Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan
*BLARING SIRENS* Warning. Warning. Post not about WoW. I just finished Dragon Age Origins and because I don’t know anybody else who’s playing it I simply HAVE to talk about it somewhere. So I’m going to talk about it here. Forgive me, indulge me, I know this is WoW blog, but I must. Normal service tomorrow, I promise *SIRENS OFF*
*SIRENS ON* Oh yeah, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. Seriously, I’m going to be talking about the ending(s) so look away now if you don’t want to know the scores *SIRENS OFF AGAIN*
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I think perhaps I made some pretty damn dubious choices because I managed to end Dragon Age in a welter of horrific tragedy. I whinged not so long ago at Spinks that, so far, I didn’t think much of DA’s much vaunted moral choices, since for most of the situations I’d encountered there’d been a rather clear-cut optimal solution. However, this completely changed in the final third of the game, and I blundered through it, apparently destroying everything I cared about in an effort to do the right thing.
Despite being a dwarf, I managed to fuck them up right royally (so to speak). Returning to the capital after my exile, I found myself having to choose between some creaky old lord and my treacherous kid brother. What was really annoying about this section of the game was that I couldn’t seem to find out any information about their actual politics – I’d have been totally willing to put differences with Behlen aside for the good of the dwarvish people, especially since I’d come to the conclusion that our rigid caste-based society was doing us more harm than good. I got a vague sense that Harrowmont was a traditionalist and Behlen was not but I couldn’t accrue any evidence either way and without evidence there was no way I wasn’t going to shaft my horrid brother as hard and violently as I could.
Unfortunately by the time I’d gone through all the trauma and drama of the ending section of the game, my poor character was so scarred by tragedy and battered by circumstances that I didn’t imagine she’d have much interest in anything except sitting crying in a dark hole somewhere so I was like “whatever” about the prospect of returning home and this, coupled with my previous political choices, sent the dwarves into a sharp, isolationist decline. Whoops.
But this was nothing compared to what I (inadvertently) did to my party. In a completely unusual move for me, I was actually playing a female character. I was messing around at character creation and I made an exceptionally hot girl dwarf – and I was like, well, that’s that then, isn’t it? How can I not play an exceptionally hot girl dwarf? And equally unusually for me I’d actually semi-bothered with the romance options. Maybe it’s because I’m a cynical bastard but I generally find romance plots in games pretty uninteresting. I think it’s because there’s an inevitability to them – as long as you’re picking the right dialogue options, love is guaranteed. And they always end up with “you live happily ever after with character x and your wuv is twu” which is as dull as ditchwater, and completely implausible for some of the characters anyway. Like you, or they, would ever settle down in that totally banal way. I tend to go out of my way to mess up romances, in games I mean, because it seems to give them more depth and meaning – turning evil on Carth in KOTOR is particularly heartbreaking. And I was very fond of Bishop in NWN2, if only because he seemed to dislike the game as much as I did so we wandered around together being rude to people and flirting. I also kind of respect the fact he’s just too evil to love you. That’s a serious commitment to an alignment mechanic.
Anyway, so, yes: 2 rare situations. One female dwarf. One incredibly sweet romance with Alistair. The romance came about pretty much by accident. I thought we were mates (and he’s a wonderfully fun character to have about, his comments never fail to raise a chuckle) and I was flirting like crazy with Leliana who is terribly pretty and whimsical. She has rather dodgy voice acting – stresses all over the place, but she actually reminded me of one of my exes, who didn’t have English as her first language and therefore, also, had peculiar stress patterns (and was also terribly pretty and whimsical) so I found her charming rather than annoying. So while I was talking shoes to Leliana (don’t ask), Alistair crept up to me and gave me a rose from a village lately destroyed by the Darkspawn, stumbling out some painfully sincere line about how he thought I was a beautiful thing in a dark place (like this rose, d’you see). And my dwarf found that incredibly endearing so they drifted very naturally and very organically from friendship to romance. Leliana was well pissed. Whoops.
Now I (and one of the NPCs agreed with me, by the way) always read their relationship as a tragedy waiting to happen – given the inevitable clash between duty and personal desire that always comes about in fantasy plotlines if you’re trying to be a good guy, which I was. And I’m not sure to what extent this take subconsciously influenced what happened but … well … I destroyed it. I destroyed it all.
What happened was this: when you go to take out Teyrn Loghain, you have a choice about the future of the monarchy. You can put Alistair on the throne, because he’s a royal bastard, or you can hand it over to Loghain’s daughter, Anora, or you can persuade Alistair to marry Anora and have them rule the galaxy together as people who don’t like each other very much. Since finishing the game, I nosed about the internet a bit and was surprised at how many people thought Anora was dodgy. I thought she had all the markings of a thoroughly excellent Queen – yes she was manipulative and ruthless as all hell, but she was also clever, committed, dispassionate and incredibly strong minded. Alistair, by contrast, is an NPC who has spent most of the game following your orders. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a lovely character but he was totally not King material, to say nothing of the fact he didn’t really want the crown anyway. I guess persuading them to marry would have been the best of both worlds but it just struck me as a joint compromise. I mean, poor Anora had already been lumbered with a weak, brainless, idealistic king and I didn’t want to force either her or Alistair into a political marriage. And, err, Alistair was mine, anyway, wasn’t he?
