Dragon Age

But weren't all those fetch quests in the hinterlands fun?

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

Hopefully DA 4 comes out and actually has something like that.

I need a new sig.

Welp, picked this up again after a long hiatus involving a lost save after I was already done with the Brecilian Forest questline.

Still went with mage origin, except I did Orzammar first. Currently about to wrap up the Deep Roads. This one's going on like forever. I'm somewhat debating going up to do Soldier's Peak so I can get the anti-darkspawn blood magic spell.

Waifu's been backing Bhelen the whole way, which I find interesting. She's drawing upon her knowledge of historical court intrigue and concluding that there's much more to the dwarf king's death and naming of heir than we're led to believe.

I find that compared to Bioware's other RP Gs, this one seems...backwards. Fast travel is too limited. Stealing, for whatever stupid reason, has a 10 second cooldown (immediately downloaded a mod to reduce this to 1.5, see no reason for cooldowns in an ability that's used outside of battle). The optimal way to play this is with a top-down view that turns it into an RTS with pause, which impedes immersion. The optimal way to play this is like an RTS, but I'm not able to move my map around like an RTS to I can actually strategize. There are many enemy types, but it's really hard to tell what they are.

Meanwhile, there's two specific issues I'm finding:

1. How do enemies resist mana clash? Darkspawn emissaries do this every so often, but the spell description doesn't indicate any sort of resistance check.

2. Not sure why white-ranked enemies aren't shattering. I'm applying Cone of Cold and having my two-handers use Mighty Blow, but a lot of the time they're just doing damage instead of actually shattering them. What gives?

You might already be aware, but you can move the camera a bit in top-down either through the arrow keys or by pushing the mouse towards the edges. But, as you say, you don't have full freedom. Origins is decidedly a throwback to earlier, isometric RPGs like Baldur's Gate, where you're expected to control everyone to some extent (either manually or through scripts). So immersion takes a backseat in combat to encourage players to tactically organise their party, which is part of what the top-down is there to help with (aside from generally calling back to isometric games).

To some extent, you can use rogues and stealth to scout out a fight and maybe assassinate/injure a key target or lay traps, though this isn't really necessary and there will be moments of, say, triggered cutscene fights were you to rely on that.

It's been a while since I went through the game, but as I recall Boss characters can't be shattered, and Lieutenant / Elite enemies have a reduced chance of being shattered (exactly how reduced depends on your difficulty).

Edited by Lavaeolus on Aug 17th 2018 at 8:59:16 PM

I suspect the design team decided that they wanted to go for certain concepts and references, but they didn't completely understand what was actually good about the games that they themselves wanted to reference and evoke.

The critters I'm wanting to shatter are just normal Corrupted Spiders and other white ranked enemies.

I went to Soldier's Peak and grabbed the Warden Blood Magic abilities. Killed the Dryden demon, let Avernus continue his research.

About to fight the Broodmother, I think.

If I have the right of it: Shattering works when you get a critical hit or use certain spells (Stonefist / Crushing Prison) on a frozen or petrified foe. Mighty Blow and a few other skills in similar veins will likely trigger it depending on your Strength, as it has an enhanced chance to critical hit, but it's not a guarantee.

Edited by Lavaeolus on Aug 17th 2018 at 11:21:57 AM

I think what's happening some of the time is that people are missing with Mighty Blow (not sure how, it's a friggin' ice statue), or maybe they're just not footslogging it to the frozen enemies in time.

Walking Bomb remains hilarious, especially on those parts in Denerim where the craptons of guards and mercs attack you.

Wrapped up Shale, Leliana, Sten, and Oghren's personal quests. Had my wife pick the dialogue choices. Think we actually hardened Leliana.

Edit: oh, we also backed Bhelen so he could make Orzammar great again.

Edited by PRC4Eva on Aug 22nd 2018 at 4:55:34 AM

Brecilian Forest has a lot less material compared to Orzammar.

Is there any in-story reason to side with the werewolves and destroy the elves, rather than doing what Zathrian told you and kill Witherfang? So he doesn't want to undo the curse on the humans who killed his children, and doesn't want his clansmen to know that the original werewolf was actually brought into the world by him, big deal. As for alliances...the werewolves are an unknown quantity, and only limited to one region of the forest. Why would you take them over the Dalish elves who are surely more numerous and tactically flexible?

