Dragon Age 2, still not riftFollow

I just started Dragon Age 2, and omg! I love the way Flemeth looks in the game. So bad ***. And the game is so pretty!

Well she looks a hell of a lot better than she did in DA:O. Although I'll admit, seeing old lady cleavage not look like old lady cleavage is kinda weird.

I see Wynne stayed home when you were off getting the Ashes.

She still has that gravely chain-smoker voice too. Sexy.

Anders gets his own healing tree variant. He's actually the game's only healer, if Hawke isn't a Mage.

Fenris makes a viable dps-based tank, if you either double up on healers or make a more thorough use of CC. Doesn't matter on the lower difficulties though.

Aveline can become super resilient if you want her to be. But, unlike Fenris, she has very limited AoE (Fenris' greatsword hits enemies in an arc, and he'll get AoE skills).

Sebastian and Varric are solid characters, and more or less interchangeable. Good single target damage and AoE. Both much better, strategically, than Isabela is. She's very meh, in my opinion.

Merrill is the odd one. She's a Mage, but she can't heal. Unlike Anders, she gets access to Entropy. And she uses Blood Magic. She can be, easily, the sturdiest character in the group. But I generally find her lacking if you don't intend to make good use of cross-class combos or CC.

They did away with armor customization so they could give companions more distinct looks and eliminate that apsect of micromanagement. I generally approved of the change, though there were definitely times I missed the old system. Still, the benched companions were generally just wearing some random piece of armor so they stayed clothed. Was always annoying at the final battle, when I'd have to fight with pitiful gear.

I just started playing DA2 last night, and I have to echo Jophiel on this one. My mental commentary so far has been:

"Man, I suck at this combat."

"Templars can get married?? I seem to recall hearing they couldn't. That whole issue with the desire demon and the templar in the Circle Tower?"

"Bye Sis. I hardly knew you. Literally."

"WHAT THE F*CK DID THEY DO TO FLEMETH!?"


So far it seems ok; feels very much like a Dragon Age game. I don't like Flemeth's make-over. I prefer the semi-rambling snarky hunch-backed crone in the woods to the "Whoosh, I'm a dragon and my hair requires three tubes of gel to stay like this!" look.

Oh, and I fanwanked away the Flemeth changes by deciding she was hiding in the swamp, and now she's her true form.

Wait til you see Qunari.

I heard they have horns now and Sten was supposedly "different" for not having them. Of course, neither did any of the many Qunari mercenaries you fought or the Qunari merchant in Awakening. Must be a pretty common recessive gene.

I'll fanwank away Flemeth by deciding my DA:O character had to kill her for crimes against fashion and good taste.

Edited, May 7th 2012 8:00am by Jophiel

I recall reading that it was a retcon. The DA wiki says it was intended but left out because it interfered with Sten wearing a helmet. The Codex entry for Sten doesn't mention him being special this way and the entry for Qunari starts with......which would seem the time to say "Oh, and they have horns." None of Sten's dialogue mentions it either. I think they just skipped the horn idea entirely in DA:O and retconned the idea back into DA2.


Regardless of whether she stays dead, I killed her and have the screen shots with her corpse to prove it

Edited, May 7th 2012 10:09am by Jophiel

The mirror has a deeper place in the plot (well, not THAT mirror, necessarily), but it doesn't come in until Witch Hunt and DA2. Merrill, that keeper in the Dalish camp, is one of Hawke's companions in the second game.

Witch Hunt should be sufficient, for the moment at least.

If you bought the same package off of Amazon as X and I, then you jsut need to patch the game and it'll give you those for free*.







*Technically, you paid for it with your $10 purchase of the game