solitae (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
solitae) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
peopleofthedas2011-03-23 04:51 pm
solitae) wrote in peopleofthedas2011-03-23 04:51 pm
Nice to meet ya!
Just wanted to say hello. It seems like there's a great deal of fun around here, so I thought I would join when a few interesting stories on FanFic pointed me this direction.
I have a few DAO and DA2 stories that I'm working on, but I never seem to get them quite finished. Hopefully hanging out here will inspire me to do so, and I'll work past my shyness and actually POST them.
And to give this some relevance to the topic, some thoughts
Does anyone else find it much easier to play DA2 if you've 'broken' your character early in the game?
My first playthrough was with a generally good and idealistic warrior. I swear, I spent most of Mina's game feeling sick. The downward spiral was soul-wrenching, especially since she viewed most of it as personal failure: failing to protect Bethany and forcing her to become a Grey Warden, failing to protect her mother, failing to realize what Isabela was up to and getting betrayed, failing to keep her beloved Anders sane when he was all she had left.
On my second playthrough, I created a mage who basically snapped when Bethany died. Flemeth became her hero, and she rushed headlong into chaos. The only thing she wanted was to be free and had no illusions that she was 'fighting the good fight'.
I realized I'm doing something similar with the creation of my third character, destroying all his idealism at Ostagar and leaving him with anger issues ;)
Thank you, Bioware, for devouring any goodness left in our souls! (In truth, I'm enjoying the game, but...ouch, just ouch.)
Also, I'm new to Dreamwidth, so if I've screwed anything up, please let me know!
I have a few DAO and DA2 stories that I'm working on, but I never seem to get them quite finished. Hopefully hanging out here will inspire me to do so, and I'll work past my shyness and actually POST them.
And to give this some relevance to the topic, some thoughts
Does anyone else find it much easier to play DA2 if you've 'broken' your character early in the game?
My first playthrough was with a generally good and idealistic warrior. I swear, I spent most of Mina's game feeling sick. The downward spiral was soul-wrenching, especially since she viewed most of it as personal failure: failing to protect Bethany and forcing her to become a Grey Warden, failing to protect her mother, failing to realize what Isabela was up to and getting betrayed, failing to keep her beloved Anders sane when he was all she had left.
On my second playthrough, I created a mage who basically snapped when Bethany died. Flemeth became her hero, and she rushed headlong into chaos. The only thing she wanted was to be free and had no illusions that she was 'fighting the good fight'.
I realized I'm doing something similar with the creation of my third character, destroying all his idealism at Ostagar and leaving him with anger issues ;)
Thank you, Bioware, for devouring any goodness left in our souls! (In truth, I'm enjoying the game, but...ouch, just ouch.)
Also, I'm new to Dreamwidth, so if I've screwed anything up, please let me know!
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WELCOME. And no, I don't believe that is an uncommon way to play. My first Hawke was trying to be a funny girl the whole way, she was a mage and she romanced Anders and she got a tiny bit upset about things, but was mostly fine until ACT TWO RIPPED OUT HER HEART AND ATE IT. Then she was a bit grumpier. But I didn't think I RP'd her well enough, at the end when she spared Anders I actually didn't think she would have, so I felt a bit cheap and wrong for doing it.
My second Hawke I played as a goody goody rogue, intending to romance Anders, but THAT didn't work (I'm going to go back and have her romance Merrill instead!).
My third Hawke is a mage, and I'm RPing that she's a funny, slightly unhinged girl. I'm actually playing her sarcastic through ACT I and most of ACT II, and then she's going to turn violent, committed to Anders' cause more than he is almost. I have no problems about sparing him at the end, she wishes she had planted the bomb herself.
I totally agree that Bioware is bending our moral compasses here. I love it though.
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I love them playing with our morality and perspective as well, makes it intriguing. It wouldn't be terribly thought-provoking if it was all kittens and bunnies, would it? Well, kittens wouldn't be so bad. >.>
My last playthrough sounds like your third one, and she was quite amusing. She had to hold back from cheering when the Chantry went boom.
Can't blame you for sparing Anders on the first playthrough really, even if it fits your character better to kill him. I'm trying to convince myself to do a game where he'll have a chance of dying. I'm a terrible softie where he's concerned.
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I often found this in Origins, too. My characters would get angrier and angrier until they were steamrollering over everything in their path. This is probably why most of my memories of the Deep Roads are of stomping around in a grump.
Thinking about it, I don't think I ever did the Circle or Redcliffe last. God help them if I had :D
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I did Redcliffe last on Sabia.
She punched Isolde in the face and killed Connor.
She was NOT a sane or happy Cousland. She just wanted to get to the Landsmeet and kill Howe.
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I always thought Redcliffe was toughest for a mage, especially if they've already been through the Circle and had to kill a bunch of people they've known their entire lives. I mean, no one was going into the Fade to save all the possessed mages.
..and then someone wants them to risk everything in the middle of a Blight to save one possessed child who has destroyed a village.
Thus, punching Isolde in the face and killing Connor..yeah, had a mage or two do that.
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Doesn't help Isolde tries HIDING it in the beginning, which just makes it worse.
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I always wished for a mod that would give you a random 50% chance of finding Redcliffe destroyed if you left it to get the Circle's help, though. Going up to 75% if you had to take the time to do the Broken Circle quest, too.