Healing the Werewolves is like super easy and with zero drawbacks, so I don't see why anyone would go with any other option.

Honestly, nine years on, the Golden Path is so ingrained that any deviation from it just sounds dumb.

"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."

My understanding was the people who actually killed his children died ages ago; the people infected with the werewolf curse are the remnants of others in the tribe and others infected.

But yes, there's little real reason to convince the werewolves to slaughter the Dalish. It won't remove their curse, so it's bad for them in the long-run as their grip on their sanity is worsening as is, and it's even worse for the Dalish who have no knowledge of Zatharian's act. I imagine the choice for most people becomes 'Insist on Zatharian curing them' versus 'Help Zatharian in the knowledge that Dalish troops will be secured', though it's hard not to metagame on that.

I don't think going for the Golden Path takes that much more effort anyway.

Werewolves are better than Dalish if you're a ruthless Grey Warden.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Why? They don't bring more power and another line of melee - unarmored at that - is less valuable than archers. None of your other allies apart from the mages have significant ranged ability.

Not enough spellpower on your mage, invest more in their magic stat.

I need a new sig.

It doesn't take much more effort to get the golden path, it's just a matter of whether we want to, and but we have old-school ideals regarding vengeance, so we didn't tell Zathrian to end the curse. Dialogue gave me the impression that the "crimes committed by those who are long dead" referred specifically to the human who killed Zathrian's son and the human who raped his daughter*, and the wolves were still mostly the same villagers padded by anyone who also wandered into the forest. Did I miss a thing somewhere that specified whether werewolves still die of old age, or are they immortal/immortal with the same conditions as Zathrian? Or am I meant to presume that even if they were immortal, every one of the original villagers were dead from living in a dangerous forest full of bears and demons and stuff?

• mmhmm, because having rapes happen is how you make sure your game is mature and adult enough to be taken seriously. It's definitely one of the things that turn me off about DA compared to KOTOR or Mass Effect.

When you bring up curing the curse to Zatharian, he defends it by arguing 'Who they are has not changed from whom their ancestors were. Wild savages! Worthless dogs!' Implying the current werewolves are descendents, or at least most of them are.

So I am an Arcane Warrior + Blood Mage.

Should I go for wearing armor or clothing? And do you find late-game armor sets to be worth mix and matching different pieces of unique armor?

I always wore armor in DAO. Figured it was essential. I also always wore complete sets of armor

I am also bad at he game.

Now, in all honesty, Arcane Warrior + Blood Mage is a relatively strong combination; you can make a lot work if you want.

It depends a bit on what you want your mage to play like here. The more fatigue your character has, increased depending on what armour they're wearing, the more mana spells will cost. In massive armour and with all the protective mage spells, your mage will be practically indestructible, even more than any tank would be. The downside being, you'll have practically no mana. Blood Mage can relieve this a bit, as it allows you to cast spells from your health, but there's a trade-off there. On all but the hardest difficulties, heavy armour and waving a sword around will also attract more enemy attention. Which, admittedly, if you were going the tanky route you might want.

If you don't really want to make your mage particularly tanky, then you could consider not going beyond heavy armour. Still, having armour on won't hurt you overmuch. Some extra protection is probably worth a bit of mana cost. Mix-and-matching different pieces of armour isn't an awful idea, but late game armour tends to have some fairly noteworthy set bonuses.

Edited by Lavaeolus on Aug 30th 2018 at 10:53:27 AM

Arcane warriors wear armor

but are boring so I never played them.

At what point did you notice the fatigue penalty actually hurting you?

Currently running the Wade's Superior Dragonskin armor set with a Juggernaut helm. Seems like I'm basically taking a lowered magic/spellpower stats for increased armor protection. Debating if I want to just swap it for something like felon's coat or Reaper's vestments. Also debating if I want the Warden Commander armor for RP flavor, being as I already have Al wearing Cailan's armor set.