There’s an extent here to which I’m not sure my own interaction with fantasy novels was influencing my interpretation of events. I was pretty invested in the idea of a letting a woman be in charge for once, and without check from some random guy I was going to force her to marry. And I have to say, I thought King Cailan was an absolute moron, understandable yes, but also a moron so there was no way I was putting her through that again. I mean, why should women have to wield power through men? And, actually, when you get right down to it, I’m not a big fan of monarchies as anything other than a figurehead. So Alistair has some blood connection to some guy who was previously on the throne? Oh come on. That’s in no way a legitimate reason to actually be King. Okay, maybe in a pseudo-feudal pseudo-European pseudo-Medieval setting but I was calling the shots here, dammit.
I was pretty open about where my loyalties lay. I knew Anora was probably playing me to an extent but I respect that. I promised her my support, and told Alistair, and he said he was “relieved.” I took him at his word. So, anyway, we confronted Loghain about having fucked everything up, there was an honourable duel, and, oh look, I’m the PC, so I won. And I was given the option to either execute him or spare him.
Again, I think perhaps I misinterpreted events due my own personal preoccupations but I was pretty inclined to spare him. I have a soft-spot for the character who does terrible things because he believes they are right trope. And I have to admit I always found Loghain a pretty compelling character – he’s well voice-acted, which helps, and he’s got a very expressive face, and these cynical, weary eyes which seem to have seen too much. He’s just awesome. Also my opinion of King Cailan was so low I didn’t much care that Loghain left him to die. Also the guy was a hero to Ferelden, despite his recent slide into Really Rather Not A Good Idea, I didn’t want to slaughter him like a villain. He gives a quite a nice line at some point during the game – something like “the quality of a man can be seen through his enemies”, and I liked that, because I respected Loghain throughout, even if I didn’t agree with him.
I wonder if this is a slight problem with the focus of the game. I mean, Loghain does abandon his King on the field of battle, leading to a mass slaughter of an army and all the grey wardens. But, the thing is, you’re in the Grey Wardens for all of five minutes. I didn’t feel I’d really lost anything personal in that battle – not like poor Alistair, who is devastated about it for most of the game. So I was always more invested in Loghain as a character, than a villain, which made me reluctant to kill the guy.
So, naturally, I chose to spare him. Whereupon Alistair threw an enormous hissy fit. I kind of saw his point – as he cared very deeply for the people who died at Ostagar – but still. He had to see that it wasn’t right to … oh … oh, okay, he didn’t see that at all. Um. Alistair, in what I can only describe as a phenomenal act of throwing his toys out of the pram, then demanded to be made King in order to see that Loghain met the fate he thought he deserved. And, I’m sorry, but if there was ever evidence that someone wouldn’t make a good king this was it. He asked for my support and, as gently as I could, I was like “no chance.” Come on. A king who can’t put aside his personal feelings? A king who wants to be king to get his own way? Never!
And that was then he stormed out, never to return. Oh noes!
I know I could have re-loaded and tried again but I felt I should stand by the decisions I made because I still believed they were right. Yes, I could have tried to compromise on something that would have kept Alistair by my side but I’d have felt a bit cheap. So the end section of the game passed in a blur of angst and misery. I even lost Morrigan who wanted to do something extremely creepy during the final battle, and took exception to me telling her “no way in hell.”
The worst of it was, that the game didn’t seem to acknowledge that Alistair had left me and I might be feeling rather cut up about this. I wandered around my companions before the final battle, hoping for words of comfort, support, or even, you know, a pity fuck, but nothing was forthcoming. Given how good they are at reacting to every little thing normally, this just felt at best lazy, or at worst, punishment for the choices I’d made.
'Allo, I am Zevran Dudecorset, one of the Antivan crows, I am bisexual, but not too bisexual, lest I offend you. Shall we make love now?
The ending of the game was consequently rather bitter. The thing is, I’d been really interested in the main plot, so I hadn’t played very thoroughly – all of which had huge ramifications for the places I’d visited. I even accidentally left a dragon terrorising one corner of the map. Uh. Oops. The ending was meant be celebratory, I think, but there was not much in it for my dwarf, who had given up pretty much everything in the name of duty. I talked to my companions, all of whom were heading off to lead their own lives, despite my pathetic pleas for them to stay with poor, lonely, abandoned me and maybe do some more adventuring. In fact, the only one willing to stick around was bloody Zevran, who I couldn’t stand and who had spent most of the game sexually harassing me and being told, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off.
In some ways it was quite an emotionally satisfying ending – being full of woe and sacrifice – but in others, not so much. It was just a little bit too punishing, I think, so much so that I wonder if, in fact, chose wrong. I think it’s pretty much set up that, whatever you do, you can’t keep Alistair without some sort of extremely unpleasant compromise – essentially elevating your personal desires above basically everything else. I don’t know if that’s romantic or just plain selfish, and I’m not sure I could have gone through with it. I don’t know if I should have been less sympathetic to Loghain, or less 21st century about it all. I mean, maybe if I’d been more invested in the sanctity of blood I wouldn’t have been so convinced that Alistair would have made a lousy King.
Also it’s hard to respect a man who talks about duty and honour, and throws his toys out of the pram so comprehensively. I’m not sure to what extent this is meant to be prefigured (he tells a story early on about how he once threw his only memorial of his mother, an amulet, in a fit of pique against a wall but I thought the implication was that he’d grown as a character since then) but to me it felt just a little bit forced. I’d have been perfectly happy for Alistair to have stayed with me only until we took out the Big Bad, I would have been perfectly happy to have ruined our relationship forever but having him flounce out when the land was about to be overrun by Darkspawn? Dude! You selfish son of a bitch, I can’t believe I ever let you bone me.
I guess it’s testament to the game that I’ve been thinking about this, and agonising about it, ever since. And I might have, y’know, shed a tear or two. People going to battle against tremendously overwhelming odds, if the soundtrack is soaring, always completely does for me. Too much Anglo Saxon at an impressionable age, I reckon.
