A Dragon Age Origins story overview

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[Music]
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hello and welcome to lore watch Round Table free form discussion about lore and your favorite media I'm your host
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Joe Perez one of several lower Focus folks from blizzard watch and I've got my stalwart gray Warden companion with
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me today Matt Rossy how you doing today Matt well I I didn't pick the uh the Mage origin so at least I I know I'm not
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related to Hawk which is good because everybody is related to Hawk sers and dies that's fair uh and chuckling in the background
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is our Warden Commander Liz Harper how you doing today Liz hello I'm doing well
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uh Warden commanders are kind of known for making terrible life choices but hey here I am I mean you are the the
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editor-in chief of our website so uh so if you can't tell from that
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we're going to be talking about some more Dragon Age uh this is the last in our series since vilard has just come
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out and and uh I believe we'll be making our way through that as time allows for each of us uh and we will eventually
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have an episode on Veil guard uh but for right now we're going to finish it off by starting at the or by finishing at
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the beginning where everything started uh Dragon Age Origins uh Dragon Age
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Origins was a game that when it was released was I me honestly it was
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heralded as like the next coming of like the balers gate type of series um it was
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filled with amazing story um it was really published uh or
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not published uh it was marketed there's the word I'm looking for words are hard I haven't had enough caffeine today um
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it was marketed as you know a epic RPG
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fantasy uh with many branching paths and dialogues and consequences uh which you know was great
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for the year uh uh 20 uh 2009 or 2009
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it released uh in November of that year right before uh the holiday season which
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was honestly the perfect time for most games to release Cut Above the Rest as far as uh it it sort of being the hot
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game that season uh and persisted for quite a while with a lot of DLC um this
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is it also got in addition to the DLC it got a major story based expansion two
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years after it released it did so that's this to put this into perspective uh the
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the expansion that it got Dragon Age Origins Awakening came out in 2010
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almost exactly a year later Dragon Age 2 came out so they were working on Dragon
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Age 2 concurrently with that expansion and to a degree it shows yeah you can also I would also say that it's kind of
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insane the sort of output BioWare was doing during this time period you know because uh Origins to and Inquisition
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came out in the period of like four or five years including all of their dlc's I mean Inquisition had three I think
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Dragon Age 2 had TW story and Dragon Age Origins had just a ton of little DLCs it
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had several little DLCs and then Awakening which was a fullon exper yeah
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and keep in mind they were also putting out Mass Effect at the same time yeah Mass Effect 2 came out 2010 and Mass
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Effect 3 came out in like 2012 I want to say it just it a s me how many games
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BioWare was putting out in this time period and how all of them were really very good games with lots of deep story
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and very interconnected intricate worlds uh it's just not this period in bover's
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history yeah and I think that's an artifact of of that time too because uh BioWare was essentially um they had been
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around for for years right they they had been producing games before this um this is not their first rodeo but this was
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them really sort of entering into uh items of a scale I guess that would be
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the best way to put it they were you know creating games or at least trying to create games that would compete with
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MMOs which were really big at the time uh honestly like Games like World of Warcraft uh you know they they were not
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exactly slouches um so you had to have a very compelling game to pull players away
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from that uh and this was that game G and the other thing that is cannot be
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overstated is that this is the birth of the Dragon Age lore uh David Gator who
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uh was a lead writer at the time I believe on this you know did a whole bunch of stuff to set up the story uh
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wrote two books to go along with the game release as well very yeah very good books too they're still worth reading if
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you're interested in Dragon Age uh and went so far as to be popular enough to
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Warrant an RPG uh which I still have sitting on my shelf uh that I only got
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to play once um but just a ton of people really invested in the lore and in
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particular it played on a a lot of I want I don't want to say a lot of tropes cuz I think David would would yell at me
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from wherever he is in the world um but it plays off of some core ideas that
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fantasy had been playing with at the time in particular the warden and the whole organization of the wardens the
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warden which you are introduced to earlier early in the game as soon as the game
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happens uh as you are essentially you know recruited by Duncan the uh Warden
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commander of the falden grey wardens uh on your way to uh travel to ostagar I
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believe is where it is uh to meet with uh King Kain and uh Taran Logan mctier
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uh I do go ahead I do want to put in one thing that I thought was really it felt
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innov ative to me but maybe maybe I'm just thinking back that way uh the way you could have an origin a unique origin
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that uh really played into how and why you wound up at tigar it's not just as
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in the more modern Dragon Age games where you're like okay I'm a human I'm an elf was like okay I'm a city elf I'm
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a dish elf I'm a noble uh I'm a noble born dwarf I'm a commer dwarf and each
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of those had a pretty indepth single player before not huge but before you get into
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this main narrative the dwarf ones are in particular actually do get to be pretty
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sizable yeah the massive yeah I was running around on on my commoner dwarf
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for an extended period of time what's really funny is if you play the commoner dwarf your sister is the woman that if
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you play the noble dwarf your brother impregnates mhm so it's it's it's it's
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kind of interesting to think about like you could theoretically have a party of these people all join the wardens at the
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same time like because they're all kind of having bad stuff happen to them at the same time it's like first off when
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Duncan shows up in your neighborhood almost certainly something bad's gonna happen to someone around you uh but yeah
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you could seriously like have a dish elf a city elf two dwarves and a human all
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be like joining at the same time I think it's two is it two humans a noble and a comer maybe I'm no there's no common or
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human there's a mage human oh that's right it is a mage human you can play you can play an elf or a human Mage if
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you play the human Mage you're actually cousin of Hawk as I mentioned earlier yeah a Mel um but if you play an elf I
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don't remember it's not you're not anybody special the this is good and this actually plays into something that
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I think I was going to talk about as well and I wanted to bring up and see how you guys felt about it when I say
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that it played off a core ideas this is part of it and including the grey wardens or the just in general this felt
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like again almost like a DND style background oh yeah right where you're
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creating your character you have unique backstory that backstory uh dictates
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what you basically what you get access to story-wise or at least your opening
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trajectory and the wardens feel like a combination of paladins as well as anti- paladins which was really unheard of at
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the time most things were very heroic and I believe that the way that they portrayed the uh grey wardens here is
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well for lack of a better term very gray right like it's it's very morally mid
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ground and I company books yeah very much so where you're like it's like yes
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we are we are defending the world yes we are here to save people but uh a the
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thing that we're fighting is so incredibly horrible that sometimes it will be acceptable for us to let an
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entire busload of school kids die to stop it because if we don't do that Millions die and that's the calculus we
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have to do and the second part of it is that in order to beat this we have to use it we can't beat we haven't figured
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out any other way to stop lights so we are we're going to all have to to take the blade into ourselves and shorten our
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lives we know we're going to die young uh we know we're going to die going insane hearing this this weird music in
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our heads that drags us underground to go try to find a giant a a giant dragon and wake it up so we're going to have to
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you know go down and get ourselves murdered by dark spawn and it's just all this stuff that that you see later on in
