I never associated them with Islam at all. They seem much more Eastern in philosophy; more like a blend of Confucianism and… other stuff.
I just wish I could get DA:I on Steam or GoG. Really don’t want to deal with that Origin garbage.
That’s what happened to me. I pushed through the last time but it didn’t help any - the game bored me. I mean, I did have some fun initially, but after some time it just became repetitive. Even with all its faults, I had more fun with DA2.
They’re also not orcs. I mean, there are no orcs in the setting, period, but darkspawn are the nearest equivalent. Qunari are giants. Well, the main race that’s identified as Qunari, since technically any follower of the Qun is a Qunari and any member of that race that’s abandoned the Qun is Tal Vashoth.
Anyways, I’ll look for some inventory and wartable mod recommendations for this game before replaying it proper.
The Qunari remind me of some versions of civilized minotaur more than orcs, no, not the horns.
I just want to thank @Fifth_Fret for reviving this thread. It was fun discussing Bioware games again. I think I’ll definitely follow the advice upthread and set the difficulty on easy when I finally get around to playing this. I only played about an hour of Dragon Age: Inquisition, but it was right after I’d finished Witcher 3 so it was a bad idea, and I hated that combat against trash monsters took forever in comparison to Witcher 3.
Despite it’s size, Dragon Age 2 adds a lot more lore than people seem to give it credit for, IMO. Basically:
- Much, much more context and texture to the Mage/Templar conflict. Although the third act is a bit rubbish, there are a lot of subquests and lore centered around this conflict that is really good and sets up what could have been a fantastic ending.
- This is the game where the Qunari are defined (in DA:O, they’re just a horned companion with a weird honor code).
- Legacy DLC introduces big bad Corypheus
Bioware’s turn to bland MMO mechanics and quests made both DA:I and ME:A significantly worse than their predecessors, IMO, although Inquisition has a few quests/areas that show the flashes of the old Bioware brilliance such as the Attack on Haven and its aftermath as well as Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts. It also, of course, adds a lot of new lore to the DA world, especially in the DLC.
The popular wisdom is that you need to leave the Hinterlands as soon as you are able. The Hinterlands is the least interesting zone, and if you compulsively finishing everything in it before you move on, you’ll all be overleveled for the rest of the game.
I’d really need some citations here. Origins has a lot to say about the mage/templar conflict, and I don’t recall DA2 contributing anything that hadn’t already been covered in the first game ad nauseam. What it does do is show both sides acting extremely unreasonably and self-destructively (granted, supposedly this is the influence of red lyrium), while Origins had a more nuanced portrayal where both sides had good points instead of both sides being obnoxiously stupid. Now, it did have the potential to shed further light on things, since the Grey Warden if mage is a Circle mage, and Hawke-as-mage is an apostate. The difference in perspective could be really valuable. But as far as I can recall, they never really explore that.
Does it actually have anything to say about him that you couldn’t learn in Inquisition? Genuine question - Legacy came out so late after I was super, super done with DA2 that I don’t think I even knew it existed until Inquisition was like “and of course Hawke ran into this dude” and I’m like “I did?”
I was let down by the reuse of the Big Bad in DAI.
Well it might have added more but every time I think about launching it again I ask myself, wait was this the 5th or 10th time I’ve been down the same dang alley and what bandits were these again? I think the main goal was a tunnel or something with a dwarf, maybe.
They more or less scrapped/retconned most of the lore after Origins, imo.
Which bits?
I always thought that was the worst thing DA:2 did. By having the whole game basically take place in one city they then went and re-used the same streets and warehouses for every quest and confrontation. To me that was more annoying than the enemies who parachuted into fights.
DA:2 has great characters and dialogue, but the story goes all to hell towards the end.
Well it’s at the bottom of a long list of games to play.
I can deal with stupid combat to an extent but when I sit down to play, and I’m like where was I. Oh right, going to a warehouse… again. I’m always going down alleys and warehouses which makes the progression not memorable at all. It’s right up there with talking to my sister or my family which I am… always talking to so not memorable there either.
Whether or not people like the whole look at this neat area aspects of games or not, those areas tend to be memorable, either in a good or bad way, but still something that sets it apart from what you did early. DA2 just doesn’t seem to have that. I’m not convinced that it’s because it was based all in a city. I think it’s quite possible to make areas of a city set apart from others and still have that cohesive piece.
Yeah, the problem is not DA2 being all in one city. I wouldn’t mind that at all. would applaud it, actually. it’s the part where that one city that’s the entire game has less unique architecture than one thimble-sized city in a lot of other RPGs. (And it’s all filled with enemy waves teleporting in out of thin air and dragging out every combat 3x as long as is any fun ever.)
Origins features the Mage-Templar conflict, but it has very little to say about it. Both of your companions who feature in it - Alistair and the Circle Mage lady - are perfectly nice and reasonable people. The Broken Circle quest is easily resolved - the request for annulment is not unreasonable, but the Templars are also willing to show mercy once the problem is resolved.
DA2’s is a much bleaker take on what this kind of social control leads to, with significantly higher personal stake (with your sibling joining one of the sides). In DA:O, there is an obvious “good” path that supports both sides - in DA2, neither side is good. While it goes off the rails at the end, it’s probably a more realistic take of what reality would look like (i.e., corrupted). To me, the latter makes for better storytelling than a scenario where there is an obvious “good” path.
Not sure I see why that matters? All the games necessarily cover lore from prior games. One could say the same about DA:O, especially given how DA2 retcons both the use and abuse of Lyrium, as well as many of the major decisions in the earlier game - notably pretty much everything about Dwarven culture got buried, the treatment of Mages and Anders’ entire character. The latter is probably the part I dislike the most, because Awakening’s Anders is such a different character - he would have worked better if they had at least shown how he changed personality during the game, rather than having it happen off-screen.
The asset reuse is also annoying, but that’s been a feature of multiple Bioware RPGs. Remember all the near identical space bases in Mass Effect?
Wouldn’t replay DA2 either, but honestly there’s none of these games I’d be willing to replay. They all have their good bits, IMO, but Bioware really hasn’t managed to put together a single great Dragon Age game yet. Fourth time’s the charm?
It sounds like you didn’t play a mage? It has a lot to say if you do.
I strongly disagree that the DA2 portrayal of either side is “more realistic”. The conflict is the same, the points both sides have are the same, but in Origins there is nuance and a spectrum between people who are dealing with a tough situation as best they can and bad actors who are taking advantage, behaving irresponsibly or blindly prejudiced. DA2 is all the latter and cartoonishly so.