Confession: Spent another hour trying to make a badass looking Qunari, ending up with Sten with horns. Played for a bit, saw how bad armour looks on Qunari gave up "especially when Iron Bull tells us Qunari can't wear chest amour because they can't get it over their horns" , went back to playing a elf.
Confession: Gonna restart again when I get home, this will be my 5th restart in 3 days "I'm only counting the ones where I get to Haven", I have vodka waiting and gonna pick up some pizza on the way. I'm going to roll a Dwarf and he is going to be the most badass Dwarf there ever was and if it's not possible to make a fearsome looking Dwarf then I'm out, I will delete this game and never look at it again.
Confession: Spent another hour trying to make a badass looking Qunari, ending up with Sten with horns. Played for a bit, saw how bad armour looks on Qunari gave up "especially when Iron Bull tells us Qunari can't wear chest amour because they can't get it over their horns" , went back to playing a elf.
Confession: Gonna restart again when I get home, this will be my 5th restart in 3 days "I'm only counting the ones where I get to Haven", I have vodka waiting and gonna pick up some pizza on the way. I'm going to roll a Dwarf and he is going to be the most badass Dwarf there ever was and if it's not possible to make a fearsome looking Dwarf then I'm out, I will delete this game and never look at it again.
Do you have the Qunari Spoils of Qunari DLC? It has some better armour models for Qunari (even if one is more of a fan service).
When I got the Xbox One version, I went with a female Qunari Spell casting Inquisitor (since you really don't see any female Qunari) and IMO, she looks bad ass.
@deltago yeah I have it but it looks really weird on a male Qunari as the character model is so overly buff, it's like a water polo players shoulders x10. Plus there is no option for body paint and that kind of annoys me. Besides that having a Vashoth wear traditional Qunari garb is kind of silly.
Happy to say I'm really liking my Dwarf, he lacks a lot of extra dialogue compared to my Elven characters but is pretty cool not the less. He looks and acts like a evil pirate and I'm loving the fact that everybody is treating him like a saint.
confession: i like da2 confession; i only finished dai once. unlike origins and 2 which i have played afew times confession; i beat my first run of da2 in one day for some reason confession; i prefer beatheny but like carers story arc more. confession: awakening is my lest favorite thing in the series confession; i have more human noble runs then the rest of the origins. confession; not a fan of dog and never use him confession: i barly use shale confession: the open world aspect of dai hurts the game confession: dai has the best version of the wheel. confession; most of the dlc in orgins is meh confession; both of the dlc in 2 are great. confession; i only used zevran my first run and that was also the one where he died. Confession: iron bull is better then sten Confession; sten is boring Confession; i don't like orghren either.
Confession: I think Dragon Age 2 is the best game in the franchise.
Confession: I've never played a het romance in the series and I never will.
Confession: The companion/NPC and companion/companion relationships were more interesting than any PC romance could ever be. Isabela/Fenris was great. Dorian/Iron Bull and Sera/Dagna were the best parts of Inquisition.
I got a DA-related question I never got an answer for on the EA-help forum (Help got split from the regular Bioware forum, with the result hardly anyone visits it no more). I quit playing DA2 because of an annoying problem, but maybe someone knows a solution?
The problem is, I couldn't find any codex entries for notes read anywhere in the GUI. Whenever I found a note relating to the DA2 family's problems, they commented on the note they found, like when they found the family's testament, but there was no text of the note to be found, I couldn't find codex entries for it. So when it comes to understanding the story or what to do next, I'm at the lost. The quest notes tell me WHAT to do next, but I can't find the WHY, so the story becomes just a checking of a list of tasks instead of an involving roleplay.
Is this a bug? Could something be wrong with my system (running the Origin version of DA2 on Windows 7 x64)? Or does the game lack a good journal system?
I got a DA-related question I never got an answer for on the EA-help forum (Help got split from the regular Bioware forum, with the result hardly anyone visits it no more). I quit playing DA2 because of an annoying problem, but maybe someone knows a solution?
The problem is, I couldn't find any codex entries for notes read anywhere in the GUI. Whenever I found a note relating to the DA2 family's problems, they commented on the note they found, like when they found the family's testament, but there was no text of the note to be found, I couldn't find codex entries for it. So when it comes to understanding the story or what to do next, I'm at the lost. The quest notes tell me WHAT to do next, but I can't find the WHY, so the story becomes just a checking of a list of tasks instead of an involving roleplay.
Is this a bug? Could something be wrong with my system (running the Origin version of DA2 on Windows 7 x64)? Or does the game lack a good journal system?
The game lacks a good journal system. A good portion of the notes you pick up adds a codex entry to your journal, but they tend to be placed in different areas.
The grandfather's will, IIRC is a inventory item that can be found in the plot items. Examining it, allows you to read the will.
The game lacks a good journal system. A good portion of the notes you pick up adds a codex entry to your journal, but they tend to be placed in different areas.
The grandfather's will, IIRC is a inventory item that can be found in the plot items. Examining it, allows you to read the will.
So it's no bug on my part? If it's indeed lack of a good journal system that made me fail to find proper info on the story, I think I was right in quiting the game. It took all the fun out of the game, not being able to delve into the story and what was going on after having paused playing for a while. It's hard to pick up the story if there's no way to re-read about what's going on story-wise. It killed my enjoyment of the game.