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the series this is the first time you get it like the wardens are are just a part of it uh as important as the
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wardens are and as important as the blats are they don't happen that often there's like hundreds of years of
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history between each one yeah and usually they're major events right like these these are like Milestones when the
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blights happen yeah so there's always there's always Spa wandering but it's never quite the blight yeah and and so
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there's it's kind of like a fascinating way to try and set up I actually think of it very much as is anti-d and and I
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don't mean that in that it is opposed to DND I mean like DND D is positive matter
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and dragon Ages antimatter yeah yeah and that's kind of feels it feels a lot of the same roles Andes but it does so it's
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almost seriously it's like looking in a mirror like where instead of having the noble paladins we have these guys who
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are you know you can't say they're not heroic because they they know they're going to die uh they throw themselves
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into this thing to save other people but it's very much not the you know bright and shiny paladins that D and D had at
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the time elves are not you know like an ancient race of powerful magic users
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well they are but they're no longer doing that they're now currently you know the nomads or they're imprisoned
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essentially yeah they're they're enslaved right yeah yeah and and dwarves there's one dwarf City that that we can
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be completely certain still exists and there's one that might still exist but we're not entirely sure about those guys
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uh they might have the blight or something because they're they're weird and they don't talk to people and then everything else has been just destroyed
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by the dark spor and it's like yeah there's a there's a lot to that there's a lot of it it feels like I feel like to
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a certain degree they first started advertising Dragon Age when they put out never winter nights they yeah they did
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it was in the game that that you know and soon never winter after never winter nights our our game Dragon Age will be
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coming uh on loading screens so I've often felt like Dragon Age is what happens when you start from d and d and
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then you try and move away from it and and and you can see that go I'm gonna shut up now so you can talk no and and I
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agree because that's exactly where I'm kind of going with it is like they took sort of an identifiable core right
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something that most folks that were interested in the fantasy genre or even in role playing video games at the time
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would be familiar with because again you're coming off the heels of things like never winter nights was probably
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the largest video game ever to release with uh Dungeons and Dragons core until
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balers Gate 3 uh and that's something that I will absolutely argue um you know
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and the people that are interested in that like Matt said were already being advertised but they were absolutely going to be interested in this and it
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does feel like that where you you look at what you did in D and D and you say what can I do to make it mine what can
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do to make it different and they do a lot of that and I think it worked really well for them their their relationship
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with magic is wildly different than sort of the high fantasy uh Magic that folks
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are used to inside of like the DN D genre uh even the enemy is and how it's
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constructed is different the relationship with the afterlife is wildly different and all these rules are
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established here my only criticism is because of how the game
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was done and you can see this as you play through it at least at first when it was first released is you can tell
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that there wasn't a super high amount of confidence in it partially I think because they weren't sure how it was
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going to be received again in a world that had moosely moved on to MMOs and
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you can see that they may have taken some I don't want to say shortcuts but they uh maybe didn't give uh you know as
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much leeway or Freedom as one would have hoped and so a lot of the lore doesn't
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just come from in the game a lot of it is also established in the books and there's some stuff that established only
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in the books um so I thought that was also fascinating because we talked about
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this with the last one we talked about Dragon H 2 Dragon Age 2 is what happens when you take the the handcuffs off and
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let somebody who's fully invested in the game world just go nuts right just have
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no holds barred and just kind of do whatever they need to do so but let's
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I'm going to turn it over to you guys and I'm going to stop talking for a while cuz I've talked for a bit with
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this opening of the game how do you like where The Story Goes what do you think
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is the most important opening cell though so to speak what what is the most important thing that happens first
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Liz uh I mean it's it's interesting that that first en I mean you go into the
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first encounter at tigar uh and that that kind of sets you
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up for the whole series you have the heroic in this case heroic gray wardens
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fighting off the dark spawn alongside a noble King who literally wears golden
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armor um and you know the classic heroic fantasy would probably go in and have
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you know a big victory here like uh you know the heroes are all cheered and instead it's it's this crushing defeat
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and you get to see what the dark spawn are what the odds are that you're up
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against when they're talking because you go into this your character goes into this well kind of your character and you
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go into this as a new gry Warden you don't know what I mean you know that they exist but you probably don't know
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much about them you definitely don't know what's involved in becoming a Grey Warden which is drinking dark spawn
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blood so that you kind of gain some of their power and the ability to sense
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them and an immune to the blight itself um if you survive if you survive if you
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can drink a little bit of dark spawn blood and survive you become more powerful but this doesn't right here
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they've set up a lot of the universe and they've set up H well I think opinions vary a little bit uh you know your big
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antagonist who is you know walks away from the battle when he could have come in to reinforce that and of course I
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think late that's uh low game YP I think later in the series that's called a
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little more into question about his motivations but during Origins he's like he's super the bad guy Matt um honestly
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I actually think it's well before aagar even I was yeah I think it's possibly
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the I don't know which one you would say is the most important I don't think that the the dish origin is fun but it's not
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super important it just means that you end up with a warden who is a dis Shelf
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and uh also it means that Merill who you will see a lot in Dragon Age 2 you get to see her for a little bit because
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she's in the daish origin of Origins um the the elf one is it's very interesting
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as a this is the world that that elves live in in cities the alienage life what
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it's like you know if if you don't know a lot about the benial period you won't know that it's many cities had alien
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ages where either Jewish people or people from like say the Romany communities were imprisoned uh it's a
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similar kind of thing uh but it doesn't really matter much to the story um I
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think for the story three of them are super important the two dwarf ones which
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I'm taking as one thing just seen from two angles are very important to set up ostagar which is the biggest chunk of
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content in the game going to aagar when you go toar sorry uh oramar thank you
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yes when you go to oramar you spend like literally like twice as much time there as you do with any other of the places
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you end up going like the the Mage Tower is possibly second the dish thing is over in a blank uh and uh when you go to
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ean's place that's kind of almost as big but it it's definitely not as big as as
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oramar oramar you are there forever you you it takes forever to get done with all of it because you you have to go do
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an incredibly long Quest just to find somebody to help you get the people
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people of oramar to mobilize on your behalf and then you have to deal with oramar people and their politics and it
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it's it is crazy long but it's also very interesting so it's it's important just to get your first acclamation to oramar
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because it's going to be so important but I honestly think that it's either the Mage Tower or the human Noble origin
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human Noble origin sets up one of the major secondary antagonists of the game uh renden how uh who's he's just first
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off he's played by Tim Curry at his Tim curest oh yeah it's Tim this pre pre-stroke Tim Curry yeah this is Tim
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Curry at his evil Tim curist like you know whereas you know when Tim Curry plays a reasonable
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character he's he's funny and and Urbane when he plays an evil character he's funny and Urbane in a way that ticks you
