31 Dorkspawn || Dragon Age Series Wrap-Up

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
So we're both wearing red to clearly commemorate this event.

(00:06):
We're both wearing red to commemorate the historically red video game covers associated
with the Dragon Age series.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it.
And give thanks to Kirkwall and to represent the tainted blood drunk by Earth's mightiest

(00:35):
heroes, the Grey Wardens.
Yeah.
And red lyrium, or occasionally angry lyrium.
Highly red lyrium.
Oh, hey gang, count it.
Under a minute before Dylan had to attack the Veil Guard.
We're not even talking about the Veil Guard today.
No, we're not.

(00:55):
We're talking about Dragon Age.
The whole series.
The whole series.
We're wrapping it up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's exciting.
It's exciting.
I'm a little bit nervous that I'm going to cry.
It is very...
Yeah.
It is sad.
By the way, I have a simply spiked lemonade.

(01:15):
What are you drinking?
I have wine.
Let's have a toast.
Just to us in general.
We set out to have a specific goal of completing all of the Dragon Age games for the Veil Guard
and then playing through the Veil Guard.
And we're here together, you, my best friend in the whole world.

(01:41):
I'm so stupid honored.
I know I've already done this with The Trespasser, but I still am so stupid honored because now
it's officially what would be the end of this podcast if we didn't have so much fun finding
an excuse to talk to each other every week and decide, oh, well, let's just keep doing

(02:02):
this and play Mass Effect afterward.
And you know what is the most special bit about the fact that we are no longer going
to be able to play any Dragon Age games?
What?
We can now talk about Dragon Age casually to each other.
Whenever we want.
A thing that we haven't allowed ourselves to do at all.
And it has been actual hell for me because we start talking and then we say, can't talk

(02:28):
about it.
We have to wait until our opinions are content.
And unfortunately, we opened up our call today with me saying, hey, how you feeling about
Mass Effect?
Oh, darn, we can't talk about it.
We can't talk about it because I have already played the prologue.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I love you very much.

(02:49):
I love you so much.
The thing that I think hit me really hard was today I was listening to the episode we
just posted, which is the last one.
And realizing that you were just excited about this series.

(03:13):
You were excited about my favorite game.
Which is just like, it's so magical to be like, hey, this is a thing I've been obsessed
with for such a long time.
Such a long time.
I've gone through so many stages of obsessed with it.

(03:34):
I've written fan work and I've done exchanges and fundraisers centered around this game.
I've just lived so many lives within this series.

(03:56):
I have so many wardens.
I have so many champions.
I have so many inquisitors that are all very, very real and important to me.
And then to bring this to you and show it to you and not only have you actually play
it, but think about it with me and talk about it with me and buy in.

(04:23):
It's just like, that's why this friendship is so special.
Because you and I care about the things that are important to each other.
This was such a prime example of that.
I just love you so much and I can't believe that we did this and we completed it and that

(04:49):
we get to now turn the tables a little bit.
And I get to play something that I've never played before and I'm really nervous and excited.
Yeah, yeah.
Beautiful.
All right.
Cheers.
Clink.
Love you.
Yeah.
So I got a little cringe in our last one, which I know, which I just got so excited

(05:11):
about my Hawk Dragon Age fan fiction.
Your fan fiction.
Yeah.
Which I would read.
Yeah.
That's the coolest shit in the world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
I mean, the Hawk going to kill Solus is best shit ever.
Right.
So this is fun now because now we don't necessarily have like a thing to talk about.

(05:37):
This is just us talking about Dragon Age.
About Dragon Age the series.
Yeah.
About Dragon Age.
About Dragon Age series as a whole.
So I do have, I have a question, I think.
Okay.
Okay.
So if you could have one NPC either come, you know, if you had one NPC come back in

(06:00):
a different game and be like a companion, who would you pick?
Or just come back and be like a kind of integral part of a team?
Yes.
There, so I have a couple of these.

(06:21):
I get why he wasn't an option to bring back.
I think it probably would have been pretty complicated given the amount of different
endings he can have.
I always wanted there to be a Zevran Arani like quest officially, not a war table thing,

(06:42):
but like a thing in Inquisition where we could go and like interact with the crows, especially
because we work with house Antiva so much throughout Inquisition.
I think like ending that possibly with a quest with him would have been really, really strong.

(07:14):
I definitely wish that, I appreciate whatever they were trying to do with the shadow dragons
or whatever.
If Veilguard had been a Dragon Age game, I think that Dorian and Maveris should have
been like two of your advisor kind of stand-ins.

(07:39):
They should have been like people I was going to all the time.
In fact, I would have taken that over seeing the Inquisitor at all.
Like let the Inquisitor maybe show up at the end, keep the concept of the letters where
the Inquisitor is helping the south while you fight for the north.

(08:07):
But here in the north, Dorian and Maveris Talani are right here and Dorian has worked
with the Inquisition, knows Solas.
Maveris and him have fought corruption in Tevinter before and are currently doing so.

(08:28):
They make so much sense and there would be so much juice there.
So I wanted that a lot.
And Morgan's kid, I wanted more.
I liked that there was the possibility for him to appear in Inquisition and for you to
get that whole scene.

(08:50):
I thought that was brilliant.
I actually don't know if I need a whole thing with him, but I would at least love to know
where he's at or like what's going on with that.
Yeah, that would be cool.
I'd like that.
I really, I really, man, I'd love him so much just to kind of be around in any context.

(09:10):
I just think he's fucking, what a cool idea of a character.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mine is.
Yeah, what's yours?
So mine's a deep pull of a guy who I love so much from origins.
God, what's his name?

(09:32):
I'm actually going to, where's my book?
Here it is.
By the way, for people who are actually listening and watching, this is my notebook.
This notebook, I had filled really very little pages.
Yeah, I filled this many pages.

(09:53):
That's a big plastic bit.
This many pages about not even a tenth of this book with nothing.
And then every single other page is every piece, every thought I've ever had about Dragon
Age is on these pages.
Yeah.

(10:14):
Yeah, it's very fucking good.
I have literally, I came to the end of the book at the end of the Veil Guard.
God, that's perfect.
Absolutely perfectly.
And I'm just, oh, here we go.
Alienage.
This is all the way back in Origins.
Otto.
Guy called Otto.

(10:35):
Oh, Sir Otto.
Yeah.
Sir Otto in.
Sir Otto in Origins is, for people who aren't aware, is a nearly blind templar who can only
see like magic and like kind of like faint essence in people.

(10:59):
And he's hunting a bunch of blood mages in the, in an orphanage in the alienage.
And he dies at the end of this quest, but he's so cool.
He's so sick.
Just like a nearly blind, nearly blind templar who is hunting mages and can see mages through

(11:23):
his templar training is something that I, if not him, I wish they touched on again.
Oh, heavens.
Bringing back.
That would be the coolest thing in the world.
I think actually that's a possibly more interesting question.
What concepts kind of got brought up in earlier games that you wish got brought back more?

(11:43):
Like that as a concept, like templars being able to like, to physically see and feel.
It's not even a concept, but the like Legion of the Dead, we had a companion in Awakening
who was Legion of the Dead, the dwarf group.

(12:05):
And I wanted maybe not even her, but that group to make more of an appearance.
Obviously, obviously I wanted the architects to be an Inmore.
Of course.
Yeah.
I wanted so bad for sentient community of Darkspawn to be a thing in these later games.

(12:32):
Because there was a community of Darkspawn that had commerce and like currency and an
understanding of patches.
I heard parkour out.
I know.
I got to check on this damn ass cat.
Cat hates Dragon Age, apparently.

(12:54):
So yes.
So the architect, obviously, and also with the sentient Darkspawn, I was thinking like
the original trilogy at least, like wants to play with this like gray morality.
Yeah.
Especially around the concept of the Wardens.
You want to really test the morality of the Wardens?

(13:16):
Do a plot line where they have sentience arises in the Darkspawn.
Because it's a whole question of like how far does that sentience go?
Do they have family units?
Do they have like community?

(13:39):
Clearly Dragon Age franchise is good at making different cultures and how different groups
work that isn't like your standard familial unit.
And I would love to have them take a crack at.
It is a group of like dead that it's like, do you remember who you were?

(14:05):
Like this body, the shell, do you remember?
Do you remember?
Like I don't know.
There's just so much stuff that could be really cool in asking those questions.
And it's a thing where it's like, I don't know.

(14:27):
It's one of the main things I wanted in the Veil Guard is like, it's been long enough
for it.
I mean, Darkspawn started creating community in what?
Six months?
Yeah.
Like, I mean, about a year and a half is when the architects started doing the stuff.
So about a year and a half they started, you know, again, they were trading with other

(14:50):
with like just a human guy who...
And that's just so cool.
And I would have loved that to be pushed more.
They went different angles with things.
And I know that, you know, I know that's obviously I love that and that's fine.

(15:10):
And you're going to have Darkspawn in all of them because there's such a huge threat
in the world and you don't really have time to tell those stories.
But I feel like you could.
That's just what I wanted.
I feel like you could.
Yeah, I feel like you absolutely could.
You know, like you wrestle with, so like, let's say they don't, you know, the architect

(15:33):
or someone else carries on the architect's work, does this again, the Darkspawn start
to rebuild a sentient population.
And then let's say a bigger threat than the Fade Rifts happens.

(15:56):
We'll pretend that the plot of Veilguard felt like a bigger threat than the Fade Rifts.
But whatever it is, bigger threat is happening.
And the sentient Darkspawn are offering to help.
And it's them or the Wardens that you get to choose between.

(16:18):
That would be fucking crazy.
That would be especially in a story like the Veilguard where it's like, let's take it as
true lore.
There are these old Elven gods that have got this like worse version of the Blight.
And that's what the Darkspawn's like bargaining chip is.
It's like that's like, they can't hurt us with the Blight.

(16:39):
They can't.
They can't.
We've already got it.
We can't do it.
We can.
And you know what?
That would be a fucking cool end to Davrin's story is that last mission where it's like,
oh, people are having the calling and then the gloomhowler is like adapting them to do
that.
Like, you know, adapt them to create a new Weiss out is it's just a bunch of sentient

(17:02):
Darkspawn and Grey Wardens who get the calling can die killing Darkspawn or go and move into
what is essentially a retirement home for Grey Wardens where it's like, oh, they have
fully lost their mind to the Blight and they fight for Darkspawn now.
But I mean, they're not raving mad like we've seen Wardens with the calling before.

(17:24):
It's like they, the architect or whoever has somehow managed to make them people again.
And it's like, oh, but they're not them.
Because they are now this new creature that is a Darkspawn.
So the Grey Warden version of themselves is dead.
Whoever that person was in life is, is, has, has deceased.

(17:45):
Because then you can also open up the fact of like, yeah, but justice in Awakening had
the same thing where the body of them is dead and now it's a new person that's living in
their body.
And is that fine?
Because it's like, well, you died.
You're not using the body anymore.
It's a whole.
It's a thing that I just think would be a cool fucking, it would be a cool story.

(18:05):
That would be amazing.
And that would be a real interesting conflict.
It would be a cap to like this thing we've been wrestling with, which are the Wardens
necessary?
Are the Wardens a, like a net good?
And like, the answer always comes down to a reluctant yes, because the Darkspawn are

(18:27):
this unavoidable evil.
Yeah.
And that happens when there's a cure and when there's, you know, a, and then that follows
the theme of Inquisition, which is like, let it, understanding when to let go of the power
that you came into.
Like you, like you came into this power for a reason.

(18:51):
Now that reason is gone.
You could have, you could have a fun, interesting thing where you, if, you know, we wanted to
do what Dragon Age loves, which is making new factions, we, you could make a new faction
of like, there is a group of like high danger criminals and their thing is, oh, we just,

(19:12):
we have a Grey Warden on staff and when we get caught doing our thing, we get conscripted
so we don't die.
And if the Grey Wardens are now being forced to disband because Darkspawn are no longer
a threat, then our whole job is going to be wrecked.
So we actually don't want any Darkspawn to have any like, we don't want people to see

(19:33):
the Darkspawn as good, so we're going to go against them.
And it's a whole like weird question of how do people in the world like interact with
the fact that demons are fine now and they just have a brain.
Not demons, but you know what I mean.
Demons in the current Earth context of like, you know, this zombies, zombies can think
and feel, I just think it'd be sick.

(19:57):
I think that'd be a really cool, weird fucking story.
Yeah.
I also want to hear from Justice slash Vengeance again.
I would love to hear from Justice slash Vengeance.
I would love a thing which I think, I understand why, but is, I don't know.
I'd love to see Anders again.

(20:17):
I just kind of want to know, because the end of Two and the inciting, not the inciting
incident but one of the main conflicts of Inquisition is caused by him.
How does he feel about that?
Like what is he fucking doing?
If he's alive, like what is he fucking doing?

(20:40):
What is he doing?
Did he bomb one church, incite a whole war and then just be like, I'm going to dip.
No, he's obviously fighting for the mages.
It's wild to me that we didn't see him.
I mean, I guess I could be forgetting something, but I haven't, I don't recall any like codex
drops that like say anything about where he is at.

(21:05):
I mean, even in Inquisition, my Hulk romanced him and then Hulk was just like, yeah, I just
kind of left.
I left Anders because I didn't want to worry him.
Or like, no, I didn't want to bring Anders because then people are going to kill him,
I think was the reason why.
Yeah, that was it.
Yeah.
Which reasonable, I guess.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah.

(21:26):
But then like, what's he up to?
What's he doing?
What's he fucking up to?
Literally.
I'm just reading Dragon Age Inquisitions, like no on Anders.
Apparently, if Hulk survives and travels to Weissout, Varric says that Anders will reunite

(21:47):
with them if justice hasn't driven them mad or he hasn't been killed.
Which again is a thing of like, I mean, Anders went to Weissout?
Like that's, that feels crazy.
Like, I don't know.
There's like so much stuff where it's like, I just want to see what happened to this guy.
Like almost more so than other companions, I feel like we have to know who one of the

(22:11):
lead villains of Dragon Age 2 is doing considering they were a companion.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I agree.
He's just great.
I love it.
I also, I was thinking about this.
So like the Manfred plotline and like basically a lot of the Navarin mortality plotline in

(22:33):
Veilguard was interesting, but something about it was like not, something about it had like
a very like weird, doesn't fit vibe, you know, in the world to me.
Not Emmerich's personal story.