Dragon Age: Origins journal system made it hard to find where a note went, under what category, but at least with some searching you could find it back. And when in DA:O you ran into the problem of not grasping how the story unfolds in dialogues, there was the option to read back the conversations. It's been awhile I quit Dragon Age 2, but I remember the dialogue unfolding real time instead of pausing after a sentence (like BG and DA:O did), so as a non-English speaker there's no time to digest what was said .
I got Dragon Age: Inquisition on the PS3. I bought it on console as I've read the game is very mouse+keyboard unfriendly. I hope I'll be able to pick up the story better than DA2's story after the current pause, but all-in-all, Dragon Age: Origins was the best Dragon Age experience.
Confession: after having played DAO an X amount of times, the major thing I use the journal for is to "mark all as read" for the codices.
Confession: if they weren't annoying before, my current DAO lvl 35 sword & board tank just got stunned by a measly deepstalker. (Human noble, so too elitist to rage-quit, but I had my mage empty his arsenal on the little s***.)
Confession: my current run is only the second time I included the DLC mini campaigns.
Confession: I rate DA2 (Dragon Age 2) at par with PS:T (Planescape Torment) - the absolute tops of story driven RPG writing. I love it the best from the series.
Confession: DA2 is the only game where I voluntarily roll a male CHAR, because I find Nicholas Boulton's performance as M!Hawke peerless. I could listen to "myself" for hours, lol! ;-)
Confession: wish I could feel the same about male Inki, because I was disappointed about female Inki voice-work in DA:I. And apriori I like Wilton-Regan!
Rant here: I think female lead char voice choices were awful all around with DA:I.
Wilton-Reagan said she wanted to channel authority to her female Inki, and IMO lowered her voice unnaturally and overacted hoping to channel "ballsy." But this was anyway better than the dead-pan female american accent, I imagine intended for the eventual qunari or dwarf.
Neither Varric nor Iron Bull are dead-pan - far from it: so why the main char, for goodness sake??!
I'd rather have willful, charming, wisecracking, playful and possibly more than a little sarcastic female lead any time than deadpan low voice Inki to channel "authority" or "race."
Confession: On my first playthough of DA:O I missed out on both Sten and Leliana, because I didn't know that once I leave Lothering, you can't go back.
Confession: When recreating the playthrough for DA:I, I pretended that I did >.>
Confession: When I played DA2 I missed out on Fenris because I refused to do any quests that suggest hunting down mages.
Confession: I can't understand what Sera is saying half of the time, even with subtitles on.
Confession: I never understood why so many fangirls are obsessed with Cullen.
Confession: Anders looks like Duncan's and Alistair's love child to me.
Confession: I have a Duncan action figure.
Confession: Aproximately five years later and I am still mad at Alistair for breaking up with my warden >:I
Confession: I am both furious at and amazed by the plot twist regarding Thom Rainier.
Confession: I want to punch Dorian's dad iN THE F***CKING FACE!1!!
Confession: God dammit, Anders.
PS: Confession: I prefer DA2's elven designs over DA:O's.
Confession: I can rant for literally HOURS about how much the armor, clothing and weapon designs in the franchise annoy me. THAT IS NOT HOW ARMOR WORKS. (DA:I made it better though.)
Confession: I rate DA2 (Dragon Age 2) at par with PS:T (Planescape Torment) - the absolute tops of story driven RPG writing. I love it the best from the series.
Confession: While I also find the story of DA2 very enjoyable, the lack of diversity in maps and blatantly obvious re-using of said maps really deflates my overall opinion.
Confession: (might have said this before but) I find DA2's genlocks awful.
Confession: In my current playthrough I "resurrected" Carver. I'll make him a Warden later on (and probably won't use him again) to justify his survival.
Confession: I'll do Mark of the Assassin at the earliest opportunity, and keep Tallis around for the rest of the game in the same way.
Confession: While I also find the story of DA2 very enjoyable, the lack of diversity in maps and blatantly obvious re-using of said maps really deflates my overall opinion.
Confession: I'll do Mark of the Assassin at the earliest opportunity, and keep Tallis around for the rest of the game in the same way.
Confession addendum: I like Tallis.
I'm not wild about the resused maps, fair enough ... Yet, DA2 had quite the short throughput time, and I just would rather "go green" (recycle) the maps than dilute the story. I've rarely felt so engaged with my companions or the game-world, because the story arcs evolved so well over each chapter, deepening and inter-twining.
Which leads to my next confession: I am sucker for city-heavy RPGs, like BG and DA. (Baldur's Gate, Amn, Denerim, Kirkwall - and of course Bethesda, and my "guilty pleasure" Two Worlds)
And I like yer style Sjerrie!
Confession: I am popping here, becasue finally I cracked and bought "Mark of the Assassin" which is downloading...
I think I was inspired by finally beating the Rock Wraith at the end of chapter I at "hard" - as a mage, I admit, which is not my typical choice for class, but I wanted to have Carver, once, for "Legacy." This only left Assassin DLC for novelty.
Confession: I can rant for literally HOURS about how much the armor, clothing and weapon designs in the franchise annoy me. THAT IS NOT HOW ARMOR WORKS. (DA:I made it better though.)
