The Old Guard (Ye Olde Cullen Thread v4.0 + gen discussion)

Oh wow! I didn't know there was so much and that it was so explicit! I figured they were faux heart options, like when you try to flirt with Aveline.

Nope, you can flirt with her in almost every new area by the time you reach Skyhold. And you can only get that end conversation or the one with Vivienne if you haven't romanced anyone else (and obviously, a number of people have skipped all the others to get it.) That's why Harding's my default "romance" for my dwarves, even though she doesn't have an official tile in the Keep.

Yeah..gated romances. I understand what they were trying to do and respect it. But....hmm.

I didn't know you could kind of have a drink with Harding.

It's good to see other pt Solas reactions to the vallaslin thing. And I know I spell that wrong every time. I only did it once and that was take away.

I did not try the dwarf pt until later and it's one of my favorite Inquisitors. Idk why but I just love her. I usually had Varric in my dwarf pt's. It helped with the height thing..except for those examples provided by Tishina.

I loved the city elf origin in DAO. Although even then one of my favs was the dwarf noble origin. Oh,Gorim...

Does Hawke mention Sebastian in DAI? I would hope she does! They've ignored the romance to absurd degrees... that would be a true slap in the face

Blackwall was originally supposed to be a dwarf. But when they put Varric in the game, they decided 2 dwarves out of 9 companions was too many Several of the romances had extremely narrow appeal or were gated. I like several of the options for male players, and I like Solas and Cullen. Sadly, none of those were available, offically, to a female dwarf.

Blackwall particularly chaps me because dwarven women have two male choices, and IB is obviously a rather narrow niche romance, but they put a lot of extra time into getting the animations right for that one instead of Blackwall. Blackwall's my type (even his voice is lovely,) he starts off wonderfully (very gallant and courtly in his flirts,) and once I got past the lying issue, I could probably have enjoyed the romance. But I hated being forced to make a decision on the romance in front of the entire court at Skyhold, the romance still feels very incomplete, even truncated because it stops there, and the animations are so poorly done for dwarves (and almost as bad for qunari,) they make me want to scream. I haven't been able to bring myself to touch my dwarf x Blackwall pt since April 2015, I just can't do it. Even the Trespasser romance segment for Blackwall wouldn't sweeten it for me because I hated the animations in the loft part of the romance so much (levitating boobs ahoy!) that I reloaded and played the alternative where he leaves from the tavern instead. His Trespasser bit loses most of its meaning if you didn't wake up in the loft alone.

Ironically, I loved all 4 of the DAO romances, though I guess my favorites, Zevran and Morrigan, are less popular than Alistair and Leliana?

City elf, dwarf commoner, then dwarf noble for me I thought the CE and DC had some amazing layers to them, ones they don't seem to be interested in doing much more with, though, other than Carta stuff. I fell in love with the dwarves with my first PT, but there's something about the CE origin, and the tight-knit community and family despite everything...

Yes, I've known about the Harding almost-romance since right after the game launched. A lot of us were hopeful since some of the devs seemed really enthusiastic about her that we might see more, but in my pessimistic moments, I feel like they wrote that off with JoH and the professor. And with Trespasser, you find out that the invitation to have a drink was a tease by the devs since you obviously never do.

There are a lot of conversations between a dwarf and Cullen where the camera is either pointing completely over her head or you have furniture in the way

My first pt of DA2 I romanced Anders.

It was turbulent. And full of feels for me. I had to set the controller down away from me in the last part...lest my finger twitch a choice.

Fenris though... he so pulls at your heartstrings All the companions have chats with the mabari; I think it does drills with Aveline's soldiers lol I think the only one who doesn't like it is Anders (he's a cat person... silly, you can love both!)

I thought you were wary of DA2 because you have to play human. I played it before I'd ever experienced the joy of getting to be gloriously elfy in a game I bet now if I tried to play it after playing the likes of DAO, DAI, Skyrim, etc. I'd be really averse to trying it. All about perspective, i guess. 

Probably the one bad thing about DA2 is that it's not very hard. DAI is definitely more of a challenge and that is probably the only reason I'm willing to give it a third go. (Even though I've paused and returned to Dragon's Dogma yet again >.>)

Fenris was my first, too, but I wish I had romanced Anders first. The first time the Chantry blew up, I literally picked my jaw up off the floor. I always figured the emotional impact of also romancing the guy who did it would have been greater without any fore knowledge. It was hard to conjure up the same shock the second time around. 

But then . . . my problem with DA2's romances was that I was so careful about getting everything the way I wanted it that inevitably half way through any playthrough with LI A would be pining for LI B. Then next PT I'd move on to LI B and start pining for LI C. I could never love the one I was with! LOL 

LOL Well, my love for Sebastian knows no bounds, but you may very well click with one of the others more. The only thing to be wary of, when you get around to it, is that you can't actually start any of the other romances if you want to close the deal with Sebastian. The original gameguide said you couldn't even flirt with anyone else, but that's been proven false. But you can't kiss anyone else.

Artemis is right, tho, that many of the LIs have such a small scene with the mabari at some point. 

Aaaaand, if you're having an angry day, you can read one of the dev's defenses for why Varric isn't romanceable in DA2. A very interesting (and in my humble writer's opinion, compelling) series of posts and exchanges about what makes a good romance story (and a good romance story specifically for a Bioware game), that I think about a lot when I see how the writers violated these very same principles when it comes to the DA:I romances and their total lack of 'will they? won't they' drama.

...which reminds me... time to start backing up the dev threads I have bookmarked!!

Well, the single race, human only part of it is definitely very off-putting for me. I'm definitely a fan of  nonhuman races in most games. For me to  play a human, the background has to be something unusual that I'm interested in. I'd never have gotten DA2 if it hadn't been on sale and really cheap. But R2 and a couple of others partly won me over, and partly I feel like I can write some of my fanfic better if I've played it in person. 

Anders was my first DA2 romance but it was a bit of an accident. I mean, I truly thought we were in the flirting phase and before I knew what happened he was crashing at my place! And I remember right after the shag scene, he left the room and I got a little notice at the bottom that said I just lost 1 silver! WTF dude?! Suddenly I'm his sugar mama!   

Anyway, I ran through all available LI's... for science... and found I enjoyed Isabela's the most because she didn't complain as much as the others. Sorry boys. you're cute and all but I have things to do and no time to babysit your emotions. There's your window into my psyche.