The HOF was originally going to be Hawke's "Warden friend" in the Here Lies The Abyss questline!

Using the warden for that would have been a very bad idea.

It would have taken a ton of resources as well. You would have six possible variation just in character design. Male and female version of human,elf,and dwarf. This is gonna be the problem they have in DA4 with the inquisitor.

We don't know but I think it's safe to say it's likely. But even if they only allow you to use the default inquisitor for each race that is four different sized characters since each race is different heights and sizes. It won't be impossible but it would take more resources then hawk did for example. I didn't even think about the different VA's. I didn't know they used four VA's though. I thought they just changed the voice a little for each inquistor race using some machine.

That would've been terrible and incredible at the same time!

Hmm. What if, instead of Stroud, the default Warden was one of the companions from Awakening? That would've been interesting. (And possibly more impactful, since you spend more time with them than Stroud anyway)

Hero of Ferelden as in the warden we play as in Origins

I suppose that of all the Awakening companions, Oghren would probably make the most narrative sense. He’s a companion in the main campaign of Origins, too, so there’s a chance the player might be more attached to him. (Personally, leaving him in the Fade would be an easy choice for me haha)

That said, I have no idea why he’d be in Orlais. We never see any of the Fereldan Wardens in DAI, do we? Come to think of it, I don’t believe we’re ever told what happens with the Wardens of other countries during Corypheus’s false calling.

Oh that choice would have destroyed me. It's the same reason I never have alistar as the warden in any of my world states.

I'm glad he finally admitted this. To me it was patently obvious, after what Leliana said at the end of DA2, that originally they had probably intended bringing back the Hero as well as Hawke and make us choose between them. That would have been brutal but story wise it made sense. It should have been the Hero as Warden Commander of Ferelden who had fallen foul of the Warden Commander of Orlais and had to go on the run

Of course, having finally acknowledged the pitfalls, it wasn't possible to change the entire narrative at that point but just who took part in it. Then come up with some explanation for why it wasn't the Hero. I was never entirely satisfied with the rather vague "went looking for a cure in the west" excuse for their absence but it was understandable if it was a decision made at the 11th hour.

Well in game it is implied that all the Ferelden Wardens were affected by the false Calling and went off to join up with Clarel (see the diary on the Storm Coast). However, one of my chief complaints about Leliana sending us to find Warden Blackwell to discover what has happened to the Wardens in Ferelden is that it totally ignored the DAA plot, with their HQ now being Vigil's Keep, so wouldn't that be the most obvious place to go for news? Since not everyone in Vigil's Keep was a Warden, there should have been at least some personnel who could explain why or at least confirm the Wardens had left.   Let's face it though, the number of Wardens  in Ferelden would have been small even if the Commander had been doing their best to recruit them in the intervening years since DAA.

As for other countries, what we are told is somewhat contradictory. Near the end Morrigan tells us there is no limit to Corypheus' range when it comes to controlling the Wardens, although if we choose to recruit them into the Inquisition, those Wardens remain unaffected by him, despite the dire warning that they would be when making that decision. Stroud's usual territory was the Freemarches and yet he could hear the Calling. Presumably he then headed south to Ferelden in order to see if it was the same there and that is when he started being hunted by the Wardens under command of Clarel. She had sought permission of Teagan to enter Ferelden (also rather odd in the light of DAA) and then seems to have assumed command there as well, presumably owing to the fact that their own Warden Commander, the Hero, had gone off on their own quest. (I assume if they are dead then the Orlesian stand-in would automatically be subordinate to Clarel or did they go off looking for a cure too?) Then in Last Flight, not only is it said to only be the Orlesian Wardens who are affected but even Vigil's Keep is meant to be running normally as HQ receives messages from there.

Anyway, since the epilogue to DAI suggests a split between the southern Wardens and the HQ in the north, I suppose broadly speaking we can assume that the southern Wardens affected by Corypheus comprise those from Orlais, Ferelden and the southern Freemarches.

I did that with loghain as well but he betrayed his king and killed duncan and then tried to kill me repeatedly in DAO so letting him die wasn't hard. Letting Alistar or oghren die though would have been much harder. I have never sacrificed hawk in probably a dozen playthroughs. I don't think I could do it and seeing "varric tears" would do me in.

They couldn't think to put that into the dialogue, just to acknowledge the events of DAA? That's all I asked for; some sort of reference to the fact that DAA even happened. As I say above, I assume now that it was because it was an 11th hour decision to drop the Hero and in trying to save the situation, PW overlooked making any references to Vigil's Keep. By contrast, every codex, reference to the Ferelden Wardens and even Teagan's monologue in Trespasser would make you think that DAA never happened.

Yeah I think I sacrificed  Hawke for the Alistair one because tha tHawke wasn't in a relatoinship whereas I believe that Alistair was playing smoochies with the HOF in that playthrough. Generally it's usually Stroud that does the Warden section and he pretty much always dies at the end of it. But then in that playthrough he wasn't king and because I think my HOF was an elf in tha tplaythrough I couldn' t be queen either so worked around it by letting Anora keep the throne and kept Alistair in the wardens. Hence the reason why Alistair was doing tha twarden section in that playthrough.