Ah yes, Dragon Age 2. The game where every criminal rents the same 3 locations.

As someone who played the Ariashok fight as a mage: Boy oh boy was it 90% running away 10% chipping away at his big as fuck health bar.

It's actually amazing how good this game is considering how short of a dev time they were handed.

Actually Merrill's obsession with the mirror stems from the Dalish Elf Origin in Origins, where a member of the clan was lost through one of the mirrors, she's convinced that fixing the mirror will be able to save him. Why she got that idea locked in her head is unknown and how she'd not give up on him possibly being alive after so many years I can't think of. To be honest I feel it's a bit of shoddy writing, but it's a better motivation than just "It's part of our history."

I like to imagine the Mark of The Assassin was just Varric getting very bored of telling Cassandra his story, so he just decided to completely mess with her by creating the most non-sensical story and character possible, just to see how she reacts to that much bullshit.

As a mage I can confirm that I spent most of my time running away from the Arisok. Thank God for those pillars.

Another detail that I don't remember you mentioning. When you face the Blood mage who kills Hawke's mother, you find various letters from a certain O. This "O" is Orsino, meaning he very much AT LEAST knew about a dangerous crazy blood mage running around killing women trying to recreate his wife, and AT WORST he was a blood mage even then before the final battle

They developed DA2 in 11 months. A miracle that they got as much done as they did. It is most likely why there is cave #101 and warehouse #2002 in the game.

Despite its shortcomings, the whole hooking your mom up with a serial killer plot line was one of the craziest things I've ever seen in a game.

Someone should make a whole game out of the unreliable dialogue wheel. Imagine a BioWare rpg where your character is fully unhinged and you have to try to do damage control as much as you can. I want single, vague dialogue options to end up in romance options and shit like that

I fucking love dragon age 2, even if it objectively has many flaws. It's probably the most connected I've felt to a fantasy game because you're actually living the life of this person. The companions aren't just npc's that tag along to help you complete quests, they're your friends, and they hang out together. You meet many people across the story and, as it takes place over many years, you see how their fortunes have changed, the characters aren't just static blocks that wait for you to give them quests. You have a family who all have different goals and motivations, and genuinely care for Hawke. The writing makes Kirkwall feel alive, even if the presentation and level design isn't at the same level.

I'd never played Mark of the Assassin but the immediate "she was given a role that she was bad at" seems insane because the whole point of the Qun is that you're given a role you'll be good at. That's why they're so successful as a society.

Anders merging with Justice changed both of them. He straight up says that the merging corrupted him just as much as it corrupted Justice.

There literally was no reason for Orsino to go evil in the Pro Mage ending. The developers have admitted that they originally designed it so that you only fought him if you sided with the Templars but you fought Meredith no matter what. It was decided that the mage ending needed another fight and so Orsino was sacrificed.

One of my favorite things about this game is how companions like Isabella and Anders have a major impact on the story. I hate how many RPG companions just come along for the ride - just agreeing or disagreeing then following you anyway. But having these companions actually make decisions, good or bad, that force the player’s hand really makes them come to life, imo. Even better if the player can influence these decisions. Loved the video! Can’t wait to see inquisition!

I’m really excited to see what Salt has to say about Inquisition

Salt may not upload too often, but when he does, it's worth the wait.

The sad thing about Anders is that if you rival him he tells you at the end that Justice forced him to destroy the Chantry. He didn't want to destroy the Chantry and he begs you to kill him.

DA2 is my "Bad game I can't help but appreciate" I will forever remember when my young self was faced with the Mage/Templar debate and having to choose a side and seemingly having world shaking consequences going forward in the franchise (not knowing of course that it wouldn't matter in the later games) It still has pretty good moments and characters, I don't mind Hawk&Pals adventures and I REALLY like the way they told the story. Especially the time skips are very unique and its awesome seeing some story line span across years, something not many games do

"Drakestone and a crystal made of manure and urine" Yknow if you know your chemistry and history this is actually a huge hint to what Anders is actually planning Never realized that til now (Basically it's similar to an old recipe for gunpowder)

“It’s a nice night for a evening”remains one of my favorite lines of all time 😂

The only reason the first enchanter goes the blood magic route was because ea said "there needs to be another boss for the mage route" unfortunately

Can't wait for the 8 hour Inquisition video.