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off because he's doing it at you and how in this game is a is a spectacular
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villain uh much better than Loan in fact and Loan even in in Origins I argue that
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loan is portrayed as somewhat sympathetic like he he really believes he's doing the right thing whether or
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not he is yeah but he he's not actually go ahead it actually took me quite a
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while to come around to this L Gan thing because it it's actually very small bits
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of dialogue that explain what loan is what his motivations are and they're of
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Miss because they're just by himself they are they are very they're just Lan had motivations but they are so poorly
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explained and so quick that you could miss them uh Falon is independent but it
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was under ruled by orlay for a very long time and King he his best friend spent
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all the time fighting the get free and then yeah yeah that's it's there the Lan
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and the previous King Merrick threw off their shackles and established Falon as an independent nation they they made a
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free Falon now uh Merrick's son Halen is
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uh facing this blight he's fighting alongside the grey wardens he has requested more Grey Warden assistance
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and the extra Grey Warden assistance comes from orlay they're going to come
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in with these grey wardens and bring a number of chilies which are Orlean troops and Loan looks at this and he
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sees you are inviting orlay to take over again your father and I fought against
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this and now you're inviting them back in and he just he thinks it's Preposterous so and and there's actually
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did you did you do ostagar the return to ostagar DLC not in a long time I
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remember this like it was y yeah Matt go ahead and talk about it when you go back to aagar there's a DLC that basically
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sends you back to ostagar uh to see if there's anything left behind or you know anything you can find out about the
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blight one of the things you do is you find uh kin's letters one of them is from Empress Seline yeah and reading the
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letter it's pretty clear that Empress Selene is saying hey I know you're
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married but you your wife can't produce you children I mean if you married me
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our two Nations could unite peacely and our children would be heirs to both both
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kingdoms think about it and kayn very definitely seems to have been thinking
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about it which means kayn's wife Anora was loan's daughter
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and if you bring loan I'm just gonna give you a spoiler guys you can actually recruit loan into your party this is
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yeah this whole thing is spoilers I think we're okay the game the game is old enough at this point that I think I
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think 15 15 years is uh a pretty good yeah yeah but any rate so if you bring
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him and he reads that letter he'll be like that's son of a you like you realize he didn't know that this was
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going on he was mad just for his own reasons he didn't realize that was
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literally going to push his daughter out of the throne and replace her with Empress Seline I honestly feels like he
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feels Justified even more after he reads that letter it's great it's hilarious but uh I'm sorry to interrupt you but I
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think it's really important for low gain's yeah and it's it's in a DLC which means a lot of people didn't see it and
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Origins has so many dlc's which makes it hard to see the whole thing for what it
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is and see the whole picture and while you were playing through certainly Lan comes across as a villain even if you
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catch these little bits of dialogue coming from your perspective they seem
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pretty unreasonable because you do at ostagar you see that falden is facing a
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significant threat you know grey wardens are the ones who can fight dark spawn
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you later learn that grey wardens are the only ones who can kill an arch demon because reasons and so loan doesn't feel
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Justified and in the game you see okay he sends assassins after you like literal ant crows to kill you he locks
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up his daughter he declares himself Regent and locks up his daughter who is
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at this time still the queen still the queen of Faldon and he also um he works
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with renden how our secondary villain to if you play a human Noble they murder
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all of your family yes take to take your land and prevent you from giving kin
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reinforcements so that so that kin is weaker and easier to get rid of I suppose but yeah I think
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that part of it was that he knew that if if kland if Taran kand was there there'd be another person in the Kingdom at the
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same level as Taran loan which meant that loan wouldn't be able to steamroll everybody the way he there's a bigger
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power struggle so they took they took out the kin first and they don't just kill the soldiers the the tan himself
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they kill your uh your nephew they and uh his mother they they kill everyone in
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the castle everyone they all try to kill your brother but he turns out not to be dead but well he he was heading to
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ostagar to help with the troops and he was out scouting when everyone was you know wiped out so he wasn't even there
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you're the only one who escapes that castle um but when later you confront
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how you know you have an opportunity late in the game he talks about how you know I I made your mother beg me to let
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them live I made her kiss my feet and it's like whoa dude you are a bad guy
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there is no about feeling how becomes almost like I it's almost up there with
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that cyber Punk Quest I've talked about once or twice where you just I can't get through it without killing those people
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I've never even tried to spare how I don't even go through the conversation like literally once I see him and he
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starts thing I'm like nope kill time I'm not doing dialogue with you
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I've read it before and I don't need it again thank you if you let him talk he just becomes increasingly less
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sympathetic so you look at him and you say okay this is the guy loan was working with this is the guy who
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murdered my entire family and is now gloating about it in front of me very
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bad idea because I have a sword and oh yeah it's just rough it's hard to see L
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again as anything but a villain coming at this coming at this as a warden
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because of course loan is against the wardens because yeah a well after tigar there
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aren't any FAL and wardens left except you and also like there's also an
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interesting thing in one of the DLCs which is also kind of hard to talk about you go to warden's keep and you find out
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that the reason the wardens weren't very strong in Falon was that like about a 100 200 years ago just before the the
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orians invaded there was a struggle over who should be king of Falon and the wardens backed somebody else which they
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weren't supposed to do wardens are not supposed to get involved in political things but the commander of the warden
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keep uh in in Falon was like no we're gon to back this guy and that guy lost
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and the person who became king brought the Army up and killed all the wardens I think being being a gry warden involves
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like there's a requirement to make so many bad choices if you don't CH yeah
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you have to make one big bad life choice just to join the wardens and after that you kind of
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continue warden's another thing what's the name of the of the Orlean Warden
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that shows up I forget he's there so briefly yeah but kind of forgettable one
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of the points he he makes is that the wardens aren't like he's like we we don't discriminate if somebody will will
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will take the the the joining we'll take them yes they're willing to accept they're
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willing to accept the risk right yeah yeah yeah it doesn't matter if they're a criminal they're aage their anything
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anything if they will come and help fight the dark spawn that is all they care about yeah and they even have their own special dispensation so if you're
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Mage and you don't want to live in the tower you being a gry warden is a way out you can go anywhere you want now so
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yeah it's weird the the wardens the wardens really sum up the the philosophy of the setting which I believe is
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it's it's not Grim dark in that way some things are where they're just Grim for the sake of it and every there's dead people everywhere the grimness in this
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is basically a reflection of a world where there are two Paladin orders one
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of them is is a bunch of Scrappy criminals and outcasts who are willing to drink the blood of evil and and take
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on its taint and they call it that and the other are lium addicts who oppress
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Mages it's it's interesting how similar they are as you you only see this later
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in the series but the Templars serve the Chantry and they're given lium in order
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to fuel their powers just like wardens drink dark spawn blood admittedly only once the Templars have to keep drinking
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lium uh you know they both have their power brought on by this thing and in
