Childer, Witches and Oh My! - Let's Play Dragon Age DLC!

Making ready to conclude Song, but first, here's why I shouldn't be allowed free reign in a CC

As the votes stand we'll be playing as a Human Noble Rogue, and unless you have strong feelings against it, this is the face we're going with.

Luckily you can import straight from the Origin so I don't have to suffer through certain events again*

*Orlana... Oren...Mommy... daddy.... ;_;

40 screenshots to go. Man, that DLC is short. Back in the day finishing an LP took months!

And with this, we are finishing the first DLC! I'm going to miss having a protagonist that talks after getting so used to it.

Thanks for this Davian. I never did this DLC. What is brought into the DA:O campaign from this?

Battledress of the Provocateur, the armour piece Leliana is wearing at the end there. It should actually come in rather handy when Awakening starts because it's made with very nice stats for a rogue and I... always feel silly putting a battledress on a certain male rogue in Awakening...

Well, it is time. Time to play the first and last Expansion Pack in the Dragon Age franchise: Awakening.

From hereon out I'll copy Joie de Combat and use summarizing headings in the tags as well as bumbing up the font size to 4 inside them unless anyone finds either very annoying.

Welcome to the Awakening.

Those ideas all came indirectly from you anyway, since I got them from discussion in the sandbox thread related to what you've been doing with this and your DA2 LP. So hey!

...thanks to DA2 and that artwork, I can't help but read that narration in Brian Bloom's voice.

Mhairi has a much cooler helmet than Elissa. Maybe they can switch.

I wish. I really wish. Unfortunately it's heavy armour.

Yes, I tested.

And this is why it did not bother me in the slightest when DA2 and ME2 and 3 stopped letting us equip and rearrange companion armor!

Because having to micromanage all the various bits of armor and weapons and accessories for an entire party of anywhere from five to a dozen people and keep up optimization in the face of leveling and the accumulation of new gear is already too much of a pain before you factor in different armor weights and things like that.

The inventory is over there, they can manage their own damn equipment. >:|

Agreed. I get really sick, really fast, of moving equipment pieces. In the end I usually just decide Alistair gets the Return to Ostagar Set, Oghren the Legion of the Dead armour, Sten gets Juggernaut and I will be wearing Effort if I am a warrior and just TAKE the extra bloody deaths rather than making sense of it all. I suck at numbers. I suck at comparing them, and I suck at figuring with them.

See I'm the opposite. I min max the crap out of these games. It's more fun for me this way. Because I'm clearly sick in the head.

It's sort of a disease I've had for 20+ years, unfortunately.

If it helps, I can't leave a map in any RPG until I have investigated every corner of it. Even if I am playing for the 10th time. Even if I know there is nothing there. Even if I know I will never return. It will prey upon me, knowing I left an unfinished map somewhere, for the rest of the game if I did that.

At micro-managaging my brain engages "CANNOT NUMBER, ABORT" and I'm fine.

Please never stop reading and catching this stuff. I learn something nearly every time you post.

Oh, Anders. You were so much more likeable before you joined Team Bad Idea.

I cannot put into words how much I missed this version of him. And not only because I generally like a character so long as Greg Ellis provides the voice.

You can always count on Oghren to be as inappropriate as possible!

DAO gave him some surprisingly good moments of characterization under the thick layer of belligerent drunken lout - and I still love his little speech from the endgame that ended with "Let's show them our hearts - and then show them theirs," - but yeah, he's not the party member I'd have chosen to carry over if I'd had the choice.

Poor Mhairi. :c

I agree. He's at his best when they try to hint at his layers, and he IS a layered character who's just very, very careful about putting himself out there, but it's like he's for the most part relegated to be the crude joke factory for Awakening and it's a bit of a bitter reminder of who else could have been there. Morrigan and Sten are impossible for story reasons, and Alistair might be to a degree, too (and Shale being DLC, they couldn't write her into this), but they're handwaving Zevran, Leliana, Dog's absence quite the bit and considering Awakening doesn't even have romances it woud have been nice to have an old friend there you could have a mature conversation with.

Of course if they're going for a general vibe of isolation, Oghren was the better choice out of the characters it would make sense to be there.

I think it also has to do with Oghren being the only companion who, as far as I remember, it's not possible to have either skipped or killed off by this point in the timeline. (Except for Morrigan, and she's already pulled her exit stage left.)

None of which keeps me from missing Wynne something fierce, although at least unlike in DA2 we have one mage who isn't completely batshit and/or obnoxious.

