While I mistakenly got the Templars instead of the Mages, I will agree that the Templar quest was pretty good. Having Cole help and irritate the shit out of Envy was pretty fun, also calling out Envy in his first appearance as a mage was also fun. I'm looking forward to trying out the Mage recruitment in my next playthrough.

For myself I'm pro-mage, however I do understand the point of a Circle and Templars. The way I view it though is more along the lines of Tevinter, in that it's more like a college to go to. Or do it like Rivian (I think that's the one.) where the rules are relaxed enough where you can see family and the like. Chantry didn't like the Rivian one though, Rite of Annulment I think did that one in.

What is the point of not seeing family for Circle mages anyway? Never understood that.

 

Rivain.

Btw, if you guys are going for your second playthrough and are thinking 'I chose the English voice last time, I'm gonna go with the American one now'...

Don't. It's horrible.

 

Well, most families are glad to be rid of mage children. Finn in the Witch Hunt DLC seems to still be close to his parents, so I guess parents are permitted to visit if they want depending on the Circle. Since you don't see Bethany in DAII (if you didn't take her on the expedition) in the intervening years between Act I and Act II I don't think Kirkwall is one of those Circles.

 

The American voice is terribad. The only way it remotely works is if you play a Qunari.

I agree about spoilers. Most of us seemed to have finished it.

 

I didn't have a problem with the apparent American voice, but I did play it with a Qunari so maybe that's why. It's weird to have a big person like that and not have a deep voice.

 

I can see it being less grating on a Qunari, but the voice just doesn't flow as nicely as the posh one. It's not well acted.

Supposedly there's a bug where if you talk to a certain npc in skyhold, it perma changes your voice.

Convenient, gonna utilise the shit out of it before they fix.

 

Is there an option for an Orlesian accent? Because that would be fucking amazing.

 

No. I don't think any of the character backgrounds are even from Orlais, are they? The elves and humans at least are Marchers.

 

Antivan plx

 

Just finished with my 1st run with ~61 hours of playtime. All in all I was pretty satisfied with the game, even though it had some annoying parts. Tomorrow I'll start my insanity run.

 

DAI just won GOTY at VGAs.

 

They deserve it.

 

Other nominations were HS, Bayonetta 2, DS 2 and Mordor.

Ttansistor is still mine :3

 

No spoilers, but I'm gonna have to go back and play as a Lavellan Inquisitor now, because goddamn is this storyline elf-centric in a big way.

As far as GOTY? It deserves it for the lore alone. There were some wonky elements (Tac cam, I'm looking at you), but my fuckin god did Bioware pick up its game from where they left it at ME3.

I have a few other quibbles. Wasn't particularly that impressed with any of the Prestige Classes, for instance, except for Artificer and Reaver. Companion AI when you aren't controlling them is fucking garbage - Iron Bull, for instance does like one fifth of his potential damage as main DPS when I'm not controlling him because his decision making and pathing is so unbelievably trash.

It took me a little while to realize how dumb some of the requisitions are. I initially was religious about filling them out because I thought they might have in-story benefit, but in reality, most of them are just ways to reward the OCD resource-gatherers with Power.

The game also felt hella MMO-y. It wasn't bad per-say, but after I realized that mobs gave almost no XP, I skipped through a hell of a lot of sections by just Stealthing and letting my party auto-pop next to me once I was far enough away. Kind of detracts from enemies' worth when their only purpose is to make me waste my health potions. I was expecting something a lot different when Bioware said they were going to 'limit healing items/spells', and was a bit let down.

I'm glad they took away gifts for approval points, because that shit was dumb. That being said, I was a big fan of the Rivalry/Friendship mechanic of DA2, because it meant I could be opinionated without having to worry about losing companions to approval loss. I managed to keep all my guys in my first runthrough, but I had to go middle of the road on a few things I would have preferred to take a stronger stance on.

Was really happy with the romance all around. Not the content of the romances themselves so much as the fact that you could flirt with folks who were blocked off to you, and those folks REMAINED blocked off to you. Also, the fact that your companion pool wasn't a giant loveboat in the middle of the apocalypse.

I fucking loved the dragons. Period. End of story-o. They turned slap fights into decent boss battles with adds and everything.

Mounts were pretty meh. They weren't all that much faster than using Bull Charge over and over again and lost their shit at the sight of stairs.

There were good and bad fetch quests. Good (astrariums, fun puzzles) and bad (shards, didn't complete even one map. I'm not gonna hunt all over the fuckin Hinterlands for collectables, Bioware).

Some of the character progression was weirdly spaced. Leliana's, for instance. I didn't find out till the end of the game that one minor conversation choice I made with her near the very start of the game was apparently one of two or so that would allow or disallow me to change her entire character, which pissed me royally off when the time came for it.

Not having an approval meter or metric was...weird. Not really good or bad strongly. I don't want my efforts basically reduced to numbers in front of me, but I would have liked a little more warning before Solas went from basically a neutral greeting to "you're an idiot, did you know that you fuckbaby?'. Sometimes it was really hard to tell where you were with a character beyond a vague sense that you'd gotten plenty of 'Approves' and 'Strongly Approves' recently.

That's all I can think of right now. Still love the game.

EDIT: Reaver, I loved because of how facestompy it was when you were in direct control.

Artificer, on the other hand, I loved because it let me shit out random bombs every like 4 seconds which fucked stealthed Rogues in the THROAT when they tried to work their shit on me. Setting up a ginormous minefield with Varric and setting up shop behind it with my bow almost brought a tear to my eye laughing when the game decided that it was time for a zerg rush section. It may not have been the most DPS heavy of classes, but it was absolutely the funniest when I first realized that my pockets had become the dimension doors to the Elemental Planes of Grenades.

 

I wouldn't gifts being in the game if it meant more to the person. Like you talk and get to know them and find out something that they really appreciate, the golden mirror and Alistair's mother's locket for example.

The shards are actually for a dungeon, you use them to unlock doors which has gear and gives you Inquisitor elemental resistances based on the doors you unlock. Unlocking all the doors for one gives you...I think a 20% resistance? Something close to that anyway.

 

But you need a crapton of shards for opening the doors. I collected every shard in 7 maps and only got halfway through. I agree on the Astariums though. They were quite fun and actually challening. (But mother of God did their difficulty increase after the Hinterlands. First Astarium on the Storm Coast nearly popped my eyes.)

 

If you collected every shard, you've enough to open all the doors.

 

BSN tells me that Reaver only works with 2h weapons. That's tremendously horrible. I always preferred the s&b Berserker in DA2 and Reaver's focus skill is the closest DAI warriors will get to that. Weapon-locking specializations? I do hope they patch it.

On the other hand, Assassin looks like every glass canon's wet dream. Mark of Death must be the ultimate big boy toy of DAI.

 

Collecting every shard is quite a lot of work. After 7 maps I had more than enough of Occularums.

On another note - the soundtrack is beautiful. I've been writing to the Elder One Theme, Val Royeaux, and A World Torn Asunder for the last few hours and it's been a blast. DA:I music really rouses my creative mojo.

 

Specializations don't have weapons type restrictions. N̶o̶ ̶i̶d̶e̶a̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶B̶S̶N̶ ̶i̶s̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶k̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶s̶t̶u̶p̶i̶d̶.̶
From what i have heard, SnB Reavers are the bomb.

Edit: Bioware Social Network. Huh. Idiots, they truly are..