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the case of lium it's they have to keep taking lium it's very addictive and it will eventually kill them or drive them
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mad and if they don't take it same thing can kill you yeah it is really
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interesting that they keeps like there different groups like that yeah they're they're both making this terrible
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bargain for power and I think neither of them know it before getting into it like
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it doesn't seem to be common knowledge that Templars are all going to lose it in the end and certainly grey wardens
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keep what in what the joining entails secret yeah the wardens keep almost everything secret they they don't talk
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about any of this stuff we need to like briefly cover the whole events of the game right I I'm you know yeah Happ
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think I think a a brief synopsis but just one thing I want to add before we go into that because again we only have
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so much time and there's so much to cover yeah the all this is to set up how broken the world is and you don't
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necessarily understand why it's broken but there are all these little tiny pieces like again with the the the way
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that the political structure is but the way that the world is the way that the races are treated the way that magic is
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handled the way that the wardens have to exist why are there dark spawn to begin
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with why is there a blight like all of these things don't make a whole lot of
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sense until later on as you get through the the story of the game but also as
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you get further into the series and yes part of it is that the series builds upon the lore that it said established
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for itself but also again this was the plan all along it was to give you little
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little hints and this is something that always stuck with me me when we talked with with David Gator about it is they
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knew what they wanted to do they knew the world and universe they wanted to create and they didn't have the time to
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put all of it into the game at first but they wanted to put the blocks in so that
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there were hints there were Whispers of it so that when it came along later if it came along later it wasn't that big
30:20
of a surprise and you could start connecting the dots so and that's what this is it's showing you the world is
30:26
broken and we find out later why the world is broken but the world is broken
30:32
so now I will turn it over to you and you can give your synopsis of the events Matt because I think you're probably
30:38
going to remember it better than most of us well I mean two there really broad Strokes various Origins happen we've
30:44
kind of talked about that a little bit uh your character arrives at aagar with Duncan and the few remaining uh feral
30:51
and grey wardens and more are about to be recruited but you have to go off into the woods first and find something and
30:59
you're not told exactly what right away you're told as you're leaving you're like yeah we need to find dark bone
31:05
blood you're like um why he's like they gotta go find dark spawn blood
31:10
this is when you're introduced to Alistair uh aliser is somebody I think it's telling that this is when Dragon
31:17
Age is when BioWare games got good enough graphically that you could tell two characters had the same face or not
31:25
because Callan and Alistair have the exact same face and when you look at them you know in
31:30
previous games so does every other person who isn't you know all women have the same face all men have the same faes
31:36
is like 2002 guys but in 2009 whilst the graphics in Dragon Age Origins don't
31:42
hold up they were pretty good for the time and you could actually tell the difference between these between
31:47
people's faces Duncan had a very different face from Alistair you can make your own face and it will be
31:53
different from anybody else in the game so when you see that Alistar and kin who you meet briefly uh have the same face
32:00
that's a hm moment but you don't really talk much about it Alistar leaves you go ahead I don't think you think about it
32:07
either you but I'm that later I am the kind of person who immediately goes wait
32:13
a minute why do you have the same so but you go off into the woods with like
32:18
various recruits um one who really sticks to mind is s Jory who keeps talking about how he just he just got
32:25
married and he's got this kid and he really wants to be a hero like the wardens and make his kid proud and you
32:31
know practically he doesn't say he's days yeah he doesn't go on about how he's two days from retirement but it's
32:37
definitely like Jenkins in in Mass Effect where he's like you know you know he's he is setting himself
32:43
up you go out into the woods you eventually find the the things you looking for but you're also supposed to
32:49
be looking for some weird old treaties that Duncan wants because Duncan's like uh we used to have a bunch of gry
32:55
wardens in this area but we don't have them anymore and these treaties that that we they're out there find them
33:00
because they could be very useful if this if this goes south because Duncan's always thinking ahead but when you find
33:05
the treaties they're not there the container is smashed they're gone and you meet a a young lady named Morgan who
33:13
is pretty quizzical with you she's not exactly happy to see you nor does she
33:19
like you but she's curious uh and except for Alistair who she immediately forms a
33:24
very powerful dislike towards uh and it's mutual alist doesn't like her either um depending on the kind of which
33:30
depending on what story choices you make oh man that's hilarious anyway continue uh if depending on what kind of Ward you
33:36
play you can have a bunch of different re relationships with Morgan uh but here she takes you to her mother fth and fth
33:43
fth dials the cryptic up to 500 in this first meeting you are like half of what
33:48
you say is like completely incomprehensible ma'am but I recognize you know Admiral Jane's voice so I'm
33:54
going to take you seriously uh she gives you the treat just gives them to you she's like oh
33:59
yeah sure here like he like why did you take them then because I wanted to meet you and you're like she she makes a
34:06
point that she took them to keep them safe and she's but she definitely hints that that she was actually it was
34:12
actually to get them to come out she's she's certainly um yeah it's it's very
34:18
odd she certainly suggests that you know a blight endangers all of you if she can help you you're kind of helping her by
34:25
getting rid of these dark spawn yeah and also there's very interesting point about the chased people which comes in
34:31
here we've SE chasen people several times throughout the various games but they're never really focused on we don't
34:36
we only go to their lands once in the trespasser de not trespasser sorry uh
34:42
jaws of hon DLC in the Inquisition but here's the first time you see them and
34:47
they're like it's actually hilarious they didn't get the blade is coming up
34:53
from Chas and lands we never find out exactly why other than the dark the the arch demon might have been found down
34:58
there but the chason's response to it isn't to try to flee into Faldon but to scatter further into the mountains so
35:06
that's why the Chason literally the fact that the Chason are not all over the swamp is a sign that yes this is a real
35:11
blight this is not just a dark spawn eruption it's not just a minor thing it's a real blight because the Chas and
35:17
aren't even trying to fight it and and they would normally not let somebody walk through their lands like this uh
35:23
this is all stuff that that fth tells you Morgan then takes you back to the beginning where you were and she like
35:30
leaves and and gives you yet another you know you were interesting maybe I'll see you again sometime but probably not because I hate your friend and you go
35:36
back and you give Duncan the treaties and you he's like oh that's weird thank you for the treaties did you get the the
35:43
blood and you're like well yeah he goes okay good now we can do the ritual and so this is where we find out the whole
35:49
thing about dark spawn blood and the joining and all that it's important to mention that this is also the first time
35:54
we find out that a mage is necessary for the joining ritual yes because this is
36:00
blood magic which we've already been told several times if you especially if you played a Mage and did the Mage
36:06
opening that blood magic is a terrible evil and it can never be countenanced it is forb building yeah I I do think you I
36:13
do think you miss out on the blood magic angle it unless you play a circle Mage I
36:19
think it's much less stress like if you're if you do that Noble human thing you don't know yeah you don't talk about
36:26
yeah you you can find out about it later from various characters but also you do
36:32
see as a warden you can play pretty fast and loose with the blood magic thing oh yeah you can even play a blood Mage as
36:38
long as you don't go around telling absolutely everyone you can absolutely take the blood Mage specialization and
36:44
if you do the DLC up in warden's keep you learn how to gain New Blood Powers
36:49
so you're like actually using the blight even more but but to get back to where we are there go ahead yeah there are
36:55
several situations in the game where you could choose well I could not do M blood magic or I could do blood magic and gain
37:03
power and that sounds pretty great like you you have those options and you don't back away from them and so here's where
37:10
you find out the true cost of the joining uh they're doing the ritual they're like they'll they'll drink some you don't just guzzle like a cup of
37:16
blood of of dark spawn blood the blood is used in this ritual and it creates the joining beverage I don't they don't
37:23
call it the joining beverage but that's what it does they use the magic to change it so that instead of infecting
37:28
you it allows you to access the blight because there there's two reasons for it
37:34
uh one of which you find out here and one of which you don't find out till later uh the main reason is because PE
37:39
people who' gone through the joining ritual can sense dark spawn they know where they are they can't be surprised
37:45
by them and and Alistar has already demonstrated this out in the field like he's he was like oh we got dark spawn
37:52
because he can feel them he's already been through the joining as a result of this when you when you do the joining
37:57
ritual if you succeed and survive you will be able to hear the dark spawn and as you stay a gry warden you'll hear
38:03
them more and understand them more it'll get to the point you know what they're thinking but that's dangerous because
38:08
what they're thinking is controlled by this music that comes yeah that comes out of the arch demons when you when you
38:15
PL them uh so yeah there there's a whole thing there you do the rituals sir Jory
38:20
you know one of the two guys you're with uh I think it's danath I think his name is or Denny or something he's a nice guy
38:26
uh he died there's there's a reason we don't remember these characters names they're
38:32
there for like 15 minutes yeah there's a there's a decent chunk of that in this game yeah yeah he does his whole thing
38:40
uh he drinks the blood and then he dies and jory's like but I have a I have a wife I have a child and he's like Jordan
38:46
and uh Duncan's like look we've told you the the secret we told you once we told you the secret that you you can't back
38:53
out we can't we can't let this get out there so Jory is like I'm not drinking that I'm not drinking that so Duncan
38:59
comes up and just kills him right in front of every I I I get a feeling that this is not part of the marketing when
39:05
they say come join the great wardens it's not like once we tell you our Horrible Secret You Have To Join or Die
39:12
you know it's it's it's very secretive and this is you know that place where we're talking about these are not your
39:20
traditional Heroes they are willing to go to some significant extremes yeah
39:25
like I said yeah I mean exactly Duncan just kills
39:31
Jory and has no issue with it yeah he's like move we move right on we told you
39:36
the deal you can't back out now if you try to leave I'm gonna kill you he tries to leave and Duncan kills him it's he