Also I can’t believe I was condemned to be followed around for the rest of my short, unhappy life by fucking Zevran. GO AWAY! I’VE BEEN TELLING YOU THE WHOLE GAME TO GO AWAY! I WISH I’D NEVER GIVEN YOU THOSE BOOTS BELONGING TO YOUR MOTHER, IT GAVE YOU COMPLETELY THE WRONG IDEA. I HATE YOU. BEGONE. IT’S NOT THAT I DON’T THINK YOU’RE ATTRACTIVE IT’S JUST YOU’RE THE WORST DEPICTION OF BISEXUALITY I HAVE SEEN IN A GAME FOR A LONG TIME AND YOU, AND YOUR STUPID DUDE CORSET, ANNOY ME.
“Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan” — *swoon*
I had no idea Anglo Saxon was so potent. Screw this WoW blogging, let me break out my kennings…
Well this is one post ill be returning to after xmas, when i (hopefully) will have time for this
I heartily recommend it. It’s quite an experience and the dwarves are fantastic. It’s genuinely hugely satisfying to play a game in which they’re not ale-swilling comic relief. Much better than the smelly, oppressed elves anyway
Tam, the title of your post made me want to run off to Europe to have all of your babies.
You are fantastic.
I’ll have to agree with Vulpina and Liadan.
Hawt Awesomeness Incarnate is thy name.
Hehe, that’s rather a mouthful, don’t you think?
Why thank you … I think. I’ve obviously been speaking way too much modern English all these years.
Aww, that’s epically tragic.
In my game, I basically went through the whole thing like a bad knock-off of pulp fiction. My dwarf commoner tried to do the right thing, but her idea of ‘the right thing’ basically involved giving criminals a free ride and asking for lots of kickbacks while making my sister queen consort, and seemed to end up in lots of unintended blood baths.
The only companions I really got on with were Morrigan, Oghran and the Dog.
I thought Anora would have made a great queen and was all for more female leaders. I even had her set up to marry Alistair (Arl Eamon basically told me that Alistair would make a great puppet king and he’d pull the strings), but when I duelled Loghain I let Alistair kill him — I figured he deserved at least that much — and Anora threw a fit and had to be put in a tower.
I let Morrigan have her way too, again I figured I owed her that much since I was prolly going to die, and I convinced Alistair to sleep with her. I was feeling a bit sorry for him at this point, and I really wanted to talk to him about it all and explain. But I didn’t get that option.
Anyway, it turns out that the ritual worked, Alistair seemed to be making a great king. And … I ended up pretty much on my own except for the dog. I think they were mostly happy, and I got made a living paragon but I didn’t really want to go back to Orzammar. So I wandered the land and did grey wardeny things I guess. It wasn’t as tragic a story as yours, because I kind of made good. But I ended up alone.
It’s definitely thrown up some interesting thoughts about the nature of tragedy in games. As I say, I feel genuinely ambivalent about the whole business – it was emotional and, consequently, quite emotionally satisfying so they must have done somethinig right, but retrospectively I’ve been more and more frustrated by it. I think it was partially the lack of in-game validation – not being able to talk about it to anybody afterwards – coupled with, perhaps, increasing conviction (on my part) that games are not the medium for tragedy. I think the problem is that the tragedy relies upon an element of helplessness in the fact of an arbitrary world or the flaws of others (or oneself) and games, for me at least, gain much of their pleasure for player agency and involvement.
On the other hand, I have been thinking and talking about Dragon Age an awful lot – so I have it to thank for something.
I’m also quite impresseed at how bewilderingly different the game seems depending on how you approached it. I’m also really intrigued by the interaction between dwarf noble / dwarf commoner stuff. I had hints that Behlen was anti-caste system and I found a love letter from him to another dwarf (your sister?) but it never really came out. Increasingly I’m thinking I should have given my political backing to Behlen but he *betrayed* me, dammit, and murdered my brother. I think, perhaps, he did it for love?
Reading your ‘ending’ I’m also quite peeved that there didn’t seem to be any way to talk *anything* through before the final battle. Especially because you have to make these *huge* decisions – like letting Morrigan give birth to a demon, for example.
It seems like the game is pretty that you’re going ot end up alone – which is fair enough, I guess. And at least you didn’t have Zevran Dudecorset following you around for the rest for your life. Gah!
Haven’t quite gotten to the ending yet, but Morrigan’s constant sarcastic comments are made of win, and she’s the only reason I’m still even playing at this point.
The game seems determined to kill me at every turn, despite playing on Easy and using every cheat I can find to help myself live longer. Someone needs to go teach Bioware what “Easy” means when designing difficulty levels. It means I don’t have to worry about a random trash combat beating the crap out of me. Someone seems to have lost that memo.
Kiryn, have you patched it? They released a couple of patches which made easy easier (I think they realised that they’d released the game with the modes set too hard).
I have not (I’m used to games reminding ME to patch them, not having to remember myself!) but if it fixes the game’s current lack of an Easy setting, I’ll try anything.
After patching, I’m finding the game difficulty much more reasonable. My characters are still buffed out with all those cheats, but at least now I’m not getting my ass handed to me by random trash mobs like I was before.
I’m even contemplating trying a second game with slightly less cheating once I get to the credits for my current game. I kinda want to play as a rogue next time so I can unlock chests I find without switching characters. And maybe play around with traps and poisons and actually do all of the side quests this time.
