#i made a custom hawke in my second dai playthrough that i never completed and basically. made this character

[bethrnoora]

even tho i still have to play origins and da2 i know my hawke is a middle-aged butch woman with a big sword. torn on whether i'd want to play a human or dwarf warden though

[meggannn]

shepard v. ryder

some meta, with no spoilers, about the differences between the characters, and how relieved I am that BW didn’t head in the direction of a “blank slate” PC like the Inquisitor for the Pathfinder.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I like it when Bioware gives us canon facts about our PCs. I know people find it limiting, but I like it because it tends to give me something workable as a “reader” of the story they’re putting out, and it usually – imo – works out better than when they give players a free-for-all blank canvas, which is what we saw with the Inquisitor, and sort of with the Warden.

I have to explain where this post is coming from by starting with an explanation of what I think is an example of a PC done poorly. this may earn me some irritated anons or reblogs of people defending their Inquisitors, but I think the Inquisitor is a prime example of when BW does PCs wrong. I think their writing is at their strongest when they decide what at the emotional core that’s driving the PC – eg Hawke, who fights for family and loved ones, or Shepard, who fights to preserve life even at the cost of their own. even the Warden had a loose narrative arc: it was a traditional hero’s journey – maybe stale, maybe cliche, maybe old, but it was there. the Inquisitor didn’t really… have any of that. they reacted to events, they never acted first (unless you count the mark, which wasn’t their choice to begin with). they had emotions, but there was no consistent theme or growth with those feelings. they made choices that didn’t change who they were, because the player had to decide who they were, often via headcanons and fic. in all of the histories (human/elf/dwarf/qunari), there were codex pages and occasional mentions of a family or life before the Inquisition, but – and I say this having admittedly not played through all of the backstories myself, but reading up enough on them – there’s nothing very substantial to grab onto. it leaves the player to fill in the blanks just to figure out who the person you’re seeing on screen is (and there are a lot of blanks), and in such a heavily story-driven game series affected by PC actions, a blank canvas for a protagonist doesn’t always fit the role well, narratively speaking. I know some people call that freeing for the purpose of OC-making, but I personally call it bad writing; there is no overarching narrative for the Herald, no… personal resolution that stretches across all playthroughs. (you might be able to count count confronting Solas in Trespasser? but that brings up a whole other litany of problems I have with that DLC, and how I think the Inquisitor’s most substantial growth as a person probably happens post Trespasser and how I’m mad that’s only hinted at, not confirmed, and that’s a rant for another day.)

my point is that I’m personally thrilled to see they went back to Shepard- and Hawke-style protagonists with the Ryders. the first time I realized BW was going in a completely different direction with Ryder and wouldn’t make them “the next Shepard,” I was thrilled. it’s very clear from the prologue they’re entirely different people. Shepard is a military commander with an established, respectable Navy career before the events of Eden Prime. even if they’re a loose cannon, Shepard has worked their way up the chain of command; Shepard is an N7; Shepard knows how to work alone and with a crew; hell, Shepard’s done enough to earn Spectrehood without even a lengthy vetting process.

Ryder is young, and it shows. Ryder has, if ever, at least not consistently, led a squad, and certainly never commanded a ship – and that shows too. Ryder is sarcastic, energetic, and occasionally juvenile, even despite selecting professional/logical choices. when Ryder makes decisions it’s often them speaking out in support or in judgment of one choice or another in a conversation, compared to Shepard’s more decisive calls made by someone with authority in the field. I don’t mind that, because I think it drives the point home: even in Shepard’s most renegade moments, they could be rude, hostile, or downright cruel to people, but they were never… youthful. or childish.