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Yes! Something like that would have been perfect.
Or maybe if you go to get the Circle's help, the demon would get Teagan. Not that I want to kill Teagan, but it seems like a small and effective cost for leaving Redcliffe in the hands of a demon.
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I also love how I am telling you this like it's going to be news to you. XD
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I love punching that tart.
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And then I redid all my icon keywords and totally ruined the point of the comment.
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I think I felt less of it in Origins to a degree because with City Elves and Couslands, mine usually cracked in their origin stories. After that, there was no more idealism left. On the other hand, the Deep Roads was absolutely brutal, and characters that had managed to keep themselves together lost it about the time they found Hespith and the Broodmother. *twitches* I think all my characters were grumps in the Deep Roads too.
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However, my Dalish elf went mad with fury and heartbreak from the very start and stormed about the whole world leaving rage and fire in his wake. THEY KILLED HIS BOO, HIS BELOVED TAMLEN. It made it a lot easier to play him considering how unhinged he was and how little he gave a damn for the shemlen world he'd been forced into all unwilling. My mage was motivated by "but what can YOU do for ME?" and my Dalish was motivated by "but how can I fuck up YOUR world the way MINE was fucked up?"
As for my Hawke, I think irritation was my Hawke's primary motivation, not so much being broken. Everything in her path peeved her marvelously, provoking truly sublime sarcasm. If she could have washed her hands of everyone who was doing things WRONG, she would have. The increasing insanity around her shortened her temper and patience correspondingly. But she got on quite well with the Arishok, all things considered, even if she was too much of a free spirit to get on with the Qun much.
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I like this phrase, a lot :D
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Because he's Zev, and he's awesome. I accidentally did something like that on one of my playthroughs too, and then Zev stole my heart and I couldn't stop romancing him with other Wardens. >.>
There really were some lovely parts of DAO that allowed the Warden to grow, and possible, get LESS angry, and possibly happy..briefly. Alistair was very good at that.
Yeah, my warrior found some strange appeal in the Arishok too. She respected him a great deal and appreciated his principles. With so much chaos around her, I think she found the certainty of the Qun intriguing.
Might contain traces of spoiler.
I don't think my Hawke had a motivation. I disconnected from her progressively, and Act 3 just felt like an endless grind that was linear to boot. Would it have really killed the devs to make two possible endings? I didn't want to kill all those mages, because it just didn't make sense. And after Orsino pulled the stunt he does, I was like, lol, whatever. Too much of that game made no sense (e.g. the lemming-bandits)...
In Origins each and every one of my characters had a different motivation. My mage was a bleeding heart who was so sick of killing posessed mages, that she felt like she had to save this one innocent child at least (though she still wanted to punch Isolde).
My Tabris, Chaeli, ran through that game feeling extremely vulnerable without the tightly knit community that she grew up in. She had no idea how a person is supposed to function on their own, so she connected very strongly to Alistair and Wynne, but that bond ended tearing her apart in the end when she decided to spare Loghain, refusing to be judge, jury and executioner *again*.
And so on. They are all their own persons, and no Warden is quite like the other - it gets even more diverse when you add other people's Wardens to the picture.
Hawke is either nice!Hawke, troll!Hawke (sorry, I think that asking a Templar who is investigating a series of murders "I hear you're still in the lost and found business?" or something similar to that is trolling) or jerk!Hawke. And that is sad.
Re: Might contain traces of spoiler.
See, I found myself getting really sucked into my Hawke's headspace, despite it becoming someplace I didn't really want to be toward the end. It was oddly compelling for me.
Yeaaaaahhhh. I just kinda stared for a bit. The only way I can make it work in my head is saying that he was too afraid of actually being free. But mostly my reaction was 'NO! NOT MY BELOVED ORSINO! I REFUSE TO BELIEVE HE WOULD DO THAT!'
Awww, but troll!Hawke has some glorious moments! And I think there's ways to create ones with different motivations rather than just sticking with always jerk!Hawke or whatever you're using as the base persona. Limited, of course, but still there.
Re: Might contain traces of spoiler.
This is my biggest gripe: I can't roleplay her, I can't give her the personality I want her to have. Playing DA2 felt like reading a book (but not quite as compelling), rather than playing a role-playing-game.
The devs really shouldn't have called DA2 an RPG. It's totally misleading. I have never played a Pen and Paper RPG where the game-master handed out ready-made character sheets to the players, saying that they would have to play these, if they liked them or not, because only they fit the story he wrote, and CRPGs are supposed to give the player a similar experience to a P&P without the need for a group. That's why they were invented.
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Playing a nice Hawke broke ME. Granted, some of it was the storyline resonating personally with me (losing one's entire family, not necessarily DARKSPAWN DISEASE AND ZOMBIES, but by the end I had broken down in actual tears twice.) I'm not normally one to cry, but like you mentioned, I got in my Hawke's headspace.
This time around, I am playing a sarcastic but nice Hawke, and it's a lot less painful. Well, except when I choose "I'm not ready for this kind of commitment" and she tells Anders he wasn't good enough in bed to keep. But the pain is totally different.
My canon nice DAO character died at the end because she was too emotionally exhausted to outlive Alistair. My selfish Warden went off and happily saved Amaranthine (and according to sidequest events in DA2, destroyed most of Ferelden. Holy crap. Nothing she touched was left unscathed.)