Hmmm. Lord Seeker Lucius would be a good choice! It would give Cass some more stakes in the conflict. I felt like her companion quest was pretty weak in comparison to some of the other companion quests (Like Bull's or Dorian's). I still think Samson could be a really compelling general. It would take some good writing to make it work, particularly since there's only a little bit of him in DA2. But I don't have the spoons to really go into that now. Maybe some other time. About the novels: I also had the experience of them being very ehhh, mediocre, trope-y writing, but fast and easy to read since I was already invested in the characters and the world. Sorta like a middling fanfic. I have The Stolen Throne on my bedside table to read. I really like Marric and Loghain (Marric/Loghain/Rowen polyamorous love pile 4ever) so hopefully that one will be nice. But now I'm really curious, @Mercury, what is your "least favorite stuff in DAO?" Also hugs if you want them about the dissociation. That shit is rough. I'm really looking forward to Weekes as head writer. He's super talented character writer (see Mordin's PERFECT character arc from the ME games). EDIT: Response to @witchknights because I missed her post when i wrote this I've basically had to retcon/headcanon Cullen's timeline completely bc as it is, it makes NO sense. First of all, if he's Knight Captain in the Gallows, he's gotta be older than in canon (which puts him at 30 in DAI and so about 21 in Act 1 of DA2 when you meet him). I don't care how talented they are, you don't make a fucking 20 year old who JUST transferred to you your second in command. So I put him at between 25-30 when you meet him in Act 1. If you want him to still be young, you can pretend like he was made Knight Captain in Act 2 or 3, which would make some more sense if he really distinguished himself and pleased Meredith. #also Dorian is a tiny baby-man who is MAYBE 24 in DAI #I will fight you Also I love, love your meta/theories on the Chantry. I think it really fits with what we've seen. And having a false Divine would have been such a good story element. Why did that not happen? *pouts*
you start talking about mordin and I'll start crying ): But yeah, he also wrote Solas who I think is one of the more interesting characters in DAI, so I am really excited for what's coming next. Did you guys see the post about earth tremors in the dad on the official Twitter? I'm SO EXCITE for the dlc.
@witchknights Just saw that. I'm intriuged. Though also thoroughly ticked off because they stopped compatibility with the PS3 for the DLC. *sigh* girlfriend and i want to get a ps4 for xmas so i guess we'll just have to wait... god damn it EA. Also been thinking of making a ME thread similar to this one. Would people be interested in that?
Considering in the Qun mages are kept chained up and muzzled 24/7, not sure if the Circle can be that much worse. Like, if I had to pick between being chained up as an animal, unable to speak and treated like a firework or being treated as an overgrown cow but had my mouth, I'd pick the second. But it's possible the Qun mage thing hits most of my nightmare triggers (yep, not being able to talk and being chained up, how predictable), whereas being excluded by my peers and being shat on by my keepers (teachers) was something I did in 1st grade, so. Of course, the templars could come up with something horrible, but I'll keep my brain from running in that direction because I don't want everything to be horrible. Oh brain. A Mass Effect thread could be nice.
A mass effect thread would be great!! I'm not sure a vashot apostate would actually be captured instead of outright killed. *points to the chantry* The racism is strong in this one
That is definitely true, the Circle is a significant improvement on living under the Qun! But yeah, a Vashoth apostate... Would probably just be killed. Why is this world so depressing damn.
Fair point there. Still better than the Qun. I apologise, I am really strongly projecting on this particular thing, and that's not fair of me. (Also someone needs to do meta with the them of "Qun indoctrination vs. real-world propaganda in historical police states", I would read the shit out of that) I like messed up worlds myself, but they need to have heart, and something that keeps me wanting to fight for them. When I think that Thedas could be better, I think about the companions my characters have and the people they have tried to help throughout the years. And then I of course think of Kirkwall and brb crying over here. I need to write that fic which is essentially "French Naturalist does Kirkwall, Also Characters You Know, Stop It Anders", but for that I need to replay the game aahh.