I’m not saying this to say Ryder is childish; I’m saying this because I think Ryder’s is – or will ultimately become – a coming of age story, because they purposefully start young and inexperienced, which is in direct contrast with Shepard’s journey in the trilogy: by the time we meet up with Shepard, they’re already an established soldier, and depending on your background choices, they’ve probably already seen one form of hell or another. they have a bad feeling about Nihlus’s mission, but I’d be surprised if most Shepards didn’t think they could handle whatever Eden Prime was going to throw at them. Ryder doesn’t have that experience to fall back on, so Ryder travels to – and eventually falls headfirst into – Habitat 7 knowing they’re in for a rough ride, and bracing for impact the entire way, because the manual didn’t cover this.

my working theory is that Ryder’s will be a coming-of-age story about taming youthful energy and craving for adventure/exploration while learning not to lose the spark that drives them (against politics, against species-wide extermination, against cultural clashes between the MW species and the angara, etc). depending on the Ryder, they may have varying levels of maturity – or immaturity – but in default dialogue (by which I mean lines Ryder says that you don’t choose), a consistent theme I’ve noticed is that they still look and act and speak young, even when they’re not snarky. directly contrasted with Shepard’s story, which is – I think most people can even loosely agree on this? – about finding ways to go on through the hard times, and people who will stand by you when you’ve been beaten down and you’ve seen the absolute worst the world has to offer. neither of these characters are really about survival or living to fight another day; any intelligent species we’ve seen in the ME universe can survive just fine. but these traits – curiosity, exploration, and the will to continue even when the odds are impossible – are humans’ strongest traits, as noted in various ME codexes. (not that no other species is inquisitive or will-driven, but this is mentioned time and time again that humans have both of these in spades, much more noticeable than other species, in ways that often drive the narrative into directions they wouldn’t in the hands of, say, an asari or turian.)

I’m not saying “all Ryders are like this” because that’s not the point of an character-customizing RPG. fandom has proven BW can give us the mould of a character and let us fill in the blanks – like Hawke or Shepard (as opposed to the ‘blank slate’ of an Inquisitor or Warden) – and people can still come up with incredibly diverse OCs and go in totally different directions from each other. so personally, I don’t find it at all limiting or a bad thing to say that I think Ryder’s narrative journey is going to be about X or Y (because it can also be about other things the player decides fit their OC the best!). but I do think Ryder – and the other two in particular – all have undeniable traits that exist no matter your canon, and I’m personally very, very glad to see they’re going in this direction again with their protagonists. my second sigh of relief was upon realizing that they’re not trying to recreate Shepard 2.0. obviously it remains to be seen if they make more content with Ryder (fingers crossed), but so far, I’m really pleased with the direction they’ve chosen for them (and their twin).

[carabas]

Dragon Age: Inquisition!

Top five things I’d change about Inquisition:

1. The mage rebellion should not have been resolved in this game. Not while we’re playing as the Inquisitor. Look, I love being able to help Fiona, and I love seeing Leliana declare the mages free. But.

Two games and a novel showing us the struggle of the mages, fighting this uphill battle, winning boons only to have them taken away again, people like Anders going to great lengths to show the world the abuses going on, people like Fiona struggling to unite the mages behind her because only when they are united do they have a chance to change anything-

And then it turns out the key to freedom was to be the messiah.

Just wake up one day and find you’ve been declared messiah.

How can you convince the Chantry to let the mages go? Easy! Just be the person in power! Be the person who gets to choose the new leader of the Chantry! Gosh, it’s so simple, how did we not see that before?

2. More plot-relevant side quests dealt with in person, less running errands that your agents could and should be handling for you.

Break side quests into categories like DA2 did, with the fetch quests separated out to make it clear what’s optional (literally EVERYTHING, NONE OF THE SIDE QUESTS MATTER, THEY’RE ALL FETCH QUESTS, GET OUT OF THE HINTERLANDS), or stagger them so that they're not available until after certain main quests have been completed, so that the story’s pace isn’t bogged down so much in the first half of the game. There are so many side quests and war table missions that I’d like to swap.

3. The possibility of failure.

Awakening did this perfectly: you have to choose how to use your limited resources, you can’t guard everything at once; and you have to build up your defenses if you want to keep your people alive. But for all the constant warnings about consequences for your actions in Inquisition, the Inquisitor’s only real chance of failure is in war table missions with no emotional impact.