One of my big problems with DA2 is that it's ultimately about the Templars vs. the Mages, but you never actually really get to see some sort of mage tower like in DA:O. You don't even meet the leaders of each side until the end of act 2!

One thing I wished you had touched on more was the rivalry system. It's the one thing I wish was in the other games because god damn it I just want the ability to challenge my companion's views without them throwing a fit and leaving. Also it really changes how you view them. Especially Anders, rivalry with him shows just how much time he is losing and how often Vengeance takes over - it even suggests that he wasn't in control when he made the bomb. Also you got a couple things wrong with the character stories - Merril's eluvian isn't a 'telephone', it's a 'door'. Fenris was not a part of a dalish clan, he was always a slave. "I don't know anything about inquisition, but it wouldn't surprise me to see corypheus show up there" LMAO please I can't wait for an inquisition review.

I also love the detail of companions commenting on selling their stuff. I don't remember the context but I do remember Aveline being very bitter that I sold her shield, the shield she got from her husband because Hawke needed money. It kinda broke my heart

There is *just barely* a templar companion: Carver, assuming you don't take him into the Deep Roads, joins them in the same way that Bethany becomes a Circle mage

2:12:38 After gatherings the ingredients, when Anders asks you to distract Elthina, you can pressure him to tell you what his plan is, while he will not reveal it, he admits the potion was a lie, and you can even refuse to do the quest both at the start and at the middle point after he asks you to go into the Chantry (in addition to the possibility of warning Cullen, a Templar, that Anders is plotting something); the games gives you plenty of possibilities to ring your internal alarm bell way before the final conversation with him.

I am so happy that someone else noticed the issues with mark of the assassin, When they first came out I got into fights over how her character made no sense and sounded like bad fan fic but was always told I didn't know what I was talking about. It was nice to have someone else state it too.

My favorite take on the Keeper getting possessed was that this was the demon’s plan the entire time. That it wasn’t feeding on Merril’s pride in elven history or confidence that n her skills. It was feeding in the Keepers pride. That blind belief that she always knew what was best for the clan for Merril. She would be the far more tempting target as while Merril was desperate but cautious the Keeper could be more easily manipulated into surrendering her body by using Merril as leverage.

I have a lot of conflicted thoughts on Dragon Age 2, but there's one thing that kind of clicked in my head while listening to the part of the review on the companions that makes me give the game a bit more credit. The presenter discussed how compared to Dragon Age: Origins companions, all of Hawke's companions were basically on the same-ish moral wavelength. I think that was intentional and actually fits well with the story DA2 is trying to tell. The Warden in Origins was trying to put together an army. He wanted an elite group who could help him defeat the darkspawn and end the blight. That's all. That means accepting competent and willing help where ever he could find it (or even conscripting unwilling help if he had to). A drunken dwarf? If he can put the pointy part of an ax into some darkspawn, sign him up. An assassin who was just trying to kill him? Sure, why not? A child-murdering giant who is an agent of a foreign power? Get him out of that cage and a sword to swing. The general he just spent two thirds of the game fighting against? Hell yes. What's the point of killing off that kind of resource? We got an angry horde of monsters on our doorstep. Hawke, on the other hand, isn't forming a world-saving super team. Hawke is mostly just making friends (or rivals). Of course he's going to end up with either people who mostly share his views, or people who he has a grudging respect for (and vice versa). Aside from Hawke's surviving sibling, Aveline (who joins during the escape from Lothering, so is already a friend when you reach Kirkwall), Varric (who starts out as a business partner) and Anders (who is sought out for his Deep Roads knowledge for the expedition), his companions are just people he's met and helped out who then stuck around. Of course Hawke isn't purposely going to hang out with someone he thinks is an irredeemable bastard for six years (Anders doesn't become irredeemable until the end of the game). Even when it comes to characters who end up as rivals, there's plenty of reasons given why that character and Hawke might still meet up. Even if for Anders, it's just to use a rival Hawke for his own ends.

Arcane Warrior being cut was an absolute heartbreak.

As an interesting fact, Anders wasn't originally going to be in Dragon Age 2. His role was intended for Velanna, the other mage companion from Awakening. There was a cancelled Awakening style expansion centered around an Exalted March. It would've been focused on the red lyrium plot. specifically the chantries reaction to the games ending, and the qunari causing trouble in the free marches. Hawke would've gotten help from both Starkhaven and a pirate armada. The player would've been able to explore more of the Free Marches and found out more about Sebastion's family. I recall hearing Varrick would've died during it but I don't know if that's true.

