What did you do today in DA? [Spoilers]

"The mages cannot be treated as people…" "We have dominance over mages by divine right" Cullen? Nice person, yes... (Ignore me, I'm just jealous...)

My archer Hawke is doing well. Ignoring any companion quest. Ignoring most quests except the ones that move the game forward.

- Went to the deep roads
- Bethany went to the circle
- I used the murder knife on the hornhead
- my mom was murdered.
- Petrice lives
- the horners attack my city
- its just you and me boss hornhead.
- haha. I'm the champion. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.


You know what? What? I will tell you. If Petrice survives DA2, why not have her in DAI and she could be made Divine? Divine Petrice. I like that. If that was possible, I wonder how many would pick her? I can see the DA team reading this post and getting a good laugh.

Because he is great in every way!

He's handsome (in most scenes. In Val Royeux the lighting was hideous.)

Because flirting with him, he is adorable! *cough* "Hmmm huh" Smile- hand on neck.

Because he worries about you before you run out to fight the dragon at haven. "But if you go out there, you'll die!" Deep look--realization- heavy silence-- nod.

Because he admits to worrying about you more fully when you arrive at Castle! "When you went out there I.... I'm just promising you, I'll never let it happen again. You have my word."

Because he is the only one, regardless of gender/romance, that asks you how you're handling your Quiz Duties! Cass comes mildly close but it's worded differently. In a admiring, how do you be so awesome way. Cullen is more like, "A lot had been going on, and I'm honestly wondering how you are feeling."  :wub:

Because the Chess scene feels like an actual date! you don't get that in any of the other romances. Maybe Sera's roof time? might come close.

His hugs-- the way he holds you-the way he kisses you, the way his culmination scene spoke of passion!

Because he is only one of two characters who get a major romantic event in Trespasser that is SUPER COOL AND HASN'T BEEN DONE ELSEWHERE. 

He's tops for fave romance for me, although I know Dorian will give him a run for best vanilla game romance- but Dorian's Trespasser stuff is not as good and I honestly consider Trespasser to be part of the main game. Not to be missed. Like LEgacy is for DA2!

And that's enough about Cullen but I lurve him.

By the way! I think maybe you like DA2 art as well because that engine is what the entire ME Triology used.

One of the good things about DA:O for me was that you can see full romance with Alistair, and then when he abandons the Warden - full romance with Zevran. It's a bit meta-gamey, but it is definetly economical and makes sense. Despite the copious amount of content, I've never had any serious emotional responces to either male lead in DA:O.
I have been playing more of the Legacy. It is starting to feel like an answer to a complaint: "but we did not have a real dungeon crawl in DA2!" Legacy does have the feel of a very old-fashioned multi-level dungeon, with hard battles at every junction. Luckily, I am more or less back into DA2 mindset, and by swapping between Hawke to direct the flow of the battle, and Anders to do cc and heal in time, have managed to cope with only one Varric death. Alas, I have to pause much to do that, and can't rely on muscule memory to fight with Hawke while watching him fight, because of the swaps and having to watch the health bars, and that's one of my guilty pleasures. I love DW rogue in DA2...
I am still in the Tower floor level of the map, I think it would be Level 3 of the dungeon. I am starting to get a bit antsy for the story to move a bit more. However the character interaction was well spaced and amazingly dense.
It is well written giving full impression that the four cohorts has known each other for years. The only problem I have is that despite maxing out dialogue volume the banter, unless I stop and move the camera towards the speakers is too quiet. It must be coded under ambient noise volum level or something. So, I enabled full subtitles, so it is easier to see which man is speaking. I normally can pick out Anders easily enough, but Hawke, Fenris and Varric from time to time are too close to one another.
Anders is having more and more troubles coping, as we go deeper in. A brilliant piece of dialogue happens when he starts lamenting: my love, I am tainted, and that's on top of my Justice problem, you have to leave me, etc, etc... to which Hawke, without losing a bit responds with: Oh, baby, tell me more... it's obvious that they had been throu this about a thousand times before, and Hawke is totally comfortable with Anders' breakdowns. That's actually is the dialogue that has the line they have in the title of Anders' thread here on the forum: nobody's perfect.
Also loved Fenris usual ray of sunshine comment on yet another one of Anders' erm... voiced concerns. You know, he's going to go mad, and kill us all.
Hawke' listening to his father is neat as well, so, yeah, lots of feels, but I am kind of a three level dungeon girl, more than three feels like the game's cheating! Everyone knows things come in threes in video-games. Amirite?

So everyone, please tune in for the final instalment of "Wildfire plays DAO"

Indeed, I finished the third PT of the game as of yesterday. It was actually more enjoyable than the last two PTs, in part because I turned the difficulty down and concentrated almost purely on the main quest. Also, I managed to choose the correct Origin this time, which was Male Human Noble. So in the end I married Anora and became Prince/King Consort of Ferelden, which is a good result given all the effort I put in But really, I've got to say that the whole origin stories thing is utter bullshit. It feels as if the game is made for a human noble, and the other origins were just copypasted afterwards. If you choose any other origin except for human noble, you just get less options during the landsmeet, and on top of that it is hard to justify your interest in resolving the affairs in Ferelden. The whole "solve other people's problems in order to get an army" doesn't work for me at all.

My Warden ended up romancing Morrigan, although he did play around with Zevran for a while. Zevran is a great character, actually, and it's pretty weird that I had not explored his content in my earlier playthroughs. On a "sadder" note, I thought that I would be able to kill Loghain and get Alistair executed, but apparently this was not possible But I guess this made sense because Alistair doesn't leave the Grey Wardens if Loghain is killed and the Queen probably can't just execute Grey Wardens like commoners. And my Warden definitely wasn't going to let Loghain get away with what he had done, so Alistair remained alive in the end. Lucky bastard

I think it's great that there are so many different possible outcomes for the Landsmeet. That's definitely one of the pros of DAO. And the fact that you are able to marry the ruler is a cherry on top of the cake. I do appreciate the possibility to shape the world in many different ways, even though Bioware obviously ran into problems in later DAs because it was so difficult to make all those player choices affect the world state in a relevant fashion. It was ambitious, which is commendable, and I do hope that one day Bioware can offer us better choices than "become lapdog of Chantry/disband" style binary options

Anyway, now that DAO is done I can start playing DA2 again Just started a new game in DA2, and this time I'm planning a playthrough with the default Hawke face, which is actually pretty awesome now that I've gotten used to the look. Mostly choosing red dialogue options, and her face is perfect for that. Although at times I feel that the red option is even a bit -too- aggressive or direct. I flirted with Merrill and it sounded like, well, almost ridiculous in its directness:

Merrill: I wanted to thank you for bringing me here, but I'm making a mess of it.
Hawke: How about a kiss, then?

I think that the line is definitely affected by the character of Hawke, and Hawke almost made it sound like a threat Only Hawke can flirt with someone while sounding like she's going to slowly dismember them if they refuse