Kintsugi Plays Dragon Age 2 (a winner is me!)

Why can't I hug every elf?????

 

I demand a DLC where your dog jumps on your companions and knocks them over and licks their faces.

And I also still want that DLC you can buy over and over and each time gives you an extra dog with no gameplay effect, but there's an extra dog! :::PPP

 

i voted for merrill romance in the pool. it's not my fault. my hands are clean of the sin you have commited

MERRIBELLA INTENSIFIES

i love merrill. i love merrill. she's so smart and so Done with people's bullshit

 

if i ever play this on my own I am romancing Merrill. I mean, I decided that a while back but this has solidified my decision.
Though

Spoiler: spoilers??

I'm given to understand that romance = basically enabling her and rivalmance = treating her like a child who cant make her own decisions, neither of which are entirely appealing...

Also I posted that sketch of Sparrow on Tumblr if anyone wants the link.

 

Spoiler

I don't see her friendship romance as enabling her, but YMMV, i guess.

 

it was secondhand info, so I suppose I will have to find out for myself :o

 

Spoiler: romance bs

the one whose friendship path i see as more closely enabling is Anders's, who is my canon romance cause my canon Hawke is a bit of a mess. Merrill's eers on the side of supportive, i think there's one quest that kind of gives people weird vibes but it's a generic one so i don't see the problem have with her romance specifically.

tho, for some reason, there are people who just despise merrill.

 

Spoiler: andersmance

I was kind of peeved when I didn't get "counted" for achievement purposes as having romanced him because my Hawke wouldn't let him stay and fight. Like... she'd asked so many questions about his plot quest that he resorted to emotional blackmail and she was pissed about that, plus she was kind of desperately hoping to be able to spin things as "we were just preventing the annullment of innocents, we totally don't support the whole churchsploding thing" and letting him stay would have kind of torpedoed the fuck out of that, right? But no, apparently that means all the feels and heartbreak didn't really count. :/

 

Re: the 'mances

Spoiler: spoiler for fenris, anders and merrill romances

I did feel the Merrill romance was a bit on the side of enabling, but tbh I think all of them are, and all the rivalry paths can get gratuituously hostile.

I mean, the friendship path for Fenris is to let him (MAJOR SPOILERS) kill his siter!!! i mean!!! that's definitely enabling!!! (END MAJOR SPOILERS) and yet it makes a lot of sense because the alternative is to give Fenris direct orders about one of his biggest life decisions in a while, and seeing as you have literally just killed the guy who used to own him, that's potentially skeevy. I mean, I did the Fenrismance twice, once with a default Garret Hawke in my 1st playthrough and then again with a custom Hawke. For the first one I was super happy that I got 100 friendship soon enough that I was able to make some non-shitty decisions regarding mages in Act 3 (when the decisions get more extreme...) and also keep Varania alive. But when I tried to do that again with my Neil Hawke and got to Varania saying "tell him to stop", I just went... dude... my Hawke would never do that, he's too much of a soft potato who still walks on eggshells around Fenris sometimes due to being a mage, he couldn't just give him that kind of order. I think this is one of the things I love about DA2, how often (at the game's best) there really isn't any perfect option.

IMHO the best thing to do to prevent Too Much Enabling is to get to 100 friendship soon enough that you can be a bit more... firm? in Act 3 - like I mentioned re: Fenrismance. My Diana Hawke, who was a hot mess with a serious problem of idealizing 1) mages and 2) femme women (like her mother, sister and girlfriend), was really uncritical of Merrill's decisions until around the beginning of Act 3... but Merrill's bad decisions kinda seem a lot worse in a romance because it's stated that you're supposedly living together but in practice you barely see her because she spends days in her Lowtown shack obsessing over the mirror anyway. And Diana eventually starts going "WTF, this is bad for you, come home already". I... love the Merrill romance you guys it's so great and so heartbreaking.

With Anders however even maxing out approval early doesn't work, since he does the thing in Act 3 no matter what you do, and then goes emotional manipulation. In fact one of the reasons I can never bring myself to like Anders much is he reminds me too much of a manipulative former friend I had (in fact, one of my IRL friends was the one who pointed out "Anders is like an OC made by Vini" and I literally jumped in the air laughing at that). I'm gonna play the Andersmance soon, but either it's gonna be a rivalmance or I'm gonna have to really work on creating a Hawke that is enough of a hot mess to take the friendmance route...

 

@wixbloom

Spoiler: Anders spoilers

I highly recommend rivaling Anders. It's kind of hard to manage appropriately to get Anders at 100% rivalry soon enough and it sometimes feels like you have to be kind of a weird asshole to get the rivalry points - another aspect in which the game's rushed aspect REALLY shows - but you really get a better idea of what kind of strain Anders is under and how well he's actually doing, which is NOT WELL AT ALL. It's pretty great.

 

@Mercury oh cool I'll do that then!!

 

I keep trying to start Accomplishing Things quest-wise and getting distracted by more dog conversations



>_?

 

>Get back to work.

(maybe that will stop you from being distracted by the dog)

 

>Get back to work.



hawke, how could you!!!

 

STOP RED HAWKE BEFORE SHE IS MEAN TO TH DOG AGAIN

 

STOP SPARROW HAWKE BEFORE SHE IS DISTRACTED BY THE DOG AGAIN

thedas won't save itself, you know...

 

I do appreciate @unknownanonymous 's reasoning, and hey, I do finally manage to make it out of the house. :P To the Hanged Man!



#kpda2banter #anders+varric #you know... i realized these tags are almost entirely useless but now i can't stop doing it






>_?

 

>Get to the point.

 

>let's get some drinks

if absolutely all else fails, we can start a bar brawl to let off some steam

 

>Let's get some drinks
Thereby ensuring things that will be both breakable and messy when they break. :::PPP

(Also, how dare you be mean to the puppy. She is a good girl.)