The Character Romance thread (Official)

I don't think it's necessarily a problem to involve metagaming. It's actually a good test of whether you'll stay "in character" or let yourself be influenced by your emotions towards characters you've previously known. DA is in the very unique position where it can actually pull that because the protagonist has changed for every game, so now the player has completely different emotional connections to the world than the main character. It's not like the game really played it up as a nervous breakdown moment for the Inquisitor, either, aside from the fact that it kind of sucks to leave anyone behind to die (and potentially face the person's best friend afterwards).

But maybe that's because I actually find meta-narratives really interesting as a concept. It's a taste thing, I guess.

Yeah... I don't think the Warden/Hawke choice was well-done IMO. They should have done more for it to be a difficult choice for your character, not the player. My Inquisitors didn't know either of these people until they came to them about the Warden questline, and there was nothing in those quests that made me have any emotional connection to what happened in the eyes of my Inquisitors. And this is coming from a player who loves Hawke a lot.

I hope future sacrifices are done in a better way, tbh. Virmire's sacrifice actually made me feel something. The whole choice between the Warden and Hawke didn't.

I have a quick ME:A romance-related question: Does anyone know if Avela locks you out of other romances?

From what I understand, she accepts that the relationship is one that can't be everything Ryder would need, given that they can't remain on Aya and she can't go with them, and you can still romance other characters

I believe that she's basically a het-locked Reyes on that front. Though I could be wrong, I honestly refuse to take any het options in this game on a matter of principle, so this is just what I've gathered from others...

I agree with this. I would prefer more choices with in-game context implications rather than just cheap feels. I get the benefit for them with cheap feels is that dead companions can just be used less, but they have to write around multiple leaders and stuff like that.

I think all choices are good. Giving the players hard decisions like not only affects the player, but the characters. I do like choices like the old God baby or drinking from the well, because it affects the protagonist. My personal favorite is deciding whether Cole will be human or spirit, because it truly impacted him in Trespassor. Another one is making someone Divine.

Sometimes I feel like the only person who liked the Fade choice

But my situation was unusual. I had Warden Alistair and Hawke, but my Hawke was turning into kind of a monster by the conclusion of DA2. So to paraphrase Harvey Dent, it was awesome seeing her die as a hero instead of living to become a villain. So while my subjective experience of that choice was one of the highlights from DA:I, objectively I can see why there are complaints about the construction of that choice.

It wouldn't be hard for the Inquisitor be in the next game. Dagna is a very talented woman who can craft a fancy mechanical arm that the Inquisitor can use. He/she gets a new skill tree with powers related to the arm to go after Solas. Plus I like for AWR to return voicing femquisitor again

The other drawback to those "what character lives and dies" decisions is how restrictive they end up being in the end. Like, we saw it with Ashley/Kaidan, once they were both on the chopping block, a lot of the things that made them unique as characters was taken away because they now had to fill the same role in the plot as each other, when their original purpose was to basically act as opposing sounding boards to each other.

The political choices can impact the story, and while the character choices impact the PC, the fact is, they really end up playing more on the player, rather than the player character. For the Inquisitor, what impact does choosing between a Warden and Hawke have? Both of them are relative strangers - if Alistair or Loghain is the Warden, they may be familiar with their story, and of course Hawke is Varric's friend, but in a lot of cases, it seems people are actively rewriting their stories to prevent that choice from taking place, because of the impact it has on them as a player, not as the Inquisitor. Sending Stroud off to die is easy for players - we don't know him, and several of us don't even particularly like him, and Stroud's most defining characteristic is a mustache. That's not the basis of a difficult choice. And I'm fairly certain Stroud is most commonly in that position.

Ryder's decisions worked for me, because they were smaller scale, with more of an emotional impact on them as a character - leaving the scouts or Raeka behind, letting Sarissa remain the Pathfinder or not, Sloane versus Reyes, who to nominate as the ambassador... These were choices that offered me the opportunity to better define who Ryder was, while still being at a manageable scale in future games to swap in regarding the results.

There's always going to be a problem with making choices that stretch across a franchise - we haven't been back to Orzammar since nominating Bhelen/Harrowmont, Alistair has been reduced to a cameo since he might be king, a Warden, dead, or a drunk, numerous characters are in a Schrodinger's state of alive and dead simultaneously because some people kill them some don't, and these are important players on the world stage. Hell, I honestly don't think Divine Victoria's going to have a long run on the Sunburst Throne, because Leliana, Cassandra, and Vivienne are very different women with very different attitudes and intentions, and the Chantry is a major political force in Thedas. These decisions are hard to account for because they require so much variation, they could literally change the entire plotline if they were brought up again.

Just wanted to pop my head into the most recent page to see what was going on before catching up. Hello!

So today I booted up ME:A to do Movie Night again, since they apparently fixed the glitch where Ryder is invisible while cuddling with their romance (I need every scrap of Suvi content I can get, okay? Her romance is short and that's the most physical contact there is in it). Things didn't exactly go as expected...

Honestly I hope Bioware doesn't continue making choices that are difficult and emotional for the PLAYER but not for the CHARACTER. Like, take the Hawke vs. Alistair/Loghain/Stroud choice in da3. The Inquisitor has know these people for maybe a week at most. They, the player character, don't have the same emotional investment in the choice that we, the players, have, and because of that it feels like more for shock value than as an actual meaningful roleplaying choice.