(22:54):
I liked that, but specifically the thing where wisps are just like constantly taking over
dead bodies and piloting them.
So in Navarin culture, so here's what I did.
I got out my World of Thedas book and I started rereading it today.

(23:14):
And the thing about it is that in Navarin culture, they don't burn the bodies of their
dead like everybody else in Thedas does.
They instead mummify them.
And the reason they do that is because it is believed, which is very different than

(23:37):
it is true that.
It is believed that when a person passes on and their soul leaves to cross into the fade,
it deplaces a spirit that's already there.
And that spirit gets sent back in like the form, in like a shapeless form and they don't

(23:59):
have anything.
And so the bodies are there in the event that a soul gets displaced and has nowhere to go
and then they can be in.
Okay.
That's what they're there.
So that's like the belief system of Navara.
I feel like it's a little less interesting to make it like, oh, that's just true and

(24:24):
that's what's happening.
Instead of like, yeah, of course.
Sure, like it's not a theory that these people believe.
It's not a theory or a belief.
Yeah.
They're just always displaced and that's what wisps are.
Wisps are around because every time someone dies, a soul gets knocked out of the fade
and has nowhere to go.

(24:46):
And so they hop into whatever corpse is nearby and that's what's creating like undead and
stuff like that, which like is fine.
But there were more interesting themes with the story of Cole, which I think is like one
of my all time favorite characters in the series.

(25:08):
Favorite concept, favorite story is that the, that happened.
The issue of Cole, the spirit taking over Cole, the human's body happened in a moment
of such dire desperation and was a anomaly event.

(25:35):
This was a huge deal for that to happen and happened out of like an immense amount of
compassion mixed with an immense amount of fear.
Cole the spirit was so compassionate and Lee worried about Cole, the human and Cole, the
spirit was so desperate for help that it created this circumstance where Cole, the human let

(25:58):
Cole the spirit take him over.
And I just, I want there to be more importance around like that as a concept.
Like I would love to, you know, like with something like if they wanted to give me a
story like Manfred's, instead of it just being like this wisp of curiosity hopped in here

(26:25):
and now this is our pet.
Like what was this spirit so desperately curious about?
Yeah.
And why this body?
Yeah.
You know, like, and like to give us like a more, I just like want, I want to know more

(26:45):
about that concept and the implications of it and like what it takes for a, cause in
all other instances too, we've always been told that like when a spirit leaves the fade
and is twisted into something other than it's, it twists it into something other than its

(27:06):
purpose and that is what turns it into a demon.
And that didn't happen with Cole because compassion was jumped into Cole in an act of compassion
and was then allowed to stay who he was.

(27:26):
Yeah.
And so like, I just, I just want more of, I want more from that whole concept of like
spirits who defy the rule that they have hopped out of the fade and into the real world, but
they didn't get twisted and here's why they didn't get turned into demons.

(27:50):
Here's why.
And that's something that I would love, love, would love to see more of.
There's a little bit of a lot of the stories in the Veil Guard is it's like, we talked
about this in our Act 3 conversation of like, they just kind of introduce something and

(28:15):
then immediately solve it where it's like, there are most, some of the stories I would
like to have just sat with for a while.
Like I sat with it and kind of gone, like kind of being like, okay, but what is that?
Like what are we doing?
Yeah.
And you know, we talked about Emmerich's, bar none the best of the companion quests,

(28:38):
but still it's like, I would have liked to talk to him more about what being a Lich entails,
what like, you know, talk to him about him and you know, Johanna's kind of history and
past and I would have liked to, I would like to ask Daverin like what his thoughts were

(29:05):
on giving the griffins back to the Grey Wardens versus releasing them in the wild.
Yeah, I would love his opinion on that.
Yeah.
And that's the thing is like, in other Dragon Age games, specifically, specifically Inquisition
actually, a lot of the decisions, the big decisions, you can ask a relevant companion

(29:28):
member if you have them with you, just like, what do you think about this?
And then they'll suggest something and then you just have like someone's opinion or even
in most other Dragon Age games, people will pitch like one line pitch their like, I actually
don't think this is a good idea, by the way, or just like, oh, we should definitely do

(29:49):
that.
But it's a thing in this where you're just kind of asked, hey, what should we do?
And I would have liked the relevant party member who I'm speaking to be like, actually,
I love the Grey Wardens, but I don't think they should get the griffins or like, oh,
hey, I don't I think that this is like, you know, what we were talking about when you

(30:11):
said, I actually don't think that we should put this like, new breed of animal into war,
immediately, as soon as they're like, refound, we should let them be free.
And it's like, I would have, it's like, if I had Tarsh with me, they would have said,

(30:32):
yeah, maybe we don't give them to maybe we don't give this this this new fresh animal
that's so critically endangered, we can count on one hand, how many are alive to a group
of people who are just about to fight a war.
And stuff like that, I would have liked to have talked to them more about stuff.
I do.

(30:52):
I also I thought of another one that I in general would have liked to see have been
in any of the other games.
The Sylvans.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Those sentient trees.
Like, yeah, that we see in Origins.
Oh my god, give me the rhyming tree back.

(31:13):
I love that guy.
Yeah, but there were like a bunch of them that attacked us, too.
So there's like a there's something out there in the Kokori wilds.
There's trees out there that are the trees.
I want to know what the fuck happened to those werewolf elves.
Oh my god.
What I would give what I wouldn't give for the best mission in in Origins, one of the

(31:36):
best missions in one of them.
Yeah.
What I wouldn't give to to just be like, what happened to those guys, actually?
Whatever happened to those guys?
Yeah.
Oh my god, that'd be incredible.
Yeah.
Truly.
Yeah.
Um, do you have all right.
Favorite favorite mission from Origins?

(31:58):
One second, I gotta go.
I gotta consult my notes.
Consult your notes.
Cat just jumped up at me.
Yeah.
All right, are we allowing awakening?
Is awakening involved in the.
Yes, babe.
All anything that we did on this show is included.

(32:20):
In Origins, though.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Origins.
There we go.
Oh, I mean.
OK, I can personally appreciate that that that Ozima is great.

(32:43):
I was it was it was a tad too many politics in a world that I didn't belong.
So I don't think that's it.
But I do want to give it honorable mention as it's it's a genuinely very good quest.
And I figured it would.
And I wanted to just like couch.
Yeah.
I loved of course, I loved the Brazilian forest.

(33:06):
I thought it was so peak.
Damn.
I mean, it it might be like.
It might be like the final mission against the archdemon is so excitingly.
That whole final mission is really strong with all of your teams coming together.

(33:28):
Yeah.
And it's the world coming together.
The gang and you get that new warden who's like, hey, I should tell you, you're going
to die, right?
Duncan told you that.
And you're like, oh, for fuck's sake.
I'm like, no, he didn't.
No, of course he didn't.
He was kind of desperate.
He didn't tell us fucking anything, actually.

(33:51):
And then and then like him dying in a really cool way was fun.
Everything.
And it's just the whole thing.
The allies coming and like the counter showing you your allies as they die.
And like you're moving through the city.
Yeah.
It's a full war.
It's cool.

(34:11):
It's like a cool moment.
And having to make like big decisions right beforehand that like once you make them, like
you're not you don't know what the repercussions are going to be until you get out of this.
And it's just like.
Yeah, it's great.
I am with you on that.
I really did like it.
I mean, I love the Temple of Sacred Ashes, but I can't really forgive that one puzzle

(34:35):
where you have to build the bridge.
Yeah.
So it does knock it off.
I do like the deep roads and I really like Branca.
But again, the first part of the deep roads, it's tough for me to forgive it.
It's it's.
Yeah.
It's it's a toughie.
I mean, I fucking loved literally all of Awakening.

(34:55):
I know that you didn't because we talked about this the other day.
I think off, Mike, but you were like that you just didn't.
It just this time around, it just didn't work.
Well, it didn't work because I was I had to play a new character that I had no connection
to because my warden died.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that was just like kind of a rough start to it.

(35:15):
Yeah.
No, it's got to be the Brazilian forest because in that.
You get the sylvans beforehand, you get the hermit who like builds you a backstory beforehand.
Yeah.
There's cool, weird werewolf stuff.
And it's a I know that we talked about this phrase, but I think it is a genuine decision

(35:36):
where you can side with the other team.
And I'd be like, yeah, yeah, it's a good, morally brave choice.
Yeah.
It's got a lot of cool, weird fucking law.
Yeah, you get Elf lore.
I can imagine if you're a Dalish elf warden, that it's so crazy to come back to your this

(35:57):
your crew.
Right.
Is that am I right in saying that that's your team or is your team?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can imagine it's fucking crazy being like, wait, what do you mean?
There's a bunch of werewolves knocking around my old camp and then trying to deal with it.
I think that's so fun.
What do you mean?
My keeper has been lying to me my entire life that like it's not just like this random guy

(36:18):
lied to his people.
You got lied to in that case.
Yeah.
Being an elf.
And you also learn a lot about elves and Tevinter.
And like the fact that's where it's like, oh, you know, elves used to be immortal and
then Tevinter Magist just kind of stole that from us.
And it's like, oh shit, that's crazy.
And it's like everything is just so there's like a bunch of fun tiny quests.

(36:40):
You can get two people like shacked up there and then you get win backstory.
Possibly.
You can get win backstory.
But there's just a lot of really cool things that I think is so fun.
It's got to be that.
And it's gutting that we don't revisit it because it's so good.

(37:03):
But maybe it's so good because it's contained.
Because it's so, so low and singular.
Like although I want to go back and check it, check up on them.
It's like, no, you did it.
It's solved.
You.
It is solved.
But you know what?
Made them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you know what?

(37:24):
That clan, maybe we could, we could, you know, find out what happened to them.
That's not the same clan that Merrill is at that potentially gets destroyed.
Because Merrill gets sent from that camp to go to the one she's in in two because she
develops magic and there's too many mages in the, in the same camp.

(37:48):
So that clan is around.
Possibly kicking around.
Yeah.
So like you could, you could meet them again.
Like and maybe there's a possibility for like that spirit, that spirit of the forest that
had like saved all of those, you know, people and like turned them all into werewolves.

(38:16):
I don't know.
There's a lot of stuff that would be cool to see again.
Lots.
Yeah.
No, I, I know.
It's just, I don't know.
I think that's, that's it with, I don't want to say it's that with a bullet because, you
know, I, man did I love almost all of Origins.
But it's good.

(38:37):
And yours is Ozomar.
Ozomar.
Totatip.
Whole thing.
It's great.
Yeah.
That's, that's the dwarf origin, whether it's noble or, or commoner.
You can't beat it.
That's the canon run to me.

(38:58):
I believe you.
I agree to be honest.
It's so strong.
The lore drops are constant.
The horror of it, the buildup to the broodmother, the tragedy of the broodmother, having to

(39:19):
fight the broodmother knowing that the broodmother is a victim and a, and a tragedy like.
Oh my God.
And you have the quest where that woman's son is being trapped in the deep roads and
you go and you find to have gone insane.
And if you talk about his mom too much, she tries to kill you because he doesn't want
to hear about it.

(39:39):
Yeah.
Because he's, he's had to eat darkspawn to survive.
And so he's got like a weird version of the blight.
Yeah.
Where like he's got, yeah.
It's like, oh, it's so good.
And then the, the proving and the orzammar politics and like learning that like orzammar.

(40:03):
So like, it's like, this game has kind of lost its way a little bit in, in showcasing
like, cause like the dwarves are also like a very wealthy culture to the point where
orzammar is a cast society.

(40:25):
Yeah.
Like the dwarves are not oppressed.
They're oppressing each other.
They're, they're, they're doing, they're doing an oppression.
Yeah.
And like, and we could have had development in that.
And we really haven't, we, we hear a little bit about it into, we hear a little bit about

(40:49):
it in Inquisition, but we don't really deep dive back in to what's become of dwarven politics
in a way that we get to see in the games necessarily.
And I would, I would love that.
Cause I just think that that, that whole, that whole sequence start to finish is brilliant.

(41:11):
I think that's my favorite.
All right.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Favorite mission in two.
This is tough.
Felicia Day's big day out.
I love Felicia Day's big day out.
I'm never going to, I'm never going to not love Felicia Day's big day out.
I'm trying to pick something that isn't Felicia Day's big day out.
So it's tough.
Yeah.

(41:31):
No, Felicia Day's big day out.
Dragon Age II's, all of Dragon Age II's missions come with the hell of its combat.
That's very true.
Yes.
So for me, I think it's probably a moment, it'll have to be a moment where it's like
the game really like got me and it's either the first mission in the deep roads where

(42:00):
you're going.
Like the first mission at the end of each, sorry, the last mission at the end of each
act is so great.
Like the first one where you're going through the deep roads is great.
The Quenari storming Kirkwall is really great.
And also I think the mage Templar war is also really good.

(42:24):
Oh yeah, all good.
There are like slight negatives in them all.
I know it, I think it has to be the final one.
Just for the, man, but then Isabella leaving and then not knowing if she's going to come
back and then her coming back in the final moments is really fucking sick.

(42:48):
But then also it's like the reason why I think I'm picking act three, the final mission act
three is because it's like everyone drawing lines in the sand and it's like regardless,
like through everything that you've been through with every single member of your party with
them saying, oh, I'm not on your side though.

(43:09):
Like I'm not teaming up with you here.
I'm actually going to go do this.
And it's like, no, and it's like, oh, I need your other companion to be executed in front
of me right now or I'm leaving and I'm going to come back with an army and kill him is
so crazy.
Like there's so much stuff that's like so it breaks.

(43:30):
It breaks like convention of a party game because everyone decides I'm not on your side
though because everyone is like kind of it brings to fruition.
Everyone's like hard beliefs and then it forces you as Hawk to be like, but what's your belief?
Like what, like your belief, like in what side of this war are you fighting?

(43:51):
And it's just, it's crazy.
It was kind of a moment where I really loved the story of two.
But I think that moment is when I was like, oh, this is the bet.
This is my favorite of them is them saying like, no, you have to, there is no good ending.

(44:14):
You're not going to, you're not going to please everyone.
You're like, your friends are going to leave.
Your friends are going to die.
Your friends are going to side against you.
And it's just like, it's like the final gut punch of who Hawk is of Hawk just doesn't
win ever.
Hawk's whole life is losing and standing up again anyway.

(44:37):
And the final mission really like hard solidifies that in.
Yeah, but then again, seeing people like, so you side with the Templars, Anders stands
against you.
Sebastian asks you to kill Anders.

