Gaming The Inquisition's Here and It's Here To Stay: The Dragon Age Series

I watched Leliana pestering Morrigan about God and the afterlife, and Morrigan sort of shot her down...but then about four or five minutes later, Leliana came back to the conversation a little more prepared, and got shot down again. Then she started obsessing about Morrigan's breasts again.

Also, I wanted to shine the spotlight on Leliana's amazing accent. There's just that little hint of French in there to reflect Orlais's Frenchie flavor. It is truly a pleasure to listen to her talk. All the characters are so much fun to talk to. Miles ahead of many other games I've played, although every one seems to have one or two standouts.

It's just that this game is ALL standout. In virtually everything.

 

Sten's awesome And who would've thought that the gifts to give him are portraits and the like? <.<

Lol Morrigan and Leliana

EDIT: So, I've just been contacted by a friend of mine. He's near the end and he happened to do something that was....kind of silly.

Milli: I tried to get my dog to lead the guys I left behind
Milli: no luck :-(
sarge221: rofl
Milli: I don't know about you, but i strip all my party members I don't use and sell their stuff for gold
sarge221: lmao
sarge221: i give them stuff
Milli: so this last fight consisted of 4 armored people and a bunch of naked people running around
sarge221: good job dumb***
sarge221: <.<
Milli: pffft, they one shot everyone anything
Milli: makes it funnier
Milli: apparently I could have recruited the golems to fight for me :-(
sarge221: could've
sarge221: by getting the anvil thing
Milli: that woman was a ***** though, **** her
sarge221: rofl
Milli: how neccessary are the armies?
Milli: for example, I killed a general and haven't used any yet
Milli: is it alright for me to just go lololololol with them
sarge221: no!
sarge221: you want to keep them and use them for the final boss battle <.<
Milli: k
Milli: FFFFFFFFFF
Milli: I do have to actually use these characters
sarge221: eh?
sarge221: rofl
Milli: I was hoping that they'd just let me go :-(
sarge221: NOPE!
sarge221: YOU LOSE!
sarge221: <.<
sarge221: GOOD DAY SIR
Milli: sten, oghren, leliana, dog
Milli: wow
Milli: sten tank lol
Milli: all I have to say is, good thing i was lazy and never emptied my bags
sarge221: indeed

 

My strategy with my Mage was to have Alistair wearing the heavy dragonscale armor and a few other items to boost his fire resistance, and then send him into the middle of a bunch of enemies. And then my Mages would drop hell directly on his head. Fireballs, fire storm thingie, etc. BOOM. He took virtually no damage from it, having close to 100% fire resistance. Fights were quick and easy.

 

I just completed the last of the origin stories, and the Nobel Dwarf has to be my favourite. The conflict between the houses and all the political backstabbing was fun, it's like something from the Wars of the Roses.

The City Elf origin is probably my next favourite, it's pretty brutal.

Also - Dragon Age Outtakes

 

Just beat the game as as Human Noble Warrior. I had played the whole game as a goody-goody Paladin type so I didn't have any problems sacrificing myself. I turned down Morrigan's offer and didn't let Alistair go through with it either. I had made him king so I didn't think it was a good idea for a potential heir to be an Archdemon tainted child of a witch.

 

The Revenant in the keep (at Soldier's Peak)? Enlarged my ***hole. Because of all the rape, you see.

Holy ****. Was I supposed to level up before going there? That was brutal. That Warden armor rules, though.

You know what? I completely take back everything I ever said about Sten -- equip him with a Maul, and up his Two-Handed skill sets, and mother****er's unstoppable. It also depends on the abilities that you're using...if your other tank is somehow doing more damage than Sten, then either he has a limitless pool of Stamina, and Sten doesn't enough to use one ability, or Sten needs a new weapon of the same tier.

I like being able to hit for 100 points of damage per swing, myself, but I'm still hoping to unlock that Achievement for 250 points per swing. Two-handers are brutal, but they're also slow starters. Sunder Armor is a lot better then it sounds, while Pommel Strike pretty much = Shield Bash, and Mighty Blow is just a tough attack. After that, it takes a while to get some more nice stuff. To get the 3rd level of two-hander abilities, you need at least +28 Strength, but in other RPGs, for example, you just need +20 Agility, so you can get that quite a few levels earlier.

