A Trail of Hope for me what it felt like arriving at Skyhold. I turned the corner.

I play femRyder, but I know all too well what you're talking about.

For some reasons, for me, Ryder was the toughest one to 'adapt' to. Frankly speaking, I'm not entirely sure that 'we've made it'. It's like at some points it was almost there, but I could never hit the right spot.

So far Hawke was the most 'stubborn' one. It took me two chapters to make it happen (yes, I'm talking about THAT moment). Once it 'clicked', however, I was amazed to see how deeply 'personal' she became to me, and how easy it was to 'explore' her personality and background via headcanons.

Even the Inquisitor (as 'boring' as some consider her, the Human Noble) was easier to headcanon. I had the basic idea of what was she like from the start, and I liked playing her story.

Ryder? I'm not sure whom or what is to blame here. Could it be me, being too old for the 22yrs-old PC? Could it be their aggressive marketing of the 'default' faces and names? I can't tell. I need another PT, apparently. The second one is usually the sweetest of them all - when you have no rush to see what's next, and you're not doing the same things for the 10th time. Maybe I should just give Ryder a second chance, I don't know.

And don't get me wrong -I'm not one of those haters, I had enjoyed the game(much more than I expected to), and I even loved the characters, it's just it was not 'personal' enough (for a BW game, that is).

To be honest I never really felt like Ryder was "my" Ryder, because most of the time you're just picking which tone you want to say pretty much the same thing in.

Inquisition suffered the same issue to a lesser degree.

I mean I still enjoyed the game, but there didn't seem to be a lot of RP in this RPG.

In the character creator.

Tough question for me because i tend to view it as a matter of not when the character became mine but turned a corner between who they used to be and becoming who they were meant to be.

The Inquisitor when she becomes coronated.

My Hawk at the end of act two.

And Ryder on the Turian arc.

Other than that there were a bunch of little moments which contributed you making my first Ryder the character i always imagined.

Yes. Exactly. For Shepherd, it caught on almost immediately. Everything was so plausible and you had a hand in his history, it wasn't entirely pre-written for you. It was just an aid to put your own input whether it really had any meaning (which it did with some codex-related quests) or not. With Origins, each origin story had their own climax and you walk up to see King Cailen. At that moment, I was kind of set loose to wonder the camp, listen to the preachers, the soldiers in formation, practicing drills, etc. That's when I made my leap as the Grey Warden. In Dragon Age 2, it was ACT 2 like you. The world, as small as it was, bended to my will and it was now clear I was invested. I\m growing fonder of PeeBee and Jaal. No alien booty for me.

It is not the same, you're right. The tone in Inquisition was way better, especially deep into the DLC. I never gave praise to Inquisition because I gave up on it before the first DLC hit. I'm replaying the DLC portions again. The GOTY is great. I just wish they would stop making the DLC episodic because eventually you train the customer to wait it out, even the hardcore junkies like me. I would rather have a self-contained story each time. Allow the DLC to fill in big or small details. Places you couldn't include in the scheduled run. That sort of thing. I love all of the DLC for Origins because it only supported the narrative, not complete it. I would jump over to multiplayer if I had reason to if it affected my single-player campaign. 

I never really felt that Ryder was my character but that's okay long as the character I'm playing is interesting and I thought Ryder was, but SAM tried its best to make the story/Ryder be as boring as possible.

Sadly, I never really felt that Ryder was my Ryder.

I felt a disconnect through the entirety of the game.

I'm not sure if it was pacing, or the structure of dialogue between crew, or lack there of. Something just didn't allow full immersion.

Hell, even the game knew it.. didn't even include me in movie night

I don't think I ever got to a point where I thought Ryder was my character. I think it was more of a point of 'it is what it is', either accept it or stop playing.

This had better not happen to me.

Actually, for most of the newer BW games (definitely everything after DA: Origin) I never felt as if the player character is completely "my character". They are too cinematic for that. I feel more like a hybrid of a movie screen writer and director. This was already the case with Shepard, Hawke, the Inquisitor and now Ryder. While I can shape their personalities to a degree, they are definitely separate characters from me.

That's not a complaint btw, I am completely fine with this. In fact, that's what RPG means for me. I don't want to play "my character", I want to play "a character" that is not me but has different traits. (That's also why I can enjoy e.g. the Witcher games, I just have to get into the mindset of playing that character and I'm good. I do the same in Skyrim, I don't imagine the character to be me or like me, I imagine a cool archetype that I want to play - be it a rough northman or a noble paladin - and then I make the character accordingly with little regard of how close it would be me in real life)

Thing is, what I do have is a pretty clear vision of what I want this character to be like. One problem I had while playing Andromeda (more than with playing DA or the MET) was that the dialogue quite often didn't allow me to shape the character into the vision I had developed for it. That's not good but he problem was definitely not in identification with the character but rather that I couldn't quite develop that Protagonist into the direction that I wanted. But ok, since I am resigned to the fact that I do play some other character, as long as it's one that I more or less like, I can work with that, also in ME:A.

@galaxy Shimmers: Haha, that happened to me as well. Is that a general bug? Or maybe a Jaal thing (I also had Jaal sitting there like this)? And yea, I also thought that was about the worst place in the game for my character to vanish. I didn't really like the movie night scene that much to begin with but this issue broke it for good.