#working on some da2 ones

[pulling-a-jowan]

Origins text posts

[vaguely-concerned]

merrill dragon age really reverse engineered an eluvian from first principles in a cave with a box of scraps and one single blighted shard. and STILL she gets no respect for it from anyone but potentially hawke, at least in a confused yet well-meaning 'are ya winning son' sort of way on the friendship path. dark days for women in STEM

(really though it seems the equivalent of a person in the middle ages putting together a nokia phone from rocks and sticks (and one coaching session from a spirit, fair enough) and then just not being able to figure out how to turn it on even though it is fully functioning. magically at least merrill is inarguably a genius. the tony stark of kirkwall. well not really that comparison falls apart pretty quickly but you see what I'm saying here lmao)

[daggerbeanart]

felt like doing a wip wednesday after all :]

💜 tags: @ndostairlyrium @greypetrel @transprincecaspian @plisuu @dungeons-and-dragon-age @shivunin

(no pressure of course as always <3)

[attanos]

how i look trying to explain to bioware fans how video games are made and that they first and foremost have to be fun to play

[littlelostmabari]

Chapter 17: The End Begins (Part I)

In which Saoirse learns, once more, that her dreams have consequences.

Tagging @skinwalkingxana :)

Fandom: Dragon Age 2 / Dragon Age Inquisition

Current Pairings: Cullen Rutherford x OC. Background F!Hawke x Anders

Rating: M (Canon-typical violence & behavior, check tags & CW on chapters)

Links: Whole Work | Chapter 17 | Saoirse Character Sheet

(Dividers by cafekitsune)

"Have any of you actually cared for a child?" Saoirse looked around the room at Varric, then Choir Boy, then Anders, then Fenris. "Look at you, you can barely take care of yourselves." Choir Boy murmured something about the Maker, but Varric shushed him. The storyteller knew the beginnings of a speech when he heard it.

"None of you have ever made that kind of decision. Have you? Have any of you gone to bed hungry because there was only food enough for one, and damn your pain, the kid has to eat? Have you ever had to hold them while they cry, telling them that their nightmare wasn't real?" She stood now, although it was partly thanks to Donny's shoulder under her hand that she didn't collapse again, her knees shaking from exhaustion. "Have any of you ever sat on a street corner begging day in and day out, debating whether or not to use the kid for pity, because it feels really fucking shitty but maybe her three-year-old face might get you enough coin to sleep somewhere with a roof that doesn't leak and beds that don't bite?" The weight of the day was taking it's toll. Her voice softened as she met Anders' eyes.

"Have you ever loved someone so much" — her voice hitched, and Donny's hand was on her hip, keeping her upright — "that you know you have to give them to someone else because you know you can't give them the care, the attention... the love they deserve?" Her gaze drifted into the middle distance, where the hazy face of Jhessem lingered in her periphery.

"Because I have."

[unreadpoppy]

I think the biggest reason I struggled to connect with the Inquisitor as a character is because of the 'chosen one' trope

[carlsdraws]

i need to draw some comics so it stops feeling like such a huge undertaking

[1ncend1ary]

i have this disease and it's called ALWAYS BEING RIGHT!!!! (making all my fave chars as warrior cats)

[danielnelsen]

the 'talktables' in dao and da2 are the files containing all the text ever used in the game and are typically separated into two talktables per module (in which a module is like.. the base game or a specific dlc): one in the 'module' data folder and the other in the 'core' data folder (typically sorted under 'packages', rather than 'module').

the core talktable generally contains asset text (eg, ability, item, and creature names/descriptions, most codex entries, loading screen text, gui buttons and tooltips, error messages, etc). while most modules have a core talktable, the whole idea of the base game's core resources is to be available to any addons.

the module talktable is where all text specifically related to that module is listed (eg, mostly dialogue, but also specific character names, plot item names/descriptions, plot-related codex entries, etc). this is where the vast majority of dlc text is stored (and the vast majority for the base game too; there's a lot more text in dialogue than in menu options).