Two-handers are in it for the long haul.

(And holy crap, but there's some major lag in uploading character-info to the BioWare site. I'm, like, Level 11 now, but the site still shows my Noble with a Wooden Shield and an Iron Ring. )

Also, I hear Alistair eventually steals all your ****. True?

 

I've beaten the game and started a second one. But it still says my first character is only level 5. It has all my achievements updated though, which is strange.

 

I'm playing through the main game with a nobel human warrior now, focusing on two-handed combat. The sword-swinging animations are excellent, it looks like they actually mocapped someone who knows what they're doing for a change.

 

Yeah, the animations really are a cut above in this game. Love it when Sten swings that ginormous hammer down on some poor sucka.

Also, it seems like the BioWare site got a partial update of my character through -- I'm now listed as being at "Level 9," though I'm well above that at this point. Their servers must really be getting swamped right now.

And even though I'm now kinda playing as a total asshat, Sten has still taken a pretty strong liking to me, though I hear that Leliana leaves the party if you choose the Reaver specialization. But, it's mostly the guilt of actually treating such lifelike characters so harshly. With such fleshed-out characters, I find it difficult to role-play the bad guy. My "douchewad" character comes across more as an incredibly-unpredictable psychopath with split personality disorder: Killing one innocent leads to guilt, leads to helping out another person. It's a vicious circle, and every one of my companions seems to dislike it.

Being evil and being a jerk are two completely different sides of the same coin. When you chat with your companions, you shouldn't treat them without respect; instead, you should consider them as useful tools (the ones you don't plan on killing, anyway). Agree to their "efficient way" of things, and be willing to do anything necessary for personal gain.

Particularly in this game, when the characters have personalities that feel so damn real. I'm viewing it as a challenge to play the game through that way, because it's not really in my nature. And there are going to be times when it's hard to work out what the "right" evil choice is. I view "evil" as seeking and taking power and riches for myself, not caring about the lots of others. There is a balance to strike, however. I can't allow Ferelden to be destroyed, because then who will I force to serve me after the Blight is over?

 

The dialogue between your party members is absolute pure gold! Right now I think my favorites are :

-Leliana offering to go shopping with Morrigan and being super creepy about it.

-Oghren and Wynne boozing it up then him trying to pick her up.

-Wynne trying to tell Alistair about where babies come from

 

Oghren asking Leliana if the priests are naked under their robes is pretty good too.

 

The third one is solid gold.

I think the next thing I'm gonna do is walk around towns with various different combinations of characters. I didn't even hear the first two conversations because I didn't use the people in question much.

 

finally gotten to play some. just past ostigar and whooo... that was interesting.

 

Not sure about that. My warrior has the Reaver, but Leliana is still with me. I can't remember if I chose the specialisation before or after she joined though, that might make a difference.

Either way, she can also leave the party if you destroy the sacred ashes. That's what happened to me during my first playthrough.

 

Huh. I know there are consequences for unlocking the Blood Mage and Reaver specs (and possibly others, but I haven't unlocked them all) but that's interesting if there are none for just using them.

Anyway, I've now finished all six origin stories. It's really cool how they all tie in to the overall story - I remembered what 'happened' for some of the origins from my first playthrough, only there wasn't the happy ending of joining the Grey Wardens. Like for the Dwarf Noble origin, you are the second prince/princess of three, and your younger brother frames you for the murder of your older brother and has you exiled. In the origin story, you then join up with the Grey Wardens. But if you're not, when you go to Orzammar, they just tell you that the the second prince died in the Deep Roads for murdering his brother.

The Dalish origin is still my favourite of them all, I think.

 

Jesus, that Uldred in the Tower's a bastard. Took me forever to figure out that I needed to activate that Litany spellbook to keep him from turning the rest of the Mages into blood-monster Abominations, and even then it was one frigging hard fight. Screw that *-hole.

It feels so great playing this game. Like reconnecting with an old girlfriend and finding out that not only is she still as great as you remember, but that she's learned a few more tricks in bed during your years apart. The backstory for my one Human Noble I've created alone is bigger than much of the total story script for Risen, and I enjoyed that game very much. This game is BioWare RPG goodness at its best. Although the "charge-ahead-blindly-and-slaughter-all-in-your-path" approach doesn't work too well in this game. You might squeak by in most fights, but it ain't gonna be easy.