I always interpreted Anders + Justice = Vengeance as an allegory for how good intentions are warped by human weakness. It works as an idea, but the execution fell short.

1:16:00 Eluvian is not a small thing 😂, it is literally one of the most important elven artefacts.

Another frustrating aspect when siding with the mages is how every single one of them turns out to be a blood mage at the end in the final chapter...

is it weird that he does a whole section of returning character cameos, yet doesn't bring up that Cullen whom was not only in the first game as a minor character during the tower snd mage origin, but also plays a larger role in two and a major role in inquisition

this was SO fun to watch, i genuinely cant wait for when you play inquisition

It has taken me literally years to realize that Fenris is simply Wolverine from X-Men. Metal put inside his body, the pain of which caused him to forget things, while hunting the man who created him, and a name based on an animal. Jesus, I'm dense.

Isabella: "I like big boats i cannot lie" Me: "no other captains can deny" ...... i mean it's catchy

To be fair, Salt, the DA2 trailer of Hawke vs the Arishok was pretty damn awesome. I'm sure it drew a lot of people towards the game.

Laughed so hard near the end when your talking about how every other mage becomes a blood mage or demon over a stubbed toe. Lol i actually cried from laughing

The Arishok fight is actually pretty fun if you’re a rogue since they have actual movement options and stuff so it’s more strategically dodging hits and stuff than just running away or wailing on him

Worth noting that the First Enchanter was helping the necromancer who was stiching together a bride and in return gained the knowledge to become that big corpse monster. You could actually find notes linking the two and in truth, the FE was covering up a lot of shady stuff, which I'm sure had no impact on the Knight Commander's growing paranoia :D

Meredith going crazy from the idol always felt like such a cop out. It would be far more interesting for her to have reached the place she did from a series of 'harsh, but necessary' decisions rather than 'No it's just magic corruption lol'. You can argue that some of it still was, but the presence of the idol casts doubt over all of it

Tallis was basically the beginning of the end for the quality and consistency of the Qunari.

I didn't mind lack of environments, it was more the lack of creation. The storyline and voice actors were amazing as usual

One of my favourite things is that if you sell Avelines shield she got from her husband she actually has angry dialogue about it later in the game, although that same dialogue is said if you put the shield in storage which I mean I guess makes sense

If Alistair was exiled from the wardens he shows up drunk at the bar and it's honestly pretty hilarious from what I remember.

Calling flemeth gilf central makes me feel much less weird about the awkward attraction I had to her lol

Your comparison between ME3 Citadel and this games DLC was pretty good. Citadel was a celebration of 6 years of characters and relationship, Mark was kind of trying to do the same thing 2 years before that but without the same care and didn't have the time for us to really care about Tallis. Especially because she just nopes out of there and is never seen again. the story has basically nothing that carries into the rest of the series either

"TURN ON THE TV THEY HIT THE PENTAGON!" omfg I was not expecting an OneyPlays referfence lmao

Hm if you choose the templars it is revealed that the First enchanter knew the serial killer who snuffed Hawks mom (something that was obvious from some notes found in the layer for anyone with an ounce of deductive thinking) and not only did nothing to stop him but helped him in his research by giving him books from the circle. His only defense was "I didn't want to make mages look bad", which was hilarious, you mean you couldn't just hired someone to get rid of the problem, like Hawk for instance which is already treated like the towns errand boy/girl. I mean he might have been your friend but also was constructing his own meat puppet from several women, geez. And when a mad mage serial killer was revealed finally that helped the mages a lot, for sure, but it made me switch my support to the templars in the final decision because leaving Anders aside no mage in this game, with the small exception of Bethany, if she lives gave me any reason to trust them. Also If Hawk is a mage his surviving sibling is his/hers brother Carver who acts like a spoiled brat with an inferiority complex which is annoying but better than the bland Bethany. And since mage Hawk is the default canonical state for the third game its carver that is the surviving sibling in that game.

Man, I did the hardest grimace when I saw Sister Petrice's self-righteous mug for the first time in years. Forgot about her.