(44:58):
Everyone is asking you to kill Anders.
People ask you to kill Anders and then Anders' best friends are like, I think you should
fucking kill him actually.
That's this is insane what he's doing.
And then having moments where it's like Varric is like, I don't care what side we fight on,
I'm fighting with you.
And Isabella is like, I don't care what side we fight on, I'm fighting with you, Hawk.

(45:19):
Like whatever side you're on, I'm on as well.
And like shit like that.
A mix of that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like those two saying that and also like your sibling, not even your sibling is doing
that.
Your sibling's like, no, I'm siding with these guys.
If you don't side with me, then you're my enemy.
And then having like, and then like everyone breaking up and then having someone be like,

(45:42):
no, I'm with you actually.
Fuck these people.
Like, I don't care.
I'll do horrific things for you because you've done horrific things for me and we're best
friends.
It's like, this is the crew.
Like this is my team.
You know what I mean?
And I just fucking I love that crew so much.
And that story is fucking sick.
And I so it must it has to be like the final, the final like mission and a few missions

(46:05):
or whatever of yeah.
That's just mine.
Similar reasoning, like similar vibes about like how it really like speak spoke about
what Hawks story is and what Hawks character is.
But the mission where we have to kill the reanimated corpse that's wearing our mother's
face.

(46:26):
I think that that is always one that I I I always am dreading it in a positive way because
I know it's going to it's going to upset me.
It's going to scare me and it's going to and it's going to like make me feel things because
this is like, OK, this is the last thing that Hawk has lost.

(46:49):
And yeah, now you've got a you've got a house.
Yeah, great.
You've got money now.
Great.
Your family is gone.
Your sister is either dead or locked up in essentially a lifelong prison.
Your brother is either dead or a fucking cop.

(47:14):
Like you're you're like you're you're in a you're your uncle abandoned you and your entire
family.
You had to do crime to get anything.
And now you've inherited the family home.
But mom's dead and you had to kill her.

(47:38):
And and it's that whole that whole thing.
And even so it was like the serial killer quest starts in Act one and your mom dies
close to the end of Act two, I think.
And it's like you had the chance to stop this, but you didn't like another like weird gut
punch of like, hey, you know that guy who you've been hunting and failed to do so.

(47:58):
He just so happened to pick and kill your mom.
Yeah, man.
He's great.
It's just bad.
Yeah, yeah, it's bad.
And then that also triggers the moment where all of your companions come back and visit
you at your home and come and check on you, which is also like such a it also defines

(48:25):
that this is not like a random team of people.
These these origins and to our found family stories, Inquisition and Veil Guard are not.
Oh, yeah.
To is you have no one.
Your family either abandoned you died some amalgamation of the two.

(48:48):
You have nothing.
All of your people.
They also have nothing and no one.
Merrick's brother turned on him and then went and died.
Yeah, Merrick's whole team.
Yeah.
And so you lose everything.

(49:12):
You go back home.
People come in and check on you.
These people.
It's you know, these random people that you've met over the last couple of years.
Yeah, this this group of some of the worst people you've ever met.
Some of the just truly most dreadful people on our truly just dog shit.

(49:32):
People are just the best and so good.
The best.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I fucking love that game.
Yeah.
So that's it for me.
All right.
Best mission in Inquisition.
It's got to be either Wicked Eyes, Wicked Hearts or or in Hushed Whispers like jump to

(50:00):
you know what?
It's in Hushed Whispers.
If I'm to think of like it's mission three and is so stupidly good.
You travel you time travel a year into the future and find that everything is wrecked
because you weren't there specifically.
And it's like oh I have to win.

(50:23):
And then you see all of you like you see a bunch of your old companions who are scarred,
tortured, burned and don't want to talk about it.
Especially like Lilliana's reaction of like it's pointless me talking.
It happened.
You're here and I'm going to die because you're going to go back in time and make it so I
don't exist.

(50:43):
So what's the point of me telling you what happened to me?
Because it's not even like I die and I can have a funeral.
I'm not going to exist in a few hours.
And acknowledging something that very few like time travel and like like kind of shows
acknowledge to me which is like yeah if you end this timeline we don't live.

(51:06):
The versions of us that have been created we die.
We cease to exist.
So and you are talking to me right now like this is make believe.
We actually lived this last year.
Like we experienced it.
So stop fucking talking to me.
It's annoying.
Like I don't want to hear you talk to me in hypotheticals.

(51:26):
And that like anger that she has in the fact that you try to ask her what happened is great.
And it shows like it's just so good of like who Liliana is is that she's so smart that
she doesn't need explain she doesn't need it explaining.
She's already figured it out.
She doesn't need to comfort her.
She with a year of torture which she withstood years of torture back with margin.

(51:54):
Yeah.
Back back before with her old mentor.
And she had to do it again.
And she.
Yeah.
And she just did it.
She kept her goddamn mouth shut and she waited till the moment was right to kill those motherfuckers
and then she did that because Liliana is my wife.
The fucking coolest woman in the world.

(52:16):
Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
I actually will just kind of honorable mention saying champions of the just I hadn't played
it in years until we did this play through and I did that one and I'm really glad I did
because it really is a great quest also in hushed whispers is going to still win as my

(52:39):
as my number one for Inquisition.
Yeah.
But but champions of the just is really strong to.
Yeah.
I mean it's like people talking to you whispering to you and like fighting for you in your own

(53:01):
mind that you are trapped in like you are being fought over essentially by two spirits.
Yeah.
One that has bad intentions.
Yeah.
One that is a spirit of compassion like fight like fighting for you.
It also I think in a way that is a little bit more intense than in hushed whisper whispers

(53:25):
it does give you a lot of like early seeds of like a lot of people are trusting you with
really big decisions and you are going to become a monster when I get hold of you when
I when when I take over we're going to use you to take over the world.

(53:45):
You're going to lock up Josephine in prison for trying to keep you on a path of diplomacy.
We're going to where you know like we're going to have the Iron Bull studied like we're going
to do all this.
We're going to imprison almost all of Thedas will subjugate them.
Sure we'll close the breach I'm sure but we'll but we'll get a lot of power in the meantime.

(54:08):
Yeah.
And it has.
Yeah it's really it's really really strong still in hushed whispers though.
And also as a as a frequent Dorian Mancer there's nothing better than that as an introductory
quest and the first flirt option that you get afterwards with him is there's no one

(54:35):
I'd rather be stranded in time with.
Yeah.
Oh god.
It's fucking good.
It's good.
It's so fucking good.
It's good.
Yeah.
No it's fucking sick.
It's so good.
Yeah.
What's the hardest choice do you think because I know what mine is.
This is in the franchise as well.

(54:55):
I think I know what it is.
I think I know what it is.
We can also workshop.
I have two answers.
I have a funny one and a serious one.
Okay.
Do funny first.
Is what to name the dog.
It's very tough.

(55:15):
Barkspawn every time.
But name it.
Here's the thing naming the dog in two.
Specific.
I always name my dog in origin.
Origin Barkspawn.
Yeah.
But then what do you name the dog in two.
I named what would I what do I name the dog Barkley in origin.
Yeah.
I named the dog in two Barkspawn.

(55:36):
So mine was fairly easy actually.
Yeah yours is good.
What's your real one.
My real one is the old god ritual.
Oh that's a good one.
Whether to do it.
I think it's a really tough decision and I think it's the best decision because it isn't

(55:57):
an either this or that decision.
It's a decision that has multiple layers because if you're a female warden there's no option
for you to do it.
If you're a male warden you can do it.
If you are a male warden who has romanced Morgan then it becomes an easy decision.

(56:21):
If you're a male warden who's romanced someone else it becomes a tougher decision.
If you are a male warden if you are a female warden who has to convince Alastair to do
it or you'll die.
That's tough.
If you're a female warden who's romanced Alastair even tougher because that's the only way

(56:44):
that you're going to be allowed to be together is if this happens and he doesn't want to
do it.
It's got so many different layers to the choice that affect whether or not this is a tough
choice or not and it has a consequence that impacts the future games.

(57:14):
Yeah it does.
Blank yeah.
That's a good one.
I didn't even think of that.
I think it is the best and hardest decision.
Potentially the hardest decision.
Definitely the most complex decision.
That is a tough one.
Yeah for some reason I didn't even think about that as a decision because I went into Origins.

(57:39):
I started this podcast knowing what I was going to do so I didn't even think about
it as a tough decision.
And you romanced Morgan so your decision was just like oh am I going to fuck my wife?
Yeah I'm going to fuck my wife.
Have what she's having?

(58:01):
For me I think it's Hawke or Alistair in the Fade.
That took me a fucking long time to do because it's not only like a decision of because if

(58:23):
you don't know them it's fairly easy I guess.
If one of them, specifically one of them isn't there then it's an easy decision.
Well that's another complicated one because it could be yes it could be Shroud who gives
a fuck.
Yeah.
Could be the warden.
But it could also be Logan McTier.

(58:44):
Like yeah that's weird too.
Because it's like oh do you, it's, because when we did it we talked about how it's probably
easier to pick Hawke because Hawke is you so you're making the choice to you know.

(59:06):
Yeah.
You're making the choice oh I'll do it I'll take this.
But you are subjugating, you are putting a full stop on someone's life that and then
that makes the book of their life just awful.
It's like their life is nothing but suffering but if they leave the Fade they can have a

(59:27):
chance of being happy.
They don't need to work with the Inquisition anymore.
Varric can help them out.
Varric becomes the Viscount of Kirkwall in the future so it's like you can be pretty
certain that Hawke is happy.
You could send their best friend back home to them.
Yeah.
That's the whole thing of, but then if fucking Alistair goes then it's like well that's the,

(59:50):
in who the Grey Wardens are at this point, that's the one person that's going to help
them out.
That's like, that's my best fucking friend.
That's the one shot at Grey Wardens being good and honorable.
Yeah.
You know it sucks.
And that's one of the Grey Wardens that has defeated a Blight.

(01:00:12):
You know there's no Blight currently when that choice comes to be.
Yeah.
Like Alistair has done it and the Wardens at Weisshaupt didn't go.
They didn't go to help Ferelden.
Yeah, that's true.
Warden Blackwall, the original Warden Blackwall, that our Blackwall stole the name of.

(01:00:39):
Stole the name from.
Note A, I was reading today, had written a letter to Ferelden, pleading that Loghain
Mac Tire let the Wardens back into Ferelden so that they can help and addressed it to

(01:00:59):
the people of Ferelden being like, we know that you're all dying of the Blight.
We would love to come.
We have been decreed not to be allowed to step foot in Ferelden by Loghain Mac Tire.
And like, yeah, it's pretty tough.
It's pretty sick.
Yeah.

(01:01:20):
And it's also it's someone who in a weird way you can imagine that if Alistair lives,
the idea of the calling being fixed by the Grey Warden, the hero of Ferelden will probably
be done faster.
Or like, you know, it's like you have a direct contact to the hero of Ferelden because I

(01:01:44):
can't imagine that if Alistair's like, hey, buddy, can you come give me a hand with this
thing because there's another Blight happening that the hero friend will be like, oh yeah,
sure, buddy.
I'm going to kind of go with Alistair because they're the boys that did the damn thing.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.

(01:02:04):
I wrote like a million years ago, I wrote like a really small short fic about like a
a romance, Alistair romance hero Ferelden, like who spent the last however many years
in the deep roads, like searching for a cure for the calling so that her and Alistair can

(01:02:26):
be free of it and live a life.
Yeah.
And it's her coming out of the deep roads with like a scroll in hand, like successful
and getting a Raven with Varric's note.
And like immediately getting that that fucking note.

(01:02:48):
Jesus Christ.
Walking her way fucking right back in like, oh, okay.
So I'm going to the faith then.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Man.
Hmm.
We have we have a series of questions.
Do you have any more questions?

(01:03:09):
I'm sure I will.
But yes, we have more.
We've done a couple of these.
But yeah, we have.
Um, best companion in the whole series.
Shit.
Who did I have with me 100% of the time?
Because it also has to be.
I feel like I might have a controversial answer.

(01:03:29):
What is it?
Algren?
Fuck you.
Fuck you.
I thought we were friends.
What is this?
It's a controversial opinion is all I'm saying.
It's controversial.
That's not controversial, because controversial would mean that there would be opposing sides.
No one thinks Algren is a good companion.
No, that's why it's controversial, because you think he's the best companion and everyone

(01:03:54):
else.
You're standing against the tide.
You're John Wick in this scenario.
Oh, my God.
No.
Um, I just think mildly controversial, but I think it's Cole.
I think I think Cole.
How is Cole controversial?
Cole fucks is so great.
I think Cole is great, but I don't think he's a lot of people's favorite companion.

(01:04:15):
Sure.
Sure, sure, sure.
I think there's because Varric exists and Fenris exists and Dorian exists.
I was about to be like, oh, man, I need you to three head a Dragon Age two companion so
I could say that there's my boys.

(01:04:38):
They're my boys.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because I was because what when I was thinking I was like, I could say Varric, but then I
don't know.
I could say Fenris.
You just said the people in my mind as I was thinking of who my favorite companion is.
Controversial opinion.

(01:04:59):
More controversial than yours.
It's Sebastian Vail.
Yeah, that's pretty.
You know what, the thing is the Sebastian Gurleys I know are screaming because they're
a small army, but a ferocious one.
Yeah.
The Sebastian Gurleys.
Hey, Gurleys, me and you, can we call it Gurleys and Robin?

(01:05:21):
Yeah.
Sebastian Gurleys and Robin, please, because I want to be hanging out with you guys.
If you want to hear me go on a full ass rant about how and why I think Sebastian Vail is
the best, go to our Patreon because in our Dragon Age 2 tier list, I give a hard pitch
to put Sebastian Vail in S and I convince Dil to put him in S.

(01:05:46):
Yeah.
Because I tell you, I can't get into it again.
Hey, listen, if you want that opinion, go there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You can hear more on the Patreon.
No, I hear you.
Again, it's like his whole dynamic, the shift that he gives to everyone is perfect.

(01:06:07):
But in a more serious note, that's my joke answer, my serious one is Felicia Day, he's
my favorite companion.
We got to design a Felicia Day's Big Day Out shirt.
That's got to be one of our shirts.
That's got to be a shirt, Felicia Day's Big Day Out.
Three shirts, gamers, count them.
We got three shirts.
I'm going to get to work on that.