@hoarmurath no need to apologize, Circle life is definitely still way, way better than the way mages are treated under the Qun. It's just my general anti-organized-religion bias showing strongly on my own treatment of the Chantry - and I would definitely read that meta. @Kittenly Thank you! I sort of get the impression DAI got approximately the same amount of writing time dedicated to it than DA2, because there's the same feeling of 'we wanted to write so many cool ideas, alas, we ran out of time' and all the extra time given to it after the deadline was pushed went to writing sidequests. i mean, even the huge amount of war table missions that should have been sidequests, the amount of sidequests that are just a fetch quest template over flavor text... its what makes me want to rewrite the game so much. (but i've never written longfic so *sad trombone noises*) I headcanon Cullen got a small bump on position "for service" or something after Kinloch as a... how can I say that... Like, he was supposed to be retiring 5ever to that small monastery, so he went from "random soldier" to "in charge of screaming at recruits, definitely not goes on missions because has to be screaming at people in training, has better pay" and that was meant to be the end of his military career, until he went to Kirkwall. Meredith put him back on the field (because he was unstable and damaged and traumatized and oh so useful to her), then was made Knight-Captain, like, halfway through Act 2. I also bump his age just a couple of years, so he's 21-22 during the Blight, adjust DA2's timeline slightly so that Hawke arrives in Kirkwall halfway through the Blight (Around the time my Surana is going back to Redcliffe with the Ashes/preparing for the Landsmeet, actually) and Varric and Hawke meet around the end of Hawke's second year in Kirkwall to allow time for Awakening, so there's less time between Act 3 and Inquisition but it's spent better. Oh, and Inquisition itself takes place in the course of 3~5 years, because all that jumping around the map. So, by the end of it, he and my Lavellan are around 36, which is still young but not ridiculously so. And Dorian is a baby-faced babyman who has a moustache because it makes him look all serious and mature.
*SLAPS HAND ON TABLE* Expansion for Inquisition!!!!111!!1 Will we at last be able to romance Varric? Not fucking likely! But I'm still excited because I do so love the bodyhorror of the Deep Roads.
*slams hands on table* THIS IS THE KIND OF CONTENT I LIKE TO SEE. Although, geez, I hope it isn't all fighting. I'm actually surprised they didn't just drop this one on our heads like they did Hakkon, tbh.
Looking things up I was mistaken about who wrote what, but Gaider is unfortunately responsible for one of the main reasons I can't make myself re-play Awakening: Anders. It's how weirdly fratboyish he is and makes a ton of weird and uncomfortable comments about women's looks - you look at the statue of Andraste in the Keep with him in your party and he starts going on about what a looker she is, do you think she was that hot in real life? It was incredibly grating, and got me to hating him nearly as much as I do Oghren, whose tragic past I do not give two shits about because he reminds me way too much of the gross friend/family member that you have to make sure never, ever gets a woman alone at a family gathering. That, and all the rape, and threats of rape. Why is Origins so rapey??
@Mercury Huh, I guess Anders never pinged me that way, but I can really see it now that it's pointed out. I always saw him as defaulting to flirtyness as his default way of talking to people, sorta like Zev or how Dorian can be towards a fem!Quizzie if she tells him to keep flirting after the conversation with his father. Selective memory I guess. Makes me not want to replay Awakening, even though SIGRUN. As for Origins being hella rapey, I know. What the fuck?? Can you believe that it's actually /less/ rapey that it was going to be originally? The creation of the Broodmother was originally gonna be more rapey rather than cannibalistic. Then Gaidar was told by some female writers that it was WAY overboard so he toned it down. Also the City Elf origin, ESPECIALLY if you play as a dude Tabris. Like it has the whole rape-as-drama regardless, but M!Tabris feels very save the poor scared womenfolk. Yeah. I think the other games have been a lot better about avoiding rape-as-drama though.