I am not so thoroughly with you there - but I still totally sympathize with your rant! (Which I think I'd enjoy to hear, actually!)
I do admit that the option to tick "hide helmet" has a lot to do with that though. I never give "Helm of the Deep" to much preferred DA:O companions, realism be sodded there for immersion!
I am with you though when it applies to DA2 mage-armor options. Generally they are just awful!! I do not play mage almost ever, only in Planescape Torment due to game balancing, and sometimes in DA2 for story.
Confession: with DA2, when I roll a mage, I use my chapter one starting armor until i can get "Robes of the Notorious Pirate" somewhere firmly into chapter II, and stick with that until I can tackle the big fight to get the "main" armour in the last chapter. Due to lead hero getting perks, one can survive it, though.
I only positively like Anders' black robes, and Orsino's robes, for DA2 mages.
@TStael I have just started Mark of the Assassin myself for this run-through. Bringing myself (archer), Carver and Anders (pre-romance).
Confession: it feels odd if I do not bring at least one of every class.
Confession: if I would go through dialog like my real-world self would, I would probably never 100% friend or rival any party member. Maybe only Bethany.
@Sjerrie - archer? (sort of reverently and slightly warily bowing smiley here - I wish someone drew that; maybe a standard bowing smiley with half-raised eyebrow or such like...)
Confession: I have never felt particularly empowered or comfy with ranged fighters in DA seriers. I love Leliana and Varric for the writing of the character, but feel they need to be micromanaged to not be savaged. Attention grabbing force of attack, minus close melee aptitude...
I rather admire you for loving the archer class - I hate BioWare archers, as such!
Confession: this is only the first time I played an archer in DA2, and I have only once played one in DAO. I also believe they need more micromanagement, but (in my current DA2 experience) having a good bow and sufficient attack score makes for a ton of one shot kills using only standard attacks on normal humanoid enemies.
Confession: while I enjoy micromanaging, during combat I usually only micromanage my main character. (In that respect an archer class works out great, but also particular (roleplayed) mage-builds.)
Confession: in DAO and DAI I really only have my party members wield one type of weapon, since I feel that a more well-rounded build, while more "true to life", just feels diluted and less viable.
Confession: I *always* keep a magic staff of each elemental type in my inventory, but I frequently forget to use magic arrows (or grenades/balms/coatings for that matter).
@Sjerrie - oh, I like yer style; and feel a little less bad of my slightly pained "story telling rules supreme over techno-cratic usefulness in party" approach to, say, Varric & Leliana!
I like melee roague too much to roll an archer, but admittedly it was really quite interesting for me to see how fights would compare - what is easier, what is harder - when I played my isolated mage in DA2. Any relevant confessions - do tell!
For example, I thought as a mage lead hero in DA2, any high armour/hard hitting char became much easier (=Arishok, high dragon, ogre). The magical fiends and assassins were quite hard because I could not murder them outright (=assassin/shadow rules supreme for single strike damage output), but keeping such enemies stunned or incapacitated for multiple rounds is challenging... (I find)
Confession: I've always been a sucker for rogue classes in most RPGs - or the charming scoundrel or sarcastic smarts kind of characters. These probably are rather type-cast characters, but for a reason, sureule. I must give it to BG though - they knew how to write annoying rogues, too! Take Nalia, say...
I've been had since: "Hi, it's me, Imoen!" really... But also Sand and Neeshka of NWN2, Haer'dalis of BG, Isabela & Varric of DA2, and Dorian of DA:I.
Follow up Confession: I really like the sass, the showmanship and charm of Tallis of the Mark of Assassin (MoA) - maybe my shadow asssassin Hawke is a little jealous that not all dual-blades serve for throwing weapons...
But I was surprised how hard it was for me to take Tallis being a qunari casually. I was rather surprisingly cold and bothered by it, because for all that she said, and had going on for her CHAR - apostasy is not an option in Qun.
@TStael Absolutely both, but what I was ^^^^ about on my quote of that post was blowing up the people who are tacitly (or explicitly) complicit in the domination, oppression, imprisonment and slavery of mages.
Like really, he did nothing wrong! He should've plotted with Hawke and kept them in the loop. That was his only mistake. There were "good cops" who died but like...it's not like those holy rollers were ever going to push for the liberation of the mages and the breaking of Chantry control over them, so I don't really shed many tears over that. He didn't kill any "innocents", no one who didn't oppose the slavery and control of the Circles was "innocent" just because they felt frowny faced about how it should be nicer slavery and wanted to push for that instead.
Like, I'd have loved to be a Hawke that was let in on the plot able to choose to either condemn or support, but tbh it would have been a condemn or wishywashy liberal neutralize and soften path if they'd written it so I'm basically fine with how it was if I just ignore the moralizing implied in the writing and take Anders' end(s) as grim sacrifice sometimes necessary for revolutionary change instead!
Not to say that @GenderNihilismGirdle speaks for me but my answer would be pretty similar.
Please, BelleSorciere, what you seemingly cannot say explicit pains me a bit more than my "woah, a demented nug hump you BW!" moment when romancing Anders on my first ever DA2 playthrought.