Redcliffe ****s you up the ass hard, and just flat-out doesn't stop. Those fricking attack dogs in the castle took me about seven reloads to beat. As for the Revenant outside, I stealth-ed to the switch, and let my buddies soften him up for me. Now all I have to do is decide is whether or not I'm a big enough dick to play around with a little Blood Magic. At least I know when I reload, what different tactics I can try. Shield Wall and Threaten on my tanks? Yes, please!

All I know is this game ****ing LOVES blood. The loading screens, the map, every battle. I'm surprised that when my party makes camp, it isn't atop a pile of gushing corpses.

Really, I've gotten most party members so far, and none of them are completely uninteresting to me -- this especially surprised me with Alistair, because normally I tend to not be a fan of the "that guy" party members BioWare is semi-famous for (Carth in KotOR, Kaidan in Mass Effect, etc.). It's actually a bit of a struggle sometimes to build a "balanced" party, because I find myself picking characters more for personality than utility (which can make the game pretty freakin' difficult).

The only visual problem I have with the game is that after Mass Effect made some nice strides in making conversations look more cinematic and dramatic, Dragon Age is a step back to the "fixed-camera-pointing-at-a-barely-moving-talking-head" technique. This is doubly bad, since the voice acting is so damn good. Also, I know it's silly, but this game has that, "Ohhhh, you saved that baby, but he's going to grow up into Hitler!" vibe...fixing a town's problems only to get mob-rushed for the reward on your head makes you paranoid, I guess. I'm also hoping the quest to get the Dwarf character isn't invalidated by my choices; I've avoided talking to the guy in the tavern because of that.

Just had a random encounter on the road that made me wonder if I should rethink my life of adventuring, and maybe settle down and run a brothel, or something...

But it's still got nothing on the City Elf origin, which is one gigantic Rapefest Weekend.

 

Good to hear that all that trouble to get Dragon Age working is paying off

 

Sure, not a prob; though if my bloodlust overtakes me, I just have to roll with it.

Don't know if anyone's done it yet, but put Wynne and Zevran together in a party -- the guy's just like Skwisgaar Skwigelf from Metalocalypse, and totally has a sick thing for grannies. Seriously, the dude's a GIL*-hunter extraordinaire; he loves the old ladies, fetishizes them, and keeps composing hymns to Wynne's "magnificent bosoms." BioWare gave this game a nasty edge. God bless them for it.

(Also, he sounds an awful lot like Peter's dead, gay boss on Family Guy whenever this happens.)

Upon reflection, Swiftrunner should have been a recruitable party member. He would have been the perfect candidate (provided you take the chance to kill the Dalish Elves, thereby choosing not to reverse the curse). What would be cooler than having a werewolf on your team? He could be a warrior, and could learn special werewolf skills, and "Shadow Wolf" stealth talents, if you chose to go that route. Then again, the only thing keeping that guy from eating your face was the Lady of the Forest calming him down. Without her at his side, it's doubtful he'd be able to contain his rage.

That's also not counting the fact that Fereldans tend to hate werewolves in general, so unless he's able to shift into human form whenever you're around people you're not planning to kill, you might be in a bit of a predicament.

And I never realized how awesome the Cone of Frost was going to be until I single-handedly annihilated two Ogres with it. Loghain, your ass is mine.

 

Might want to lessen the sharing of the stuff in the game a bit as well Leto in case there are people who have not finished it yet or, an impossibility really, even bought it yet

I think everyone has forgotten about one certain individual. One who would kill you and everyone you know while you were asleep.

And you know what? He was always standing right over you when you were sleeping.

Yes.

I'm talking about Sandal.

Darkspawn ain't got nothing on him

 

So I'm guessing Flemeth's ultimate plan all along was to get Morrigan pregnant with a Grey Warden? Is there anywhere in the game or other fiction that might suggest it?

 

No it doesn't seem like it's suggested anywhere else I dunno about the Stolen Throne but I read The Calling and there isn't really anything about something like that in there. It was just something that seemed to be thrown in out of nowhere and yet I think it had managed to fit in pretty cleverly nonetheless