[sage-nebula]

I've now finished DA:I and have a completed World State in the Keep for DA4. I will say that, out of the three games (Origins, 2, and Inquisition) I think that the Inquisition party feels the closest to me. Like they're the ones I feel would actually want to stay together after all was said and done, helped I think by the fact that so many say that's what they want (with Sera almost starting to cry if you have the Inquisitor tell her that Skyhold will always be her home if she needs it). With Origins, it really felt like everyone was there and working together purely because of the mission to stop the blight and no other reason. With 2, it felt like they were there and working together because they lived in Kirkwall and wanted to make their lives easier. But with Inquisition, everyone who was there chose to be there, and sure it was for a cause . . . but also we got bonding scenes like them playing Wicked Grace together, or eating cookies up on rooftops. Even when they fought with each other, I felt a real closeness there. Like it was them against the world (which it kind of ends up being during the Exalted Council).

Of course, this is just all my opinion, and it's possible that this had something to do with how the personalities of each character developed over my playthroughs, as well as the fact that I found it a bit hard to track people down in Kirkwall sometimes and as such didn't bond with my companions as much as I would have wanted. (RIP Fenris, I missed the opportunity to do your character quest and so you died 😔). But at the end of DA:I Trespasser, I had the Inquisition stay together not just because that's what my Trevelyan wanted (as making the world a better place / helping people is very important to her), but also because I didn't want to see the squad break up, even though they had to break up a little due to responsibilities elsewhere in the world anyway. It's just how they made me feel.

[maid-of-the-golden-deer]

im starting to think theres a connection between being anders being noted as similiar to/admiring malcolm and ppl who seem to lean into leandra's parentification of hawke romancing him

[vaamiel]

Reblogging this to say both thank you for all the love on this AND I think it's so fucking cute when this gets cycled between fans of the different characters hehe. Everyone's comments are always so fun to read!!

Little group picture!

I think I'd like to do one of these for DA2 and DAI romances as well 🤔

[maintitle]

The funny thing about the whole 'I'm worried about DA's gameplay and you should be too' crowd to me is that, yes you're right, but also I'm a console gamer. Origins is my second favorite game of all time and it has all the fun of combat entirely gutted out of the game. I actually LOATHE Inquisition's combat. DA2 is my favorite combat system of the series (outside of PC Origins which I've barely played) and it's also my least favorite game in the series. The gameplay mechanics I'm worried about and what you're worried about just aren't the same.

[girlb0yfriend]

started another origins playthrough before i left my pc for a week and i thought about it so much that i want to restart the playthrough now that im back <3333 yayyy yippee

[littlelostmabari]

Snippet Saturday

Working on One of the Good Ones, Chapter 17: The End Begins (Part I)

... and I didn't know where this scene was going until I got there. But I'm DAMN PROUD of this interaction.

The 9.5% ABV beer might have something to do with it. Wheeeeee!

CW: misogyny, minor violence

(Dividers by cafekitsune)

"Cullen? He's… Cullen, now, is he?" Saoirse's eyes widened, realizing her slip. "Not 'Knight-Captain Rutherford'? Not 'Meredith's lapdog'?" A dark laugh began in Anders' stomach and rose to his eyes, his hand mussing his hair with grim delight. "I see, that's why you gave her up so fast. It's why you've been gone from the clinic all this time. You've been kissing the asses of the Templars this whole fucking time. And here I was thinking I would have to risk life and limb to go in and get you after the fuck-up younger brother took you." He was near maniacal now. "But noooo," he sang, "you just waltz in and out of the Circle like the Templar's fucking whore. Tell me, how many had to take you to get them to let you say goodbye to the girl?"

She slapped him.

Before she realized she had even moved, Saoirse brought the palm and fingers of her right hand so hard across Anders' face that the small room nearly echoed with the sound of skin meeting skin. Everyone else held their breath. Anders paused with his head tilted over his right shoulder, slowly bringing his left hand up to where she had struck him.