I never thought "I will break your heart" as a fair warning - and would advise against that in real life, actually - but in view how hard it is for me to take Anders neutrally, the more I think his fans should be welcome.
@TStael Absolutely both, but what I was ^^^^ about on my quote of that post was blowing up the people who are tacitly (or explicitly) complicit in the domination, oppression, imprisonment and slavery of mages.
Like really, he did nothing wrong! He should've plotted with Hawke and kept them in the loop.
Like, I'd have loved to be a Hawke that was let in on the plot able to choose to either condemn or support, but tbh it would have been a condemn or wishywashy liberal neutralize and soften path if they'd written it so I'm basically fine with how it was if I just ignore the moralizing implied in the writing and take Anders' end(s) as grim sacrifice sometimes necessary for revolutionary change instead!
If this is within the simplicity and levity of the fantasy that Dragon Age affords, I am happy that you side with Anders.
If everyone thought like me - "I will break your heart" is no fair warning for terrorism - the writing would be lacking in empathy and nuance, or such like.
The simplicity I refer to is the fact that you endorse Anders so admiringly when the nationalist, anarchist or political terror has brought so much death and so little actual achievement in Europe, at least.
I think we split on definitions of terms for both in-game and real life stuff @TStael so I'll just say we can agree to disagree rather than quibbling about that into infinity.
I think we split on definitions of terms for both in-game and real life stuff @TStael so I'll just say we can agree to disagree rather than quibbling about that into infinity.
Hah, were it that easy! ;-)
If you ask me to accept death penalty for apostasy, or terrorist blast for anything, I cannot.
I'll give this a go then, and I'll do it in the format of this thread!
Confession: Anders did nothing wrong, aside from not letting Hawke in on the planning stages so you could have helped him do even more damage to the Chantry slavers (or picked the Chantry side like some players do for probably the same sorts of reasons some people pick the Confederate side in Civil War games or the Nazis in WW II games...all of which I haven't the least interest in, personally, in my motivations for playing a game, but it's fine if other people want to, it's entertainment after all it's not like they're going out there and advocating the parallels of those views in the real world, but it's just not something that interests me personally).
Confession: Those members of the Chantry that Anders killed weren't victims of terrorism any more than were any of the Roman soldiers killed in the Servile Wars, or the Spaniards killed by Gaspar Yanga and his fellow escaped slaves trying to resist the assault on their community which had the intent of re-enslaving them, or the British killed trying to recapture the slaves rescued by ex-slave Nanny of the Maroons in Jamaica, or the French military and slaveholders killed in the Haitian Revolution by slaves, or any of the slavers or militiamen defending slavers and slavery that were killed by black slaves in the New York Slave Revolt of 1712, or the Stono Rebellion in 1739, or the 1811 German Coast Uprising, or Nat Turner's Rebellion, or Madison Washington's, or during John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, or any of the other countless desperate acts of resistance to slavery throughout history. That's why it's a definitional error in my view to apply the label "terrorism" to any of these historical acts, or to Anders' fictional act.
In other words, it is not "terrorism" to resist the violence of slavery with whatever violence the enslaved and their allies can muster. It never has been, and never will be.
Confession: Anders didn't initiate a "terrorist blast", he killed those who were either tacitly or explicitly involved in continuing to enable (as I say in the initial comment you quoted) "the domination, oppression, imprisonment and slavery of mages" who are not innocent victims "terrorized by violence", they are slavers who needed to be killed to free the slaves held by the Chantry in that city. Anders couldn't know for sure whether it was going to spread from Circle to Circle, but he acted with that hope in his heart and it actually happened! Even if it hadn't happened, he would have been in the right, just as the various unsuccessful slave rebellions were entirely morally, ethically and practically justifiable in real life despite their lack of success...but on top of his action being in no way wrong, it also succeeded! And not just in one Circle, but in all Circles! The ends (which were good, the killing of slavers) enacted means which were good! It's win-win, there's no need to wring our hands and mourn the loss of slaver lives, even those who refused to free their slaves because they "treated them well" were people in history who needed to either free their slaves or die for refusing.
Obviously one can hope for a peaceful solution, but DA:O and DA II offered no such path as forthcoming. Even the most "Circle-friendly" Chantry members, Templar or not, only wished that the mages had greater comforts and freedom within the context of their "necessary" ongoing slavery.
And so they were not innocents to be terrorized, but slavers to be stopped from enforcing slavery by any means necessary. That was not terror, it was resistance, and morally justified. If one who terrorizes a population (such as a slaver) feels terror, the one who made him feel it is to be celebrated, not disgraced or shamed or called a "terrorist" (except, of course, by the lapdogs and sycophants of the initial, actual terrorist who holds a population in terror from birth to death under threat of torture and execution).
Confession: Like you though, @TStael, I don't agree, at all, with a death penalty for apostasy, though I'm not sure what that has to do with the issue at hand as the reason Anders wished to die (and/or the reason he dies by your hand should you choose that) was to do with feelings of personal guilt (or despairing sympathy with his guilt/wrong-headed outrage at his act depending on why Hawke does him in if they do) and not for apostasy. Though he was an "apostate" according to some slavers and he didn't deserve to die for that, I agree, I just don't see what it has to do with whether his act of resistance to slavery was wrong or not.
