;w; Thank you! idk if I've mentioned this but your posts are what got me to play DA, so that makes me happy. So, Berit set out to be Inquisitor. Broad-scale plot decisions: she got the mages' help and took them as allies rather than prisoners, she negotiated a compromise between the three major Orlesian players, she let Morrigan drink from the Well of Sorrows. In general, she favored the past of least resistance in conversation and political situations, and made decisions that favored mages and reform. She relaxed a bit in her absence - the stress makes her go right back to Polite Berit, but Polite Berit tends much more towards subtle sarcasm now and is better at making decisions people don't like. The rest is better organized by character, I think? Leliana: God, they are so fraught! Berit is distraught about the fact that Leliana ended up cunning and ruthless after all, even though - as Leliana is happy to point out - Berit can't complain after she /literally faked her death and disappeared for almost ten years/. Berit keeps telling Leliana to make the "good person"-coded decisions, but it rings a bit hollow because, you know, Leliana is her spymaster and the Inquisition's success depends on her being cunning and ruthless. In Hushed Whispers reactivated all of Berit's protect-Leliana instincts but also, you know, Berit figures out a peaceful way to get the amulet and Leliana shanks the guy's son. In Valence, Berit told Leliana to spare Natalie, but Leliana didn't listen. (I told her not to kill Butler, but I guess I made the wrong choice after In Your Heart Shall Burn?) It was.. a really cool moment for me, as a player, because usually DA character stuff is obvious enough that you can figure out how to just say what you want so that they do it, but is it actually that easy? And of course it makes sense that Berit, of all people, can't just tell Leliana to stop being ruthless. I have a lot of feelings about this. Berit also wants Cassandra to be Divine - for reasons I'll go into in a second - but didn't do enough to actually bring that into being, especially because her Inquisition's decisions are more Leliana-y. So Leliana became Divine Victoria. This is a really cool parallel to the earlier thing aaaa! Berit told Leliana that she thought there was someone better for the job, and that was a wrench, for Berit to say something that openly confrontational, and she looked so guilty and thought it was such a heavy choice but just *telling Leliana to stop* isn't enough to change what she does! Their relationship is not like that anymore! (flailing) So on the one hand Berit is glad that Leliana is further away, but on the other hand she just knows that she is off being efficiently ruthless. And efficiently ruthless about making changes Berit wants, and getting it done effectively, which is upsetting in its own way. Cassandra: Oh my god, Berit fell hard for Cass. She combined the puppy-dog crush Berit got on Morrigan with the strong conviction and idealism and faith that she really liked about Origins!Leliana. Berit flirted with her until she got the "plz stop I'm straight" conversation. Berit had the same... opinion-matching? unwillingness to disagree? that she did with Morrigan, at first. But then she took the mages as allies - and Cass disapproved, but she told Berit that she still respected her, and that she wouldn't let her disapproval interfere with their goals, at which point 1) it became clear to me that this was healthier than Berit's thing with Morrigan and 2) Berit got even more (heart eyes) about Cassandra. Once Berit figured out that Cassandra wasn't into her, they ended up really good friends, even though they don't agree on everything. It did take Berit a long time to wind up to the "hero of Ferelden" thing, but it turned out that Cass had figured it out because Berit was very obvious. (She blamed a lot of incongruous things on her "Dalish upbringing.") Cassandra was torn between exasperation and fondness. Varric: Thank fuck I didn't successfully import Berit's Origins save file, because Berit absolutely would have picked Alistair over Hawke. But as it was, the decision wasn't very hard. Berit liked Varric so much! She enjoyed being snarky with him, she tried to mediate between him and Cass - she mostly took his side, honestly, but she didn't want to upset Cass - and she tried to help him with Bianca. They didn't talk about Important Stuff so much, but they could talk, which Berit appreciated a lot. Also Varric figured out her ~secret identity~ more or less immediately, he's clever like that.