WYNNE. How could I forget Wynne?! I knew there was a name that was slipping for me. Goddamnit. She's even one of my favourite characters! Anders does fill the healer slot, but I agree. I really miss her. Best mage character the games have had so far.

What's wrong with you people? Oghren is constantly just wrong every moment he talks. It's amazing.

Even when I play a warrior, I'll keep Oghren in my party (though I respec him for sword and board). His comments are uniformly inappropriate.

I had never seen this in a game without needing to hack, cheat, or mod until Saints Row 3, then my reaction was sort of like "What the hell, why isn't everyone stealing this idea?"

I will be pissed off it it's not in DA3, let me tell you. Cosmetic nonsense like changing Hawke with each age past aside, I absolutely hate being hounded by one tine CC mistake for my entire playthrough. There's not once in DA2 where my first stop in Act 1 isn't The Mirror of Transformation to make sure Hawke doesn't look like they were kept in a basement without sun for fifteen years, regardless of skintone because the CC is so dark I always miss the mark I went for even when I consider it. I don't know why Bioware in general seems adverse to make the CC optimal, but if they have the Mirror I'm okay with it.

Okay, I'm done with the Prologue. It's 80 screenshots, so this might be a while.

Varel is a badass. I like him a lot.

And hi Alistair! :D I admit I was a little sad that playing Awakening as Queen of freaking Ferelden didn't really have much impact on the plot.

In a way I'm glad Elissa isn't, because they really treat it underwhelmingly. All the talk about being an Arlessa seems pretty stupid when you have a higher title it would make more sense to refer to.

...you know, they could have let Alistair hang around to perform the Joining. Steve Valentine already recorded the lines and everything! (Yeah, depending on your choices in Origins it's not guaranteed that he'll be there, but really, the Joining was a whole big Warden secret back in Origins so having Varel do it is pretty sketchy even if he is generally awesome.)

And oh, Mhairi, we hardly knew ye.

I remember when Awakening was first coming out, BioWare gave her a whole promo profile the same as all the other companions.

Because BioWare likes to make people suffer!

I will give them they've gotten better at it. Trask in KotOR had TUTORIAL COMPANION written all over him. Mhairi dying the way she does is a genuine shock, and it would have been interesting to see how her ideals would hold up to the ugly reality of being a Warden.

I have awaited this moment. I loved how they left the caption there for the whole scene; Oh captiondudes.

Going back to the returning companion part, I wasn't too thrilled to hear it'd be Oghren.. I didn't really like him that much (One of the factors for not picking this up, sadly). Veeery clever with what they did with Mhairi, but funny that the ONLY one who really wanted to join teh wardens for a noble reason has that fate. Also the whole "Your ending status didn't really matter much upon import", and their lackluster "nods" in place of it. Ohhh well.

Obviously it's to say that the wardens aren't as noble as they're painted to be! Obviously. Haha.

Yeah, Awakening really takes the deconstruction DAO runs from the Joining onwards and just makes it worse. By Awakening I was so little thrilled by Warden-ness I felt like I was dooming everyone I handed that cup to. Bethany's fate in my first DA2 playthrough really didn't help, either.

And that caption... I started laughing uncontrollably the first time because I recognized her animation from Daveth (if you die, you fall forward) and it just... kept... hanging... there... like cruel mockery. Really... not a classy move on the part of the game.

Thus Korpi and Palme poses that targetted benefits only provide the highest monetary aid for the poor when assuming constant budget size as the encompassing model typically have a larger welfare budget as well as support from other classes in...

... right, Mhairi died! That's what we were doing.

I laughed.

Though now I am disappointed. He could have been an accidental Grey Warden, it would have been perfect.

"Whoa, what happened?"
"You should swing that thing with your mouth pointed away from the darkspawn."

I smell a wasted opportunity, and I am dissapointed in Bioware now.

Naaaaate. <3 It's kind of amazing, and also heartening, that despite being a Grade-A number one asshole, Rendon Howe managed to produce some remarkably decent children. Nathaniel's full of an awful lot of anger and bitterness right now, but it's not like he doesn't have good reasons to be.

Speaking of sad, sad wasted opportunities - I suppose it would have required too much extra dialogue, but I wish they'd done more with the past history between the Couslands and the Howes and had Nathaniel and the Huamn Noble Warden actually know each other even a little bit. I mean, back before things went pear-shaped in Highever Howe was making noises about marrying Elissa off to his son (the other one, sadly).

The backstory is juicy enough that a Cousland is always my favorite Warden to take through Awakening anyway, but there's just... so much fertile ground there.