So far I haven’t really found any options that made me stop and think too hard. At Redcliffe, Morrigan came up with an alternative so that we could kill the demon without killing the child. I liked the dwarf commoner story more than the dwarf noble story, so I’d rather have Bhelen as king. As adorable as Alistair is, it seems rather obvious to me that the best compromise is to have him marry Anora, and that madman Loghain totally needs to die — as long as Alistair isn’t the one to do it, or Anora won’t want to marry him any more, I learned that the hard way.
I’m glad you’re having a better time with Dragon Age now – I did really enjoy it, to be honest. I mean, yes there things that disappointed me a little and, overall, I think preferred Mass Effect but I was generally pretty pleased with it. I’m not trying to be a superior son of a bitch but I didn’t have *that* much trouble with the combat, although I did occasionally drop it to easy when I just wanted to get past a fight in order to move the plot along. I was playing as a rogue, though, so I had some imba DPS
I don’t know if you’ve picked up Wynne yet but having a dedicated healer also makes life a heck of a lot easier, even if she’s a bit “hello, I am a mentor figure.”
I was a bit disapointed about the so called “moral” decisions until I hit the Kingmaker decisions. I mean, there always seem to be an “optimal” solution to me. But I thought the tissue of choices and consequences surrounding the throne, Logain, Alistair, Anora and later Morrigan was quite well done. In particular, maybe I’m just swung by decent voice acting, but I secretly or not so secretly admire Loghain. I just have a weakness for that trope the – the man who gives everything, and does terrible things, because he believes it’s right.
And I didn’t want to lumber Anora with Alistair – why compromise when she’d make a perfectly good queen all on her own.
I actually ended up killing Zevran, because he met up with one of his assassin buddies in the city who was all “hey, come back with me” and Zevran was like “okay, just lemme finish the job real quick” and we got jumped by a dozen thugs. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t give him his mother’s boots. I had them in my bags, but I never put him in my party so I just never got around to it.
I did have Wynne, but with Morrigan and me being best buds, I didn’t really have room in my party for a third mage around. We were both Spirit Healers, with me as an Arcane Warrior also. Honestly, I love Morrigan. I do anything if she asks me to. I was on the fence about the whole golem thing until Morrigan started saying “but think of the knowledge that will be lost if it is destroyed!” with her puppy-dog eyes. I can’t say no to her.
I really get the feeling that the game has an “intended” ending, and the more you deviate from that ending, the suckier the ending feels. I think I got remarkably close to the ending I was supposed to get, although the game pretty much outright TOLD me that I was supposed to have spared Loghain, because it proceeded on as if I had. Though I’m not entirely sure how I was supposed to get Alistair and Anora to marry if Alistair runs away when I don’t kill him.
I don’t really get the feeling that Loghain was doing what he felt was right — I felt from the beginning that he was a madman who needs to die, and everyone could see it but Anora because she was blinded by the fact that he was her father.
But hey, despite the bugs, I enjoyed it enough that I’m playing through a second time, exploring all of the side quests as a rogue myself, and I’m finding the combat to be quite a bit easier this time. I’m attributing it to the patch I installed, and not at all to the fact that I have a better idea what I’m doing this time.
I skipped this (for now) since I plan to get it, but it will be on XBOX…
Yes, definitely, don’t read until you’ve played. It is game wreckingly explicit.
I’d be interested by your thoughts when you’ve played it though .
Nobody around you plays it? o_O
Wow…I seem to be surrounded by people who do, and to think that I went to Torchlight first, because instead of more story I wanted mindless pewpew as my side game.
The boyfriend plays dragon age though, so I’ll have to play it too at one point =)
Yeah, although my friends do have their geekinesses, I am the one with the most pronounced weakness for computer games. Alas, it is tragic
A few people in guild are playing it, though, so I have been able to talk about it a little bit.
In my game, Alistair ended up as the puppet to my Warden, which was pretty cool, except for all of my friends also leaving me, including Leilana. Kind of a downer after the game tells me Ferelden was doing pretty good.
Did they leave you because they hated you, or because they had better things to do with their lives? My character wasn’t *that* politically savvy so I couldn’t really see her manipulating Alistair that way.
[...] options on the night before the last battle, it would have given a better sense of closure. Tamarind discusses his story here (spoilers behind the link) and explains why he really needed to have words with Alistair … if the [...]
Marvellous! Well, horrid and sad and more emo than I’ve ever seen from a dwarf girl, but marvellous all the same.
Funny how many of us seem to have ended up playing dwarven wimmin. As a wimmin myself I’m already watching with interest to see what choices I’ll be offered later on — I’m 60-odd hours in and only about halfway through, a) because I’m a slow bastage and b) because I’m eking the experience out as much as I can. (Oh and c) I’m in the Circle of Magi Fade bit and I find it piss boring so I haven’t played in a few days.)
Was hoping the Alistair romance could go somewhere, but have only reached the stage where he tells me he’s not that kind of girl, so I guess I haven’t become *quite* pullsome enough yet. There’s time before the end of the world, anyway, but if I’m going to have to marry him to poor Anora anyway just because male-centric stereotypical designer thought-processes assumed a female needs a male in order to be able to rule in her own right (Salic law was a made up con!)… Yeah. Maybe I’ll just let the bloodbath happen. The next generation might be less sexist.
Oh crap, I’m dissecting a computer game for gender bias again. I promised I wouldn’t do that again this year. I’ll just get me coat.
It was pretty damn emo =P Next time round, I’m being a human man and I’m going to shag everyone and be totally ruthless. None of this girlish snuggling up with Alistair nonsense. Dammit, I’m going to see if I can make *myself* King! Actually the romance with Alistair came upon me (so to speak) quite unexpectedly… in the sense that I was busy talking shoes with Leliana and, although “gosh, aren’t you a big handsome man” style options had come up with Alistair, I’d ignored them, reasoning that if I was going to be a girl in the game, then I was going to get romanced, not the other way round. And I guess this must have been non-threatening or something to our virgin boy, because eventually he did, in fact, pursue me. And he was so hesitant and endearing about it, it kind of won me over … I felt like a right fool but it was very sweet.