(01:06:27):
Felicia Day's Big Day Out, I'm going to make an omelette and it's Hulk holding Solas'
head.
And then fuck, what was the other one that we did?
The other one was, I've already clipped it and it's going to go on socials tomorrow,
is a woman's place is on the front line with the adamant fortress.

(01:06:48):
Damn.
Damn.
Damn.
So good.
Yeah.
My favorite guy.
Okay.
Let's see.
Best character in the whole series is the next question from Raven.

(01:07:08):
Best character in the whole series.
It's Hulk.
Is the best character in the whole series.
Thank you so much.
Character meaning player character.
I'm just- No, character as in character.
Character as in character overall.
Just overall, okay.
We should do a separate best protagonist.
Sure.
Best- Fine.
All right.
All right.
Removing protagonists.

(01:07:28):
Yeah.
Best character in the whole series.
Man, if the Veil Guard was good, it would be Solas.
Solas is so deep in- In Inquisition.
In the lore and origins.
Solas is in origins.
That's true.
Solas weaves his way through every aspect of Dragon Age.

(01:07:49):
And whenever we think we know a piece of lore, he changes it.
And he's like, actually you're wrong.
This is what happened.
Or like the Valashen we thought we were just like, yeah, it's just Dalish, like Tadu's
for culture.
And then he changed the whole perspective of what that is.
He changed how we see spirits and demons.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.

(01:08:09):
He's great.
He changed how we see Elven gods and Eluvians and everything.
And then Treshpasser, he changes it all again.
And that's the problem with him is that the problem is that now his lore is weird and
is a bit icky and doesn't really work or make much sense.
And he was- He was so strong.

(01:08:30):
It's him.
Yeah, he was so strong.
It's Solas and Varric are the two Dragon Age characters.
Yeah.
And- I am going to say I'm answering this question, omitting how people from previous
games acted in the Veil Guard.
Because I can't discuss it.

(01:08:51):
Yeah.
So my answer in that case is going to be- I'll show you who is it.
Fuck, there's- everybody's so amazing.
It's Morgan.
It's Morgan.
Oh, it's Morgan.
It's Morgan.
It must.
It almost simply must be Morgan.

(01:09:13):
Yeah.
She has such a good through line, such a good arc.
She's so like in Origins, you meet her and she is so much more- she's so powerful and
so confident until you poke at it.

(01:09:34):
And then you learn that she is so insecure and so like desperate for her mother's like
affection, love and a sense of safety and trust.
And she's abrasive and cruel, but it's because she was alienated because she was pushed away

(01:10:04):
and because she has had to fight for everything.
And yeah, she's got an ulterior goal in mind.
She's got a goal for her own survival in mind and a goal to break her own curse, like her
own family curse, this curse that's going to one day come for her and place the soul

(01:10:30):
of something in her.
And then she does.
She escapes it and she unlocks ancient magics like that humans have never had access to.
And then depending, she fucking eats Mythal's soul anyway.

(01:10:56):
And she's got the soul of Mythal within her and makes peace with her mother.
And she's just always there through these major events, making sure she's protecting

(01:11:17):
people without sacrificing the fact that she is looking out for herself as well and that
she is making sure that she is safe.
And that makes her seem really dangerous and untrustworthy, but she's never been.

(01:11:40):
She's awesome.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're right, actually.
You're correct.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and especially with like, you know, there's a thing of...
All right, I know that you just said because we can't talk about how they were acting in

(01:12:02):
the Veilguard.
But it's a thing where when she appears in the Veilguard, which is exceedingly early
on and then doesn't really do a lot, but she's also very pleasant and affable and still talks
and is talking to people in a very kind way.
And people are like, oh, well, because she's grown from Inquisition and she's grown from

(01:12:23):
Origins and it's like, well...
But it's still where she always has her fingers crossed and hand behind her back whenever
she is doing nice things.
I mean, she only joins you in Orlais in Inquisition because she's like, yeah, but I mean, there's
a fucking well of souls and I'm gonna, I want to drink it and eat it up.

(01:12:47):
But then also, it's like a...
You can kind of see...
And it's the same with Origins, where you can kind of like...
It's a thing which has stressed me out in these games where everyone has been saying,
oh, the mages will always betray you and Morrigan doesn't do that at all.
Morgan does not betray you.
She just has a thing that she wants to do and then she doesn't force you into it.

(01:13:08):
She's like, you can do it and I will leave because this is kind of why I'm here.
But she's doing it because she still helps because she's like, yeah, it's my...
I want to help you, but she refuses to say, oh, I want to help though.
And in Inquisition, she's doing stuff and Lilliana's like, she's fucking shady, I just

(01:13:30):
don't trust it.
And Emma's like, I just don't trust her.
And then she's like, I want to help you.
I just don't want to outwardly say, I want to help you.
I want you to accept my help and I will begrudgingly do it, but I offered my services to you.
I want to be good and I just can't be.

(01:13:50):
And it's cool.
Yeah, it's really good.
And you romance her and she runs away and she runs through an alluvian and goes into
a fucking secret corner of the Fade to raise a child and...
Yeah.
And then...
The fact that you can follow her.
And I did.
I did.
Crazy.

(01:14:11):
Amazing.
Yeah.
And she says the line, I hate you so much.
But then she also says the line, you're a good man, Alistair.
Where she says that her son knows that his father is a good man.
Yeah.

(01:14:31):
Yeah.
Oh, incredible.
I love that.
Incredible.
Incredible.
I love that.
I love her so much.
Incredible.
Incredible.
She's also my wife.
She's your wife.
I love her so much.
It's true.
Yeah.
No, she's great.
God.
But then there's also Liliana who is...
Liliana's so...
Don't...
I mean, look, she's incredible too.

(01:14:54):
Yeah.
She's wonderful.
The fact that Liliana's in almost the opposite way to Morgan where Morgan keeps fighting
the fact that she is ultimately a good person.
Liliana is doing the opposite where Liliana is fighting the fact that she is so apathetic.
And you have to fight against her wanting to be bad and do bad stuff in almost an opposition

(01:15:21):
to Morgan where you're fighting against her kind of...
Morgan will always say a snippy comment, but Liliana will just kill someone.
And then you have to be like, Lily, come on, babe.
We can't be doing this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it is fine.
Yeah.
But Liliana...
For I am the Divine.
And Liliana is always trying to fight...

(01:15:41):
The thing is that that's what she was raised to do.
She was raised to be...
Yeah.
And yes.
A spy, you know?
But the thing that's fun in Liliana's story is you have to fight against her instinct
in origins, but she doesn't change by...
If she is left alone away from good influence, she will always slip back into what is easier.

(01:16:09):
Almost in opposition to Morgan who is always doing what is harder.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And those two having a contentious relationship throughout the series to the fact where they
canonically traveled together and fought by each other's side for two years, didn't see

(01:16:29):
each other for a couple of years.
Morgan shows up at the Inquisition and Liliana is like, yeah, no, I know her.
Don't...
Hater.
Don't talk to her.
But also, fucking Morgan, Morgan, our girl, shows up in the exact dress that Liliana described

(01:16:52):
for her years ago.
Liliana said, I would love to see you in something formal.
Dark red velvet with gold embroidery.
It should be low cut in the front, of course.
We don't want to hide your features.
And Morgan, years later, was like, I need a formal dress.

(01:17:15):
You know what?
One was described to me once.
I was...
Let's make it that.
And wears exactly that dress.
Morgan also has...
There are a lot of characters that Morgan has relationships with outside of you in a

(01:17:37):
thing which I think is really cool.
Because they're almost all negative.
It's like Liliana and Alistair and stuff like that.
They all have opinions on Flemeth.
They all have opinions on her as someone.
It's the thing where you speak to them and they're like, oh, she's an awful hag of a

(01:17:57):
woman.
She's evil and I hate her.
And Morgan's like, my son knows that his father was a good man.
And oh, hey, I'm wearing that dress that you described.
I'm turning up in it.
Yeah.
Oh, and I'm here to help.
Eight years later.
I'm here to help you, by the way.
And I'm here to help.
And it's like no one likes her and she likes everyone so much.

(01:18:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
She likes you so much.
So much.
Favorite lore fact from the series.
My favorite lore fact is that Kirkwall is the greatest city in the world.
That's a pretty good one, actually.
Yeah, it's pretty good.

(01:18:42):
I think...
Oh my God.
Best character in the whole series is the architect.
I'm so sorry.
I said a different answer and I just realized that the best character in the whole series
is the architect because there is nary an episode where I don't mention the fact that
he has the best storyline and I want to see him again.
Before we do lore fact, favorite protagonist.

(01:19:05):
Yours is Hawke.
Hawke.
I think to the point where I'm going to argue with you now.
Oh, okay.
Great.
Hawke is a character is the thing.
When it comes to protagonists, the warden is great.
The warden is ultimately you.

(01:19:25):
The Inquisitor is very good.
Less you, but still very you coded in.
Hawke is not only a fully fleshed out character that goes on their own journey.
Hawke is you as well because you can point Hawke in a direction, but Hawke will always
pull to a neutral state which is fully fleshed.

(01:19:49):
If you didn't interact with the character of Origins, if you didn't interact with the
Inquisitor in Inquisition, you would walk away with no opinion on either because you
have to build that story.
We built a story for our Hawks and if you don't interact or engage with Hawke at all,
they walk away a fully fleshed out character still.

(01:20:11):
They are a person.
Sure.
I agree with you.
Even so, we had different Hawks.
You can make someone who is a completely different Hawke.
It's like to be able to manage to have a fully customizable character and have a character

(01:20:32):
who is just a person and someone who already lives and breathes in the world.
A crazy form of talent that I've not seen in a game like ever.
No, the writers went absolutely bat-crunk with Hawke.
Hawke is just so much about him.

(01:20:55):
They're a person who, my favorite archetype, has had nothing but bad things happen to them
and almost continues to do good for the sake of the fact that it just is.
Don't even do good, just survive for their people.
They're just trying.

(01:21:15):
Their life sucks.
It's devastating.
You have Morgan, Liliana, you have Alistair, who adventured with the original gang and
the original Grey Warden.
You have Solas, and you have Dorian and Cass, oh god, Cass, I love you, and Cole, who traveled

(01:21:39):
with the Inquisitor.
Then you have Varric and Isabella and Anders and Sebastian Vale, who traveled with Hawke.
The impact that Hawke had on those characters is so much...
IMO, is so much heavier than the impact that the Inquisitor or the Hero Ferelden had on

(01:22:03):
their party.
I agree about the Hero Ferelden.
I don't know that I agree about the Inquisitor.
I think the Inquisitor has a lot of influence on party members.

(01:22:24):
Has influence on party members, yes, but it's like...
Varric hides Hawke.
Sebastian still talks about them in war table notes.
The impact that Hawke had on their lives.

(01:22:47):
The thing is about Inquisition is that those characters are full, successful people in
their fields and go on to continue to be fully successful people in their fields because
they're...
Because they've been asked to join the Inquisition.
It's a different scenario.
Exactly.
Kirkwall, you're all outcasts who...
And Origins too, you're all outcasts and people without a place in society.

(01:23:12):
Hawke gives the outcasts the spark to fully become the people that the Inquisition want
to pick up.
I think the impact on the personal fire that Hawke lights in the people is...
I don't know, it's just huge.

(01:23:34):
I obviously get very excited about Hawke because I think Hawke is just the coolest.
Yeah, for me, it's so easy for me to say that Hawke is the best.
I think that my answer to this is pretty controversial overall, but I think that my favorite protagonist

(01:24:01):
is the Inquisitor.
I think that the Warden is so customizable and such a classic role play character that
you have to put into it a lot to make that character feel like a person.

(01:24:23):
Hawke is a swing in the other direction where they're so pre-written that you then also
have to do a little bit of work to make them your person.
Otherwise, they're going to be who they are.
And then the Inquisitor is to me a bit of a balance in that.

(01:24:46):
I have a lot to customize, I have a lot to work with and a lot to work to role play with,
but they also have a very clear theme, a very clear journey to go on.
Their story and how they are tied to the events of the game is very emotionally engaging to

(01:25:11):
me.
The fact that they literally don't have a choice.
I think somebody has a line somewhere in that game that's like, yeah, if I didn't want to
participate they'd probably just muzzle me and handcuff me and wield me around Thedas

(01:25:35):
throwing my hand at the sky.
They need me.
The only reason that they're letting me lead right now is because I'm participating.
But the Inquisitor has just such a...
There's a lot to their emotional journey.

(01:26:00):
They have a good story, but they are still pretty customizable in a way that gives me
a good chance to role play.
So yeah, I think that's my answer.
Nice.
That's good.
I understand.
I understand.
I know.
All right, so favorite lore fact is where we didn't answer that one.

(01:26:24):
Yeah.
There's just so much there.
I think the Titans are really fucking sick and I would actually love to see more of them.
Yeah, same.
Or what was originally intended for them.
I think these secret gods that are still alive and just existing and I don't know what the

(01:26:47):
Titans are even doing, biding their time.
They lost a war against the Elven gods and are now...
There's a whole legion of dwarves that live, a whole city that lives and knows that the
Titans exist and everyone else thinks they're gone.
The Titans can actively give magic back to dwarves.

(01:27:09):
The whole thing is just so cool.
The implications of everything that happens is so interesting.
I want that.
I want to see that's what I wanted.
That's what I wanted a Veilguard to be.
I wanted it to be that Solas tears down the Veil and now people who have not had magics
suddenly have magic.
Yeah.
The art book has Solas resurrects a Titan that lived under...

(01:27:35):
That Manrathis was built on.
Solas resurrects it to fight Ghilanain and that's fucking crazy.
It's the coolest idea of Harding almost single-handedly bringing magic back because now she can speak
to the stone.
Cool idea in theory.

(01:27:57):
They just don't do it.
The problem is I wanted that to be the story.
The story.
Instead, it's like the story was figuring out that that's what the story is.
Is that a good summary of what Veilguard is as a game?
Every quest is figuring out what the story is instead of doing the story.

(01:28:22):
I mean, I guess.
But even so, the story of the Veilguard twists and all is solved at Demeter's Crossing almost.
Mission two.
It's like, hey, so Solas is trapped in the Fade.
They brought these two old gods out.

(01:28:43):
These old gods can control the Blight.
By the way, the Blight is a thing.
It's like, oh, okay.
Then you just spend the whole game solving that.
To the point where figuring out what Solas' story was, was not important to solving the
issue.
It only is important in your ability to appeal to him to get a certain ending.