39:44
doesn't it's not dissembling he doesn't distract him he literally walks right up to him with a sword and jams him with it you know then then they turn to you and
39:51
go like are you going to drink and you're like well I guess I might as well H and because you are the protagonist
39:58
you survive and so now you're a Grey Warden and you get it'd be a short game otherwise yeah it'd be like a Far Cry
40:05
game like you know how there's always a Far Cry game where if you just stand there for 10 minutes the game just ends
40:10
but uh yeah so you you're now you're a warden you go up to uh taen well at
40:15
least with Taran Lan and Lan's like this is a stupid plan we shouldn't do this we shouldn't do this this is a stupid plan
40:21
uh and you go okay your highness um we're going to go light that Tower when
40:28
we're it when when the dark spawn are fully committed which will allow Taran loan to bring his men in from behind and
40:33
cut them off and once we do that the wardens in the front can destroy enough
40:39
of the dark spawn to break their their break their formation everyone's off on the plan except Lan who doesn't like it
40:44
but he's like fine I'll do it and so we set off to the tower we fight our way to this big tower at aagar to get up to the
40:51
top and it's absolutely infested with dark spawn way more dark Spa than anybody knew about and all the and stuff
40:57
in the tower are dead they've already been killed by dark spawn which is like wait how did the dark spawn even know
41:02
about this Tower to do this yeah like what's going on this definitely feels like a real blight because because kayin
41:09
keeps going I don't even think this is a blight I don't I just think you know and but you're getting signs no this is a
41:14
blight all right uh you get to the top and you manage to light the beacon which means at that point low gain should
41:21
swing into action and the the dark spawn should be crushed and they still could be because at this point most of the
41:27
wardens are still alive he doesn't do anything he just sits there and watches and he calls The Retreat he calls for
41:34
them to retreat yeah and so when he does that the wardens are outnumbered by just waves of dark spawn and are killed
41:41
including Duncan and including King Ken who is also killed right there on the field of battle um the only survivors
41:48
are you and Alistair because you were in the tower and because floth showed up and got you out of the Tower and she
41:55
doesn't directly admit that she did this but it later comes out that she basically turned into a dragon to get
42:02
you out of the yeah she she can turn into a dragon so you go you you wake up in the
42:08
swamp uh Morgan's there she's like yeah my mother saved you uh your your King's
42:14
dead your Army's gone you're the you two are the last gray wardens or I'm sorry
42:19
you and the idiot are the last gray wardens uh I'm coming with you and we're gonna we're gonna go and try and save
42:26
all this point point of order fth sends Morgan with you and
42:31
Morgan is surprised when flyth says this Morgan did not expect to be kicked out of the house essentially although you
42:39
know she does kind of take to it after a little while but yeah you're right she does she does take to it but when fouth first Springs it up she is surprised and
42:46
it yeah it surprises me in context also but that's another story yeah I I have
42:52
theories about that but we don't have time from here I'm gonna I'm gonna put it on speed mode you go from tigar you
42:59
head up to a little town called loing and if you remember the previous the previous podcast we did on Dragon Age
43:06
the sequel to this game starts in loing with the dark spawn and army advancing you you get there before the dark spawn
43:13
do in this game so you get to loing they know the dark one are coming they know they need to get the heck out of there
43:19
although some of them are not retreating they're like you know they're not it's like they can't deal with the idea of
43:24
losing their homes which is understandable but you guys gotta go you're gonna die it's I mean we see that
43:30
even in modern times with know natural disaster is coming through people are warned and they stay anyway they stay
43:37
gets home so that's pretty relatable a war comes through an area suddenly that people are in the war zone but it's like
43:43
you know we where were we supposed to go we didn't have anywhere to go yeah so that's kind of happening in loing you run around doing a bunch of various
43:49
quests where you might recruit uh Lana who is pretty convinced that she can
43:54
talk to the maker who is God in this setting uh for the people who worship uh the andrastian faith which is based
44:01
around the prophet andraste who loved the maker so much that she let herself be put on a a py and ulated for him uh
44:08
but one of the the people who were burning her the tenter Mages had sudden swell of pity and stabbed her so she
44:14
wouldn't have to burn to death because it's pretty awful um also Sten a canari
44:19
who doesn't have horns which to to you at the time this is your first canari you don't know canari is supposed to
44:24
have horns so you're not surprised like it's like you know okay whatever I will say there's another kunari in Origins
44:32
who also does not have horns I think the only other kunar you see he's in Awakenings in Awakenings I think oh okay
44:40
I I thought you meant the mercenaries you can fight in this game there are Merc you can oh yeah there's there's
44:46
like H there's like a vendor kind of in a dark spawn area in Awakenings who is a
44:51
kunari and also does not have horns he uses the same model as stin yeah pretty much uh so yeah St doesn't have horns
44:58
and that's not a thing anyone says anything about at the time I think however there is one uh what do they
45:04
call it entry uh journal entry or whatever uh where you can read codex entry there's a CeX entry where you can
45:09
read that they have horns and that if they don't have horns it's a big deal but I don't remember if that's actually in this game or an Awakening I don't
45:16
think it is I think it's an Awakening yeah but anyway I I I think they just changed their minds and thought they
45:21
looked cooler with horns and Dragon Age too that's my that's my personal thought but uh so anyway you get through loing
45:27
you recruit um at least those two uh on the road you meet an assassin him zon
45:33
you can also leave Sten to his fate you can leave you can leave both of them behind you don't have to bring either of them but you can recruit those two I
45:40
always recruit both um you then find out the Assassin named zon tries to kill you
45:46
uh this is where you find out that Lan is hired people to kill you um and you if you take out his forces you can
45:52
recruit him if you don't then actually get him to like you he will betray you later H but you know that quite frankly
45:59
I was amazed everan had a possibility of not betraying me I was like why did we trust this guy
46:05
again well you know why not he was there he's there I know he need another romantic interest there just weren't
46:12
enough but you also find out that loan has put a bounty on all grey wardens
46:17
loan has you're all to be arrested and imprisoned if his name was RI
46:23
Orton that's be Grey Warden from from early sorry guys any I'm trying to like basically from
46:29
here you decide okay we have to go find allies because Lan has a Stranglehold on
46:35
the assembly he's got like he's basically squatting there like a like an idol and we we can't get rid of him by
46:43
ourselves so you head over to where ARL renen how doesn't live different guy Eman ARL a this is this is where those
46:52
this is where those treaties come in handy because the wardens had treaties where they could call on different groups for Aid so you kind of the rest
46:59
of the game is kind of like okay I'm going to go here and ask these people for Aid I'm going to go here and ask these people for Aid because I have
47:05
these treaties and and partially you go you go try to get um ARL Aon Garen as as
47:11
your ally because Alistair lived with him for most of his life he was raised there um he was like some kind of weird
47:17
Ward and aliser doesn't really know the details uh but he knows that he grew up there and you know he he believes at the
47:25
time that he was the son of like a washer woman who for some reason left
47:30
him there it's it's a weird story but it basically turns out that none of it's true and they've been telling him the
47:36
truth for at least a few years like he just kind sure he sticks his his father
47:42
is yeah he sticks his fingers in his ears and goes blah blah blah I don't want to hear it I don't want to talk about it but you get in there and
47:49
amongst the things you know Arlan does agree to help you if and once you save him from his own son who is summoned a
47:56
demon to try and cure him from a wasting disease that he contracted it's very wasting disease a wasting disease that
48:02
he contracted because Lan hired someone to poison him yeah so this is another this is another place where you see Lan
48:10
really acting like the bad guy because he took out the kland with ARL how and
48:15
then he took out Earl Eman by sending someone to poison him even before else
48:22
yeah a blood Mage so this is actually the you didn't play a mage this is
48:28
actually kind of that first time you see oh blood magic is really bad huh yeah
48:33
but so you get through all that stuff um I'm really trying to flip this down and it's really hard you fight your way
48:39
through a bunch of Undead being raised by the demon you successfully either you kill Connor uh you lobotomize Connor or
48:47
you save Connor uh there's three different ways that can go uh but in order to do any of that stuff you have
48:52
to go after you've beaten the demon you have to still go to the ccle Magi and no
48:58
you have to get the circle of Magi first because that's the only way you're getting that thing out of Conor's head remember like after you fight your way
49:05
you can you can also use the Mage to do a blood Magic Ritual to get the demon
49:11
out but it will kill someone in this case his mother yeah okay so she
49:17
volunteers she volunteers to do it or you can get the circle of Magi to come and cure him or you can just kill him
49:23
and be done with it yeah so different Origins here here but I'm going to I'm going to go with the assumption that you go to the circle of Magi so I can break
49:29
that one down for you quickly you go to the circle of Magi but the Magi are currently having demons everywhere
49:35
because this guy named alred is it alred or ol I can't remember his name regardless he's he basically has been
49:42
told by by loan that he and his Mages can be free of the circle if they will
49:47
follow him and back him up during the blight and he's like yeah let's do that we can finally not have to listen to the
49:53
Templars so like all of these things tie back to loan in various ways loan was
50:00
had already set all of this in motion to consolidate power and get rid of people who might object to his rule so after
50:09
you you deal with that either you um you basically back the Templars and kill all the Mages or you get the Templars and
50:15
the Mages to be like nice and then you get the Mages as your allies uh you go off to the dish that one's real simple
50:22
do you do you work with the dish or do you work with werewolves that want to the dish or do you do you find out that
50:28
the werewolves are only werewolves because the keeper of the dish Clan cursed them to be to be werewolves
50:35
because a human did something bad to his son or daughter was it his daughter I
50:40
forget it's his daughter and it's his daughter it's dark it's very dark it's
50:45
dark it's dark but also he's been holding this curse on them for like a hundred years or something I mean these
50:51
are people who never even met the guy that he's mad at um at this point because he does it to every human that
50:57
he sees like you know everyone from that area but anyway you can cure you know you can either get werewolves you can
51:03
get dis shelves um or you can get dis shelles without having to do anything to the werewolves uh but anyway you you go
51:10
there you do that you go to oramar and as we talked before you have to get the
51:15
the dwarves to say well we don't have a king right now uh we need somebody who who can basically stand up and tell us
51:23
that that we should do this and as a there's only one person who can because
51:28
there's only one living person who is a paragon and a paragon in dwarf culture is like a living Exemplar of the
51:35
dwarvish people they can do anything they can come and so you go looking for this Paragon go ahead Liz like the thing
51:42
is there are two candidates up for King and neither of them can get enough advantage to you know claim the throne
51:48
so you've got to go searching for this Paragon who that's that's also a place
51:53
where it gets very dark very dark it's really funny about that is you one of the Paragon that's missing uh bronca her
52:01
