straightforwardly | 078 | In which I finish Act 2 of Dragon Age 2, and flail over a cameo made by a certain character <3

More of my adventures in Dragon Age 2! Since my last post, I’ve finished Act 2, and entered the beginning of Act 3.

LAST TIME on Dragon Age 2, I was freaking out about Merrill picking up and wanting to fix the MIRROR OF DOOM, but decided to head out to the Dalish with her anyways. After watching a city slicker stumble ineffectively to his doom, killing a many-legged creature that gave me an achievement, and hearing Anders snipe at Merrill about blood magic all the way back up to the surface, Marethari gave Hawke the magic knife-thing.

At which point, Hawke… did not give it Merrill. I’d expected to get some rivalry points from that. I did not expect to get 155 rivalry points from that, holy shit.

Hawke spent the post-quest conversation and the questioning beliefs quest telling Merrill that she’s worried / only trying to help her, but that only served to max out rivalry with a +25 and +5 point gain, respectively. So… congratulations, Merrill, you beat out Fenris at making rival first?

The more Fenris-centric quests I do, the more I warm up to him. I finally unlocked his questioning beliefs quest, and after he told Hawke allll about his escape from slavery, he basically told her that while they don’t always “see eye to eye”, he respects her.

WHICH BASICALLY TRANSLATES INTO, WHO THE HELL IS MY NEXT HAWKE GOING TO ROMANCE? Fenris and Merrill have utterly charmed me (seriously, in her post-quest conversation, only the fact that she’d already committed to Isabella kept my Hawke from flirting with her), and I still really want to romance Anders. DECISIONS.

Now, to handle the kidnapped qunari!

You know, I really don’t like Petrice (religious zealots… are not my thing at all), but every time I see her, all I can think is, ‘holy shit she’s attractive.’

holy shit Aveline it’s just a shield. also, Hawke would never sell your husband’s shield, what are you talking about! It’s safely in storage right now, along with all the other not-so great items various party members showed up with.

Missing mother? LILIES? asdfghjkl; HOLY SHIT moment

(I did find Gamlen’s concern for her really cute. Ditto about the fact that they apparently have weekly lunch dates. He’s not entirely a terrible brother, after all. ♥)

I went with Gamlen’s search options because I felt sorry for him / the way he was trying to deny that something bad might have happened, but I half-wish that I’d talked to Gascard— now I’ll never know if he was telling the truth about his sister or not ~~unless I do it in my next playthrough, cough.~~

The way Hawke’s voice sounds so shaky and increasingly desperate as she searches for her mother. >_>

AND THEN THERE WAS A FRANKENSTEIN MOTHER. SO. CREEPY.

This is going to sound terrible, but the way Anders very quickly went, NOPE, SORRY, CAN’T HEAL HER amused me, what with the way he’s been playing miracle worker for Hawke and friends since the Deep Roads.

That being said, Hawke’s last conversation with her mother + the conversation with Gamlen = teary eyes for me.

Isabela trying to comfort Hawke? SO CUTE. She might say that she’s not good with the emotion thing, but she did a pretty decent job, I think. Now I’m wondering how a rivaled character would handle that conversation.

The aftermath of Saemus trying to join the Qun = not pretty. This game is just drowning in sadness now. The poor viscount— I’ve been warming up to him for a while now (it’s hard not to feel sympathy for someone trying to keep a lid on this whole awful situation), and the way he was just so… broken at the end, it hurt to see.

Oh, wow, shit went down fast after that.

Hawke chose to help Isabela, because girlfriend. Sorry, Aveline, Hawke loves you too, but you’re not about to die, so Isabela clearly wins here.

She also gave Isabela the relic, and wow, her shock that Hawke was on her side was… a bit sweet, but mostly depressing.

And then Isabela’s good-bye letter. =(

Now to meet the Arishok! ….Things went bad, fast, there.

Time to run around Kirkwall, and commence in the time-honored tradition of looting during a crisis.

BETHANY! ….does not seem all that happy to see her sister. Though there was a nice, albeit brief, moment of bonding over their mother.

Now I want to know what that urgent Grey Warden business was.

Oh, I like Orsino. I chose the distraction route, and he set things on FIRE. I suspect I might make similar choices if I were to play a mage. ~~What can I say, I imprinted on Dilandau hard as a kid.~~ I was a bit worried that he’d get himself killed, though.

Isabela came back! ♥ ♥ ♥ AND NO ARISHOK, YOU CAN’T HAVE HER.

So, I chose to duel the Arishok, AND THAT BATTLE WAS SO HARD. I used more potions during that battle than I did in the entire game. My strategy basically consisted of stunning him whenever possible, and running away. HOW HONORABLE.

AND SO, Act 2 ends! After an adorable bit of hero-worship on the part of Cassandra, on to Act 3!

Hawke tried to be as neutral as possible in that opening scene, but she ended up siding with Orsino because definitely not on Meredith’s side. Nope, no way. Seriously— ruling for three years? She couldn’t find someone suitable to rule in three freaking years?!