Confession: I think one thing the writers did wrong, not Anders, is to have Anders have the liberal wishy-washy conscience of 21st century video game writers who've never seen a day of slavery in their life and had him desire to die for his "crime" rather than investing him with the defiant radical anti-slavery conviction that made more sense given a) his context and the world's context, b) all his dialogue and character development up to that point and c) his actions. But hey, people are complex, and some people feel guilty for doing things which are as virtuous as any action can be, like killing slavers who will not relent in keeping slaves through any peaceful negotiation that's been tried for CENTURIES. Dunno why someone would feel that guilt other than just "oh I ended a human life" but if anything that makes Anders even MORE sympathetic for what he did, not LESS, because he acted against an arbitrary personal standard he genuinely had in the service of doing the more moral and ethical thing, which is actually quite moving (but not how the writers wrote or intended it fairly obviously unfortunately).
And just to preempt any "wait you're right wing?!" comments that I sometimes get: when I say "liberal" in a derogatory fashion, understand that I find ideologies further right than liberalism absolutely abhorrent (which, arguably, conservatism isn't since conservatism is actually a further to the right sub-set of liberalism that tries to conserve "actual liberalism" but I find it abhorrent too, and even more ahistorical than liberalism qua liberalism). I just also hate that when radical action is taken in history, contemporary liberals try to pretend each side was somehow equally right or equally wrong in some way, and hence equally undeserving of action being taken against either side, even when inaction has horrifying consequences only for one side. It's completely ahistorical and only serves contemporary liberal prejudices (as many liberals of the day that were abolitionists at that time absolutely applauded violence by the enslaved and their allies against slavery, which you can see in the writings of Emerson and Thoreau about John Brown pleading for him not to be executed for the deaths of the slavers because he had committed a just act, and the beautiful eulogy afterwards...as I said, modern liberal wishy-washy equivocating is ahistorical but most liberals don't know their own ideology's history as well as some left wing radicals like me do).
Radical action against oppression has never been a moral or ethical wrong, and I don't like when fiction/media/entertainment tries to imply or suggest or assert that it is because it encourages and propagates that wrong-headed (and extremely disrespectful to the many who died at the hands of slavers trying to end slavery) idea about radical action throughout our culture. Liberals couldn't be handing the extreme right wing forces on the rise in this world in North America and Europe alike a better gift on a platter than neutralizing the impulse to resist among those horrified by extreme right wing politics, which seems to be what most mainstream "left" (ha!) liberal media has been doing since World War II ended (and, surprise surprise, our nonviolent engagement with fascists and neo-Nazis over the intervening years has yielded their election to member positions in the European Union in multiple countries as they begin to be elected into national parliaments around the world and support someone who could be the next President of the United States openly, and as this tweet by KKK Grand Wizard David Duke makes pretty clear, the extreme right in America knows they are gearing up for actual power grabs).
Frank Frison, Holocaust Survivor: “If fascism could be defeated in debate, I assure you that it would never have happened, neither in Germany, nor in Italy, nor anywhere else.”
Adolf Hitler: “Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.”
Hence, confession: Anders did nothing wrong. We need more Anders in the world today IMHO (but with less guilt and more grim determination).
Not to say that @GenderNihilismGirdle speaks for me but my answer would be pretty similar.
Please, BelleSorciere, what you seemingly cannot say explicit pains me a bit more than my "woah, a demented nug hump you BW!" moment when romancing Anders on my first ever DA2 playthrought.
I never thought "I will break your heart" as a fair warning - and would advise against that in real life, actually - but in view how hard it is for me to take Anders neutrally, the more I think his fans should be welcome.
It's not that I cannot say it explicitly, it is that literally @GenderNihilismGirdle said something I absolutely agree with better than I could have said myself.
Comments
Confession: Gonna restart again when I get home, this will be my 5th restart in 3 days "I'm only counting the ones where I get to Haven", I have vodka waiting and gonna pick up some pizza on the way. I'm going to roll a Dwarf and he is going to be the most badass Dwarf there ever was and if it's not possible to make a fearsome looking Dwarf then I'm out, I will delete this game and never look at it again.
When I got the Xbox One version, I went with a female Qunari Spell casting Inquisitor (since you really don't see any female Qunari) and IMO, she looks bad ass.
Happy to say I'm really liking my Dwarf, he lacks a lot of extra dialogue compared to my Elven characters but is pretty cool not the less. He looks and acts like a evil pirate and I'm loving the fact that everybody is treating him like a saint.
confession; i only finished dai once. unlike origins and 2 which i have played afew times
confession; i beat my first run of da2 in one day for some reason
confession; i prefer beatheny but like carers story arc more.
confession: awakening is my lest favorite thing in the series
confession; i have more human noble runs then the rest of the origins.
confession; not a fan of dog and never use him
confession: i barly use shale
confession: the open world aspect of dai hurts the game
confession: dai has the best version of the wheel.
confession; most of the dlc in orgins is meh
confession; both of the dlc in 2 are great.
confession; i only used zevran my first run and that was also the one where he died.
Confession: iron bull is better then sten
Confession; sten is boring
Confession; i don't like orghren either.
Confession: I've never played a het romance in the series and I never will.