husband aan is a completely useless alcoholic maniac and I don't know why the two of them got married there like
52:07
there's some setting that like you know they they were young and in love and then he just each grew into the thing that they are uh she became a paragon of
52:15
her people and he became just this horrible thing but you can recruit him and he's kind of funny I I'll give him
52:21
that he's fun companion have around he's voiced by Steve there's the little hints
52:27
that they really care about each other deep inside and very hidden well that's
52:33
why he goes he doesn't go just because he's you know he goes because you know whether or not you know she's a high and
52:38
mighty Paragon whether or not uh you know she's completely obsessed she is
52:43
his wife and he cares enough that he's going to go find her you go in there's a lot of stuff with the dark spawn here
52:49
that is just way I mean she's she's vanished into the deep roads and no one no one even knows if she's alive frankly
52:56
but you go in uh when you finally get through all this including a really disturbing section where you find out
53:02
how Doc spawn are quote unquote made um the the dark swor brood Mother Bit in this is just horrific it is hor it's
53:10
awful and brona has been giving them dwarves so that they leave her alone
53:16
isn't that right yep yep yep sacri she she's been sacrificing her followers one
53:21
at a time cuz and again this is another one of those instances of somebody doing the CC
53:27
she's like well yeah okay I'll lose my you know I'll lose the various followers that joined my house when I became a
53:32
paragon but if I get this thing I'm doing done then we'll just destroy them
53:37
we'll have we'll finally be able to destroy the dark span once and for all and what you find out is the Paragon kin
53:44
originally invented these things called uh golems and the Golems are basically gigantic constructs with the souls of
53:50
dwarves put in them MH which that is something no one knows she's gone in
53:56
here looking for this Anvil that they know Karin used to create Golems but no
54:02
one realizes that he could only create Golems by infusing them with the soul of a dwarf and that he took and executed
54:10
these dwarves to fuse them into this Gollum and he will talk about at first
54:16
it was volunteers and it was criminals and the poor and you know it's just yeah
54:22
the goal post because it kept being you know we need more we need they needed Golems yeah because that was the only way they
54:28
were holding off the dark spawn and aan finally was like you know they did it to him when he protested he's like we can't
54:34
just grab people and put them in these things so they did now now keran you
54:39
find keran you weren't looking for keran he should be long long dead but there he
54:44
is as a Gollum yeah and you're given a choice you you can help bronka kill kin
54:52
and give her the void the Anvil of the Void where she can start churning out G
54:57
which will be great for you because you'll have an army of you know practically indestructible Golems to help you against the dark spawn or you
55:04
can help Ken which means you have to kill brona with her husband right there and he's like trying desperately to talk
55:10
her out of it like he does not want to fight her he's like please stop this and eventually he come down to which one do
55:17
you support one of them dies if you support Bron Caron dies if you support K and brona this is another thing where
55:23
brona's already done the math brona is willing to sacrifice dwarves If this
55:28
means she can reach her goals and start making these Golems man we didn't even talk about Shale at all no no but sh is
55:35
DLC character so you might not have even seen her and that's sad because sh is really but if you bring Shale here
55:41
there's a great bit with kedan where kin knows everything about Shale even though Shale doesn't remember herself yeah because kedan is the one that made Shale
55:48
yeah uh anyway so you can I usually pick kedan I picked Bronco once just to see what happens um but if you we either way
55:57
these are two Paragons caran is a paragon just like Bronco was either way
56:02
they will make a crown and you take that crown back to the assembly and the assembly's like that Crown must be made
56:08
by a paragon and so you seems Seems like that's an assumption but there you go
56:15
yeah and the best part is now you can walk in and you now you who unless you're playing a dwarf you know nothing
56:22
about these people or their culture really can just pick who you want to be king the sneaky little conniving son of
56:31
the previous King who is absolutely right about everything he's saying about their culture but he is a guy who also
56:38
framed his own brother for murder and murdered somebody to frame his brother for the murder and the person he
56:44
murdered was his own father uh no not his father it was older brother the the older brother was the one who was going
56:50
to inherit the middle brother is your character if you play the dwarf from The Noble background and this guy is your
56:55
youngest brother and he he kills your oldest brother and frames you for it so that your father will have no choice but
57:01
to you know have him as a this is one of those things if you played a specific origin you are going to have some
57:08
serious opinions about this but if you played a human or an elf you have no idea you're just like okay I like this
57:14
guy I like this guy done yeah it's it's complicated uh but if you pick harant
57:20
then you know the the the dwarves become insular and they basically are like we'll help you but then we're going to
57:26
close our gates and not let anybody in here ever again uh and if you pick Balin who is the one that did the horrible
57:32
thing of murdering his older brother and framy his middle brother he wants to have relations with the surface and he
57:38
wants to have good trade and he wants to be part of the he wants the dwarves to be part of the world again so it's like
57:43
this will be better for everyone except me it's really you can even help him get
57:50
his son approved it's just it is messed up uh anyway so that's you're done when
57:55
you've been to these places you go back you you get um ARL uh Aon garan and you
58:02
you get him you know un un demon at this point there there there is one other
58:08
step to that Eman which is you have to go yeah you have to go find the N of sacred ashes which is the only way to
58:14
cure him and this after this poisoning this is how the game really lays out the andrastian religion for you because the
58:21
ear of sacred ashes are the ashes of andraste because andraste was was from
58:26
falden um the so that's this entire religion started in falden which is hilarious that it's it's coming from
58:32
orlay the the Chantry is based in or but the actual andraste lived in falden um
58:38
so you you go through this this town that where the the all the Chantry the thing is in in the rest of the game all
58:45
the Chantry is is is women there's no men in positions of authority it's all women uh the chanters because you know
58:52
the the the head of the religion the figure the Figure Head of the entire religion was a woman so they don't let
58:59
men be priests or chanters I think they're called here uh there's a few like there's men in some roles but most
59:05
of it's like they have men who are the equivalent of nuns but for the most part all the priestesses they're priestesses
59:11
they're women when you get to this Village you know something's off immediately because there's a there's a man in charge of the Chantry
59:24
here so you basically you get up there there's a guy in charge en Chantry that's bad you kill him you go into the
59:30
the the place you find out all sorts of weird stuff's going on in there there's dragons claiming to be involved you
59:36
eventually find the actual Temple uh which you will see again in Inquisition because it's the Temple of sacred ashes
59:42
you find it there's a whole bunch of stuff involving the the uh andrastian religion in there uh specifically but at
59:49
the end you find the urn and you take some of the ashes not a lot you don't grab the ear and leave with it you just
59:55
take some of the ashes and you go ahead this is also a point at which Liliana can die if you decide to
1:00:02
corrupt the ashes and you can fight have to fight Liliana which is awkward when
1:00:08
you get to Dragon Age Inquisition where she is a major character yep uh but anyway you get down there you cure aan
1:00:14
aon's like look we can't do this unless Alistair is willing to step up and be king that's the only way we we we don't
1:00:20
have any any other candidate to put up there unless we produce marrick's other son like that's it Al was just like I
1:00:27
don't want to do it and then there's a quest line where you can deal with someone who claims to be his sister and
1:00:33
totally isn't um and you can either get him to be like dude dude buck up and be
1:00:40
a king or you can be like all right just be you just be like you are that you're fine but we'll go in there and we'll
1:00:47
we'll figure if we can see some other way out of this and if you're dating Alistar at the time this has ramifications get to you go to uh denm
1:00:54
which is the capital is where the lands meet will be happening and Lane manages to I I know honey I gotta go I gotta get
1:01:01
through this um go ahead and say it I mean the lands meet is a big uh meeting
1:01:06
of all of the nobility of Faldon at which Earl aan has said okay we need to
1:01:12
get everyone together we need to challenge loan and we need to get him out of power and then we can unite Forin
1:01:17
to defeat this blight which it's an attempt it's an attempt to end essentially the Falon Civil War that's
1:01:23
been happening this entire time and so you get there almost immediately you after you do some things to together
1:01:28
support uh queen of Nora contacts you through one of her people and you know
1:01:33
arlan's like that's great why does the queen want to talk to us and you find out that Taran Lan imprisoned her his
1:01:39
own daughter uh because she was like what what happened with kin why isn't kin here why did kin Die Why did you let
1:01:46
kin die where's my husband yeah Dad you left with my husband and you came back with nobody um so through a series of
1:01:53
events you go and get Anora but the process you can get captured y um if you
1:01:59
don't fight the guards that are there at the end everybody but you gets out but
1:02:04
you get arrested um or if you're like me you you tried to get out of this a few times get kept getting murdered because
1:02:11
there like a million archers and then realized I can just run back at the hallway and pull them in one at a time
1:02:17
and kill them right here and they'll be getting hit by all the AO magic so that's what I did so yeah I didn't get I
1:02:23
didn't have the Prison Break scene but there's a Prison Break scene if you don't do that if you however manage to talk sir krian around when you get to
1:02:32
the lands meet after you escape Anora makes a deal like you support me and and
1:02:37
I'll you know I'll support you you you make sure you get me like on the throne and and I'll help you and you don't want
1:02:44
Alistair as king trust me there's nothing wrong with Alistair I don't hate him she doesn't even no one knows
1:02:51
Alistair he's not for leadership she straight up tells you that knows who he is she always has yep but she's like I
1:02:59
you know he's there's nothing wrong with the man he's not a bad man I don't know him very well but I've I've had him watched he just isn't King we need a
1:03:06
king and quite frankly I've been doing the job the whole time kin was King yeah but I mean you can sort of one of the
1:03:12
things you can do is make the arrangement where like that still happens go ahead yeah when you get to
1:03:17
the lands meet there's a whole bunch of things can happen here but basically it comes down to either you or somebody
1:03:23
else fights Lan and the somebody else is as Alistair if Alistair fights Lan he
1:03:29
will not spare him under any circumstances correct because Lan is
1:03:34
responsible for the death of Duncan who to Alistair was more of a father than anybody else so he will not spare him
1:03:41
and since he will not spare him Anora will not agree to the big possible um
1:03:48
conciliation move you can do here so he ends up either he just says no I'll be a
1:03:53
gry warden uh or he becomes king by himself if you're playing a female Warden that dated him
1:04:02
you can if you're if you are the the human Noble you can Mar human Noble only a human Noble yeah a human Noble can
1:04:08
marry him um an elf or I guess a dwarf I I don't know any dwarves that that did this I never romanced him on a dwarf but
1:04:14
an elf or or a mage they can be his consort but they don't actually get yeah
1:04:22
yeah you can't be Queen yeah but you can be Queen if you're the if you're if you're the if you're the uh kland you
1:04:28
can be his Queen but you can also negotiate for Nora just to become Queen
1:04:33
you can still if you don't kill her father if you fought him and then you spare him and we're gonna get to that if