I will die mad about the missed opportunity that was Anders' writing. Also mad that so little of the side writing they did actually made it into the game. Dude's been through some SHIT. But the game is like 'oh he didn't like the circle and the grey wardens made him give up his cat' while he was actually stuck in solitary for an entire year and ran from the grey wardens because they assigned him with a templar who like... murdered him. (Justice kept him from actually dying). Anyway, I'm not normal about Anders. Good video though. I giggled a few times.

As a side note it's fun to remember the blight in origins lasted one year. ONE. The last blight before lasted like 2 decades and the first blight lasted hundreds of years. If fereldan was messed up after only one year, how bad was the world in the other blights

I'm certain another year of development would have made a huge difference. They certainly considered letting Hawke have more influence over major events and the repeating assets would have been eliminated. Where DA2 really shines is in the companion dialogue/stories . . . here the player CAN influence events, and how the story turns out for each companion is directly determined by what you do. I also really liked how they had three different personality tones for Hawke . . . I didn't even know this was a thing the first time I played through. Hawke really feels like a different person depending on which personality you play.

Watching Salt's video is like seeing your childhood friend once a month. It's so pleasant and welcoming.

I'd love to see you do a review of Jade Empire with all of your reviews regarding biowarw games, its a messy, neglected gem of a game with a fantastic story, setting, and lore. Hell, to this day Open Palm and Closed Fist are some of my favourite types of alignment because of how specifically fleshed out they are beyond being good and evil.

I still find it a little weird that some of the voice lines of Justice in the Origins DLC definitely made it sound like he would’ve merged with Nathaniel if he were to go with anyone, not Anders. It’s like they were planning on going one direction then changed their minds between the two things

Worth noting you can romance characters you are rivals with and it is much more interesting than friendship ones a lot of the time

Re the Keeper, there's a fairly popular theory that the demon was actually corrupting *her* instead of Merrill because she's a more powerful mage. Like you said, her actions don't make sense at all (trying to coax Merrill back while spreading rumours about her to the other Dalish) unless you read it as the demon influencing her mind. It's pretty much the only way to make sense of the inconsistent writing in Act 3.

Honestly, I feel like playing as a mage helps a bit with some of the weaknesses in the story. Carver’s a polarizing character, but his relationship with Hawke can have some actual development, and his involvement in the mage vs. Templar conflict feels a bit more personal.

42:00 Fun fact: You can do a side quest involving Thrask who has a mage daughter turned abomination. Afterwards, renegade Hawke can blackmail him to keep you silent. A little later, when the quest at 42:00 comes around, you get a letter in your mail from Thrask, calling you a friend and acting like you never did that. When you get to the cave with the apostates in it, Thrask doesn't even acknowledge what you did either. He calls you a friend again. Then you get a dialogue option saying "Did you call me here to pay up in person?" and only then does he acknowledge that we are in fact not friends. But then he goes "But alas, you are the only one in the city I can trust..." and it's back to "friend".

You have no idea how much I have been looking forward to this video after you made your Dragon Age Origins video!!!!!

Bethany and carver have some interesting character developments depending on what happens to them. Bethany is happier at the circle doing what good she can and properly learning magic in ways she couldn't before. As a grey warden she becomes more of her own person but at the cost of her becoming more of a jerk even to her sibling. Carver becoming a Templar, while by his own choice still holds deep resentment for his family as he was the only child born without magic so he ironically didn't feel special to any of them and the entire party hates him if he's around during the dlc quests. If he becomes a grey warden he becomes more humble, he realizes how he's been acting and is proud to serve a purpose for saving the world and thanks you for giving him a second chance, plus all the companions like him better, even Isabela who flirts with him a lot in the dlc. But maybe that's just cause he can't get her pregnant and he can't get any of her diseases

I remember I played this on the 360 when I didn't have a consistent internet connection meaning I couldn't update the game. So I had a glitch where every time my character leveled up he would move slower and slower in combat til he literally snapped into position and got stuck in every combat encounter forcing me to play with the other characters. I turned it into a joke that my character was actually just too busy hero posing the whole time and stealing credit for the other party member's work before I finally got the update. Lol

The party members having a default, unchangeable look was actually asked about at a Q&A panel at a convention around the time the game came out. I think it was lead writer, David Gaider, who was asked why that change was made. He pointed to some DA2 cosplayers in the front row and asked if they would stand up. He thain said that it was for their benefit, it was a change made 'for the fans'. Which, to be fair, is true, just that it's a very, very small subset of fans. The rest of us can get bent.