(01:29:09):
But you can still defeat him without knowing what his story was.
After last episode, I was like, during, actually, last episode, I said, I want us to wait until
after call and I'm going to show you the fight Solas ending of the Veilguard.
It was cool, right?
It's fun.
It's cool.
Yeah.

(01:29:29):
I didn't get the super secret special ending.
I just got an ending which I was like, oh, nice.
Okay, there.
That makes sense to me.
Did you watch the Solavellan ending?
No, I haven't.
I haven't watched that today.
Yeah.
It's the same ending I got.
In my ending, and I hadn't told you this.
I forgot about it.

(01:29:49):
In my ending, Mythal comes out of the idol to end.
So does Morgan because Morgan has a bit of Mythal in her and the idol has another fragment
of Mythal.
The two of them together speak to Solas as their old best friend, begging them to make

(01:30:10):
amends with them and that they're like, she's releasing them from her service so he's no
longer bound to her, et cetera.
And also, the Inquisitor shows up.
In mind, the Inquisitor showed up and Solas is like, my friend, I'm sorry.
I know that I hurt and betrayed you, but I've come too far and I've hurt too many people

(01:30:36):
to get here.
If I don't finish it, all of that death is for nothing, which I think is interesting.
In the Solavellan one, that all still happens, but then afterwards and after Mythal convinces

(01:30:57):
him to bind himself and make amends, Lavellan agrees to go with him.
And that's the real main difference.
The other thing though is that the two of them talk a lot in Elven, which I did like

(01:31:20):
because that is a thing that I didn't love about Inquisition is that an Elven Inquisitor
and Solas never really...
He spends all of Inquisition condescending to you about your own heritage.
So I did like the progression of Lavellan showing up and just the two of them speaking

(01:31:46):
to each other exclusively in their language.
Yeah, that is cool.
And I thought that that was a good solid progression of that story arc.
So I liked that and then they go into the Fade together to try to calm the blight, I

(01:32:11):
think is the goal, do things to make up for Solas's past.
Sure.
Sure.
Nice.
What's your favorite lore fact?
Fact.
Fact, not theory.
Fact, not a thing that I assume about the series.
Fact, fact, fact.
I mean, it's down to interpretation.

(01:32:32):
I mean, I guess you could do.
Yeah, but I have a lot of things that get crossed wired.
So I have to check myself.
Yeah, sure.
You have to untangle it.
Yeah.
But I think mine is the whole tranquil issue.

(01:32:57):
The entirety of it.
The fact that this ritual was created so that the first Templars that became the Seekers
could get their abilities and that it was discovered by the Templars.

(01:33:22):
So this is an example of good Dragon Age lore building is when they draw inspiration from
real life.
It's like, okay, a really powerful institution that maybe had the inception, the idea of

(01:33:43):
it at inception was to keep people safe and keep mages safe and just prevent mages from
accidentally getting turned into abominations and killing and hurting people.
Maybe that was the intention, but in pursuing that intention, they got power.

(01:34:03):
They had power over others and then they obtained information on how to erase someone's free
will.
And you give a cop the ability to erase someone's free will, they're going to weaponize it.
They're going to do it and they're going to do it en masse.

(01:34:23):
They're going to do it over disputes, over breakups.
There are stories we encounter all the way back in Origins of a Templar and a mage had
a romantic relationship that ended and the Templar-
Jesus Christ.
Yeah.

(01:34:44):
There's all these kinds of stories of just a mage talks out of line or whatever it is
and they do that.
They have the tranquil solution gets proposed where it's just like, this is just a punishment
now that we just do when a mage breaks the law or acts out of line.
Instead of putting them in jail, we're just going to make them tranquil.

(01:35:06):
It's irreversible.
It's permanent.
It's horrible.
It's a nightmarish concept.
But when you have a class of people who have abject control over another class of people,
if a bad thing exists in the world, they will abuse it against those people.

(01:35:30):
I think it's one of those things where it's a horrible piece of lore, but it's my favorite
because it is so relatable to real life but fully bought into the fantasy world.

(01:35:51):
It's not a one-to-one.
It's not a copy paste, but you can see it in our own reality.
You can see the allusions to our own reality in it even though it fully fits inside this
fantasy world.
Then to then learn that it is completely reversible and has been this whole time and that people

(01:36:13):
in power likely have known this.
It never had to be this weapon against these people.
For us to learn this so late in the game is such a heartbreaking revelation.

(01:36:36):
It's just such a bitter and horrible truth.
The fact that you speak to the old Inquisitor and then I think he brings it up or he brings
up the old Seekers.
I don't know if tranquiling people was a thing at that time.

(01:36:58):
But then it's like even with that knowledge, you just have to trust that Cass will do something
about it.
It's really like you have to put it in the hands of someone who is a Seeker first and
foremost.
That's her gig and you've just got to be like, I really hope that you have learned enough

(01:37:22):
about the worlds to understand that you can't do this.
Someone that when you first met was pretty distrustful of mages.
The fact that it's like that's kind of, again, going back to the old Inquisitor, that's his
story is that he put all of these building blocks up and then when he left, it was found

(01:37:44):
out that the foundations of those building blocks was him and everything just crumbles
immediately as soon as he goes.
And then with the knowledge that the same thing is going to happen to you, as soon as
you leave, are you so foundational to goodness in this way that if you leave, it's going

(01:38:11):
to turn out that you're the only foundation and everyone is just going to go back to doing
the easiest thing to do, which is for Cass, like, yeah, fuck it, it just stays the same.
I'm making the Seekers again and this is the thing that we all understood.
And yeah, and shit like that.
Anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is cool.
That's good.
That's a real good one, buddy.

(01:38:33):
Buddy.
So good.
Buddy.
Actually, you know what?
So our next question is, what was the coolest twist that any of these games took?
And I'm going to say, I actually think it might be that.
I think it might be the tranquil.
That was a really, that's a really strong twist.
People being a almost manmade manufactured thing is crazy.

(01:38:57):
Being a manufactured thing that is completely survivable and completely reversible.
Yeah.
And people know how to do it.
It's just no one does.
They're just not sharing that information.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Devastating, actually.
I think I might agree with you.
I'm just trying to kind of circle through some.

(01:39:21):
What are like huge twists in it?
Valashen being slave markings is one of them.
That is a big, huge, that's a huge twist.
That's a big, big lore one.
Yeah.
I mean, Solas being the Dread Wolf is another big one, I guess.
That is, no, it is for sure.
Flemeth being Mythal or having the fragment of Mythal within her.

(01:39:44):
That's a big one.
That's crazy.
That's a really big one, I think.
That's a crazy one.
Yeah.
I mean, it's fucking Anders blowing up the fucking-
Anders blowing up.
That might be the biggest twist.
Blowing up the Chantry.
And I think the thing is that as much as I hate that man, I think that I might think

(01:40:07):
that that is the biggest twist.
Because that is like-
Yeah.
Because regardless of who you are to him, he fucks you over.
He can't, yeah.
Yeah.
Which I do.
I hate him, but I love that in a character is that they're so convicted on this thing

(01:40:28):
that there is no way to convince them.
Yeah.
And it also brings up questions of how much is vengeance in Anders?
How much of vengeance is almost controlling him?
He has such blinders on that it doesn't matter.
He's going to get his, and he's going to get his by starting a war that kills hundreds

(01:40:51):
of thousands of people.
But who cares?
I blow up a Chantry.
Well, the idea, I think, is that because justice was the spirit that entered Anders.
And then Anders twisted-
Anders turned justice into vengeance by having so much justified hate in his heart that he

(01:41:13):
made justice into vengeance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There is also, I mean, the thing is, is that I think there's a, not to dismiss kind of
that, but spirits are fairly easy to manipulate.
Yeah.
Solas says that if they do anything that's not what they're supposed to, they immediately
switch.

(01:41:34):
That's outside of their, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I mean, Anders isn't, what is Anders going to do?
Because justice going into Anders, Anders then immediately has to turn himself in, or
justice is just going to get switched immediately because it's like, oh, well, justice is that
you, you know-
Pretty much.
You do justice.
And then he doesn't.

(01:41:54):
And then Anders might interpret that as, I had so much hate in my heart, but it's also
like, yeah, you did, but also you didn't do to justice what justice needed to stay justice.
The only reason justice was justice for so long is because it had control of itself.

(01:42:15):
You doing, like Anders doing anything one way or the other is going to warp that mindset.
So it might, that might also be a part of it is that Anders fully just had a demon in
him for, you know, years.
Big twist is that Grey ones have to die as well.
That's another one.
I was just thinking, I was like, I feel like one of the earlier twists might be the biggest

(01:42:39):
one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Finding out that, that as a Grey Warden, finding out at the end of this, that the only way to
actually kill an arch demon is not just to be a Grey Warden, but to be a Grey Warden
and die.
And die.
Yeah.
Because, because also that comes with a big lore drop, which is that there's a soul inside
that arch demon, an old God soul fragment, and it needs somewhere to go and it will just

(01:43:06):
go into the next one and we will have another blight within the year.
Yeah.
You being there is the only way because that soul will enter you and because you have the
blight, it will go into you and you will die with it.
And that is, that's it.
Yeah.
I think, I think that's mine.
I think that is mine.
I was just like, there, there are a lot of great twists that are, that are deeply personal.

(01:43:42):
To you, like the Valeslien one is, is so, is, is revealed in such a personal moment.
Yeah.
The thing which I'm trying to think of is a lot of the twists I knew beforehand, so
they weren't twists.
They were just kind of like lore information.
Like I knew that Grey Warden had to die.
I knew something was up.

(01:44:03):
Oh, you knew that already?
Yeah.
Just because I knew that you would die at the end.
I knew Anders blew up the Chantry.
I knew that Solas, you know, you know, just from like, just from being exposed to Dragon
Age, to the world, and stuff like that.
Yeah.
But, so for me, it's, it's, it's the, it's the tranquil thing.

(01:44:24):
Because I had, I didn't know about that at all.
That's a big one.
Or Mythal is also a big pitch for that.
Mythal is a great one.
Hello, kitty cat.
Cat is screaming at me to be scratched.
Where'd it go, baby?
Good kitty.
Yeah, so I think it might be that for me.

(01:44:44):
Yeah, I like that.
That's good.
Oh my god.
Not to bring up my main boy again, but also the fact that Darkspawn have, can have thoughts
and feelings and ideas might also be another one.
Totally.
No, I, you know what, as much as I didn't really enjoy the experience of playing that
DLC, that is a huge twist.

(01:45:05):
And that has huge implications.
Like that, for the world at large.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I totally agree with you on that one.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay, favorite mission, all games.
Mission all games.

(01:45:28):
Didn't we?
Oh no, we did it.
Yeah, by game.
What favorite mission?
Whole series.
Your cat sent a message.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Silly cat.
Now people know exactly the time that we record.

(01:45:49):
Okay, I'm going to consult the notes.
I'm consulting the notes, I think.
Do it.
I think this one's a tad too big for me.
It's a big one.
It's a big one.
All, huh?
Okay.
Wondering.
Now here's the crazy thing.
I'm wondering if it's going to be different to one of my favorites.

(01:46:16):
It's going to be different to one of my favorites individually.
No, because I can't necessarily remember.
Okay.
Because I was like, man, I really liked Awakening so much that what it like the final mission
of Awakening when you confront the architect and you have a full intellectual conversation
with them is so big Dragon Age vibes from it.

(01:46:40):
Great Dragon Age vibes.
Great Dragon Age vibes from it.
It might be the Brazilian forest, I think.
Because if I'm to do favorite mission, I think I have to think of like, now that we're talking
outside context of games, I need to think of how fun it is to actually play.

(01:47:03):
DA2, I think story wise and implications is my absolute fave.
It is not fun to moment to moment play.
So it can't win.
It can't be overall.
Yeah, no, no, no.
It can't be overall even though I think it's funner, it can't really be overall.

(01:47:24):
So it might be the Brazilian forest, I think.
I just think it's the coolest shit ever.
And the thing is, is that Trespasser is so great, but I didn't play me in Trespasser,
so it's really hard for me to be like super gung ho for it to be the best, because I technically
didn't play it.
I know.

(01:47:45):
I wasn't hell in.
Almost weirdly, the same reason why you really can't get behind Awakening.
Awakening, yeah, yeah.
So I think it's the Brazilian forest, I think is overall the best.
Just because genuinely Origins is wall to wall winners.
There is nary a moment in Dragon Age Origins where I did a mission and I wasn't like, that

(01:48:07):
was one of the best things I've ever done, actually.
I'm so fucking excited about this.
It's very true.
Why when people are like, oh, which Dragon Age game should I start with?
I'm like Origins.
I know it's old, but it's so perfect in every way.
It's such a good fucking game.
Like the graphics are old.
Get over it.
Who cares?

(01:48:28):
Just slog through it.
In Hushed Whispers.
Sure.
I mean, it's outstanding.
I think it's so perfect.
Yeah, I think it's so perfect.
The thing is that I would say Orzammar, I would say the Deep Roads.

(01:48:48):
It's just that the, and this is totally just the technological advancement and the way
that they're able to do to execute in Hushed Whispers.
They're both to me, they're like, the emotional resonance of them is so good.
The story of them is so good.
They're executed so well.

(01:49:09):
But then when you add in the fact that in Hushed Whispers, I get to watch Liliana fucking
choke a man out with her thighs.
And go sicko mood.
And those, like the just cinematography of it all.
The way I feel when I play in Hushed Whispers is, it is the thing that makes me buy into

(01:49:34):
Inquisition.
When I'm playing as the Inquisitor, as soon as I do that mission, the Inquisitor becomes
real to me in that mission.
And it's so good.
Yeah.
No, that is good.
What would you have wanted to see in the series going forward?
The geographically or narratively?

(01:49:55):
Do you know what the thing is?
I want it to be north.
And I want it to just be, I want a Kirkwall in Minrathus.
In Minrathus.
Yeah, that is what I wanted geographically.
That was the thing.
A big reason why I did not like the Veilguard is that nowhere felt real.

(01:50:16):
You're just hopping, teleporting from one place to the other.
I want to know Minrathus like the back of my fucking hand.
Because the thing is, you only go through Doctown and it's fucking boring.
I want to go through Minrathus.
I want to know the different areas and the different vibes.
I want to go up to that cool, weird prison palace, but without there being a big blight.

(01:50:42):
I just want to go up there and see how fucked it is normally.
I don't want the Venatori to make a peep.
I don't like them as enemies even a little bit.
It's such a cop out because yeah, the Venatori are like Tevinter's supremacists.
We also know that Tevinter's Magisterium is full of corrupt magisters.

