#literally ran to treviso directly after the dragon fight and did every quest available

[butterflydm]

DAV: emotional impact of second playthrough

I am finding it much harder not to take the damage in Treviso more personally and more of a failure for Rook - and I think that's because I saved Treviso in my first playthrough, so seeing the impact of it blighted now is emotionally devastating because I (the player) know these specific minor characters.

[endgame spoilers below]

And the game makes you personally need to kill them -- Heir, Fletcher, and Chance all die by your hand, because they've turned into darkspawn and need to be put down. In my first playthrough, I had no idea of the full extent of the consequences that would happen as a result of the Minrathous vs Treviso choice. I had no idea what I was losing by saving Treviso over Minrathous. In this playthrough, I know exactly what I'm losing.

Jacobus coughed the last time I talked to him in Treviso and now I am worried he will also turn into darkspawn. Every single time I stopped by Treviso in my first run, I always talked with Heir and Jacobus before I went out on whatever mission I was doing. Every single time. I wanted to keep track of him, and how he was doing after Dareth's death, and how he dealt with his pain and grief.

Looking at the blighted landscape of Treviso is so horrific because I played a whole game where Treviso stayed gorgeous -- with issues that needed to be fixed, of course, but such a beautiful city, full of vibrant life (I actually went over to my other save for a while just so that I could hang out in unblighted Treviso; sad but true).

My interactions with Lucanis have been breaking my heart. I think I read that the "Inner Demons" quest doesn't happen if you save Minrathous? So... so Lucanis will never leave the Ossuary, not in his head. He and Spite are gonna stay stuck in there together. Trapped.

(he's not even mad at you! he's just exhausted and resigned and somehow that is so much worse)

I have found that this choice really impacted the way that I'm playing my second Rook mechanically, which I did not expect -- she is much more aggressive in battles now (using the orb & dagger more often than the staff & I went the Deathcaller route instead of Spellblade as I'd originally planned), and in the scene with Solas after the dragon attacks, she was much more laden down with guilt (and lashed out at him a bit because of it). I think because she knows she chose Minrathous not for practical reasons but because it's her city, and so she feels like she made the selfish choice, especially seeing how destroyed Treviso has been as a result. It weighs on her.

My first Rook (elven Gray Warden rogue) chose to save Treviso for reasons that weren't particularly personal (since it was my first run, I didn't know, as a player, that choosing Minrathous would cut off Lucanis's romance path, so that wasn't a factor in their decision) -- they made the calculation of "vulnerable merchant city" vs "magitech powerhouse city" and figured that Minrathous had a better chance of defending itself. So while they deeply regretted that they couldn't help both cities personally, they felt like they made the best choice they could with the information that they had. This Rook (human Shadow Dragon mage) worries that she made a choice with her heart and that Minrathous would have been fine without her, and that she doomed Treviso by choosing to save her home. Needing to personally kill blighted Crows has not helped with her guilt.

otoh, I now get to learn what I gain by saving Minrathous. And Minrathous really does suffer more frequently than any other city in this game, in the sense of being ground-zero for attacks three different times -- at the start of the game, then during the Minrathous vs Tresviso choice, and again at the end of the game.

And I do love getting to talk more with the characters in Minrathous. I just went back and was able to talk to Maevaris and Tarquin. Very good conversations, especially with a Shadow Dragon Rook. I learned my character's backstory! That was exciting!

I also learned that Neve and Davrin have met before - that came out during a conversation between the two of them at the Lighthouse before Lucanis returned to us, so I'm guessing that's why I never heard that banter before. Their respective jobs intersected! That's so cool!

But, yeah, the second playthrough is rough because you know more of the consequences. I imagine that the Harding vs Davrin choice way down the line will be the same. I didn't know the distraction team leader would die in my first run, and I was playing a Gray Warden Rook, so of course I picked Davrin to run the second team! I trusted him more than anyone except my love interest (Lucanis). But now I know the distraction team leader is going to die, so that choice is more weighted now, for me as a player.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, this is my 'testing all the options' run, and I have a tentative plan in place. There are also a couple of things that I missed in my first run that I definitely want to make sure that I get to experience at some point here (Lucanis & Neve get together if you aren't romancing either of them, I believe, which obviously I didn't get to see in my first run, since Lucanis was my LI; and apparently Strife and Emmrich can get together if you have Emmrich stay mortal, so I want to check both of those out. Taash & Harding were so sweet together and I loved seeing their courtship, so I'm very interested in seeing Lucanis/Neve & Strife/Emmrich).

This little sidequest really got to me this time around. Because of Varric reasons: