Negotiating Civilly with My Dragon Age Obsession
Saturday, 21 April 2012 13:59![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lea_hazelList of fandoms I have neglected since I became obsessed with Dragon Age Origins, eleven days ago: Homestuck, Korra, Community.
List of more important, real-lifey things I have neglected: sweet mother of noodle, I don't even want to think about it.
List of stuff I'm going to do today, or perish in the attempt: HAHAHAHAHA *weeps*
My ability to remember what I was thinking about just minutes ago when I was standing in a different room, contemplating my to-do list: basically none. Level of comfort from knowing the cognitive mechanism that stands behind this bullfuckery: 0.001%.
In order to succeed in being productive today, I'm going to purge my systemof all weirdness temporarily, by writing a post about Grey Warden characterization choices.
My Grey Warden is a Brosca. This means she grew up in a very literal projection of a sociological principle -- the idea that poor people with limited options are thrust into crime and brutality. Casteless dwarves are literally not allowed to hold a legal job, they have to be criminals, beggars, or at most petty hawkers of dubious wares. An oddly formalized concept of poverty, accentuated by the Warden (I kept the default name, Natia), her best friend, and her sister, who becomes a "handmaiden" of sorts to a dubious royal type. A stroke of insight in dwarven society is the fact that there are one or two routes of social climbing, rare and untenable though they might be.
The best and worst thing about the Brosca Warden is that she is, at the beginning of the story, completely interchangeable with her best friend. They have roughly the same history and skill level, as far as I can tell. The course of action that leads to Natia becoming a Warden and Leske staying in Dust Town to rot is plot-mandated and basically random, her only virtue over him is that she's a protagonist. When I started playing the Orzammar quest, I tried to keep that firmly in mind.
For the most part, the dialogue options in DAO give a lot of interesting and varied characterization options. There are a few exceptions, and the confrontation with Leske and Jarvia is one of them. There was no option of saying, I sort of don't mind what you did, because you had to, because I would've done the same in your shoes, because I basically did do the same. But I have to kill you because I want to live. For real, I didn't regret killing Jarvia and destroying her operation, but I wasn't angry at her and I didn't really want to accuse Leske of betrayal. What's more, I was sort of impressed with her for expanding Behrat's operation so much. Clearly she was the brains in the outfit, he was a petty slum lord who preyed on the people of Dust Town, whereas she robbed the peoplewho deserved it who had the real money, which both made her rich and less of a scavenger.
In the Gauntlet for the ashes of Andraste, I ended up having to do an extra, and surprisingly difficult, battle, because none of the dialogue options with ghost!Leske made any sense to me. IDK, maybe if I looked back at them now they'd make more sense. Of course Natia left Orzammar, and of course she killed Leske, and abandoned her mother, and whatever else. Just like she'd have done the same as Leske, it also works in reverse. Something about the dialogue options didn't ring true. Maybe it's because I perceive a big difference between regret and remorse: Natia doesn't regret not being dead, but she does feel remorse over having to kill her only friend.
I play her like someone who is opportunist, but won't turn her back on allies or potential allies. Not just because it's fairly complementary to game strategy. Sure, it allows me to loot a lot with a clear conscience, while also picking up lots of "compassionate" side quests, and only pressing people for rewards who seem to be able to afford it. I guess I have her aiming at a one-strike loyalty policy: turn on me once, and you're dead meat. Not gonna lie though, I took some satisfaction in burglarizing the dwarven royal palace, then encountering a bunch of other burglars, killing them, looting their corpses, and taking credit for the deed with the palace guard. That's how a rogue rolls, I think you'll agree.
My character I guess is pretty cynical in some ways, and yet not a lot of the companions seem to have issue with this. You'd think Leiliana or Alistair would have something to say about prying open sarcophagi and removing the honored dead's armor. Or Wynne, for that matter. Playing a rogue has made my character pretty rich, I think. I got out of the Dead Trenches with some fifty gold, I had three backpacks and I still had to jigger things so as to not leave anything valuable behind. I don't know how I would have financed my operation if my character didn't have the lockpicking skills. As it is, I'm tempted to go back to certain older quests to salvage the contents of the shiny white chests, ooh, they're so tempting.
It's safe to say that I've really taken to the magpie aspect of the game. Goooooooold. :D
There's a lot of people in this game who want to die. Too many of them seem to think asking my character to dispatch them is reasonable. IDK, that type of "I have lived too long" plot makes me vaguely uncomfortable.
Since I'm barely even pretending that I won't play another round with a mage, maybe I'll make the next Warden male, to see whether people give him better compliments than "Pretty Lady".
Gooooooold. :)
List of more important, real-lifey things I have neglected: sweet mother of noodle, I don't even want to think about it.
List of stuff I'm going to do today, or perish in the attempt: HAHAHAHAHA *weeps*
My ability to remember what I was thinking about just minutes ago when I was standing in a different room, contemplating my to-do list: basically none. Level of comfort from knowing the cognitive mechanism that stands behind this bullfuckery: 0.001%.
In order to succeed in being productive today, I'm going to purge my system
My Grey Warden is a Brosca. This means she grew up in a very literal projection of a sociological principle -- the idea that poor people with limited options are thrust into crime and brutality. Casteless dwarves are literally not allowed to hold a legal job, they have to be criminals, beggars, or at most petty hawkers of dubious wares. An oddly formalized concept of poverty, accentuated by the Warden (I kept the default name, Natia), her best friend, and her sister, who becomes a "handmaiden" of sorts to a dubious royal type. A stroke of insight in dwarven society is the fact that there are one or two routes of social climbing, rare and untenable though they might be.
The best and worst thing about the Brosca Warden is that she is, at the beginning of the story, completely interchangeable with her best friend. They have roughly the same history and skill level, as far as I can tell. The course of action that leads to Natia becoming a Warden and Leske staying in Dust Town to rot is plot-mandated and basically random, her only virtue over him is that she's a protagonist. When I started playing the Orzammar quest, I tried to keep that firmly in mind.
For the most part, the dialogue options in DAO give a lot of interesting and varied characterization options. There are a few exceptions, and the confrontation with Leske and Jarvia is one of them. There was no option of saying, I sort of don't mind what you did, because you had to, because I would've done the same in your shoes, because I basically did do the same. But I have to kill you because I want to live. For real, I didn't regret killing Jarvia and destroying her operation, but I wasn't angry at her and I didn't really want to accuse Leske of betrayal. What's more, I was sort of impressed with her for expanding Behrat's operation so much. Clearly she was the brains in the outfit, he was a petty slum lord who preyed on the people of Dust Town, whereas she robbed the people
In the Gauntlet for the ashes of Andraste, I ended up having to do an extra, and surprisingly difficult, battle, because none of the dialogue options with ghost!Leske made any sense to me. IDK, maybe if I looked back at them now they'd make more sense. Of course Natia left Orzammar, and of course she killed Leske, and abandoned her mother, and whatever else. Just like she'd have done the same as Leske, it also works in reverse. Something about the dialogue options didn't ring true. Maybe it's because I perceive a big difference between regret and remorse: Natia doesn't regret not being dead, but she does feel remorse over having to kill her only friend.
I play her like someone who is opportunist, but won't turn her back on allies or potential allies. Not just because it's fairly complementary to game strategy. Sure, it allows me to loot a lot with a clear conscience, while also picking up lots of "compassionate" side quests, and only pressing people for rewards who seem to be able to afford it. I guess I have her aiming at a one-strike loyalty policy: turn on me once, and you're dead meat. Not gonna lie though, I took some satisfaction in burglarizing the dwarven royal palace, then encountering a bunch of other burglars, killing them, looting their corpses, and taking credit for the deed with the palace guard. That's how a rogue rolls, I think you'll agree.
My character I guess is pretty cynical in some ways, and yet not a lot of the companions seem to have issue with this. You'd think Leiliana or Alistair would have something to say about prying open sarcophagi and removing the honored dead's armor. Or Wynne, for that matter. Playing a rogue has made my character pretty rich, I think. I got out of the Dead Trenches with some fifty gold, I had three backpacks and I still had to jigger things so as to not leave anything valuable behind. I don't know how I would have financed my operation if my character didn't have the lockpicking skills. As it is, I'm tempted to go back to certain older quests to salvage the contents of the shiny white chests, ooh, they're so tempting.
It's safe to say that I've really taken to the magpie aspect of the game. Goooooooold. :D
There's a lot of people in this game who want to die. Too many of them seem to think asking my character to dispatch them is reasonable. IDK, that type of "I have lived too long" plot makes me vaguely uncomfortable.
Since I'm barely even pretending that I won't play another round with a mage, maybe I'll make the next Warden male, to see whether people give him better compliments than "Pretty Lady".
Gooooooold. :)
no subject
2012-04-25 04:58 (UTC)My second character was a male mage, too! Mmmm, Morrigan romance...
no subject
2012-04-25 19:07 (UTC)I felt worse about Jarvia than Leske because she's such a fine example of the type of female character that can't really thrive in fiction. But then, there's also Anora, so that helps me feel a little better about the whole situation.
no subject
2012-04-28 09:46 (UTC)