(01:51:05):
There are only seven of them.
There are only seven of them, by the way.
We kill a bunch of them in this game.
There are canonically only seven magisters from the seven houses in Minrathus who all
elect a Magister.
That's the game.
That's the game.
The game to me is you are in Minrathus and you are doing a full rebel coup against the

(01:51:31):
seven magisters.
You know how the treaties in Dragon Age, you can kind of do them in any order in Origins?
It's that.
Who are we killing first?
Not who are we killing.
Who are we killing first?
We have seven of them to go and each of them are like a weird arc mission in a unique place
that we're going through and you're just figuring out how to get around them.

(01:51:56):
They get harder with each Magister that dies.
It's like if you're halfway through one mission and then you hard pivot and you start another
one and you finish it, the missions that you've done is like, yeah, we can't do that anymore
because you killed one of them and now they know that we're coming.
So we have to figure out this other way around it and shit like that.
That'd be sick.
That is really sick.

(01:52:17):
Here is my pitch.
My pitch is the game takes place in Minrathus.
We've tracked Solas here to this place.
Beginning of the game is Solas tears down the veil.
He doesn't.
He tears down the veil.
He re-imprisons the gods.
Magic returns to Thedas in a flood, an overwhelming flood that causes immediate devastation.

(01:52:46):
Demons are everywhere.
People who've never had magic before, all of the elves get magic back.
All of the dwarves get magic back.
Chaos erupts throughout Thedas and Solas' journey is that he now has to actually face
deep regret.
That still is a theme of his character, but in this one it actually makes sense because

(01:53:08):
he has to watch.
The last time he did this, he did this and then he went to sleep for a million years.
He didn't have to watch the destruction happen in real time.
This time he has to watch it happen in front of him.
We can see Southern Thedas and the Inquisitor, his friend potentially, potentially his lover,

(01:53:30):
like fall, maybe even die.
Maybe he really has to suffer.
He reluctantly joins up with us, which the original pitch for Rook was that Rook was
somebody the Inquisitor found and was like, I need someone in the North.

(01:53:51):
I have my hands full down here.
The Inquisitor is like Solas is redeemable.
I know him.
He is not the one-sided monster you think he is.
You can work with him, but I need to trust you and sends you and sends Varric to work

(01:54:14):
with you.
You team up with Solas who is questionable, untrustworthy, faltering and possibly has
another ulterior motive, but ultimately is steeped in regret, does not like that he is
responsible for this, but is still happy that the magic has come back.

(01:54:38):
There is this push and pull between you about whether or not you can fully trust him.
In pursuit of a way to control the chaos without putting the veil back up and letting the world
be the world that Solas was trying to restore, but end the suffering that the chaos is causing.

(01:55:05):
We need the most powerful magic in the world and seven people, the most powerful mages
in all of Thedas are those people.
One of them is Dorian Pavis.
Great.
We got him.
The other six are monsters who have just been forced to not do slavery like sometime within

(01:55:31):
the last two years because they are so evil.
Convincing them is going to be maybe impossible.
We might have to replace them, which can be done.
Altices can be appointed by other magisters and you have Dorian in your corner, but something
is going to have to happen.

(01:55:52):
Maybe some of those magisters can be reasoned with.
Maybe some of them have sympathetic bloodlines that we can encourage to replace them.
Maybe some of them just straight up have to be assassinated and we have to use the Antivin
Crows and we have to go and partner with them and get those magisters assassinated and have

(01:56:16):
someone fill in for their place.
The end game is at the end, we now have seven of the most powerful and learned magicians
in all of Thedas in our corner ready to help us crack the code and figure out a way to
calm the chaos of all this raw magic pouring into the world.

(01:56:40):
We do it and we can calm Thedas, but leaving it still a place where magic has been restored
to those that it was cut off from.
Solas still needs to be a part of that to redeem himself in order to do that.

(01:57:03):
I think that that would have been a more interesting story.
We would have spent a lot of time in Minrathus and Treviso still, but we would have really
spent time there in the cities learning about the-
That's what was missing from it is that you don't spend time in- the best bit of Minrathus

(01:57:25):
is literally the opening where you see it at night and it's beautiful.
As far as I'm aware, every single time you see it post is daytime.
And that's the thing is like, I want to see more of it.
I want to see what it's all about.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it would be cool.
That would be sick.
I'm into it.

(01:57:47):
Speaking of magisters, I'd love to fucking know what happened when it comes to like Corypheus
and the architect.
I want to know if they knew each other.
I want to know if it happened at the same time.
It did.
Is it that the seven magisters are all weird darkspawn things that are just in the world

(01:58:09):
still?
I just want to know more about those.
That would be fucking sick.
And that's what we could do is if we had a story with the magisters as like a prime plot,
being like, so what happened all those years ago?
Like what is it?
Is it a thing that you're happy about?
Is it a thing that these magisters must know?

(01:58:32):
And that would just be a cool plot point to like angle in on.
That would be a cool plot line that we could then bring back in the Mourn Watchers.
All right, so now we want the Mourn Watchers to be a part of this.
We have magisters that we are trying to get on our side.
Maybe one of the houses wants to know about their lineage and they have allegations that

(01:58:56):
their family line is tied to Corypheus because in Inquisition that is a real thing that comes
up is that that guy was a magister and magisterium, the magisters are passed down by bloodline.
That one guy, he has allegations that his family line is tied to Corypheus and all the
other magisters want him out now.

(01:59:18):
He says, you know what?
You want me on your side?
You figure out a way to clear my name from this.
You go to the Mourn Watch.
You go to the Mourn Watch and you figure out and the Mourn Watch is like, well, I mean,
we can get to it, but I mean, it's in this like weird language that we don't know and
it's in this weird place in the world and we just don't have vessels and ships that we
can get to or treasure hunters or people that know this like Dungeon Delvers and it's like,

(01:59:42):
oh, let's bring in the Lords of Fortune if you want to bring in that.
And then the Lords of Fortune are added in by being like, we are pirates and treasure
hunters.
We can find your weird dead body that you're looking for.
This one specific guy.
We can tell you where he went.
We can get it.
We can get it all.

(02:00:02):
And our beans.
We know for a fact that these magisters are full of darkspawn blood.
How are we going to fix this if they go AWOL and we need them killed?
Get a fucking bunch of Grey Wardens on.
And the Grey Wardens are in.
You go to Wysapt and you're like, hey, we're on this dangerous mission to kill some of
the original darkspawn.
Do you want in?

(02:00:23):
And they say yes.
And they hop along with you.
Yeah.
Also, I just realized this today.
I was actually talking to Drak and had a and was just like midway through talking about
something else.
I was like, we never there's nothing in Davern's Quest about the fucking Monster Hunter book.

(02:00:45):
At the end.
They don't ever close that chapter.
They don't bring it up again.
They never bring it back up again.
That was like a prime bit of conversation from him that he was actively doing it.
And it was a cool thing because he's like, yeah, all of the Monster Hunter books are
written by mages that have had no frontline experience.

(02:01:06):
That's why I'm doing it.
Yeah.
Isn't that why he's always carving as well?
Fucking hell this game, man.
So but that so that leads me to another avenue where Davern would still possibly be a really
good strong character in this new storyline that we've crafted is that oh, you're a you're

(02:01:27):
trying to create a book that is a Monster Hunter book that is written by actual Monster
Hunters, which the Grey Wardens objectively are the actual people on the ground doing
that.
You know, and you're doing that in opposition to the mages that we're trying to gain the

(02:01:49):
support of.
Those are the people that have historically written these books.
We could put that in as a central conflict is like, you know, like, is it maybe going
to be a thing that makes it harder for us to get support if we support Davern in in
pursuing this book?

(02:02:09):
Is are we going to prove one of the Magisters?
Yeah.
And then maybe the only way maybe there was a way to convince him.
But now we have to use violence and maybe.
Yeah.
Hey, magic has been reintroduced into the world.
Dwarves are freaking the fuck out.
Ozomar is in such heavy turmoil.

(02:02:31):
Who comes along but Cal Shorrock and they're like, yeah, we know about dwarves being so
we know about how dwarves having magic.
That's part of us and our culture.
You're now going to have to broker a very, very reluctant peace between the two.
And then Hardin can still be in that storyline still knocking around.
I'm trying to get them all in.

(02:02:53):
I am too.
Except I think that Lace Harding should still be I think Lace Harding should have replaced
Lilliana as the number one assassin for the Inquisition.
Because I think that a storyline where magic comes back to the dwarves, there is one person.

(02:03:21):
There is only one person.
Is it Dagna?
It's Dagna.
The only fucking dwarf to go to magic school ever.
That is actually something that I thought was interesting because I was as I was playing,
I finished Harding's story and I was talking to Kai, who's my housemate, and they were

(02:03:42):
like, is Dagna in it?
Dagna should be in it, right?
Because she's the only dwarf to go to magic school.
And I was like, she's not even mentioned.
That's not fucking insane.
She was in the Inquisition.
I would have thought whilst Harding was reminiscing about the Inquisition, she would have been
like, oh my god, I should speak to Dagna about this.

(02:04:04):
Oh, holy shit, there's a dwarf that knows tons about magic.
And speaks to them maybe.
The best enchanter that the mage college has ever seen.
I should probably reach out to her.
Maybe a lot of my troubles would go away if I just reached out to Dagna.

(02:04:25):
Maybe I don't need to just pensively look out over a field of mountains and say, I'll
figure it out.
I should speak to someone who's figured it out.
Who's fucking figured it out.
Who probably-
As a friend?
Yeah, and is allegedly a friend.
Dagna felt one rumble under her feet and went, okay, hang on.

(02:04:47):
That is somewhere in southern Thedas right now, completely having a handle on all of
this.
That would be-
Yeah.
Rook goes to the Inquisitor in the Veilguard and is like, yeah, I know, it's crazy.
And Harding has magic.
And the Inquisitor's like, oh shit, that's going really well for us.
Yeah, because Dagna's still knocking around and she's just, she's got it.
She's got it all sorted.

(02:05:08):
And Rook's like, oh yeah, Harding's having a real hard time with it.
Yeah.
The South is actually fine.
The South is fine because the Inquisitor is there and Dagna's knocking around and it's
just a bunch of competent people.
They have a handle on it, so it's way calmer, but it's more interesting because people
are, there's a little bit of infighting and it's interesting in some way.

(02:05:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because I mean, now the Harrowmonts have magic, so there's a downside.
Holy shit.
Yeah, yeah.
What's so crazy is if they had a follow-up quest, which was, it was like they asked the
question who took charge, because, and then in the fourth game, it comes back as like,

(02:05:52):
it's those two houses again.
They're back at it, but now both of them have magic and it's war in Ozomar.
It's like brutal.
But it's like, it's those two houses are fully vying for control because one of them won
over the other and it's been a, it is a schism in their, in like the foundation of Ozomar
that has never really healed in the 15 years since it happened.

(02:06:15):
Not only that, all of the castless dwarves are full on rebelling now because they have
magic and also this like crazy, they're all, like they have this huge criminal network
and they were like, oh, we can cast fireballs from our hands.
We can fully turn invisible.
This is awesome.
It's over.

(02:06:35):
And we have an, and we have, we already have an underground tunnel system that leads directly
into your fucking palace, buddy.
And now I can cast bomb with my hands.
So now I can set your blood on fire.
It would be so funny to have a quest where there is a nobleman or a noble family in a

(02:06:59):
palace who you like, you have to go in because there is like a castless dwarf who is threatening
like all of this crazy stuff to kill them and you go in and you're speaking to the dwarf
trying to do a hostage situation and the dwarves like, oh, like I'm going to, I'm going to
do this crazy stuff.
Like I'm going to resurrect all, like a bunch of people, all the ghosts that have you've
ever bullied are going to come back.
But if you're a mage, you can say, you can't do that with magic.

(02:07:24):
No one's ever done that before.
Like you can't, like you're just talking at your ass.
You're lying about the things that you can do.
None of this is possible with magic.
And then that's how you defuse the situation is you just kind of have to prove that you
know more than them about magic.
That would be such a goofy, fun quest.
Yes, because it's new for everybody.
And like, yeah.
And no one really knows.
So it's like this dwarven family who have never left Ozomara horrified at this person

(02:07:47):
talking about all the things that they're going to do to them.
And then you turn up and you're like, you can't do that.
Can you arrest this guy?
You can't do that.
Yeah.
And then if we bring Dagna into this storyline and Dagna, it replaces Harding, which makes
so much more sense in every single way, then I wouldn't need her to be like a main character
in this story, but a side quest about Sarah who can potentially be romancing Dagna at

(02:08:15):
the end of Inquisition.
Sarah who hates magic.
If the veil comes down, she's got it.
Oh my God.
And she hates it.
It freaks her out.
It's terrifying to her.
A like a Dagna personal quest could be like my either friend or partner is losing it.

(02:08:47):
And I can't help you until I until this until this is fixed is fixed.
When we find out, I mean, my personal personally, I wanted Sarah to also have like a fragment
of Andral in her.
I don't think that they would.
I don't think in any circumstance I would get that.

(02:09:10):
But it does seem it does seem like she knows things in Inquisition that she shouldn't
know.
Like she learned how to to shoot a bow on instinct.
And she also repeatedly talks about this sense that she's seen everything before.

(02:09:34):
Like when she goes to places that she's never been, she's like, I've been here.
Sure.
And like or like this has happened already.
Yeah.
And it's like I just think that she has maybe a maybe a fragment of a trapped god or something
like that.
But at the very least, the veil comes down.

(02:09:55):
She's getting magic that she does not want to have.
And that would be a cool storyline.
We could also it's a good chance to evolve a new character because we've done a lot of
like evolving of these characters from origins that have a nice through line.

(02:10:17):
But like I would love to see one of the Inquisition characters then like a character that was
introduced in Inquisition get a nice character growth arc.
We do not get that with Harding.
We get a devolution, if anything.
But I would love to see like, OK, Sarah joins the Inquisition as like a 21 year old.

(02:10:45):
Now we revisit her years later.
This is like mid 30s or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is a like let's and and she's going through a crisis, but she's a tougher, you know, more
grown version of herself.
Full leader of the Red Jennys now.
Leader of the right.

(02:11:06):
Leader of the Red Jennys.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that would be cool.
That would be cool.
I love this game.
All right.
Little question.
What was your opinion on Solus's flashback hair?
I hated it.
I hated it.
I thought it looked stupid.