Also, yay the grand cleric— I like her, or at least what I’ve seen of her so far.

Time to check in on what the companions have been doing!

...I… did not expect to walk in on Merrill sobbing and saying that Hawke was right all along.. =( Poor, precious darling. I mean, I’m glad that she seems to be staying away from the eluvian now, but I didn’t want her to be depressed!

Though, I do wonder what triggered this reaction— it was a bit out of the blue, and she didn't really explain it.

In other news, I am utterly predictable, because her mentioning that she thought she saw Mahariel, “the lost warden” in the market made me incredibly happy. (And is also helping to fuel my newest ship, whoops.)

WHICH REMINDS ME. I forgot to mention this in my last post, but Merrill’s been mentioning Mahariel by name quite a bit recently, and… she’s been pronouncing it differently than she did in the banter I mentioned back here. That is, she’s pronouncing it as “ha” now instead of “hay”, and now I don’t know which one is right anymore. @_@

Next up, let’s check on Varric!

Ha, Varric was talking to Anders about stuff that happened in Awakenings. ♥ Though I don’t know what you mean, Anders, “Kittenmarsh” sounds perfectly acceptable.

Something amusing: right before I started this conversation-quest, a couple of the people in the bar talk about how terrible the beer is there. When Hawke asked Varric why Anders was there, though, he tells her it’s because he couldn’t get better beer anywhere else.

After that, Hawke went to talk to her girlfriend. ♥

And that turned out rather melancholy. Poor Isabela. =( I really loved Hawke’s “but I still care about you, and idgaf that you’re thief, etc” mini-speech.

MY HEART I just looked at Isabella’s “the last three years” entry, and apparently, after the Arishok was defeated and the qunari left, Hawke and Isabela spoke, and Isabela told her, "I didn't do it for them. I did it for you. It was always about you." ♥ ♥ ♥

ANDERS. darling, you’re worrying people. And by people, I mean me. And maybe Hawke too, a little bit.

Ahhh, why is Isabela and Merrill’s banter so adorable. ♥ I might ship them— and, in any case, I definitely friend-ship them, if nothing else.

This was quickly followed by another adorable banter where Merrill awkwardly and ineffectively compliments Anders’ coat-cape thing, and Isabela most definitely did not help. =P

I’ve really, really warmed up to Gamlen— the whole “we’re the only family we’ve got left” and “Leandra would be glowing with pride” was so sweet.

Fenris’ sister??? is real???

SHE SOLD HIM OUT! holy shit, what a JERKFACE

Holy shit, Anders. Usually I like him tons, but what he said about Fenris just being “jealous” of his sister = HORRIBLE. THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO BE A JERK.

Hawke decided to encourage Fenris to not kill his sister, mainly because while she does not like said sister, she’s still pretty traumatized by the loss of nearly her whole family, and is not a fan of depleting the ranks in other people’s families.

The player behind this Hawke, however, was more than half-tempted to let Fenris kill her.

SHE IS SUCH A JERKFACE. Seriously, “you got the better end of the bargain” YOU’RE NOT A SLAVE. HE UNDERWENT TERRIBLE THINGS. YOU WERE BETTER OFF.

Wait wait wait an Antivan elf assassin? And a mission titled “murder of crows”? COULD IT BE??!?!?!!?!?

ZEVRAN MY LOVE ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ SO HAPPY TO SEE YOU (though why have your tattoos disappeared???)

His being happy to see Isabela was so cute. ♥ ♥ ♥

ISABELA IS THE BEST.

Hawke: “You know him best, what do you think?”
Isabela: “Oh, I’ve had better.”
Hawke: “...I meant about whether or not we should let him go.”
Isabela: “Oh. Right. I’d let him go.”

I REPEAT: ISABELA IS THE BEST.

Ahh, more mentions of my warden. ♥ Between the backstabbing-guy’s “His Warden isn’t here to protect him” (!!!) and Zevran’s “Why they insist on thinking they can kill people like you and the Warden, I will never know”, I AM A HAPPY CAMPER. And hey, there are his tattoos. For some reason, I didn’t see them earlier.

“Now I’m sure you wish to loot the camp, yes? Talk to me when you’re done.” AND THIS THOUGHTFULNESS IS WHY I LOVE YOU <3

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oo, I think I'd have a hard time with the latter (though I'd read commentary about it with glee). I'm one of those people who have a really hard time being mean in video games.

...I say, as I make notes for a possible aggressive!mage!Hawke playthrough. So maybe Dragon Age is slowly weaning me away from that, haha.

I haven't found anything in the way of pirate!Merrill fics (but I haven't looked very hard, or very recently), so I might just have to write some.

I certainly won't discourage you, cough.

Mass Effect is what finally made me capable of being mean in video games, since I really wanted to see what happened if I played full Renegade (and even then I got a bit soft toward the end of ME1). I still can't be completely awful to anyone on a first playthrough, though, and I never did manage to be mean to Tali. /o\

078 | In which I finish Act 2 of Dragon Age 2, and flail over a cameo made by a certain character <3

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