Varric is the best companion hands down. He could talk an arch demon out of starting a blight.

Varric was the best thing to come out of this game, and secret boss in Legacy was neat. Also, fun fact: in a series of hidden codex entries throughout the game, it is revealed that the Veil is so thin in Kirkwall that the demons can basically possess anyone they want, which is why this plot point comes up so much. It’s still kind of silly, but at least they tried to put in an explanation.

6:45 Default was always my choice in DA2 and Mass Effect, because that just feels canon. In both these games you're not making a new character, you're playing the ONE the game is about, so modifying the look didn't feel right. It wouldn't have felt like THE Shepard.

24:08 you actually meet Isabella in DA:O, she's the Duelist trainer in the main city though she looked a LOT different then. 39:39 I think you're wrong there or misinterpreted something because their title LITERALLY means "dangerous THING". They're treated as living weapons that could blow up in their masters faces at any time. It's basically the reverse of the Tevinter Mages, they're slaves. I think they were going with making elves more cat-like in their features, with the bigger eyes, sharper features and long bridged noses. Make them more than just "pointy eared humans dressed in fur, bone and leaves" basically. 1:32:25 Sebastian is AWFUL. The DRIEST, most BORING $8 I ever spent and NOT EVEN A UNIQUE CLASS. ANOTHER Archer Rogue who's VASTLY inferior to Varric both gameplay wise, story-wise and character wise. And at the end of the game, you're "forced" to choose between him or Anders. Let's see, the ONLY HEALER or a bad copy of an already existing character mechanically and the most bog-standard piece of hardtack I have ever had the displeasure of purchasing. After the *amazing* writing and integration of Shale with her myriad combat roles, unique perspective and dry wit, whoever wrote and planned Sebastian failed *miserably*.

For all the hate this game gets I can see what Bioware was going for. A refugee who wanted to keep his family safe...loses them one by one as events progress and they are powerless to do anything to stop it leaving them more and more alone. Had this game gotten another year or two in development, it would have been a fantastic one I'm sure of it.

God damn I love when salt uploads.

25:48 That's how I feel about the Qunari in Inquisition. They looked rad in DA2, but then they turned them into "elf with horn"!

The Dalish Keeper is possessed by a Pride demon because she's too prideful to realize her own shortcomings.

I love the 'Blood magic is evil' perspective mainly due to irony. Setting people on fire, freezing them in blocks of ice, throwing giant rocks at them, petrifying them or even zapping them with electricity are all fine. But sacrificing your own life to do magic that can actually help... That's a bad mage...?

I love these comfy short analysis videos on games that I've spent hundreds of hours in

Okay, so Dragon Age 2 had some major gameplay issues. All the caves/dungeons were literally the same and the repeated mobs fights got really old, really quick. The combat was okay, but lacked a lot of the strategy in DA:O. The NPCs couldn't be customized as much (which is kind of a requirement in an RPG). Having said all that, Hawke's story is told really really well. Origins was a good game, but I never really got invested in the warden himself because the overall story was a very simple good vs evil high fantasy romp. With the exception of Morrigan and maybe Alistair, I did not find any of the companions all that memorable and the MC himself was more a high fantasy protagonist stand-in as opposed to a complex character in his own right. DA2 is very different. The large plot points are less important than Hawke's personal story. The main events in DA2 (for me) are (1) losing Carver/Bethany at the start of the game, (2) Losing the other sibling either through death in the deep roads, or to their respective order, (3) losing Leandra and finally (4) Hawke standing alone at the end of the legacy DLC in his large mansion being consoled by a vision of his mother telling him how he's just like his father and it'll be all right. That etches the characters and plot of DA2 in a far more personal place in my mind. I genuinely teared up when I first played legacy to the end. I also think the storytelling in DA2 was a lot more creative than the other games in the series. For example, the sections where you character is suddenly OP and it turns out it's just Varric making stuff up. Speaking of, Varric is an *amazing* character. He's Hawke's bro through and through and IMO is the best companion that Bioware's created. So yes, I didn't like the gameplay or the combat, but the story of DA2 was special. So much so that I was mildly disappointed that inquisition wasn't as complex or personal with a protagonist who once again was a simple Aragorn stand-in trying to save the world.