Is the circle stuff that bad? I quite liked all the wibbly stuff in The Fade, it was a nice change of pace, although the “turn into a mouse!” “turn into a burning dude! puzzles grated after a bit. I mean, it’s hardly rocket science is it? Oh, there’s a small hole there, maybe I’d better be a mouse. Oh, look, an heavy door, better be a golem.
And you’re more than welcome to look at gender bias in the game – it’s important. To be fair to DA:O, I don’t think the implication was that Anora *needs* Alistair to be a good Queen. I think it was purely political – in the sense that, if you want to retain some control over the monarchy, you can do it through Alistair, either by marrying him to Anora or making him a puppet King. I think the game is pretty honest about the fact that Alistair is not necessarily kingly material, but that he does have a certain presence about him that could be very useful.
And I think Anora is genuinely quite a cool character – it’s pretty obvious that she’s playing you from the moment she meets you, and she’s very much her father’s daughter, dispassionate, ambitious, manipulative, but I say fair play to her!
“I made an exceptionally hot girl dwarf”
Screenshot or it didn’t happen.
That said, nice post. Happy to see that you aren’t one of those who bash DA:O for being “too tolkien”, “too canon”, or “too not modern warfare 2″
I will dig out screen-shottage and you will all marvel at the hotitude of my dwarf. Oh ye of little faith.
Well, the thing about comptuer games (and sorry if this gets me showered by vegtables from the gallery) as far as I’m concerned is that the stories they tell are best when they feel like other stories. I don’t think it’s an ideal medium for “originality” whatever that means (and, actually, I think originality is over-rated anyway) … so I really like the fact that playing DA:O feels like being in every generic fantasy novel you’ve ever read. I see that as strength, not weakness.
“I will dig out screen-shottage and you will all marvel at the hotitude of my dwarf. Oh ye of little faith.”
I’ll hold you to that promise!
I actually love Zevran but your description of him made me die laughing. He’s rather a woobie with a seriously traumatic past, hence his rapid attachment to you if you’re nice to him.
And man, that sounds like a lousy ending! I’d probably put Anora on the throne as well and not force a marriage between her and Alistair (I am completely against arranged marriages!) but accept Morrigan’s offer. Creepy, perhaps, but effective.
Nice play-through, though. Your post made me giggle, so thanks. XD
I have a male human noble in the pipeline (so to speak) so I might consider giving Zevran the benefit of the doubt but … actually … no … I’m blatantly going to go for Morrigan, aren’t I, especially since I’m determined to be a bit less dutiful and bit more ruthlessly, so she might hate me marginally less this time round. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, I guess Zevran’s ‘type’ just doesn’t appeal to me at all.
It was a pretty lousy ending – worst of all possible worlds, in fact. To be honest, I found it quite emotionally satisfying when I first encountered it (emotionally satyisfying in the sense of I Had Emotion, which is rare for computer games) but retrospectively it felt like a bit of a force.
I just found your post after typing in “unhappy with alistair ending” in the google search engine.
I laughed with tears streaming down my face throughout your entire post because you made the same choices I did and you were very funny in expressing your frustrations. I started out with a dwarf female warrior because I felt dwarves were just bad-asses all around. (I was disappointed there wasn’t a dwarf male to romance so I gave Alistair a try.)
Even though this was a game and I wasn’t taking it seriously at first, I was completely charmed by Alistair and the direction their relationship went. At some point, I stopped caring about vengeance against my backstabbing brother and the dwarves for exiling me and just hoped that maybe Alistair’d ask me to be his queen if there was a king option in the end. (I mean, think about it — dwarf noble and human noble, right? Right? I’d get my honor restored at some point, right?) However when we did get to the end, I felt Anora would be the better choice because she was driven and ambitious. Alistair kept repeating that he didn’t want the job. OK, so don’t do it then. I picked Anora. I was on the fence about Loghain and I decided to spare him in the duel because of a) my previous conversation with Anora about showing him mercy for his actions and b) I really liked the idea of him becoming a Grey Warden to atone for his sins against Duncan and to show support for the cause. Alistair had this huge hissy fit, which just stunned me when he was gone from my party entirely.
Hell, no. I wasn’t moving forward without him! So I redid the duel and killed Loghain off. This time, I decided to make Alistair king. Got a nasty shock when he broke up with me because I wasn’t a human noble and the people wouldn’t accept me as his queen. Plus something about two grey wardens not being able to breed. I went to bed licking my wounds and had a full night’s sleep. Redid Landsmeet AGAIN and picked Anora queen and killed her damn father. JFC, already. Had no problem with letting Alistair sleep with Morrigan the ends justified the means.
So that was the happy ending — the only one available for my dwarf. I was so brutalized by the first two endings from Landsmeet that I didn’t (still don’t) have the heart to play again with a second character.
I hated that nobody else in the party acknowledged the situation and that there was no real closure in our relationship after killing the dragon other than blocks of text describing what everyone did.
Your post had me laughing and feeling a lot better. I heard the sequel to Dragon Age is going to be based off the choices we made in this game. I refuse to make a human noble just to get the best happy ending with Alistair (marry him/be his queen) so here’s to hoping they add more stuff for the dwarves!