Oh my god there's so much of this. Can you tell I've been thinking about Dragon Age instead of any of my original creative writing for several months? :P Also I think I switch from past to present tense a lot, sorry. Josephine: Berit was extremely fond of Josie, and flirted with her amiably, and did her personal quest and flirted with her some more. Then Leliana gave her the shovel talk. There was zero chance of Berit pursuing a relationship after that - firstly it brought up concerning "pursuing a casual relationship with an innocent-seeming romantic (Leliana/Josie) while being super in love with another person (Morrigan/Cassandra)" parallels, and secondly it just reminded Berit about all of her self-worth and commitment issues. :| She has TWO SEPARATE magical ticking time bombs going for her - she shouldn't be in a real relationship with a normal person. They're still on good terms, but Josie probably wonders why Berit suddenly got way more standoffish with her. Blackwall: Ha. Ha ha. The fake Warden and the Warden pretending not to be Dalish. Before she caught on, she was worried he'd figure out her secret. Irony! After she realized HE was faking, she was just sort of mad and uncomfortable. She doesn't like him. He asked her to leave him in prison in Val Royeaux, and she did. Cullen: They met during Origins. Cullen isn't 100% sure he recognizes her, and Berit would rather not talk about it again. She was surprised by how much she comes to like him, though! He's a decent man, and he plays board games with her. She encourages him to stop taking lyrium. Cole: Berit is protective of Cole, and sided with Varric in encouraging him to be more human. She doesn't mind when he reads her mind, but she does mind when he says it to everyone. Bull: Berit thinks Bull is attractive, and likes his.. simple persona? She wasn't fooled into forgetting that he was Ben-Hassrath, but that didn't make it any less enjoyable to hang out with him and drink and talk. She told him to save the Chargers; she was never very good at prioritizing the greater good over the feelings of the people around her. After she stopped flirting with Josie, she did a fwb d/s thing with Bull for a while, but then her commitment issues reared up again and she called it off. Still - they were good friends, and their post-dragonslaying drunken celebration was adorable. Sera: Berit had no idea how to feel about Sera. Mostly Sera's straightforward rudeness made her uncomfortable, but in calmer periods with the Inquisition she got to like roof hangouts and she was even convinced to prank her advisors. They got in a fight after the Temple of Mythal, though - Berit isn't religious, but she believes the elven gods exist in some form, as a matter of fact. Sera wasn't with them at the temple, but still felt the need to make sure Berit didn't believe any of that rot. Whoops. Dorian: They got off on a really bad foot. Berit spent all of In Hushed Whispers freaking the fuck out, and Dorian was way too nonchalant for her. She spent a while thinking he was a theatrical prissy bastard who didn't care about anybody. But his behavior didn't support that, and she liked his geeking out about magic, so they got on alright. Vivienne: Vivienne, I'm sure, found it hilariously easy to make Berit flip her shit. Berit, meanwhile, sort of enjoyed disliking someone so much that arguing with them didn't make her feel bad. She respected Viv, and did her personal quest, but they Did Not Get Along. Solas: Ehh she liked asking him questions about history but didn't like him being a condescending dick. He told her she was a credit to the Dalish and she was all :| Morrigan: Someone Berit was sort of hoping to never see again! But she discovered that most of the confusing feelings were gone, and she could be amused by how awkward she'd been in the past and, newly, not hurt by Morrigan sniping at her. She let Morrigan drink from the Well of Sorrows, and ended up really worried about the fact that she bound Morrigan to Flemeth (Kieran should have been there, but I fucked up my save file.) Although her reaction to Flemeth showing up was OH SHIT, YOURE MYTHAL, OH SHIT, I TOTALLY TRIED TO KILL YOU, OH SHIT, YOURE STILL ALIVE and the Morrigan parts only hit her later. Now she is in happy stasis until I play Trespasser :P
Every time i see a Surana I get a bit teary eyed :") love those shitty elves but the fandom is alllllllllllll over the amells
I'm doing In Your Heart Shall Burn with my Trevelyan, and I love!! the bit where you're wandering around in the snow half-dead. I love it! It's so atmospheric!!!
That was one of my favorite parts tbh! Like, the fact that your character was slowed to the point where you literally COULDN'T move faster than a weak stumble just. God. They did SUCH a good job with making it actually feel like you were slowly dying as you wandered around lost in the snow.
Uuugh that's my favorite part of the game!!! I wish they'd made the rest of the quests as intense and emotional as that part, I was playing it for like the eleventh time with my fakey Surana and still got all sorts of chills.
Yes! After In Hushed Whispers and that, the rest of the game was kind of a letdown. I still loved it, especially the character stuff, and Adamantine and the Temple of Mythal were cool, but they weren't nearly as moving! And the ending was emotionally disappointing. In Origins you get the, uh, like. Epic fantasy climax with the night-before-the-battle goodbyes and protracted boss fight, which felt like an ending. In DA2 everything just falls the fuck apart in a way that is both sudden and completely inevitable, which I love, and which causes me to have emotions. In Inquisition .. everything just sort of winds down, plot-wise? And the boss fight itself wasn't very interesting. I've heard Trespasser is a better ending, but I haven't played it yet.
Trespasser is the ending we deserved. I'm bitter we had to pay for it, but it's great. The endings of all the dlcs were pretty good, I think - Descend was the weakest if you aren't into lore stuff, and Jaws of Hakkon was especially emotional with a Lavellan, but Trespasser is just really really good. It could have more romance related content, and I am never going to forgive what yet did to some of the romances, but. So good.
I've had a long think about it, and I'm pretty sure this is because Corypheus wasn't our major villian. He was a threat, but once we pounded him into the dirt, that was that, we were powerful and great! Wow! That sure was easy. ... and meanwhile, the real mover and shaker, who had been by our sides all along, sneaks off to lick his wounds and figure out a contingency plan in his quest to destroy the world we know and love. I'm not, because it's not content they cut from the game and re-sold to us. It's content that they didn't have budget or time for until the game sold well. If DAI hadn't done well, it's likely that we wouldn't have gotten Trespasser - they would have wedged its important story content into DA4and we would have gotten brief mentions of the companions, at best. Instead, we got to experience it for ourselves, and have our Inqs have one last big adventure with their friends.