I think the biggest problem were the time constraints of the Devs. Having varied environments and the ability to make complex "trees" for many playerdescisions to branch out differently over a full game and have those different scenarios voiced and animated is a huge workload and timeconsuming like hell. I bet, the people that worked on DA2 are quite torn about it. On one hand they are for sure prowd of what they have managed to build in such a constrained timeframe but at the same time sad, because if they had more time it could have been so much more then what we got here. DA:O took 7 years to make into what it was in the end. Thats over 5 Times a period long compared to the time they had for making DA2... Even it pales absolutely in comparison to DA:O, it's still a wonder, it got as good as it was in the first place under those circumstances.

One thing you skipped over with the Fenris round up is that you actually get a few unique dialogue options with him if you play a mage, and if you go the friendship route and romance, it really serves to open his perspective further by challenging his mage prejudice. In my opinion, a fenris romance as a mage is one of the most interesting romance paths you can take in this one as he grows to care for something he originally hated. #NotAllMages. I joke, but it's accurate.

Anybody notice how your characters' attacks are so fast and flashy but NPCs attacks are still exactly like they were in Origins apart from spells and special moves? At first I was so irked by it, to the point I'd stopped playing it. But once I finished my first playthrough, I finished it a couple of times and thought of it as an embellishment to the story told by Varric. It made me enjoy the game more and not think about it anymore and proceeded to finish the game more than 10 times.

Dragon Age 2 is my least favorite title for a lot of reasons. First, I didn't like the change to the Darkspawn. Hurlocks are what you run into 90% of the time and look more like ghouls than pseudo-human monsters, Genlocks (which according to lore are the most common since the Dwarves are in contact with the Darkspawn the most) are only found in DLC and are now hulking gorilla beasts, Alphas don't exist aside from a handful of Genlock Alphas in Legacy, Shrieks don't seem to exist anymore (or at least I can't remember seeing any in DA2), Emissaries all have a look implying they're all Elven in origin rather than being magically gifted Hurlocks or Genlocks, and Ogres are more pink and a lot less tough (as mentioned in the video, the Origins ogre intro fight was something special while the 2 intro fight was just marking the end of the tutorial). I get changing up the art style, but in simplifying the Darkspawn, they sacrificed variety and completely altered the foundations of what has been established for the Darkspawn. Then, there are the same 5 map assets being used for the entire game. Re-using assets and maps is something that's expected in initial titles (like we saw all the time in the first Mass Effect), but after how varied and well crafted everything in Origins was, it was a slap in the face to see the same environments and even map layouts just with different bits blocked off by rocks or rubble. Speaking of re-used assets, the Flesh Golem making an appearance in this game made no sense. It was a wild boss in The Golems of Amgorak that the Dwarves made in an effort to recreate the Anvil of the Void. Watching Orsino use blood magic to wrap himself in a handful of corpses to become a Flesh Golem (complete with the ability to detach from the main body) just felt weird and out of place considering how that particular monster was made in the first place. Then there's the skills. I love playing mages so seeing that pretty much all of the established schools of magic except for the Primal school (which got split into Primal and Elemental) were gutted was a little upsetting. Plus seeing only 3 specializations when we had twice as many after Awakening was a bit annoying. In Origins/Awakening, my favorite build was always an Arcane Warrior/Spirit Healer/Battlemage. This way I'm on the front lines providing aid to my party while also being about as beefy as a dedicated tanks and I had a lot of spells that supported this playstyle. This simply isn't possible to pull off in DA2. And of course there's how little you actually get to choose in DA2. As mentioned in the video, there are a lot of in-the-moment choices that either don't extend beyond the immediate situation or ultimately prove to not matter because the result is always the same. The Qunari always assault the city, Anders always nukes the Chantry, and the leaders of the mages and Templars both go nuts and need to be put down. In Origins, siding with the mages means dealing with the demons and returning the status quo while siding with the Templars means eradicating every last mage. Siding with the Elves means wiping out the werewolves to cover up the Keeper's secret and siding with the werewolves means wiping out the Daelish clan in retaliation for their Keeper unleashing the curse upon them, but there's also a diplomatic route that has you release the curse and peacefully resolve the situation between the Elves and werewolves. Hawke has more influence than the Warden ever had in these sorts of situations since Hawke has been around and in a position of power while his situations were brewing and yet the Warden has more choice in how things are handled. DA2 needed more time in development so they could properly flesh out the story and choices into something meaningful as well as including different skill trees and specializations so it didn't feel like they just straight up cut out a lot of existing content. But at the same time DA2 needed to not work so hard to change certain things and just leave them as they were. Things like leaving the Darkspawn variety alone rather than streamlining the Darkspawn into melee Hurlock, ranged Hurlock, Emissary, and Ogre (with Genlock and Genlock Alpha DLC).

