"Curious things I noticed actually revisiting the DA trilogy..."

"Obligatory indecent fraternization' got an actual laugh out of me, well done.

Alistair is a wonderful character, although I find it hard to romance him these days. I view him a lot like Wynne does, which makes it feel weird.

I had the opposite reaction to music as you, funnily enough. I played it just a few months back and already forget most of the music. Although the Gordon Ramsay Hell's Kitchen sound effect that plays in the Fade is hilarious and never fails to make me smile.

Unfortunate thing about Oghren is I see the idea with his character, and it's an interesting one, but he never really gets to transcend beyond joke character status. And his jokes aren't funny, either. What a waste of Steve Blum.

For me, pleasant surprise from replay was how much more enjoyable Dalish origin was than I remember. It always bugged me that they were only Origin that didn't get to return to their original starting zone, but they still baked a lot of reactivity into conversations with the clan, and the Tamlen thread was well executed.

The Landsmeet really is brilliant, isn't it? I can't find it, but someone posted a flowchart on Reddit about how choices intertwine in that quest line, and it's all very impressive.

As the launch closes in, I shall continue. I'm intentionally skipping DA2 because I've played this so much I know every detail by heart.

DRAGON AGE INQUISITION

- This game is absolutely gorgeous.
The graphics are amazing. I mean, some stuff looks uh, bit moist? But for the mois-... most part, the verdict is, "f*ck, this game is absolutely gorgeous". How old is this again, 10 game years? Which is like 40 years in human years? F*ck.

(Don't get me wrong, I don't care about this in the slightest. To me, every game looks "good enough" ever since the PS3 came out. I remember when most games just "couldn't do" water. And then some devs made a new game that was the one with the good water, and that's what the reviews were about. "Glitchy facial animations" my sweet behind, you guys wouldn't survive a harsh VGA CD-ROM quality colors winter if your life depended on it.)

- DID YOU KNOW
that Leliana is willing to make Some Tough Decisions®, buddy? Talk to her at literally any given time during a +40hr game, she'll let you know.


- The world design is a lot better than I remember.
And by that I mean especially the atmosphere. Every game has big maps these days. But here, each area has a very distinctive vibe, and sometimes very creatively so. Y'all know Caspar David Friedrich? Master of ambvivalent ambience? I'm especially amazed that they managed to seperate similar environements by finding even deeper nuance, e.g. Haven opposed to l'Empris du Lion, not being "icy worlds! Good enough."

The problem was NOT the open world part. Then I remember the problem. As soon as the fetch quests start racking up, they quickly declass themselves to the bothersome background of me trying to curb my pathological completionism. Then I remember another problem: I'm older now. Life is busy. And I get actively hostile towards games that waste my time. I get even more hostile towards myself, wasting my time with things I know are only there to waste my time.

The level designers and concept artists do not deserve this memory.


- Michel du Chevin looks more like Alistair than the actual Alistair they specifically created for the game. Even the hairstyle seems more of a fitting "evolution" than copy the exact one of another (similar looking) major character.

- VARRIC JUST SCORED A BLOODY 24k CRIT WTF (lvl 9 t1 gear) DAI IS SO BAD AT MATH
I love you so much already buddy, stop breaking my heart and not being in Veilguard.

- The random loot.
Most of the really stylish looking gear was first featured as uniques/DLC in DA2. Now that's neither here nor there, but what's with the using a Qunari Shield with the Qunari logo (tm) and call it "Orlesian shield" ? Like, you go out of your way to name it something emblematic and then YOU get it wrong...? You're Bioware, guys!

- Major characters, as I see them after maturing/detereorating for 10 more years
Dorian is a riot. Like how the hell did I not ever bother with him the first time around. He's in my group almost constantly, for Walking Bomb and the banter. Don't matter with whom, he's a riot, as stated previously. The guy's the lemon-and-salt of party banter.

Sera makes agreeing with her sound interesting, but it really isn't. Funny phrasing, though, usually. Kind of a thin concept for such a major role, innit?

Cole is so MUCH - but the game's framework effectively allows none of it. Feels like BioWare fan-modding their own game, awkwardly.

Blackwall works for me, now. I envy those who still find him boring.

Cassandra is a pleasantly genuine bad ass. She doesn't sell anyone anything, doesn't hide her flaws and she just actually sucks at being nice.

Solas. Tell me about the Fade, tell me about Elves, tell me about Corypheus. The 90s alternative pop song that never happened, and just as cheery.

Leliana is willing to make some tough decisions.


(to be continued as I notice stuff. and boy will I notice stuff)

Perhaps not quite what was asked, but in DA:I, after you drain the lake in Crestwood and you leave the dam to go down to the Old Crestwood... I only very recently realized there was something to the left of you after to turn off the dam. Nothing of note, but I'd apparently gone past this bit without ever looking to my left. When I finally did, it felt so surreal as if BioWare had just now added that bit to the game

That bloat was a prevalent desease of this particular gaming era, though. The best I can say about it, is that at least they always TRIED their darndest to make it somehow connected to the world rather than pure achievement hunting, e.g. the shards. It's always a painful cointoss between enduring the noise of an occularum nearby, or filling my map up with more freaking unfinished questmarkers.

I actually love being able to jump so much, even if it has zero use. I feel constantly uncomfortably restrained by 3rd person games of any genre, with no jump/dash/roll/skip-y kind of quick move. That's why replaying DAO and ME2 is such a chore for me, I usually just watch vids of my favourite scenes instead.


I think, besides all personal preference in people etc., the most annoying thing is that I feel like the writing/direction(?) here truly failed. I don't know how to express it properly, she and the Inquisitor simply never seem to "vibe" in any way at all.
Every exchange somehow assumes a different type of relationship/degree of familiarity they clearly don't have; and then that's not even linear neither.
I think Leliana as that character would have worked a lot better if she simply were less... available and literally more elusive as a figure, for some reason.


I think my problem is that it's not possible to have decent middle ground with her. Don't write anyone with different methods off as an apologist, no need to loose that wild energy. Instead you either get to be a hostile poopy pants, or someone bonelessly fascinated by her folk heroisms. ("Bonelessly" is for you, Sera.)



Hey the character is great, it's just in gameplay where things get awkward. I simply don't see why he needed to be a dual dagger rogue. Yeah, he mentions mercy killing someone sometimes, and I guess with a knife. He would have worked better as a mage. Or an oracle-type NPC altogether.

So I'm currently replaying Inquisition. I discovered the Hissing Wastes for the first time. I have no idea how I overlooked them the other times I played but here we are

Yeah that guy is the biggest chauvinistic pig I've ever encountered in a videogame (and a drunkard on top of that), I always tell him to fuck off after A Paragon of Her Kind is over

That's exactly my problem. He's so blatantly bad, especially in what yall mentioned before, I wonder - and again, taking an especially hard look at Awakening. And they had freaking anders and justice in that one - literally what the writing team saw in him. After writing all these great (dwarven-) characters.

The crazy thing about Oghren in Awakening is supposedly they brought him back because they thought he’d be a fan favorite character, which is just ?? Like how can anyone look at Alistair and Morrigan and think, y’know what people actually want? A drunk, gross dwarf that you likely won’t pick up until the final third of the game. Oh to be a fly on the wall of THAT meeting.