I think right now I have an issue where I'm getting so much high end unique gear, but I don't have enough characters to use it on. Sten's on Diligence, Al's on the Cailan armor set, Oghren's on the Legion set, and then Leliana and Zevran and Morrigan are on different mixed/matched unique armors, which leaves the dog and Shale who wear their own equipment.

On top of there just being so many single or two handed weapons I can possibly use.

You don't need to wear armor as an Arcane Warrior, especially not as an optimal one.

Personally, I've always said 'Fuck it' to the in-game armors and used a mod that gave me Duncan's set of armor that would level with me. Mostly because I never quite liked the in game armors, inventory management, and then I always get frustrated when games give me the x chest piece, but I don't get the greaves or gauntlets anytime soon. So, Rainbow Pimp Gear hits.

Finally finished this game over the weekend, and was overall left with a sense of...fatigue.

I can't really put my finger on how or where it lost me. I can point to it and say that I like what they've done with the elves and the dwarves, and a little bit about the whole magic/chantry/gods/darkspawn relationship. But I'm not sure where to begin with what made me fall out of love with this game.

Gameplay, certainly, had something to do with it. The AI just isn't very good, and the tactics settings seem less like a gameplay feature and more like a way to pawn off responsibility for bad AI to the player. "If we make the player responsible for AI, they'll see it as a feature and not a bug!" Combat got downright repetitive. Fort Drakon was a slog. The Army Picker was a decent idea, but it seemed like the armies' main purpose isn't really to fight the darkspawn, more to clear out the hordes of darkspawn grunts that die in one hit anyway so you can spend effort on fighting the ranked enemies that actually have real health. Conversely, the hordes of darkspawn grunts felt less like they were there to make me feel powerful, and more so that it's just a slog to get to the final boss.

Does the game ever specifically spell out how strong a darkspawn is supposed to be? I never know whether how threatening I'm supposed to take them, which take the oomph out of all those scenes where they try to establish "look how much danger we're in! That darkspawn just executed a captive human soldier!" It tends to drive me towards "either they're really strong, but they don't really look that way", or "how did you guys lose, again?"

Meanwhile, I feel as though the writing, when looked at as a whole, feels somewhat lazy and uninspired. The quests themselves don't actually offer you that much choice to consider. Certainly nothing up to the level of the rachni queen or the Virmire survivor. Redcliffe you decide whether to dick Connor over in return for Blood Magic or not. Circle you decide whether to dick over the mages or not. Elf forest you decide whether to dick over the werewolves or not. Dwarves...actually had a decent split, but then it became a problem of the writing wasn't spent giving you resolution, but handing you a "gotcha" moment. Did you pick the nice and honorable king? Too bad, it works out badly! Should have picked the asshole based on...his red colored helmet that says in dwarf runes "Make Orzammar Great Again"? And Loghain...Bioware, if you're going to want the player to feel sympathy for him before killing him, maybe you should show him actually doing sympathetic things? Rather than just relying on Anora's word that he wasn't always a douche? And of course, the blood and sex that just exists to make things darker and edgier. I mentioned the part where I like the "faded glory" aspect of elven history. You know what part was bleh for me? The part where the elves are this way because they were defeated and enslaved, exactly like happens in many instances in our own history. There's pretty much nothing fantastical or unique about it.

And the characters - holy crap! I personally like cheesy humor, so I liked Alistair. But beside him, though, the only actual likeable character was the dog, for me. Everyone else just has too much baggage, when they're not being so sarcastic with the lampshade hanging that they knock over the entire lamp while doing so. No, I don't need an umpteenth joke about how the stupid mooks insist on attacking me anyway, or how we have to solve everything ourselves. I especially don't need Zevran and Oghren to call attention to how lots of works do the elf-dwarf rivalry, so DAO is by golly not going to do it!!eleven!

Humor also feels forced and out of place a lot of times. No, I don't need random notes about a dwarf named Shepard who climbs in a slow elevator, or a short skit that's just a bunch of peasants quoting Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

In any case, I'm going to be clearing the other DLC campaigns, but once that's done, I don't think I'm going to be giving this another playthrough.

None of the catharsis from Jade Empire, KOTOR, or Mass Effect 1 to be found here, only...fatigue.

Don't play DAII.