Hello there – and thank you for the comment, I’m so glad to have amused you
It sounds like we played pretty much the same game, making similar decisions for similar reasons – which is a bit of a relief, in a way, because everyone else I’ve spoken to about it seems to think I made some completely mad choices. Ooh, and as a dwarf female, did you have a forbidden romance with Gorrim at the beginning? I did – which certainly influenced a lot of what followed, I think, in that I didn’t really let romance blossom with anyone else until I’d found him again in Denerim.
As I say, I’m not usually all that into romances in games (they make me feel a bit of a fool) but Alistair was a genuinely lovely character, and he is very very sweet. I enjoyed having him in the party, actually, because his comments and conversations were always so entertaining.
I do like it when games rouse emotions in me as a player – and, to be fair, Dragon Age did that; however, the more I think about it, the more I think that games are not the medium for tragedy. I mean, the problem with the events, as you outline them here, is that there’s an extent to which they have to be – and consequently feel – forced. Being able to talk Alistair “out” of his hissy fit would have invalidated the hissy fit in the first place, but *not* being able to do so left you standing around, feeling useless and cheated. I often find “and then you live happily ever after with your twu wuv” endings unsatisfying as well but the problem with dark or unhappy endings, I think, is that they invalidate player choice? The point is, however must you feel that a darker ending would the suit story (as I know I did, while I was playing) nobody in their right mind would *choose* one – so you’re left in this awkward situation, where the designer has to take your agency away from you *for your own good*. Which is just not fun. Or fair.
I’m babbling here but I think it’s interesting
And, you’re right, the lack of closure was infuriating. How could they have put all that effort into their NPCs only to throw it away at the final hurdle? Zevran at the very least should have offered me a rebound shag, he’d been trying to sleep with me the *entire game*. And I would have liked to have been able to talk my reasons over with, well, anybody to be honest – it need not necessarily have changed anything but it would might have made me feel like I had more ownership of the decisions I’d made.
I’m rerolling a mage since I didn’t really like pressing only two buttons on my warrior. I’ll miss my dwarf though.
Very nice work as usual mate.
Thank you kindly – M’Pocket Tank and I are playing again as a mage, this time, (and Alistair can go hang – we’re going to snuggle up with Leliana) and it’s about 100% more fun. Went for a “life in one hand, death in the other” thing – so creation and entropy and currently we are cake-walking every fight. The range of options you get as a mage makes it so much more interesting.
Was out of town so sorry for my late reply!
1. Yes, I did have a romance with Gorrim!
2. I was sooo happy to see him again in Denerim and I really wanted to pick the option that said, “You can be my second again!” But y’know, Alistair was standing right there. I didn’t think to go back to a previous save to check it out later so that has always left me wondering. Would he have still let me down and told me about his wife/child or would it have played out differently? (I made the mistake of saving over the same file each time because I didn’t want multiple copies of the game confusing me. I regretted this later.) What did you do when you saw him?
3. I had some more time to think about the game and once the “sting” of the emotional stuff passed, I was able to look at things logically.
a) The game really did warn early on that we’d have to decide between duty and love. That came in the form of comments from other people in the camp, whether I wanted to hear it or not.
b) It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be queen with him, but that I wanted a *wedding* (which queens got) because of the line that he gave in camp that was something like, “You were my first and if I have my way, you’ll be my last.”
c) Since there’s obviously a sequel coming and that it’ll be based off our choices in game, I realized that not having him king was probably the best way to go because he’d be by my side fighting the next Blight with me. If he was king, duty could prevent him from jumping in the fray with me and the rest of the group. Also if he was king, he’d be conflicted about leaving his queen wife or his heir or something. That would just complicate things, right? And if I was human noble queen, wouldn’t there be something to prevent both king and queen fighting Blight side by side? One would have to stay behind to rule while the other went off to fight?
4. It doesn’t sound like you went back and tried a different ending other than Alistair leaving. When I chose Anora as queen, he expressed his relief to me afterward for not picking him. And before the final battle, with everyone in the party giving you their farewell speech, the last person to approach me was Alistair and he said, “I love you. Always.” I think that was my last video dialogue with him. I read that if you decline Morrigan’s ritual and you take him with you, it doesn’t matter if you were intending to die yourself. He will tell you he was a fool, that he can’t go on without you (or something like that), and give you one last kiss before he finishes off the dragon and dies. Only way to make sure you off yourself is to not bring him along at all in your final party.
5. I am going to play again when spouse finishes his game (we are sharing the same DVD to cut down on expenses). I want to try out the dwarf commoner side of things. I read that I start out with a drunk mom and a sister who is a consort to King Behlen. She will vow to disown me if I do not support Behlen for king. So that’d be fun to switch sides this time around. I tried to play a human noble (to gun for the queen ending), but I couldn’t get into the race. Maybe I’ll play an elf to focus solely on Zevrhan, but after Alistair, he’d be sloppy seconds (and thirds) and every female knows that. =p We’ll see!
“Only way to make sure you off yourself is to not bring him along at all in your final party.”
That’s not true… I kept telling he couldn’t do it and it was my duty to do so. Perhaps it would have been different if I hadn’t made the choice for him to be named as king, but I was able to refuse him the opportunity to slay the archdemon.
Really? I didn’t know that – I thought, if you didn’t take Morrigan’s deal, he sacrificed himself regardless.
*strokes goatee* Interesting…
Reading this is actually really (really!) therapeutic for me, as it sounds as if my playthrough was very similar to yours (including starting out trying to lay the mack on Lelianna, and being all sidetracked unexpectedly by rose gifts and charming voice acting, and so on). And I was on the same page, with Queen Anora. Even knowing that she could back-stab, under certain plot circumstances.
Anyway, I’m glad I’m not the only one who experienced the last quarter of the game as a series of (oddly poignant) slaps in the face. And I agree twenty times over about the sad lack of companion dialogue about any and all subjects post-landsmeet.