@Kittenly that's the weird thing for me - I think Zevran is great and funny even though he's wildly inappropriate a lot of the time. Hell, that's part of his charm - I didn't make my tumblr tag for him 'alleycat boyfriend' for nothing! But Awakening!Anders just... worked my nerves. I can probably write up a more coherent statement as to why if I can grit my teeth and replay it. Pretty much all of Awakening except for Sigrun works my nerves, but that's a different story. XD AS IF IT WEREN'T RAPEY ENOUGH ALREADY. Jesus wept. D: I can't play through the City Elf origin as anything but an F!Tabris, especially after having played through as M!Tabris for comparison purposes and oh my god the story one of the elves tells about Vaughan's 'tastes'. Nope. Nope! (Still kinda mad tho that the City Elf just stands there and gets punched at the wedding rather than being allowed to actually react or fight back.) There's also rapeyness in the Dwarf Commoner origin - when you break in on the boss of the area, you overhear him talking with his lackeys about how he's going to go after the Commoner's sister now that she doesn't have her sibling to protect her. It was just... so totally unnecessary and clearly put in for shock value. >:T
It's funny because the Qun pings me much more as religious as the Chantry? Like...I have an inherent anti-religion bias too, but somehow it's concentrated on the Qun, which is strange. But I guess the Chantry is just like...we've lived through that here in my country. I mean, Christians came and destroyed our old religion and despite that, we're still fairly nonreligious (and the old religion has adherents as well). So it's like "you tried, bye". But the Qun is like "RELIGION INDOCTRINATION + MINDSHATTERING DRUGS BAD TIME". Also I wish they had chosen a name that is not three letters of a holy book of a religion very contentious in the western world. I found Zevran quite tiring actually and am still bitter he's the bisexual dude interest in Origins as opposed to Alistair. Still bitter. Like us bisexuals can be precious paladin types too, wtf. And I liked Awakening!Anders? It is DA2 Anders who is my "Fictional Character You Dislike Most Ever". Awakening!Anders seems to be flirty as a defense mechanism. Mostly what I am seeing here is that there are so many different ways to read a story. I don't think I am objectively right about most of my opinions about the series (not that I think you guys think it either), and that is what makes it interesting.
I would just like to say that my Cadash started a romance with Sera yesterday and it is SUPER. CUTE. :3 :3 :3 Sera's journal changes to reflect it: She read a book Lamia was reading! SHE WANTS TO MAKE HER GIRLFRIEND UNDERWEAR HOW CUTE IS THAT??
Awww. I need to go back to my Nas (My Vashoth mage babe) and continue Sera's romance. I really love the romance's in this game ;-; Except for Blackwall. Sir serious boring awkward man. Why was he going to originally be the straight option for women and not Cullen?? Why?
(Preface: this is a joke) no u leave santa stark alone Anyways, no idea why. But I personally like him. He was a cowardly afraid shitty person who tried to atone and was shit at it and then at the final breaking point, he went for it. But I guess for me the dialogue about the dog sort of crushed me. He's...so many people. So many people I have known and know exist in the world. No idea about the romance though, will try. But I am glad Cullen is an option, because out of the three het men, he seems to be the only one who does not essentially betray the Inquisitor.
Blackwall is too much of a passive-aggressive doormat for my tastes. I started out liking him and then little things kept bothering me more and more and then his super dramatic I'M A MOOOONSTEEeeeeeerrrrr in the jail cell just made me tired. This doesn't mean he's not interesting, but he pushes a lot of buttons I don't want pushed, so mostly I just don't bother to recruit him. On another note entirely, this wishlist of Inquisition backgrounds is making me pine for what could have been. THE FORMER TRANQUIL WOULD HAVE BEEN SO. AMAZING.
Mostly for me, the way he idolizes the Inquisitor makes me feel really weird. Like the whole, You wouldn't have let them kill the dog! thing. Like. Wow there. I headcanon that after that chat, Cullen or Dorian comes down to the tavern and finds my Quizzie absolutely blackout drunk blubbering about how he wouldn't stop talking about the dog. His romance is by far the my least favorite and I think the worst done. His kiss scene makes me want to curl up and die of secondhand embarrassment. Also after you sleep with him, you wake up in the fucking barn alone because he's gone to Val Royeux to die. wft. I've also got one playthrough where Alistair meets Blackwall and it was just sort of awkward because Ali should have been livid that Blackwall claims to have been in Ferelden at the time of the Blight but didn't join them bc the love of his life is DEAD and she might still be alive if he had been there.