(02:11:26):
I thought it looked stupid.
That's the end of it.
I just thought it looked dumb.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't I I just I the problem is, is like giving Solus like a hair would make Solus
look a bit dumb because his face is made to be bald.
Some people's faces are just made to be bald, unfortunately, and Solus is one of them.
The thing is, I think they needed to change his look a little bit more and like age because

(02:11:52):
OK, so this is something I know about a behind the scenes choice about Solus's design in
Inquisition is that they specifically designed him in a way that would make him age ambiguous.
Yeah.
Making his eyes small in comparison to the rest of his face was like a conscious choice

(02:12:14):
because like you want to because because big guys read as young no matter what and and
he doesn't appear to be young, like he doesn't have wrinkles on his face.
They didn't give him hair because they didn't want to give him gray hair.

(02:12:38):
But giving him like a full head of hair would would be deceptive in a way that they couldn't
justify at the end.
So they designed everything about his look so that when it is revealed that he is ancient,
that he is so far beyond your years, there's there was no way for you to tell.
Oh, I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to lose my fucking mind.

(02:13:01):
I'm so sorry.
I'm just looking.
I found someone just uploaded the art of Dragon Age the Veil Guard as a PDF.
Guess who one of your advisors is an awakened darkspawn is one of the advisors of the original
advisors of Brooke is is is is fully a darkspawn who can lead an eye.

(02:13:22):
I'm going to do a crime.
I'm going to kill.
I'm going to do a crime.
I'm going to lose my fucking mind.
Dorian was one Isabella was one an awakened darkspawn was another.
I'm going to kill.
I would never cause harm to another human being ever.

(02:13:42):
I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry to interrupt you.
I was just I was just scrolling through the output casually while listening.
Glad I saw Isabella.
And then it was like I saw Isabella and a big title that said advisors.
And I scrolled up a little and I was like, that's a corpse.
And I scrolled in and it was like an awakened darkspawn.
Oregon is also there, it looks like.
But she looks way different.

(02:14:06):
She looks more like Flemeth than she does.
That is cool.
If you're going to tell me that somehow, like the the fragment of Mithal has like has taken
root in her, like I would love for her to look a little different.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, my heart just got really I've genuinely like I feel

(02:14:30):
an actual like pain in my chest a little bit.
There's there's a storyline art here that I'm looking at.
This is.
Yeah, it's crazy.
There's an sparking an uprising in Tevinter, an aquatic infiltration in Tevinter.

(02:14:54):
You're like infiltrating Tevinter in some way, soulless interacting with you in dreams,
but in like a really kind of weird fucked up way, there's like a scene of you like falling
through a really bright landscape as a as the Dreadwolf like eats you and stuff.
Yeah, like the Fade being a freaky place, like the Fade, the Fade has been so consistently

(02:15:22):
good in these games.
It's been so weird and disorienting and and freaky.
And I just would rather they not send us there at all.
Oh, my God.
So it has so it looks like from what I'm looking at.

(02:15:47):
Gilgamesh looks so fucking sick.
So the same it looks like it's like you go and you infiltrate Tevinter.
You meet the Archon of Tevinter and then you go to stop Soulless's ritual and Elgin and
Gilane escape.
But the thing I laughed at is it's a picture of like a war table.

(02:16:11):
First of all, this is going to be upsetting for you and me specifically.
It looks like the original team name is the Patchwork team because it says the Patchwork
team doesn't get along at first.
Oh, I'm going to be sick.
Oh, I'm going to be sick.
Oh, my God.
I'm going to be sick.
I'm going to be so sick.
No, you have you have.

(02:16:34):
For people who don't know, Dylan and I had a show for many years where the main crew
was called the Patchwork and it's very dear to me and Dylan.
So that's kind of upsetting.
The thing that I laughed at because I didn't read the Patchwork team, I just said the team

(02:16:55):
doesn't get along at first, which I think is very funny and considering the Veilguard.
Exploring the Anderfels is a big piece of art.
Because making the oh my God, Valyrium Dagger looks so hot in the original art, but the
Valyrium Dagger looks like the idol.

(02:17:15):
It has the head of the idol and then like a full like that.
That's cool.
That's cool.
That's cool.
You're having a bad time, babe.
No, Dylan.
My favorite guy in the world.
No.
We've unfortunately activated Dylan's trigger phrase by saying Dylan's two favorite things

(02:17:41):
might have had the team name be the same.
Baby.
He's okay.
That's such a good like the thing is that that's such a good Dragon Age thing.
Like that's such a good.
That's such a good.

(02:18:04):
The Patchwork crew, like the all the things that I loved about that story are like things
that I love about the Dragon Age story is that like we don't necessarily like all belong
together and like we don't like all have an alignment at first and like and it's just

(02:18:28):
that like we but we have to figure it out.
And that's such a good.
That would be such a good Dragon Age story.
It would be such a good Dragon Age story.
And and and oh it's so sad that they didn't get to make that story.

(02:18:48):
It is so upsetting that they didn't get to make that story because and and this series
deserved that story and the writers deserved to make it and and I and I deserved to play

(02:19:12):
it.
So yeah you did.
And I did.
Yeah you did darling.
It's so serious it's just it's so sad that like there was an end to that story that the
writers were excited about and that everything I learn about it is so.

(02:19:35):
Is so what it should be.
It's so quintessentially Dragon Age.
It would have been so good and it's so sad that because of essentially corporate greed
and a misread of what their audience is we never get to have that closure to that story

(02:19:57):
and the and the game is just done now.
Like they it's just it's over.
Yeah.
Jesus.
Okay.
I'm so sorry.
That hit you way harder than I thought it was gonna.
Thank you so much darling.
I'm so sorry.
That's okay.
That's all right.

(02:20:18):
You know what?
I think I think we should call Anders.
I think we should let Anders know and he'll just he'll do he'll do a bomb threat.
It'll be fun.
No he won't.
Anders famously doesn't call it a bomb.

(02:20:39):
No he doesn't call it a bomb.
He just blows it up.
He just does the damn thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll tell you what.
Whoo.
Um.
Oh wow.
Uh okay.
We've got.
I'm kind of I'm kind of crashing out actually Robin.
I know.
I know.
I can see I can see that be tough.
I know.
I can see.

(02:20:59):
I can see that be tough.
I know.
I know.
I can see.
I can see.
I can see.
I can see.
I can see that be tough.
I can see that be tough on you and I was like oh how much of this is going to get cut actually.
None of it.
Live with it.
Uh sit with it.
I'm going to tag all of the Dragon Age devs in this.

(02:21:19):
Um yeah.
Uh okay.
So I'm looking to see if we got any other questions.
We didn't we didn't get any other questions.
Okay.
No.
I like my fantasy uh future Dragon Age game.
I also love what should have been uh the writer's vision for a Dragon Age game.

(02:21:45):
It sounds amazing.
Um I loved there are a couple of you know there are a couple of themes in the series
like that we see repeatedly throughout the games.
There's like there's themes of like justice and vengeance shows up a lot.

(02:22:10):
Even outside of Anders is like this like theme of of of that.
There's um a there's a theme that that runs pretty strong which is like a grabbing um

(02:22:30):
like the power like the power you yield and like having that uh after it's necessary and
the corruption that it can lead to.
That's definitely another theme.
What are some other what are what are some other themes you see repeatedly in the game?
Um I mean there's a pretty there's this you know I know that I speak for Dragon Age 2

(02:22:57):
but like extremism and like when is that a positive thing is consistently I think talked
about um because it's like I mean you know origins you have a lot.
I mean the Brazilian forest to talk about a thing that's extremism um yeah yeah uh you

(02:23:18):
know the the mages uh start speaking of uh the annulment the right of annulment like
immediately as soon as you get there the the templars are like let's just kill them all
because there's demons upstairs and shit like that and um you know you have the chance to
destroy the urn of sacred ashes because because the threat of the fact that it's can be found

(02:23:40):
and taken by people is like so big that is it worth it to um to like have this like there's
so much a lot of the big big choices are down to like extreme beliefs and when is it okay
to when is it okay to act on it and when is it when is it like we can't do that though

(02:24:03):
like it's like I understand why you feel this way and does I understand why you feel this
way but you can't do it like this um but then also it's like the weird thing was like and
as you can't do it like this you did fix it though like you've and as did a significant

(02:24:24):
amount like almost destroyed every circle through this one act of horrendous violence
um did liberate a lot of people and it's like is that what it like the question is is that
worth it is that like a thing that's yeah you know what I mean and the the unfortunate
part of it is that he did start a rebellion and well that's it that's yeah and we and

(02:24:49):
and we did step in to that rebellion and and stop them from fighting each other it's just
that then what becomes like an unanswered question is that because this game the series
is really bold in a lot of ways but they've always been a little bit timid on on on giving

(02:25:13):
us like a an actual resolution to the to the these fights against oppression like obviously
the worst offender has been veil guard we don't get to we don't get to fight oppression in
any way meaningfully at all but our status quo holders status quo holders in veil guard

(02:25:34):
but um but i do think that running through the series i would have loved to see like
a little bit more of a a through line to that where we could see that like okay so the major
rebellion happened we stopped them from fighting we sided with whoever whichever one is that

(02:25:57):
what are they still what's going on in those circles are they still doing the right of
annulment with is vivienne at risk of the right of annulment at this moment in time
that's that's what i think is is you know part of that extremism conversation is vivienne

(02:26:20):
being so status quo win is also very status quo holder where both of them want to you
know let's uh let's actually yeah it's tough but let's kind of keep it i will push back
on vivienne being status quo holder i think that vivienne vivienne's thing is that she

(02:26:41):
she thinks that the best way to change things for the mages is for the mages to have more
power in the chantry and so for the circle mages to have a say in chantry law because
that's the system she knows and that's the system she grows up in so she she feels that

(02:27:06):
being able to affect change in that system is the best and safest way whereas like some
of us are like get rid of the circle entirely she's from her perspective she's seen people
become abominations she's that sure but she still she still is like she's still pro keep

(02:27:30):
the mages in prison just make prison better no no no yeah absolutely she's only that because
her prison is great actually and she's having a great time with it and i can imagine vivienne
being like she can be she will be manipulated in the system instantly actually i think day

(02:27:50):
one vivienne will start like trying to make moves and people will say give her a rebuttal
and she's like yeah i guess you're right yeah we can keep it as it is and it's like i feel
like as strong as she is she does want it to remain the same because i think there's
a lot of like internalized mage homophobia from her or mage phobia i don't know what

(02:28:18):
you'd call it and it's you know you can say like oh well it's because she's seen those
things firsthand and it's like yeah but so has every mage like like all of them have
seen that happen i don't see a world in which even like an apostate hasn't seen someone
become an abomination the threat of them becoming an abomination is constant it's a thing that

(02:28:41):
they mages just live with and you know i think that i think vivienne is just like yeah well
we kind of want to just keep it going yeah keep that same same train a rolling but maybe
give it a new kind of paint eh add on a little food cart for the mages then the people in
snow piss it will stop complaining yeah so i think i think you know extremism and how

(02:29:10):
that kind of interacts with the world is is a big thing because because and it's because
oppression is such a huge storyline in the world that extremism and the question of it
naturally comes out through being you know yeah if you're talking about oppression you

(02:29:30):
have to bring up the the fact that to get out of oppression people are going to do huge
things and the thing that is uncomfortable for most people is those huge things often
are the only things that work and that's what a lot of a lot of dragon age is about yeah
yeah i agree yeah uh yep i have a new one okay on kissables what companions what companion

(02:30:01):
one that wasn't romanceable should have been romanceable felicia day you want to talk about
game sales game sales going up in 2009 you're getting felicia day kissable in a video game
age two would have been the biggest selling game ever hate that hate you but yeah yeah

(02:30:26):
yeah sure and then you can only kiss her on her big day out on a big day out it's varric
varric is the character varric in inquisition not into i think it is very important to the
structure of two that varric is your best friend i think that is i think that's exceptionally
important to the through line of case i change my answer then because mine is varric into

(02:30:50):
not an inquisition oh what is your other answer uh let me think about it i've got a okay a
second uh mine is varric in inquisition varric in inquisition should absolutely be romanceable
yeah you help him through his divorce yeah you may get with him yeah uh oh that's tough
or let me fuck that old woman let me fuck win like what yeah she's only she's 29 she's

(02:31:22):
we make her younger every time he's only 29 yeah true yeah true um i would really dig
the problem is is i would really dig a a a villain who is romanceable like i would love

(02:31:50):
a full obviously i'd love a full game where the thing is that solace is in love with the
protagonist yeah um it made trespasser really cool like like the idea that he is killing
everything but oh my god is so heartbroken by the fact that they're doing it and it's
like that's it's just it's that's good and i would love a game where god i don't know

(02:32:16):
i i solace has already been answered but the thing is is like is that is just a pitch that
i would really like i would like a game where the person is the antagonist from the start
and you can romance them like fucking meredith like you you can meet meredith early doors
with avaline you get to know her because at first she isn't mad she goes mad because of

(02:32:40):
the lyrium idol like you can you can romance her the pair of you can fall in love and then
like she descends into madness and there's nothing you can do to stop it um and then
maybe there will be cool things where it's like she's ascending into madness but then
hawke is also descending a little bit into madness and there's like weird scenes where

(02:33:00):
things aren't what they seem and and you're like why is it whenever i see meredith i go
mad like or i stay over i go mad and it's like oh it's because you know there's carbon
monoxide poisoning in her house and that could have been cool too because like if you were
a pro mage hawk and you were romancing her and you convinced her to be a little more

(02:33:21):
sympathetic towards mages the descent to madness would have been fully against her will and
it would have like manifested as her like fighting it and then like if but if you were
a pro templar hawk that fully like encouraged her hate of mage then you drive her into it
yeah yeah and it would have been it's it's it's da2's i wouldn't i'm probably weakest

(02:33:50):
for me storytelling bit is that meredith and orsino are only in like they're in the whole
game but they are prime in act three yeah whereas this would pull them into like i mean
you can easily meet meredith act one because avaline is there and avaline is like she's

(02:34:11):
like oh i've done templar like i've done training but they kind of want me to be do some like
templar shit do you want to come with me and then you meet meredith and you can like flirt
and kind of have like a thing where you see her more and more and then she has a personal
quest that lasts one and two and then act three it's like you turning up at the big
fight between orsino and meredith after um you know after all of the end of act two and