Ok, not content to just leave a comment on a stranger’s blog, I actually felt compelled to do some further ranting on the subject in my own style. So here, somewhat inspired by this post (thanks! And, er, sorry?):
http://nernie.deviantart.com/art/Dragon-Age-maybe-spoilers-145757031
Marian, that’s *fantastic*. I love it
Glad to oblige … I think =P And series of poignant slaps in the face is dead right – I wasn’t anticipating uncompromising triumph but there was way too much bitter in my bittersweet. I think it was the lack of control, perhaps? It’s not that I think you should have been able to smooth over the issues with Alistair but having him stomp out in a huff was just a bit crap.
I’m playing through again with a friend (we often play computer games together – I know, it’s a bit bizarre, but it’s more fun with 2) and we’re pretty much determined to be a bit more clinical and practical with it, and seee where we end up. We still don’t quite have the bollocks to be actively nasty to people but we’re a determinedly lesbian mage. Take that Alistair =P
I saved this to read after I finished Dragon Age myself.
Wowza was your ending tragic D:
Mine was very bittersweet…
I persuaded for Alistair to be king with me ruling beside him (we were falling in love anyway). He was fine with the sudden engagement.
I dueled Loghain and killed him – he took it like a man. This made Alistair happy. And I had to do it – for what he did at Ostagar but also for what Arl Howe did to MY family at the beginning and they were in cahoots together. (I was a human female noble).
Anora wouldn’t stand down, so I suggested she be locked away for now.
Morrigan approached me about the creepy baby ritual. She didn’t seem to understand I wasn’t going to ask my fiance to sleep with her and the game wouldn’t let me express it in that way.
I told her no way, so she left. Leliana had really taken a liking to me although I kept telling her we were just friends. She wasn’t thrilled about the engagement, but pledged her loyalty to us.
The archdemon fell, Alistair and I fought over who would complete the killing blow. I told him he needed to be king, and stabbed the wounded thing.
My funeral was sad and touching… the kind words Alistair had to say… he said he thought we’d be together forever…
Even Sten had respect for me and went back to his people, telling them he met ONE competent person when out in the world.
Thank you for coming back – I fully expected this post to slip into oblivion but, actually, I really like reading about other people’s endings and their responses. And, honestly, trust you to get your own way while the rest of us flail and flounder
I like the bittersweet of your ending more than the outstanding woe of mine because it seems like you had more direct involvement in it – i.e. the tragedy of it was Alistair’s (the love of his life sacrificed herself to save the world) rather than yours (everything went horribly wrong). Essentially you got to make choices – whereas the game basically stripped choices away from me. Grrr.
I didn’t know you could talk Alistair out of sacrificing himself to the Archdemon – I thought he always did regardless. Hmmm..maybe it’s only if you make him King, so he has a more pronounced sense of his duty to the kingdom.
Marian, I loled and loled at your DA art — husband came over to look to see what the deal was. I intend to log in and fave that page. Thanks for the art and great sense of humor.
I’ve been playing a dwarf commoner rogue this time around and it’s so interesting how my motivations changed from the dwarf noble. Noble was born with a silver spoon and had a sense of duty to her people while the commoner did what she could to survive. Heck, her own sister was trying to be a consort just to have a better life. I found myself making completely different choices and I was much more aggressive in asking NPCs to give me rewards. I wasn’t willing to hold Alistair’s hand in his personal quest with Goldanna simply because I had a drunk mom repeatedly telling me how worthless I was and a tattoo on my face to remind my people to treat me like crap.
In fact, I identified with Leilana and Zevran that much more because I knew they wouldn’t judge my actions as much. (Zevran was rooting me on in some of more crass decisions.) I haven’t gotten to Landsmeet yet, but I’m pretty sure that I’m going to make Alistair king (not sure if I’ll have him hook up with Anora, but she is the devil I know if he has to reproduce with someone anyway) and stay on as his mistress. It’s exactly what my sister is doing back in Orzimmar, bearing children for a noble without being married to him and living as his mistress, and I don’t see how my character would feel she’s above that. That situation would seem pretty ideal.
I’m just really impressed with how much the flavor of the game changed. I thought my experience would be similar because I was playing a dwarf yet again, only with lockpicking skills, but it went much farther than that. I noticed that my romance dialogue with Alistair even changed slightly. When he’s confessing his love in camp, my noble had the option to ask something like, “Does it bother you that I’m a dwarf?” He replied, “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. If anything I was wondering if I was too tall.” To my dwarf commoner, the dialogue went, “Even though I’m not human like you?” He replied with a grin, “(Chuckles) Especially because of that.”
Oh, there’s a quest in Orzimmar where this noble girl has been living in Dust Town because she bore a casteless bastard child. On my noble, I reasoned with her father to take her pack. On the commoner, I thought, why? Living on the surface isn’t so bad and there’s no casteless BS up there. Go up there and make a better life for your son instead of worrying about social status.
I’m already thinking about the next character I’ll play! (And yes, I’ll bench the dwarf this time, hah.)
I found that whether you have a mage, any mage in the party pretty much dictates the difficulty. Try it without any mage and well… it’s not pleasant.
It was so bad that I restarted as a female elf mage (all the mage origins are practically the same whether you’re human or elf) and have been knocking stuff down at a reasonably fast clip.
If I go back to my human warrior noble I’ll make sure to meet Wynne asap.