1:04:41
you spare him then Nora can become Queen and if you're the male kland you can
1:04:46
marry in Nora because she's like oh oh you're the you're the you're technically the tar then aren't you because this
1:04:52
moment they don't know your older brother's still alive this makes you basically the next best thing to a King
1:04:58
marrying you would put a it would basically unify the kingdom just like the other way around so you can do that
1:05:05
or you can convince Alistair and Anora to get married you can talk them both
1:05:10
into it yeah and you basically convinced by aliser saying yeah or telling the aliser you don't worry about it she's
1:05:15
going to take care of everything you don't have to worry about this you can still like you know go fight and do whatever but you're this is part of your
1:05:21
duty like you know again Matt said it like it's like kind of like you know buck up and and just accept this yeah um
1:05:29
but the other interesting thing that Matt didn't talk about is if you were the one that fights low gain uh there is
1:05:34
a third option that you can actually uh go through um yeah but I know but I I think it's
1:05:40
one of the most interesting options because and it's the one that I I don't know why but I always take after you
1:05:46
defeat him go ahead it has the most impact on the story to come I think I I
1:05:52
would agree and I also think it makes the most amount of sense uh one of the things you can do is you
1:05:58
can force him to become a gry warden you can force him to go through the joining and I I always find it slightly poetic
1:06:05
because he spent so much time hating the grey wardens and now he has to be one
1:06:11
because I mean again spoilers he survives uh he becomes a Grey Warden and
1:06:17
he will be there at the final battle to assist you uh that's not all he'll do to
1:06:24
assist you go ahead a after you get done with the lands meet whoever's in charge whoever's King now
1:06:30
king or queen they say okay enough of this BS get ready the the dark spawn are
1:06:36
coming get everything together you're in charge now Warden person get out there and stop this you now have the unified
1:06:43
might of Faldon behind you now that there's no longer Civil War and all of your allies as well the all the possible
1:06:49
werewolves and Golems whoever you recruited um you get your forces get together but that night while you're do
1:06:55
all that Morgan comes to you first off Riordan comes to you and says look uh I
1:07:01
need to get into this building in denim before we do anything else you take him there and it's where the Grey Warden
1:07:08
stockpile of blood is so they have a bunch of dark spawn blood that's already been magically treated so they can make
1:07:14
more wardens that's how you get uh L Gan as a warden um if you've got Lan as a warden
1:07:22
Alistair won't come with you yeah you lose Alistair for sparing him either either he's the king in which case he's
1:07:28
like I'm not I'm not going or he's still a warden but he takes off and and he's a
1:07:33
drunken drunken mess uh yeah he's he's out yeah so he's not there so either Lan
1:07:40
or it's Alistair with you riodan comes you and goes look uh we need every Advantage we can get because here's
1:07:46
what's going to happen there's the reason I insisted that we bring Lan in uh if somebody who's not a warden kills
1:07:53
the arch demon the arch Demon's Soul will just go into the nearest dark spawn corpse and boom it'll just turn into
1:08:00
dark into a new Arch Arch demon basically making them functionally Immortal yeah they they can't this is
1:08:06
why in the previous the first blight we we killed the arch demon like 16 times it didn't matter we'd kill it and it
1:08:12
would just be back uh it wasn't until we found out about the wardens we realized if a gray warden kills the arch demon
1:08:19
the arch demon soul will go into you because your blood is Tainted M and if it does you will die both die and so
1:08:28
will it because its soul and your soul will explosively destroy each other there's not enough room there for two
1:08:34
Souls boom you're gone so not only will you die you will completely cease to
1:08:40
your soul will be gone there will be nothing left of you in any world here or Hereafter nothing this is the true
1:08:48
sacrifice Warden yeah and this is why they never tell you that this is going to happen because you sign up for they
1:08:53
only yeah they only tell you this when it's time because yeah so you're you're hit with this knowledge and you're like
1:08:59
well all right um we'll definitely think about which one of us is going to do that tomorrow and if you have low gain
1:09:05
with you he's like let me do it like I've got you know I did this this is on me that it got this bad let me do this
1:09:13
and if it's Alister he'll be like well you know you shouldn't have to die for this so I'll do it and you're like you
1:09:19
can say yes or no but whatever but Morgan then shows up and if you've if you've been Romancing Morgan what which
1:09:25
I think you can do as a woman but I'm not sure I know you can as man though um only male okay so if you've been if you
1:09:31
if you are a woman you have to try to convince somebody else to to Bear the child which is another Warden um or
1:09:37
depending on what you did with aliser yes sorry sorry the child um you could also be Alistair yeah it can be Alistair
1:09:43
or loan yep which is even funnier um I did the lane one once just to see it it's hilarious he's so he's like I
1:09:50
haven't been with a woman since my wife died 30 years ago and you want me to do this like oh well I I guess it's for
1:09:57
Falon he like he goes in there and he's so awkward he's got this look on his can we also just take a moment to real like
1:10:03
just not downplay how creepy it is because you're just kind of like there for the thing yeah it's it's all bad
1:10:09
this is not this is definitely not something that's great uh but if it's you who does the siring which I is the
1:10:15
case for me because at the time I played a dude War um you basically you have sex with Morgan or somebody else has sex
1:10:22
with Morgan because she was sent for this purpose this is the actual reason that her mother sent her because the
1:10:29
arch Demon's Soul if it was purged of the taint would be the soul of an old God it'd be the soul of a dragon not a
1:10:37
not a a blatant fested monster and they want to do that they want to rescue this old God Soul because it is an old God
1:10:45
it's this connection to a part of Falon and the world's history that's been lost
1:10:50
think about all the things that that Soul experienced go ahead Liz at this point you do not see fim's hand in it it
1:10:57
she tells you her mother sent you for that reason though Morgan does she does tell you that it largely depends on the choices
1:11:03
you've made with her because there are playthroughs that I've had where Morgan does not reveal that yeah in my playthrough she did so regardless your
1:11:11
choices here is uh no we're not going to do that one of the wardens will die okay
1:11:17
um I'll do that whether or not you and I've even been romantic uh if I'm male I will do that or if I'm female I need to
1:11:25
talk talk the other wardens into doing this I think you can talk reordan into it too I don't remember but I think
1:11:32
you're correct yeah it can be Reiner it can be L Gan um but regardless whoever
1:11:37
it is it's creepier if it's if you're the female Warden talking somebody else into doing it because then you're still
1:11:43
there watching it yeah it's like what am I sitting in the corner in a chair I don't why do I have to be here for this
1:11:49
I'll just take your word for it there is a stipulation though that Morgan makes afterwards that once the child is born
1:11:54
that you or the child's father uh if there is another one that you've convinced to do so do not follow them or
1:12:01
go after them or try to seek anything for the child ever again uh that has
1:12:08
story implications later um but once that's done that essentially is um
1:12:15
you're either going to reject the ritual in which case Morgan leaves the party um you're going to have somebody else do it
1:12:21
or you're going to do it um which then leads to the final battle which is the Battle of denim go ahead Liz and of
1:12:27
course the thing here is that by creating this child the child will
1:12:34
absorb the old God's soul and no one has to die and she will have a child with the soul of an old god well they believe
1:12:41
child will not actually you know yeah they believe that the child will be have the soulen old God freed of the dark
1:12:46
spawn corruption yeah yeah but this ritual she's doing makes it to where
1:12:52
this child could absorb the soul of the old God instead of a warden thus letting
1:12:57
the warden survive killing the arch demon yep yeah so so you fight your way through denim uh you get to the to you
1:13:04
get to the building that the arch demon is currently roosted on top of after Riordan jumps off of a building lands on
1:13:11
the on the dragon's wing and rips it in half with a dagger so it can't fly anymore but it's still a gigantic Dragon
1:13:17
so it kills him um but it's now it's stuck up on the top of this Tower because it's its wingspan's all messed
1:13:23
up and it can only do short hops so you now like okay we have to get up that Tower you run through fighting all these dark spawn until you get to like the
1:13:29
second to last floor where sandal is waiting for you we didn't talk about sandal very much in this episode so you
1:13:35
just have to trust me there may be there may be an instiller episode before we get to Veil guard we'll see yeah anyway
1:13:41
sandals's up there sandal has been doing enchantments for you this entire time which means he puts like various stuff on your weapon and his dad bodon has
1:13:48
been selling you the potions or puses and all that stuff that you've been using to keep from dying uh they're
1:13:54
pretty cool you help them out from some dark spawn then they started following you around and and and doing that for you but when you get there sandal who
1:14:01
talks very strangely and is often somewhat preoccupied and says I think nine times out of 10 what he says is
1:14:07
enchantment uh you get to the top of the tower and there's like a hundred dead dark spawn around this one
1:14:13
dwarf and you're like sandal how did you get here enchantment and he's he's
1:14:19
covered in blood covered in it covered in it just swimming in blood not super
1:14:24
unusual in this game franchise if you have any fight with anything you're probably covered in blood but yeah so
1:14:30
you don't ever get any answers from sandalus to how he did this but you do manage to like he's brought bowden's
1:14:35
goods with him so you can finally you can do your last purchase of various healing and magic items like Lan potions
1:14:41
you can buy any items he has that you actually think would be useful and you can get anything you found on your way
1:14:47
up Enchanted and then you go through the door and you fight the arch demon and the arch demon fight is a p it is such a
1:14:55
p it is it is World of Warcraft levels of running around and micromanagement
1:15:00
because you you're managing the entirety of the party at this point uh
1:15:06
yeah but once you do defeat the the arch demon uh basically that's it upon its
1:15:13
death the dark spawn flee the battlefield and you end the fifth blight now there are dlc's that that happen and
1:15:21
and come after this which we're not going to talk about here um but everything that this game does feels
1:15:30
Grand right like it's it's large scale for what games at this time were doing
1:15:35
and it set the groundwork thankfully it was successful enough that it set the groundwork for uh you know the entire
1:15:42
franchise that we've seen set before us Dragon Age 2 came and was absolutely phenomenal uh regardless of what anybody
1:15:48
says ignore the caves um Dragon Age Inquisition really flush out a lot of
1:15:54
the stuff particularly with the fade uh and giving you sort of the backstory of
1:15:59
that and the elves as well uh giving you more meat on those bones and now also
1:16:05
had the best DLC of any Dragon Age game quite Poss trespasser is an amazing D
1:16:11
and now we have Veil guard which is carrying on that torch and I'm looking forward to seeing how that plays out because I'm going to be playing it soon
1:16:17
hopefully um and hopefully we all we all will will talk about it there but this game did a lot it was very ambitious it
1:16:24
it created a a in my opinion a very provocative world uh it took things that
1:16:31
were familiar it made it their own uh in a lot of ways that we talk about like creating your own stories and and things
1:16:38
like that do like or tabletop games and and experiences it was just overall a
1:16:43
great experience and I don't know about you guys but I put probably close to a
1:16:49
thousand hours into this game and that's not a joke like if I look at steam I'm pretty sure like I have like a like
1:16:56
stupid amounts of time in this game um because everything you did and this is
1:17:01
