DA:I - Jaws of Hakkon thoughts
I presume everyone who follows such things knows about the final DA:I DLC coming out next week, Trespasser. I'm looking forward to playing it, because I think it's good that they're bringing the Inquisitor's story to an actual end (rather than providing a bunch of different possible directions as they did Hawke and the Warden). However, it's been announced that it's a post-game DLC, meaning that once you play it, you can't go back and finish any of the open world stuff -- including the two other DLC stories, Jaws of Hakkon and Descent. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I picked up Descent right away because dwarves, but I'd been putting off Jaws of Hakkon. I was unable to buy it right away because it was a Microsoft exclusive then, and once it came out for PlayStation I had sort of forgotten about it (and remained somewhat irritated by the exclusive release). And I started Descent with Kendra, not Malika, and there was just no way I was finishing Kendra's complete game in time (What Pride Had Wrought is up next). So suddenly I was feeling the pressure to get Malika through both Descent and Jaws of Hakkon... by Tuesday.
I just finished Jaws of Hakkon tonight, so that's not going to happen. (I'd have to play literally all day tomorrow, and I don't think that would go over very well with certain people who I'm married to.) But I did want to talk about JoH, because I really enjoyed playing it, and I'm very interested in the revelations about the history of Thedas and the Last Inquisitor. There were a lot of things I was into: spending more time with Scout Harding, learning more about the Avvar, some fun puzzles and gameplay (I could have done without the easily-triggered hostile wildlife, though, especially those goddamn spiders), many of the new characters (Kenric -- does anyone else think he's sweet on Harding?, Svarah Sun-Hair, Storvacker -- I totally recruited Storvacker). I ran the area with Blackwall, Dorian, and Varric, and that made for a great combination, both in terms of banter and their comments on events. Almost all of the side quests helped expand our knowledge of either Ameridan or the Avvar, and it had some of the most beautiful and compelling environments in the entire game.
But yeah, Ameridan's story is particularly of interest, and mostly what I wanted to talk about.
Learning the truth about Ameridan throws a lot of what we thought we knew about the history of Orlais, the elves, and the Chantry out the window. That a Dalish elf mage could lead the Inquisition and call Drakon, the Orlesian emperor who founded the Chantry, his best friend, suggests a very different relationship between the Orlesians and the Dalish than I had imagined. Was it the founding of the Chantry that changed things? The wedge driven between elves and humans by the events of the Second Blight? One of my party members, perhaps Blackwall, mentioned that, had Ameridan returned from the Frostbacks convinced the Dalish to help the humans end the Blight, the history of the elves might have turned out very differently.
It also seems that mages were more integrated into society in Ameridan's day. That might be another change wrought by the early Chantry, or it might have come later. I don't know if we have enough evidence to say.
I really wonder what Drakon was like now, what he intended with the founding of the Chantry, and whether the Chantry of the Dragon Age is even vaguely like the organization he envisioned. My gut feeling is probably not, but it would be interesting to find out.
Anyway, big rec, for anyone who's playing or has played DA:I. Like DA2 and Legacy before it, a DLC is now officially my favorite part of the game.
This entry is also posted at http://owlmoose.dreamwidth.org/717192.html. There are currently
comments on DW.
I just finished Jaws of Hakkon tonight, so that's not going to happen. (I'd have to play literally all day tomorrow, and I don't think that would go over very well with certain people who I'm married to.) But I did want to talk about JoH, because I really enjoyed playing it, and I'm very interested in the revelations about the history of Thedas and the Last Inquisitor. There were a lot of things I was into: spending more time with Scout Harding, learning more about the Avvar, some fun puzzles and gameplay (I could have done without the easily-triggered hostile wildlife, though, especially those goddamn spiders), many of the new characters (Kenric -- does anyone else think he's sweet on Harding?, Svarah Sun-Hair, Storvacker -- I totally recruited Storvacker). I ran the area with Blackwall, Dorian, and Varric, and that made for a great combination, both in terms of banter and their comments on events. Almost all of the side quests helped expand our knowledge of either Ameridan or the Avvar, and it had some of the most beautiful and compelling environments in the entire game.
But yeah, Ameridan's story is particularly of interest, and mostly what I wanted to talk about.
Learning the truth about Ameridan throws a lot of what we thought we knew about the history of Orlais, the elves, and the Chantry out the window. That a Dalish elf mage could lead the Inquisition and call Drakon, the Orlesian emperor who founded the Chantry, his best friend, suggests a very different relationship between the Orlesians and the Dalish than I had imagined. Was it the founding of the Chantry that changed things? The wedge driven between elves and humans by the events of the Second Blight? One of my party members, perhaps Blackwall, mentioned that, had Ameridan returned from the Frostbacks convinced the Dalish to help the humans end the Blight, the history of the elves might have turned out very differently.
It also seems that mages were more integrated into society in Ameridan's day. That might be another change wrought by the early Chantry, or it might have come later. I don't know if we have enough evidence to say.
I really wonder what Drakon was like now, what he intended with the founding of the Chantry, and whether the Chantry of the Dragon Age is even vaguely like the organization he envisioned. My gut feeling is probably not, but it would be interesting to find out.
Anyway, big rec, for anyone who's playing or has played DA:I. Like DA2 and Legacy before it, a DLC is now officially my favorite part of the game.
This entry is also posted at http://owlmoose.dreamwidth.org/717192.html. There are currently
comments on DW.