Huh, I hadn't thought about it like that, but it does make sense. I sort of got the feeling, and it was part of my criticism of the writing, that it was like the third act of the game that they were selling separately while it should have been worked into the main narrative from the start instead of dragging act 2, but I guess it's easy to say that coming from an outside perspective without the time and budget restraints of actually making the game.
I do feel like they kind of fucked up the pacing of the main game, so it ended on a flat note - doing something as simple as making Doom Upon All The World happen immediately upon trying to leave Skyhold after What Pride Had Wrought would have made the whole thing feel a lot more urgent and climatic and less "Wait, that's it?" Since we still have access to most of the content post-game (except character quests :/) it's not like it would have hurt to do something like that, so long as it was clearly communicated that once you go to the Arbor Wilds, you're starting the endgame and it's best to be well-prepared. Or, well, anything that didn't make it so you could essentially postpone DUAtW for tens of hours without repercussion. I think Corypheus could have stood to be harder, too, like by level scaling or something - as it is it's pretty easy to blast through him fast enough you don't even get to hear all his monologuing.
Yeah, I managed to fuck up the boss fight such that I was standing outside his "arena" hitting him with ranged attacks, completely outside of his AoEs. I had more difficulty with the dragon, but not much because I had this amulet (which I just read the lore on holy shit) and resurrected often enough that it wasn't very hard.
The last time I got to that stage in the game, I just wailed on him with my Knight-Enchanter Inq and beat him into paste, even though my dps wasn't exactly great. Of course, I play on normal, so he's not as difficult as he might be, but still. I shouldn't be considering soloing him just to make him appropriately challenging.
Making Doom Upon All The World auto-start would definitely been super way better, because I imagine, like. Cory making his nails and petting some dogs or something while he waits for the inquisitor to come back from dragon hunting or faffing around in the hissing wastes or something just so he can start his temper tantrum when it's more convenient. Gameplay and story segregation and all that. In a perfect world of unlimited budgets I still want a siege of skyhold, to really put all the improvements to use - and a couple of intermissions between the parts of the fight against corypheus to see how things are going back home. Seems odd to complain about anticlimactic and ask for And Now For Something Completely Different breaks, but I like how it was done during the Battle of Denerim in DAO and it would have been nice to see the companions we leave behind helping Cullen fight corypheus's people or helping leliana and Josie evacuate the civilians - and it would be sort of like an incentive to build a strong inner circle and recruit everyone
Mobile fucking post it before I was done writing, bleh. But yeah corypheus is too easy as he stands, Dorian glitched out of existence during the first time I fought him and I still managed to beat him in like five minutes at most. Nowadays with all the overleveling and cool equips the quest name is too dramatic to be taken seriously >.>
I've set a Rule for myself on my playthroughs going forward - after WPHW I go back to Skyhold and finish up companion conversations there, and then it's straight on to DUAtW so I don't lose story momentum. Hopefully having the trials that autoscale enemies and being careful not to overlevel will up the challenge on Corypheus a bit as well. I'm kind of two minds about the game being so 'loose' you kind of have to set your own challenges and limits - on one hand, it allows you to really customize your gameplay by being able to choose what your Inq focuses on, but on the other, it made a lot of the storyline loose and untidy. I'm just glad I finally internalized that the game won't actually penalize me for skipping a bunch of content, so I don't actually have to complete every last fiddly side quest or level grind.
What did I do with my snow day? Why, added "The Dawn Will Come" to my stable of not-really-intended-for-the-ukulele ukulele songs, of course. :D
Heading towards the end of Dragon Age 2. So far I am greatly preferring it to Origins. The scope is a lot smaller and honestly I kind of like that. Kirkwall feels more significant and special to me than Lothering did. I also like the chemistry between the group more. Especially how it changes over acts. Also thank fucking god coercion or whatever the fuck got shunted. I hate having to spend skill points in that in Origins or just decide on physical violence. Though sometimes it was hilarious like when I threatened a priest while Morrigan and Alistair were around to save Sten. Also Merrill. Just Merrill. My precious darling baby blood mage who I love very much partly because she is apparently shitty at remembering to get food in act 3 and so on. Also Merribella. I NEED MORE MERRIBELLA FANFICTIONS.
...so, my Inquisition playthrough is making me so happy I'm wanting to start a separate one just for myself. And I have this idea. It's not exactly my idea, I saw someone on Tumblr mention that they'd done it with theirs- a mage Trevelyan who was Tranquil. If just standing next to Anders going glowy will counteract that, getting dragged bodily through the Fade and coming back with a chunk of something Fadey embedded in your body will probably do you one better, after all. So me and my thing about Tranquility have obviously got to try this. Sadly, I doubt there are any mods out there to put a sunburst tattoo on your character's forehead, and I kind of like the idea of her intentionally having her hair so as to show it because of the way it makes people exceedingly uncomfortable. Survivor guilt is over nine thousand, what with this horrible event being the best thing that ever happened to her. Impulse control is probably low, being no longer used to having impulses. Gotta decide who to romance, too, because whenever I try to decide these things in the moment I get choice paralysis. What do you guys think?