Confession: The companion/NPC and companion/companion relationships were more interesting than any PC romance could ever be. Isabela/Fenris was great. Dorian/Iron Bull and Sera/Dagna were the best parts of Inquisition.
The problem is, I couldn't find any codex entries for notes read anywhere in the GUI. Whenever I found a note relating to the DA2 family's problems, they commented on the note they found, like when they found the family's testament, but there was no text of the note to be found, I couldn't find codex entries for it. So when it comes to understanding the story or what to do next, I'm at the lost. The quest notes tell me WHAT to do next, but I can't find the WHY, so the story becomes just a checking of a list of tasks instead of an involving roleplay.
Is this a bug? Could something be wrong with my system (running the Origin version of DA2 on Windows 7 x64)? Or does the game lack a good journal system?
The grandfather's will, IIRC is a inventory item that can be found in the plot items. Examining it, allows you to read the will.
Dragon Age: Origins journal system made it hard to find where a note went, under what category, but at least with some searching you could find it back. And when in DA:O you ran into the problem of not grasping how the story unfolds in dialogues, there was the option to read back the conversations. It's been awhile I quit Dragon Age 2, but I remember the dialogue unfolding real time instead of pausing after a sentence (like BG and DA:O did), so as a non-English speaker there's no time to digest what was said .
I got Dragon Age: Inquisition on the PS3. I bought it on console as I've read the game is very mouse+keyboard unfriendly. I hope I'll be able to pick up the story better than DA2's story after the current pause, but all-in-all, Dragon Age: Origins was the best Dragon Age experience.
Confession: if they weren't annoying before, my current DAO lvl 35 sword & board tank just got stunned by a measly deepstalker. (Human noble, so too elitist to rage-quit, but I had my mage empty his arsenal on the little s***.)
Confession: my current run is only the second time I included the DLC mini campaigns.
Confession: DA2 is the only game where I voluntarily roll a male CHAR, because I find Nicholas Boulton's performance as M!Hawke peerless. I could listen to "myself" for hours, lol! ;-)
Confession: wish I could feel the same about male Inki, because I was disappointed about female Inki voice-work in DA:I. And apriori I like Wilton-Regan!
Rant here: I think female lead char voice choices were awful all around with DA:I.
Wilton-Reagan said she wanted to channel authority to her female Inki, and IMO lowered her voice unnaturally and overacted hoping to channel "ballsy." But this was anyway better than the dead-pan female american accent, I imagine intended for the eventual qunari or dwarf.
Neither Varric nor Iron Bull are dead-pan - far from it: so why the main char, for goodness sake??!
I'd rather have willful, charming, wisecracking, playful and possibly more than a little sarcastic female lead any time than deadpan low voice Inki to channel "authority" or "race."
Confession: When recreating the playthrough for DA:I, I pretended that I did >.>
Confession: When I played DA2 I missed out on Fenris because I refused to do any quests that suggest hunting down mages.
Confession: I can't understand what Sera is saying half of the time, even with subtitles on.
Confession: I never understood why so many fangirls are obsessed with Cullen.
Confession: Anders looks like Duncan's and Alistair's love child to me.
Confession: I have a Duncan action figure.
Confession: Aproximately five years later and I am still mad at Alistair for breaking up with my warden >:I
Confession: I am both furious at and amazed by the plot twist regarding Thom Rainier.
Confession: I want to punch Dorian's dad iN THE F***CKING FACE!1!!
Confession: God dammit, Anders.
PS:
Confession: I prefer DA2's elven designs over DA:O's.
Confession: I can rant for literally HOURS about how much the armor, clothing and weapon designs in the franchise annoy me. THAT IS NOT HOW ARMOR WORKS. (DA:I made it better though.)
Confession: (might have said this before but) I find DA2's genlocks awful.
Confession: In my current playthrough I "resurrected" Carver. I'll make him a Warden later on (and probably won't use him again) to justify his survival.
Confession: I'll do Mark of the Assassin at the earliest opportunity, and keep Tallis around for the rest of the game in the same way.
Confession addendum: I like Tallis.
Which leads to my next confession: I am sucker for city-heavy RPGs, like BG and DA. (Baldur's Gate, Amn, Denerim, Kirkwall - and of course Bethesda, and my "guilty pleasure" Two Worlds)
And I like yer style Sjerrie!
Confession: I am popping here, becasue finally I cracked and bought "Mark of the Assassin" which is downloading...
I think I was inspired by finally beating the Rock Wraith at the end of chapter I at "hard" - as a mage, I admit, which is not my typical choice for class, but I wanted to have Carver, once, for "Legacy." This only left Assassin DLC for novelty.
I do admit that the option to tick "hide helmet" has a lot to do with that though. I never give "Helm of the Deep" to much preferred DA:O companions, realism be sodded there for immersion!
I am with you though when it applies to DA2 mage-armor options. Generally they are just awful!! I do not play mage almost ever, only in Planescape Torment due to game balancing, and sometimes in DA2 for story.
Confession: with DA2, when I roll a mage, I use my chapter one starting armor until i can get "Robes of the Notorious Pirate" somewhere firmly into chapter II, and stick with that until I can tackle the big fight to get the "main" armour in the last chapter. Due to lead hero getting perks, one can survive it, though.
I only positively like Anders' black robes, and Orsino's robes, for DA2 mages.