So at minimum, if I screw up a war table mission badly enough, then I want a cutscene afterward, I want an NPC I can see and talk to. If Clan Lavellan dies I want the chance to say something about it.

I want an assault on Skyhold. There has to be an assault on Skyhold. I want Skyhold to be able to survive where Haven didn’t, I want to see the agents I recruited protecting it, I want it to survive because I made alliances and built up my defenses, I want being the Inquisitor to mean something more than just a title and a throne and a power trip.

4. Remove Hawke.

Let them send a letter like the Warden did, let us know that Hawke and their LI are still alive and safe, acknowledge the role they played in freeing Corypheus and red lyrium and the start of the mage rebellion, and that’s it. There are just way too many variables here; no matter what dialogue they put in, Hawke-as-an-NPC was always going to seem OOC to some portion of the audience. It’s not just one bit of dialogue, not just the way Hawke feels about blood magic or the Wardens or the Inquisition or Anders or Kirkwall or their willingness to sacrifice themselves to a Fade spider - it’s everything combined.

And the sacrifice option in the Fade actively irritates me. It undermines everything I loved about DA2, and Flemeth’s message to Hawke in particular. “We stand upon the precipice of change. The world fears the inevitable plummet into the abyss. Watch for that moment… and when it comes, do not hesitate to leap. It is only when you fall that you learn whether you can fly.” That’s gorgeous! The hope that the uprising at the end of the game is flying, not falling! That for all the tragedies you go through, you survive!

Or, alternatively, she could have been saying, “Go feed yourself to a demon and die,” I guess.

And the timing. The timing’s the worst part. Hawke shows up when you’ve just gotten to Skyhold. I would really like to like Skyhold. It’s my new base, it’s filled with my team, I want to enjoy it. But in practice, when you first arrive in Skyhold, you’re treated to a ton of dialogue in which your companions insult each other, and then you top it off with the frustration of trying to make not-Hawke look vaguely like your custom Hawke, which I STILL haven’t managed. I’ve tried nine times! Three per playthrough! I can’t do it! I wind up giving up in frustration and listening to someone who looks nothing like my Hawke say things that my Hawke would never say. WELCOME TO YOUR NEW HOME, ISN’T THIS FUN.

So. Yes. Remove Hawke. I love Hawke’s brief conversation with Varric in the hallway, but I am willing to sacrifice that. Remove Hawke, and instantly improve my ability to feel something positive about Skyhold.

5. Admittedly this is several things crammed into one but let’s go with the theme of making this game feel more personal, that counts as one thing:

Add a pre-Conclave prologue. Show us who our Herald was before they became the Herald. Show us the people that we hear about later in those war table missions. Give me some clue what my mage Trevelyan was doing during the war instead of forcing me to puzzle it out along the way from contradictory dialogue.

Add at least one more personal quest for each companion.

Add a reason to go to your quarters in Skyhold more often. Give the Inquisitor a pet, put their collections on the shelves, give them gifts from their companions and display them there - possibly this would be that extra companion quest I just suggested - let their companions visit them there, let their LI move in with them there, SOMETHING. Give the Inquisitor a place to relax and feel at home. Because Skyhold isn’t a home, it’s a place of business.

The Warden got to huddle around a campfire with their companions, and you spent time there, you had conversations there. Hawke had an estate where their friends would come over just to play with the dog, where Isabela doodles in the margins of the books and Merrill (and I suspect Anders) has named the statues Finnegan and Messere Pointy-Face. But my Inquisitor Trevelyan just has a room he never sees, decorated with a banner bearing the symbol of the templars who’ve been hunting him down over this past year of war.

…since I mostly post about DA2 and not Inquisition so much, I also want to point out the things I wouldn’t change - the Temple of Mythal, the encounter with Flemeth, Solas, the ancient elves, the eluvians, Trespasser, wandering through elven ruins, a story told primarily through desolate landscapes, through music and atmosphere…

Inquisition is a three-act story of faith and personhood revolving around the Herald’s ties to Andraste, Mythal, and then Fen'Harel, and I’m in love with the second and third acts. That first act, though.