I only ever played the game once, and didn't have any dlc, I played as a mage and took blood mage as a prestige class and it always felt weird how I would use magic in front of the templars or blood magic around anders and it never mattered, and was always ignored. My choice of class had no impact on the game outside of how I made things dead

As bad as this game sometimes is. It does feel like it’s set in the same universe as Origins. Inquisition feels like it’s from an entirely different genre

About the serial killer: the biggest reveal in the questline is that First Enchanter Orsino knew about his researches, furthur pushing the point that neither sides in the conflict was innocent. Still that doesn't make the quests interesting. Also being friendly or rival with companions can change how the story develops (although the end is always the same), Anders being the most impactful.

I played this game mostly as a mage and maybe it was the german voice over but I HATED my brother. He was such a smug bastard, always complaining, always blaming me for everything. I always took him to the deep roads just so I could get rid of him.

Dragon Age 2... I love this game... I know it has some serious, SERIOUS problems, but it's probably my favorite Bioware game. For as weak as the gameplay can be, I love the characters. Even the characters I hate. Its one of the only RPG's I ever played where i believed that the party members actually KNEW one another. They were friends, or hated one another. It felt like they interacted with one another when I wasn't around. I love Hawke. I love how snarky or funny they can be. I love how much they have to deal with real, actual loss. By the end of the game, they can lose every family they ever had. The Friend/Rival system is probably one of the best ways i have ever seen party members handled in an RPG. The day i learned that its OK to rival someone is the day I realized that a lot of characters I hated I, in fact, really appreciated as characters. I love that the game takes place over a considerable period of time, and, therefore, actually has a well paced story. And Kirkwall was a shithole, but it was MY shithole. Its hard to even explain. My head says this game is bad, but in my heart, it's one of my favorites ever. I love this game and these characters so much I NEVER want to see them again, because I dont want NuBioware to ruin them. (Also Merrill makes me very very happy and is my favorite Bioware Romance.)

One of the very few things I was frustrated about DA2 was how hidden some of the Companion armor upgrades are, including only able to buy certain armor bonuses at certain shops at certain times.

3 hours and 18 minutes...thanks Salt, I love you. Now I have something to watch this morning.

You bet your ass if this was a JRPG we could all alabama as much as we wanted.

Considering they only had 16 months to develop the game, I'd say the devs did a good job with such a limited time frame.

Playing Dragon Age 2 as sarcastic Hawke is actually pretty fun 😆

"When you press a button, something awesome has to happen." "Button, Awesome"

One of the things it did right is that, depending on how you respond in Act one, your Hawk would speak differently in the later chapters. I miss that. I should mention that the story has a different feel if your Hawk is a mage. For example, Carver becomes a Tenplar. You get a Templar companion in the legacy dlc.

I always felt like Fenris' design and personality were one big reference to characters like Cloud Strife, especially since Advent Children and KH were so popular at the time

Its 2:30 am in south Korea but fuck it, lets throw this on and see where it takes us.

I legit can't handle this coincidence. I recently finished Dragon Age Origins and rewatched your review today. I want to play the entire series through and was wondering when you would do Dragon Age 2. It is creepily crazy how I finished the review today and a few hours later you release this. It's like destiny... That or you live in my walls.

On my first playthrough, I never recruited Isabella on accident. Never actually visited the tavern. Well, when I got to the big Arishok confrontation, the story just couldn't progress. I had to run the whole game again lol. I liked the game though, the Mage v. Templar build-up during Origins and this game was awesome

Also if I am not mistaken, even if you don't help sneak Anders into the Chantry to plant the bombs, he still somehow pulls it off anyways, just another choice taken from you that could've heavily impacted the ending. Also the trailer really made me wanna play some sort of melee mage like Hawke was in the trailers, but no luck, not to mention I don't think you get the cool arm portal spell he uses as well.