(02:34:40):
then you can talk through um you know what what has happened to you like what is going
on i haven't like you know it could have been cool another thing that uh not to go back
uh but the i'm going back a little bit but a thing in your pitch of a game that i thought

(02:35:01):
of that would be an another interesting side story yeah is if everyone got magic would
all the qunari have to change their names to like bars or like there would be like a
small there would be like a village or like a thing where where someone's like oh there's
a cerobos that's doing all this bad stuff where everyone keeps talking about this awful
cerobos and you go there and it's a whole village of people who are new mages didn't

(02:35:24):
know what to do with it and they all called each other the same name um and then it's
like oh it's not one person doing all this stuff it's not one incredibly powerful mage
doing it it's a group of people who don't know how to handle the fact that they're
cut off from the world and all naming all calling each other the same thing i like i
like that i also think that if i think that so i think that like the veil coming down

(02:35:49):
the dwarves get the magic back from the stone the elves get their magic back from the fade
the qunari all get their dragon magic back yeah it would all be dragon all get their
their their breath magic back and that's the like that's a whole other like quest line

(02:36:11):
a storyline that we have to unlock is that like that like what is the qnari link why
did that get severed in this mess that would be cool yeah right what qnari was working
with elven gods at the time and got like uh you know like what what was it that got us

(02:36:36):
wrapped up in this and that like that that i love this yeah you know what it is like
i love thetus i love i love the world that they've created it feels so alive to me um
that like that like i feel able to just think of possible plot lines in this world that

(02:37:06):
i didn't make you know like that but like that it's so real to me that i can kind of
do that and that we can sit here and riff about it like i just feel like it's such a
real place um no it's great it's really very very cool yeah um so yours is yours is varec
inquisition is your kissable yeah oh yeah varec is my is my i do i do i do think it

(02:37:30):
might be someone like meredith like yeah like someone who is like can pull a really interesting
like yeah i like that curveball and then also it kind of like it would lead it would it
would lead her descent into just like a really interesting place i think yeah um and unlike
switch is unlike solus i mean admittedly like solus where it's like you can't convince him

(02:37:53):
otherwise um but i know in the veil god it's like the idea is that you can and then he
regrets it it's meredith's like you can't convince her otherwise like and she has no
regret about it and it's like it's like this isn't you're not the same person anymore and
i do actually think it will be a night that would be an interesting uh reflection of the

(02:38:15):
like romances between if you romance solus and you romance meredith it's like both of
them are driven by this one singular thing and it's kind of like a it's just so ingrained
in them that you can't fight against it um regardless of how much you like want to and
how much you try like solus isn't going to give up and neither would meredith um but
they're for different like darkly different reasons you could have an interesting conversation

(02:38:40):
if hawke survives and romanced meredith hawke could have a really interesting conversation
with the inquisitor about like yeah i also fell in love with someone who tried to destroy
the world um shit sucks dude it's bad then we should talk about it yeah yeah um how you

(02:39:01):
feeling oh bad i'm yeah i'm gonna crash out a little uh i but i love the series i all
right so just a kind of general let's say you know what let's say uh a series overall
but we get two we get a the whole series and we get a first we get a trilogy rating a rating

(02:39:29):
for the trilogy for the trilogy but you get out of 10 yeah yeah okay yeah the only thing
that brings it down is gameplay yep yeah and that's that's a shame about it because we
are replaying origins because i'm chomping at the bit i have hey gang i have dragon age

(02:39:50):
the the stolen throne book here yeah because i want to experience this world more you and
i uh spent just solid two hours talking about doing a one-on-one dragon age ttrpg when we're
bored and we make characters and then we pitched our own dragon age storyline yep um because
we want to spend more time in this world like the world is honestly perfect it's so like

(02:40:16):
it it joins like the echelon of things that the problem with the world is that it it is
now too many cooks where there are too many people in their hands in pots and and and
people don't really want to advance the world in a way that's fascinating because i would

(02:40:37):
love this for to be one of the series where i can i have friends who know like uh middle
earth like back of their hand are talking deep deep lore and like we're getting mad
at rings of power because while this person actually joined with this faction because
of this and this in the simirillion and this and this and like saying things that are complete

(02:41:00):
gibberish to me i want to be that for dragon yes you know i want to know that shit for
thetus i want to yeah like i like like how you go on rants of just like well that doesn't
work in the veil guard because of this tiny piece of lore said in this one comic uh that
was printed on free comic book day in 1985 and i i'd love to have that kind of knowledge

(02:41:27):
so the world is a solid um i don't i i never used to like giving like full perfect scores
like 10 out of 10s because it's like well there's always something wrong with it but
then i kind of i kind of got over the fact that well there's always something wrong with
the world you have to look at the world as like well nothing is perfect so a perfect

(02:41:50):
score is different um i do think the world is a is a complete 10 i love i love it and
i love the stories i'm telling you right i'm get i'm fucking i'm sick i'm i feel ill with
how much i love hawk um i feel disgusted with the dragon age 2 gang and how much they are
my my fucking boys that's your voice i'm getting art for the walls for kirk wall because that's

(02:42:15):
my fucking city greatest city in the world don't ever step to it don't ever talk bad
about my city only i'm allowed to do that um uh i think it just it just fucks go birds
what would the good the kirk wall what would the kirk walls be hawk okay no but that's
the character of hawk like kirk wall isn't gonna say go hawk is the champion of kirk

(02:42:41):
wall and then they make their sport team team around one guy yeah yeah yeah all right uh
uh sure go birds go hawks um uh game wise it fluctuates like fucking crazy i don't think

(02:43:03):
you can give i don't think you can give a rating on the i i fully if you're gonna rate this
game series you can't you unfortunately have to be like mechanics aside uh because it's
like what game are you fucking talking about everyone has such a vastly different combat
system that it's and mechanical prowess that is pointless talking about it yeah origins

(02:43:24):
is like the most fun to play a mage in the world inquisition is the most fun to play
dragon age 2 is the best story and the mechanics suck and the velgarde is a middle action ps2
game um but it's like but then it's like oh but you just said inquisition is the most
fun it's like yeah but i can't be a blood mage put walking bomb on one person hold 50

(02:43:46):
people uh still as as my team hits one guy who explodes transfers bombs to everyone and
they all explode you can't do that in inquisition yeah that's a thing that origins is so uniquely
perfect at because that's the type of game it wants so it's like what are you gonna do
when it when you talk about you know exactly mechanically it's it it's such a divisive

(02:44:08):
series because everybody has a different favorite of like what they think works no one's is
too to be clear no one's is too no one's is too but like between origins and inquisition
people have different opinions about like which one of those feels better and it's just
it's it's just sort of it's just so much of a difference um yeah but i'm gonna i'm gonna

(02:44:33):
say uh the first three chile trilogy overall um it truly is like a nine nine out of ten
to me is like one of the greatest storytelling experiences of my life um series overall including
veil guard is gonna bring the bring the mean down to to probably about a six seven yeah

(02:45:01):
oh veil guard veil guard is a three to me it has it is such a disaster of a game um and those three
are the last three missions of the game uh the three that i'm giving it is the points for those
last three missions excluding i've been dead this whole time yeah no it's the last sorry it's the

(02:45:25):
last two and emmerich existing yeah there we go yeah there you go thank you so yeah yeah it's that
and uh yeah so it but but the rest of it it's it's yeah i i feel i i want to just say because i know
we've we've come up on uh hitting our our longest recording time uh yet again so excited and i i

(02:45:52):
just want to say before we start to wrap up is that um i feel like this game had become
because i've loved it for so long it and i've loved it for so long
in a way that everybody i know knows i love it um but most people i know don't like care about

(02:46:17):
it on this level um so i've loved it for a long time as like a solo thing like it's just a me
thing and it's become a comfort thing for me where i just it's just like you know it's it's like you
open it up and you just sort of exist in it and and have it like like the equivalent of putting

(02:46:41):
you know a show you've seen a hundred times on in the background to fall asleep too like
uh it has become that so getting the chance to replay it with you but doing so with the intent
to like really re-approach the story and really like re-experience it again um has made me like

(02:47:04):
fully know that this is not a nostalgia piece for me this is an actual thing that i this is a piece
of art that i actually really love um and i just am so grateful to have a friend like you and to
to that you did this with me and that you i got to see my favorite piece of media through

(02:47:30):
your eyes and with you and to talk about it with you and that this is now a thing that we share
and that doesn't end when we close out this episode like this is just now a a favorite
thing that we have in common and that we built that uh with this so i really appreciate that

(02:47:53):
and what i'm really excited for is so we we are now starting with next week we are going to
start playing the mass effect franchise starting with the prologue of mass effect which ends after
you leave eden prime um a game series that i really like i love i love mass effect um you

(02:48:14):
haven't played it um but what i'm excited about is not only do does us talking about dragon age
not end you know when we hang up this call and we're going to be able to talk about in person
love this thing together we are going to talk about dragon age in reference to other pieces of
media um we're going to talk about how mass effect was pre-origin so it was the first of you know

(02:48:41):
this kind of um you know this this theme the three of them i'm almost certain it is i'm gonna google
it i think i googled it yesterday uh mass effects uh let's look at the release date of mass effect one
effect one um dragon age origins um mass effect came out in 2007 dragon age origins came out in 2009

(02:49:12):
i do now need dragon age origins to explain to me why it looks like that
you're playing the legendary edition of mass effect that's true that's true okay i forgot
i forgot i was playing a very remastered version of mass effect one let's yeah i'm so glad you said

(02:49:34):
that i was like um i i now need someone to answer yeah um so we are going to be able to look at
the differences between mass effect one two three which is a trilogy of games where you play the

(02:49:57):
same person with almost the same crew consistently um and then how they decided to approach dragon age
which is the same world but three different people um and different characters and then
occasionally people turning up and like what the implications of these things are um i'm just really

(02:50:19):
stoked to discuss to keep talking about dragon age uh yeah i hadn't thought of it that way
these lenses of other things there is um you know uh big events that that um like big choice things
that they decide to take and then kind of expand upon in separate like like mass effect does a

(02:50:45):
thing that dragon age then picks up and expands upon dragon age does something that mass effect
picks up and expands upon um things that i think are just really interesting i'm excited to discuss
and talk about uh yeah as we go through this and then you know eventually we're going to go on to
other games i'm sure balders gate 3 is going to be one of the games that we decide to play at some

(02:51:05):
point yeah which again is so tied into dragon age that oh absolutely this show is going to become
we play story driven heavy choice games that have lasting impacts and its relation to the dragon age
franchise is what that is that i hadn't considered that as like a piece of it yeah yeah yeah yeah

(02:51:29):
no that does make sense that's really exciting actually and we're gonna do it together as best
friends these were best friends oh my god oh dear all right wait robin hello what do we do as a sign
off for the whole series i think we should i think we should do all of them all of them i think we

(02:51:50):
should do all of them in in like conjunction with one like like one after the other we should do
them and to be clear the last time we did that we did it in the last time we did it in the last time
we did them and to be clear the last one is the last one that we decided for yeah yeah we should

(02:52:11):
also do the other one that we should do all three that we decided all three okay okay okay
okay alright okay so from dragon age origins wardens other round um
Um, in peace vigilance, in war, in war victory, in peace vigilance, in death sacrifice.

(02:52:47):
Now gather around you fucking scumbags.
You fucking slut.
You absolutely disgusting shit.
You ugly pieces of shit.
Losers.
You disappoint me in every single way.
It's fucking disgusting looking at you.
And get ready because your struggles have only just begun.

(02:53:10):
Now on your knees.
Beg.
Beg.
Beg.
Beg.
Beg.
That we succeed.
Beg.
That we succeed.
For we have seen the throne of the gods.
And it is empty.
Now gang.
Hey gang.
You wanna crack some eggs?
Oh shit Dylan.
What?
Where is Soglas?

(02:53:31):
Oh, he's right behind me isn't he?
That one's hard to be beat actually.
I fucking love it.
Hey, the Veilguard.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.

(02:53:52):
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Whatever it takes.
Whatever it takes.
That one sucks.
That one stinks.
It sucks.
I hate this fucking game.
I'm glad our more masochistic listeners, who have outed themselves several times.
Oh yeah, we know who you are.
I hope they're very excited about the fact that we ribbed on them a little bit and then

(02:54:16):
told them to beg.
And then told them to beg, yeah.
All in sequential order.
I like that those two are backed up against each other.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
If you nutted, tweet us about it.
Yeah.
You were on board and then you hugged when I said.
The rumors.
The rumors.
The rumors.
Gang, this is it.
We're going to talk about Mass Effect in our next episode.

(02:54:42):
Mass Effect next week.
We're going to do the prologue of Mass Effect.
So we're going to come with a shepherd.
And we're going to do Eden Prime.
Yes.
Which I'm looking forward to.
Yeah, it's going to be grand.
If you want us to talk more about Dragon Age, I know we've said it a few times, but on our
Patreon we have a Dragon Age Origins Every Single Character Ranked, except for Awakening,

(02:55:06):
which is sad, but then at the end I demanded that we ranked the characters from Awakening.
Dragon Age 2 ranking and in a few weeks we're going to do the actual Dragon Age book, starting
with the Stolen Throne.
We're going to do more.
Our goal, I'm going to say our blue sky, we might have to reassess, but we're going to

(02:55:30):
do five chapters every two weeks.
That's what it is.
There are 19 chapters plus an epilogue.
Our goal is to do, did we say a week?
Did we say two weeks?
Two.
Two weeks.
We're going to do five chapters of the Stolen Throne every two weeks and that will be on
our Patreon.
It should be fun.
The first episode will be around the 24th.

(02:55:54):
End of this month is our goal to do that and talk about it, which is also my birthday,
the 24th of February.
Very exciting.
Do you subscribe to the Patreon as a gift for Robin's birthday as well as supporting
us?
Yeah.
And thank you again to everybody who has already supported us on Patreon and has already had

(02:56:17):
access to these things.
You are supporting us in making other art that isn't this.
This is a fun project for us, but we have other things that we're trying to make.
So I really appreciate you.
But a very special extra thank you to Rodrigo, Parker, Meadow, Callum, and Caroline, our

(02:56:41):
top supporters on Patreon over there.
Thank you so much.
We did a whole project that we set out to do and we finished it.
And now we get to keep going.
And we keep going because we had so much fun.
We did.
Yeah.
Love you.

(02:57:01):
Love you.
Thank you.

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Crime Junkie