The DA Keep is actually saving every major decision as you play. In DAI, that is. It didn't exist in Origins or ][.

The Keep's a little counterinuitive. It can be pretty difficult to tell which save is which.

edited 21st Jul '17 4:13:42 AM by Unsung

The walk with me trial is fun but not so much when barriers take literally 5 minutes to kill because they're promoted lol. Also I once had to reload because a venatori mage spawned with a full barrier that kept regenerating and I could not get down at all. He was basically unkillable. Taught me the importance of dispell lol, I have it all the time.

Knight enchanter is a really cool class. Boring Yet Practical somewhat, but being a fantasy jedi is pretty fun. FORCE LIGHTNING! LIGHTSABER!

Knight Enchanter was heavly nerfed, during it's release state Spirit Blade had such huge multipliers against Armor and Barriers you never needed Dispel.

Knight Enchanter is still ridiculously good, though. It's just not immortal.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

So Knight-Errant ended today. Pretty good comic all around. I liked it much better than Mage-Killer, which never really lived up to its potential.

The comic ends with Vaea heading off to Tevinter, which probably means that she'll be in DA4.

I get the point of using Mage Killer and Knight Errant to set up the backstory of potential party members, but I hope it isn't relied on and we can learn about these events from the characters in game.

I found that they actually explained Cole's Character very well even for people like me who didn't read Asunder.

I don't know why I forgot about Cole. I guess I just wanted to comment and chose a subject at random.

I felt abit mixed about Cole. In Asunder, it was pretty clear Cole is a corpse. He's possessed a dead body.

But, in Inquisition, this never comes up? And, heck, he can become 'human' despite still being a rotting corpse and even get a girlfriend. I'm a little confused at this point.

Necrophilia anyone?

It's been a while since I read Asunder, but I don't remember them talking about him possessing anything. He's a spirit, maybe a demon, who's taken Cole's identity, yes, but when his true nature is uncovered, his body doesn't slump to the floor; he just completely disappears. I don't think there's ever the implication that spirits possessing corpses end up as anything more than the creepy almost mindless shambles that are thrown to the player as mooks.

The odd thing I remember, okay, so in Asunder Cole begins coded very much as a serial killer. Obviously from his perspective he doesn't know he's a spirit yet, but the way he's presented feels generally different. Although you see him potentially mercy kill someone in the game, Cole's murders in the book are very much self-centred, in my reading: he feels himself slipping away the longer he goes without killing, giving into a blackness, and the way it's written it sounds to an extent like he's got an addiction to ending life.

As far as the game goes, you just sort of know that at one point when he first came into the physical world his nature was "corrupted", but it's not really given much more detail than that.

edited 13th Sep '17 1:55:53 PM by Lavaeolus