I rolled a female human mage. Right off the bat I started making questionable decisions, playing one side against the other, then persuading my way into a good “diplomatic” quest ending. Early on I fell madly in love with Alistair. I pretty much kept a standard grouping of me as dps, Wynne as healer, Alistair as my tank and Leliana as melee dps. Just to be sadistic, I made Leliana rob everyone – even beggars! I thought she might turn on me in the end, but no – she remained true and loyal. I pissed Sten off no matter what I did. I never liked Morrigan. Oghren, the dog and Shale were awesome and I couldn’t get them to dislike me if I tried. Zevran sided with the Crows a 2nd time and I killed him. Anyway… back to Alistair. I did EVERYTHING with him in mind. I even bargained with the desire demon in the fade for his love. It was something special. Stop laughing – I really cared and thought I would make a splendid queen. So I did all the scheming and political maneuverings, only to have Alistair reject me once he was to be king! He said the people wouldn’t have it and I’m thinking, “WHAT people wouldn’t?!?! The same people that just stood behind ME to pick their king?” I called him an ass, but I still hoped he would come around. I rejected Morrigan’s offer. Alistair still didn’t change his mind, so I did what every heroic woman spurned does: I ordered him to be a soldier and said a rude and dismissive farewell. I gave command of the troops to Oghren and took Leliana, Wynne and shale to go fight the generals and the arch-demon dragon. I gave my life to secure Alistair as king and to protect his kingdom from the Blight. I died a legendary hero with the satisfaction of knowing that Alistair would blame himself and become a lonely, depressed man who would forever rule in the shadow of my magnificent memorial statue. Hell hath no fury like a rejected magi Grey Warden!
I played as a human noble male rogue in it for number one yet still made relatively good decisions due to the watchful judging eye of Al. He had quite a hissy fit when I did off with Isolde yet volunteered to take out Loghain the hypocrite.
I think starting off with the dog in your party gives him a little less uselessness and it seems like this game was designed around the idea that you’d be a human noble male given that his end options are all relatively legit. My biggest woe is why can’t you be a Human commoner, some street punk with a knack for swinging a blade?
I ended up going Morrigan early, then tried to pull off a three way with Leliana to no avail, so I moved on to the latter only to dump her for Anora. I ended up killing that snake Zevran when he rejoined the crows and pretty well ignored Sten, Oghren and Wynne. Al killed Loghain, I became King but not before a pre game shag with Morrigan and the ending was such:
- My brother was pleased I killed Howe, as was I
-Al continued to be a grey warden and helped rebuild them on Howe’s lands
- Anora ruled pretty terribly, inciting riots in the alienage and I appeared to be a non factor in the ruling process (not legit).
-Ozammar rioted over class struggle cause of Harromont only to start a war with Ferelden because that crazy bitch Branka was kidnapping humans (I only wanted Golems, I never asked for this!)
- Sten went back to his lands and rejected me coming with him, I’m the king I should do as I please
- Morrigan left, but I swore I’d find and kill her
-The high dragon terrorized pilgrims, and destroyed the urn, I should’ve killed that goddamn thing.
I doing it again as an Evil Racist Dalish warrior so we’ll see how it goes,
I know exactly what you mean by not being able to keep Alistair around without making some pretty dubious choices. I played as a human female noble, romanced Alistair, and eventually put him on the throne with me as queen, my reasoning being that Anora seemed to share that illogic with her father that goes "I honestly want what's best for the nation, so what's best for me must be best for the nation, since I'm the only one who can be trusted to make the correct decisions for it" which is not the absolute worst attitude you can have as a leader (it's not like Anora was a crazy kleptocrat), but as we saw with Loghain and have seen in real life so often before, can lead to not-so-great things like secret police and reeducation camps and the like. However, that means Alistair being king, and if I hadn't had the option being queen to stare over his shoulder the whole time, it would have been a tough call. That's the thing; in making Alistair king, I basically had to become Anora, reigning in a man-child husband to make sure he doesn't muck up the nation.
Serious DA expansion coming in March and it picks up where the game left off. I'd go through this Landsmeet ending again if it means I can see Alistair face to face and get this BS resolved. (He's actually in the teaser video with the line of how much he missed being a Grey Warden.) If he's still off somewhere being a drunk, oh well.
My original character was a Male Elf Mage but after many leveling errors restarted as my sexy Female Human Noble Archer. Although setting out to be a good character when push came to shove my decisions ended with as much self gain as possible (eg. siding with the merchant in Lothering just for the fact I wanted as much chance as possible to buy some epic 200 gold gearz) and the disapproval of everyone except Morrigan (who i needed after siding with her at the magi tower and killing everyone). Early on I decided to romance Allistair for the xbox achievement and was quite suprised when he didnt want to root my epicly hot chick, also disapointed that it took so long for him to grow some balls and give me my gamer points.
In the end my major decisions were as follows:
- preserved the Anvil of the Void just because I thought the golems were to epic to destroy (although kind of confused my Branka shat bricks all of a sudden and curled into a little ball)
- sided with Bhelen because being a noble myself i believed i would agree more with bloodline than presonal choice and i liked his policy for change in the crappy dwarven traditions
- sided with Allistair as king again partially to do with bloodline and the fact i wanted to make royal babies with him
- got Allistair to kill Loghain, thought he deserved it and quite enjoyed his public decapitation
- and finally, chose to participate in the magical-dragon-baby-sex-ritual so both Allistair and I could survive to rule together
In the end I became Queen, everyone left, although not before Sten made me piss myself laughing at the fact his people celebrate once in a lifetime then it ends with public executions cause they had to much fun, then for some reason Allistair, who now has the responsibility of ruleing a nation, ends up leaving for Weisshaupt for some unknown reason, i presume to explain why he allowed Morrigan to run off with the imprisoned soul of an Old God inside her womb.