Saoirse realized that her hand hurt, and that Anders' face probably hurt more, but the true wound was the betrayal. She hadn't betrayed her values, yet here the man who was supposed to be a healer,the man who taught her how to be the persona that she had been playing, was accusing her of highest treason because he couldn't see that the cost was greater should she have run with Antsa clutching her cloak. Arguments and logic be damned, the only way he could see her ever talking to — getting through to — a Templar, was with her pants around her ankles instead. That was a festering wound, and one she thought was beyond his ability to heal.

Her eyes never left him, and he was looking anywhere but her.

"Hate me if you must," she finally hissed under her breath. "But I will not apologize for trying to heal what you would rather burn."

[knife-eared-jan]

Ok, as much as I have been hyping and playing 12 hours a day since it got out (still in Act 1 though, bc I'm a slowass player and completionist), I feel like I have to say something that is getting hard to ignore at this point... and I wanna preface this by saying that I am loving a lot of aspects of the game and I adore the writing when it comes to the companions, who I am obsessed with.

And maybe this will get better yet, as I generally heard the writing picks up once the story progresses beyond picking up all companions..

But I'm starting to get quite upset at the way the writing just does NOT care about the established lore and the politics of Thedas like at all, when to me - and many others - that richness, nuance and depth of the world is what makes the games so special.

(Spoilers below)

I looked past the way the elves in Arlathan just seemed to know that their gods are evil and Solas is "kind of a dick" but was right about that. When, you know, that made him basically the Satan of their pantheon up to now.. It was after all the tutorial stage of the game and I understand that you wanna ease newcomers into the lore. I could also handwave it in-universe with Morrigan being there - she could have filled the Veiljumpers in on the discoveries of the Inquisition or even what the Well told her.

It felt a bit weird that our contacts in every other faction just accepted this huge revelation without a blink, but again it was the early stages and I also get that having a discussion about it 6 times with different faction leaders would have been incredibly tedious. So I ignored that. And yeah, at least the First Warden found it hard to swallow.

The fact that they brushed aside the gods finding elven subjects - many of whom after all still worship them - with one sentence from Solas was disappointing though. Instead they chose to ally them with the Venatori and the Antaam who are the pure evil factions with no nuance or motive to side with them besides a comic book level of hunger for power. They didn't even throw in a sentence about the gods maybe speaking to the Venatori through the Archdemons to get them on their side or how it's very ironic that the Venatori, who want to make Tevinter great again, stoop to working with the pantheon of the people they oppress because they see them as lesser and other. No political exploration of the massive lore implications at all.

It really hit me when I picked up Davrin and he commented how Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain blighting the world would really endear us (elves) to the rest of Thedas - this was the first time anyone actually mentioned the political impact of the elven gods being real, freed, evil and blighted on modern day elves at all, when this should be HUGE. It should be ugly. It should be complex. It should be explored in as many examples as bloodmagic and the oppression of mages was in DA2. It should be a central point of Act 1. (This btw made me love Davrin so much in that moment because this was the first time in the game for me when I actually felt like talking to a Dragon Age elf and even just that one line felt like home.)

And now I just did Taash's first companion quest and it seems Qunari lore is also being ignored (except for the gender aspect of it, which I look forward to). Taash's mum was a scholar and had a baby and the only problem about that was that it could breathe fire and was special but otherwise all would have been dandy? Like she would have just been allowed to keep Taash long enough to find that out about her baby if she was living under the Qun? That directly contradicts everything we know about how the Qunari's culture around reproduction and childcare works.

Sorry to be negative and talking myself into a rage - I know it's not something people want to see rn. But like, I realise you have to brush over some lore intricacies for brevity and to make it digestible for new players. But this is a world initially inspired by Wheel of Time and ASOIAF, both of which are interesting because of the depth of ficitional cultures, lore and politics, and hence it's also what gives Dragon Age its appeal. And now they take us to the most politcally interesting areas on the world map and just get rid of all of political depth?

That's really disappointing. Imagine if Winds of Winter dropped all political themes just because there's several previous books and it's been some a lot of years.

Also, I managed to play DA2 before I ever played Origins and they could introduce me to a vast established background of lore just fine back then.

Sorry. Rant over. But I had to get that out of my system.