Confession: it feels odd if I do not bring at least one of every class.
Confession: if I would go through dialog like my real-world self would, I would probably never 100% friend or rival any party member. Maybe only Bethany.
Confession: I have never felt particularly empowered or comfy with ranged fighters in DA seriers. I love Leliana and Varric for the writing of the character, but feel they need to be micromanaged to not be savaged. Attention grabbing force of attack, minus close melee aptitude...
I rather admire you for loving the archer class - I hate BioWare archers, as such!
Confession: while I enjoy micromanaging, during combat I usually only micromanage my main character. (In that respect an archer class works out great, but also particular (roleplayed) mage-builds.)
Confession: in DAO and DAI I really only have my party members wield one type of weapon, since I feel that a more well-rounded build, while more "true to life", just feels diluted and less viable.
Confession: I *always* keep a magic staff of each elemental type in my inventory, but I frequently forget to use magic arrows (or grenades/balms/coatings for that matter).
I like melee roague too much to roll an archer, but admittedly it was really quite interesting for me to see how fights would compare - what is easier, what is harder - when I played my isolated mage in DA2. Any relevant confessions - do tell!
For example, I thought as a mage lead hero in DA2, any high armour/hard hitting char became much easier (=Arishok, high dragon, ogre). The magical fiends and assassins were quite hard because I could not murder them outright (=assassin/shadow rules supreme for single strike damage output), but keeping such enemies stunned or incapacitated for multiple rounds is challenging... (I find)
Confession: I've always been a sucker for rogue classes in most RPGs - or the charming scoundrel or sarcastic smarts kind of characters. These probably are rather type-cast characters, but for a reason, sureule. I must give it to BG though - they knew how to write annoying rogues, too! Take Nalia, say...
I've been had since: "Hi, it's me, Imoen!" really... But also Sand and Neeshka of NWN2, Haer'dalis of BG, Isabela & Varric of DA2, and Dorian of DA:I.
Follow up Confession: I really like the sass, the showmanship and charm of Tallis of the Mark of Assassin (MoA) - maybe my shadow asssassin Hawke is a little jealous that not all dual-blades serve for throwing weapons...
But I was surprised how hard it was for me to take Tallis being a qunari casually. I was rather surprisingly cold and bothered by it, because for all that she said, and had going on for her CHAR - apostasy is not an option in Qun.
Like really, he did nothing wrong! He should've plotted with Hawke and kept them in the loop. That was his only mistake. There were "good cops" who died but like...it's not like those holy rollers were ever going to push for the liberation of the mages and the breaking of Chantry control over them, so I don't really shed many tears over that. He didn't kill any "innocents", no one who didn't oppose the slavery and control of the Circles was "innocent" just because they felt frowny faced about how it should be nicer slavery and wanted to push for that instead.
Like, I'd have loved to be a Hawke that was let in on the plot able to choose to either condemn or support, but tbh it would have been a condemn or wishywashy liberal neutralize and soften path if they'd written it so I'm basically fine with how it was if I just ignore the moralizing implied in the writing and take Anders' end(s) as grim sacrifice sometimes necessary for revolutionary change instead!
I never thought "I will break your heart" as a fair warning - and would advise against that in real life, actually - but in view how hard it is for me to take Anders neutrally, the more I think his fans should be welcome.
If everyone thought like me - "I will break your heart" is no fair warning for terrorism - the writing would be lacking in empathy and nuance, or such like.
The simplicity I refer to is the fact that you endorse Anders so admiringly when the nationalist, anarchist or political terror has brought so much death and so little actual achievement in Europe, at least.
If you ask me to accept death penalty for apostasy, or terrorist blast for anything, I cannot.
If you can argue it to help me, do tell.
Confession: Anders did nothing wrong, aside from not letting Hawke in on the planning stages so you could have helped him do even more damage to the Chantry slavers (or picked the Chantry side like some players do for probably the same sorts of reasons some people pick the Confederate side in Civil War games or the Nazis in WW II games...all of which I haven't the least interest in, personally, in my motivations for playing a game, but it's fine if other people want to, it's entertainment after all it's not like they're going out there and advocating the parallels of those views in the real world, but it's just not something that interests me personally).
Confession: Those members of the Chantry that Anders killed weren't victims of terrorism any more than were any of the Roman soldiers killed in the Servile Wars, or the Spaniards killed by Gaspar Yanga and his fellow escaped slaves trying to resist the assault on their community which had the intent of re-enslaving them, or the British killed trying to recapture the slaves rescued by ex-slave Nanny of the Maroons in Jamaica, or the French military and slaveholders killed in the Haitian Revolution by slaves, or any of the slavers or militiamen defending slavers and slavery that were killed by black slaves in the New York Slave Revolt of 1712, or the Stono Rebellion in 1739, or the 1811 German Coast Uprising, or Nat Turner's Rebellion, or Madison Washington's, or during John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, or any of the other countless desperate acts of resistance to slavery throughout history. That's why it's a definitional error in my view to apply the label "terrorism" to any of these historical acts, or to Anders' fictional act.
In other words, it is not "terrorism" to resist the violence of slavery with whatever violence the enslaved and their allies can muster. It never has been, and never will be.
Confession: Anders didn't initiate a "terrorist blast", he killed those who were either tacitly or explicitly involved in continuing to enable (as I say in the initial comment you quoted) "the domination, oppression, imprisonment and slavery of mages" who are not innocent victims "terrorized by violence", they are slavers who needed to be killed to free the slaves held by the Chantry in that city. Anders couldn't know for sure whether it was going to spread from Circle to Circle, but he acted with that hope in his heart and it actually happened! Even if it hadn't happened, he would have been in the right, just as the various unsuccessful slave rebellions were entirely morally, ethically and practically justifiable in real life despite their lack of success...but on top of his action being in no way wrong, it also succeeded! And not just in one Circle, but in all Circles! The ends (which were good, the killing of slavers) enacted means which were good! It's win-win, there's no need to wring our hands and mourn the loss of slaver lives, even those who refused to free their slaves because they "treated them well" were people in history who needed to either free their slaves or die for refusing.
Obviously one can hope for a peaceful solution, but DA:O and DA II offered no such path as forthcoming. Even the most "Circle-friendly" Chantry members, Templar or not, only wished that the mages had greater comforts and freedom within the context of their "necessary" ongoing slavery.
And so they were not innocents to be terrorized, but slavers to be stopped from enforcing slavery by any means necessary. That was not terror, it was resistance, and morally justified. If one who terrorizes a population (such as a slaver) feels terror, the one who made him feel it is to be celebrated, not disgraced or shamed or called a "terrorist" (except, of course, by the lapdogs and sycophants of the initial, actual terrorist who holds a population in terror from birth to death under threat of torture and execution).
Confession: Like you though, @TStael, I don't agree, at all, with a death penalty for apostasy, though I'm not sure what that has to do with the issue at hand as the reason Anders wished to die (and/or the reason he dies by your hand should you choose that) was to do with feelings of personal guilt (or despairing sympathy with his guilt/wrong-headed outrage at his act depending on why Hawke does him in if they do) and not for apostasy. Though he was an "apostate" according to some slavers and he didn't deserve to die for that, I agree, I just don't see what it has to do with whether his act of resistance to slavery was wrong or not.
Confession: I think one thing the writers did wrong, not Anders, is to have Anders have the liberal wishy-washy conscience of 21st century video game writers who've never seen a day of slavery in their life and had him desire to die for his "crime" rather than investing him with the defiant radical anti-slavery conviction that made more sense given a) his context and the world's context, b) all his dialogue and character development up to that point and c) his actions. But hey, people are complex, and some people feel guilty for doing things which are as virtuous as any action can be, like killing slavers who will not relent in keeping slaves through any peaceful negotiation that's been tried for CENTURIES. Dunno why someone would feel that guilt other than just "oh I ended a human life" but if anything that makes Anders even MORE sympathetic for what he did, not LESS, because he acted against an arbitrary personal standard he genuinely had in the service of doing the more moral and ethical thing, which is actually quite moving (but not how the writers wrote or intended it fairly obviously unfortunately).
And just to preempt any "wait you're right wing?!" comments that I sometimes get: when I say "liberal" in a derogatory fashion, understand that I find ideologies further right than liberalism absolutely abhorrent (which, arguably, conservatism isn't since conservatism is actually a further to the right sub-set of liberalism that tries to conserve "actual liberalism" but I find it abhorrent too, and even more ahistorical than liberalism qua liberalism). I just also hate that when radical action is taken in history, contemporary liberals try to pretend each side was somehow equally right or equally wrong in some way, and hence equally undeserving of action being taken against either side, even when inaction has horrifying consequences only for one side. It's completely ahistorical and only serves contemporary liberal prejudices (as many liberals of the day that were abolitionists at that time absolutely applauded violence by the enslaved and their allies against slavery, which you can see in the writings of Emerson and Thoreau about John Brown pleading for him not to be executed for the deaths of the slavers because he had committed a just act, and the beautiful eulogy afterwards...as I said, modern liberal wishy-washy equivocating is ahistorical but most liberals don't know their own ideology's history as well as some left wing radicals like me do).
Radical action against oppression has never been a moral or ethical wrong, and I don't like when fiction/media/entertainment tries to imply or suggest or assert that it is because it encourages and propagates that wrong-headed (and extremely disrespectful to the many who died at the hands of slavers trying to end slavery) idea about radical action throughout our culture. Liberals couldn't be handing the extreme right wing forces on the rise in this world in North America and Europe alike a better gift on a platter than neutralizing the impulse to resist among those horrified by extreme right wing politics, which seems to be what most mainstream "left" (ha!) liberal media has been doing since World War II ended (and, surprise surprise, our nonviolent engagement with fascists and neo-Nazis over the intervening years has yielded their election to member positions in the European Union in multiple countries as they begin to be elected into national parliaments around the world and support someone who could be the next President of the United States openly, and as this tweet by KKK Grand Wizard David Duke makes pretty clear, the extreme right in America knows they are gearing up for actual power grabs).
Frank Frison, Holocaust Survivor: “If fascism could be defeated in debate, I assure you that it would never have happened, neither in Germany, nor in Italy, nor anywhere else.”
Adolf Hitler: “Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.”
Hence, confession: Anders did nothing wrong. We need more Anders in the world today IMHO (but with less guilt and more grim determination).