something that Liz talked about earlier and I think it cannot be overstated there are so many different variables
1:17:07
and variations on how you can get to that end point that there's so much to experience it and if you listened to our
1:17:14
Fallout episodes it's like that it's like that that level of of your
1:17:20
cascading choices whether it's losing companions gaining comp iions how you
1:17:26
alter the story how you leave the world of felon behind you and yes as the game was for there are canonical endings or
1:17:32
canonical plot points that's just something you have to accept uh as a game moves into a franchise where the
1:17:38
story continues onward uh but it was just phenomenal especially at the time in 2009 to see a game that really gave
1:17:46
you consequences to your actions and choices a game where you could die a game where you could die I me and that's
1:17:53
the canonical ending of the story if you do certain things your character steps up and kills the arch demon and there's
1:18:00
no baby there's no ritual you die and you don't just die you know your soul
1:18:05
just died like there's nothing left of you um and I I wanted to like make sure that Liz got a chance to talk about it
1:18:11
because lizard mentioned something about Origins that I thought was really interesting because if you combine the origins at the beginning of this game
1:18:18
with the stuff that happens in the game and the final choices you make you end up with a lot of points that can be like
1:18:25
in a matrix of possible endings to this game so Liz what was it you were talking about earlier you said something about
1:18:31
talking about choice and consequence in this game I mean it feels like there's a whole game in playing each of the
1:18:38
origins here that almost like you have to go back and play each of the origins
1:18:43
to Joe's point about putting a thousand hours in the game because each one approaches the story in a different way
1:18:50
and there are so many big choices you can make that are going to be in formed in different ways depending on the
1:18:57
background you picked and it's it just kind of creates this fascinating tapestry of you know choices that seem
1:19:05
very consequential when you make that and as you go through the series it
1:19:10
feels like they become just a little less consequential but while you're
1:19:16
playing the game it feels it feels like a big deal to choose brona or keridan do
1:19:21
you want a Gollum army or do you want the dwarf a Dwarven Army Army and cost all these Dwarven lives both of them
1:19:27
cost Dwarven lives everything you do feels impactful here and it feels big in setting up the
1:19:35
universe MH and in setting up the kinds of choices you're going to make moving
1:19:40
forward yeah and I and it really does set that bar uh and again like it's
1:19:47
deliberate it's not accidental it's not lightning in a bottle it was always the
1:19:52
game plan it was always sort of like like the goal to have this sprawling
1:19:58
large world that could infinitely be built upon and in terms of I know people
1:20:05
still to this day throw around retcon as a very negative thing it Dragon AG is
1:20:11
very little of that actually like going back through it going through all the stories like listen to all our episodes
1:20:17
while there is canonical points and there are fixed points in the storyline there's not a lot of revision there's
1:20:23
not a lot of going back because a lot of it was just planned out from the beginning I don't know how that's going to play out with Veil guard but at least
1:20:29
up into that point like everything is either just building off of something but doesn't erase what happened
1:20:35
beforehand uh and just sort of like builds what feels like and maybe this is just me and my love of this franchise it
1:20:43
feels like a living world it feels like a world that evolves as the the story moves forward as things happen uh it
1:20:50
feels like a a a story in which Grand consequence in major events do have
1:20:56
impact and aren't just erased and I really do enjoy that which is one of the
1:21:02
the the reasons we I think I don't know for both of you but I know for me like I'll go back and play these games
1:21:08
because again it just it has that sort of feel that many other games just don't
1:21:13
come close to even today but I think we're running out of time here we've gone a little bit long
1:21:19
and I know how much you all love that but I'm going to throw this over for final thoughts uh on anything doing with
1:21:26
this particular game or Dragon Age in general and I I'll let Liz go first I mean this sets the stage for a huge
1:21:33
franchise I think while I think you can play any of these games on their own
1:21:40
they become so much bigger when you play one into the other because each establishes different parts of the world
1:21:46
different characters this really establishes the gray wardens but then
1:21:52
there's a lot you don't learn about the wardens and until you get to Inquisition and you get to that whole subquest over
1:21:58
there every game Builds on what the last game did but not but not necessarily
1:22:04
linearly it shows you a different part of the world which will change your perspective on the rest of it almost
1:22:11
like those origin quests in Dragon Age Origins where depending on what you pick
1:22:17
you'll look at the world in a different way so I think this is just this is part of what has become an amazing Fran
1:22:25
a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts when it with all of its interlinking narratives and characters
1:22:32
and organizations Matt um I think one of the things to think about when you think about Dragon Age Origins as a story is
1:22:40
to think about how it basically exists to avoid what I used to call the zenisha
1:22:46
problem uh there's a lot of exposition in this game but the exposition is often delivered literally just before or just
1:22:54
after you've experienced something that will need some Exposition it's not just there because we want to tell you
1:23:01
everything about the world no it's you need to know about blood magic and if you didn't play the Mage origin we still
1:23:06
gotta you still got to know about it so here's a book about blood magic you'll find and then suddenly you're in that
1:23:11
basement with that blood Mage that you know that almost killed you know Connor's father like okay even though I
1:23:18
don't know who you are because I didn't play the Mage origin I still know blood magic is bad and that's important
1:23:24
because I'm about to talk to you and and maybe make a deal for you to do something there's a lot of I don't want
1:23:30
to say like I said before it's kind of like a matrix like when LZ talks about how you almost it's almost like playing the game from a different origin gives
1:23:37
you an entirely new experience of the game yeah um one of the problems of doing that kind of thing in games is
1:23:43
that you sometimes have these encounters that don't really feel important until you do the other stuff so in a way the
1:23:51
fact that Origins is as good as it is is almost in in spite of this decision that
1:23:56
agreed that they had to fight against this decision in order for it to be rewarding there had to be there had to
1:24:03
be strain to it and I definitely think that that strain shows the storytelling in in Origins is still chunky compared
1:24:09
to the storytelling in two where the storytelling is always really good but
1:24:15
sometimes the actual gameplay can be significantly weird like I'll never get over the fact that in in in uh Kirk wall
1:24:23
if like hundred are living on rooftops around you only 10 will come down the other 90 will sit there and wait oh nope
1:24:29
he's killed all our friends jump down another 10 it's like no just all come down at once either you kill me or I
1:24:34
kill you but please stop doing that I I think to a degree the story of Dragon
1:24:39
Age has been consistent for as long as it has been because of how good the
1:24:45
foundation was here yeah and my final thought is play the game right like it's
1:24:51
it's while it is 15 years old at this point point it is well worth playing
1:24:56
with all the DLCs you can often pick it up for a song uh and you will not be
1:25:01
disappointed the game play may be a little bit dated in some parts but I think that the story and the world
1:25:08
that's crafted from it makes it well worthwhile I will also say that if you are inclined to read uh I know everybody
1:25:15
feels a little bit differently about what they read but in particularly if you are interested in fantasy with a darker uh a darker side to it maybe a
1:25:22
little Grim dark but not I wouldn't really call it Grim dark read the two books yeah it's a little bit lighter
1:25:29
it's still dark um but uh I would say go back and read those uh as well um and I
1:25:38
believe that those books were and it's been a while uh please remind me if you
1:25:43
remember what they were I don't remember the names I can literally break down the plot for you but I can't remember the names what is something I think it was
1:25:49
the stolen throne and the calling right yeah okay yeah that is cor those uh so
1:25:55
they were written by David Gator um there was actually four books uh and these were all written by him uh the
1:26:02
stolen Throne the calling uh shell I think it was a Sunder and then the mass Empire um read them they're well worth
1:26:09
your time they give you such deeper roads and meanings into the games even if you don't want to play the games uh
1:26:16
and they're just very incredibly well written uh like I cannot stress that enough and I usually don't uh uh say
1:26:24
very often about fantasy or or game tie-in novels Liz you you know that I am not usually on these uh shows but Dragon
1:26:31
Age is a special one for me I usually cannot go through a video game tie and
1:26:37
novel I don't find many of them very compelling these are just good novels
1:26:43
these are great they have the Liz seal of approval for whatever that's worth they yeah they they acknowledge that the
1:26:49
games exist without making them about the games if that makes sense right which is what makes them really really
1:26:55
uh interesting uh and if you are so inclined to pick up a little piece of History if you can find it uh highly
1:27:01
recommend picking up the uh Dragon Age role playing box um because it was not a
1:27:08
full book release it was a box release that they they released it was only available at like believe Barnes &
1:27:14
Nobles across the country uh at least in North America I don't know where uh elsewhere in the world but if you're
1:27:20
into tabletop RPGs highly recommend that as well there were little tidbits of lore in that as well
1:27:25
uh that you you didn't get anywhere else uh they weren't critical or crucial uh
1:27:30
but if you are definitely interested in Dragon Age highly recommend that as well uh but I think that's going to do it for us here friends blizzard watch is made
1:27:37
possible due to your generous contributions at patreon.com blizzardwatch your continued support means that this podcast sighting
1:27:43
Community is able to thrive and grow blizzard watch supporters and Jo exclusive benefits like early access to the podcast a better chance at having
1:27:48
your question answered on our podcast or the que and and answer side experience um we haven't done this in a while but I
1:27:54
do think that this is actually uh something that is relevant here um you
1:28:00
can still sign up for audible uh when you get the opportunity um I believe our
1:28:06
code still works uh which is just blizzardwatch doccom audible um I highly
1:28:11
recommend that if you don't want to read the books maybe check out audible uh and get those books on there because they are available there they are read I
1:28:18
forgot who does the voice uh does the actual reading um but again it can't
1:28:24
can't hurt you get a free audio book with a 30-day free trial and if you're so inclined definitely at least listen to The Stolen Throne uh it is an
1:28:31
absolutely phenomenal good time and then parting if you have questions for this or any of our podcasts send those in you
1:28:37
can send them into podcast blizzardwatch do.com specify the show that it is for in the subject line and then add any
1:28:43
special pronunciations of your name if you want to hit up on Discord you can comment or send us comments on uh the Q
1:28:49
and podcast questions channel uh if you are a patreon subscriber you can send us to the patron q and podcast questions
1:28:54
channel uh where we tend to look there first as a way of saying thank you for helping us keep the lights on and you
1:29:00
can also message us directly through patreon as well but with that folks I do want to thank you for listening to us on
1:29:06
this Dragon Age Journey as we went backwards through time uh and I do want to thank Liz for joining us on this
1:29:12
journey and offering uh her Insight thank you very [Music]
1:29:21
much I wasn't going to let you do these without me I'm just saying

A Dragon Age Origins story overview

blizzardwatch.com

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A Dragon Age Origins story overview

blizzardwatch.com