A Replay of DA2, An Introduction [Part 1/4]

[juliannos]

Given the recent teaser of DA4 that was released at the game awards and my lack of internet over a few days, I decided to try and play DA2 once more. I don't have the best memories of DA2. It is, by a long shot, my least favorite Dragon Age game. There's probably a couple of reasons for this:

1. I went into DA2 the same day I finished DAO. I was, at the time, fairly new to playing video games and super new at playing narrative driven rpgs. I was on such cloud 9 after finished DAO and I was looking for more of the same for DA2. I pretty much set myself up for disappointment without realizing it, as I had no idea what to expect for DA2.
2. I romanced Anders the first time through.  I had not played Awakening by this point, as I think I was having trouble getting the game to recognize it. Either way, I had seen on tumblr parts of his romance and I was intrigued. Plus, I played a mage and was super not about the templars or the Circles, so I was thought, excellent! God, that was a mistake for me. I am very open about my dislike of Anders and I'm fairly sure it was because I had such a negative reaction to his romance. An important note - I dislike Anders, but I find his character interesting in the overall narrative. Even if I do want to punch him.
3. I didn't really understand the Friendship/Rivalry system.  After DAO and the whole, "here's a present, be my friend" mechanic, I was woefully unprepared for the Friendship mechanic of DA2. DAO, I took the same 4 people with me almost everywhere. I found very quickly that some of the characters I was most interested in did not get along and would bicker.

I have replayed DA2 once before, when I did my long replay to get my save state in order for DAI. And, somehow, it went even worse than my first time playing it. I ended with only 3 companions staying. 2 of the companions that stayed were rivals. I ended up having to kill Fenris, who I also accidentally romanced. It was awful and I felt so downtrodden by the end that I closed the game and uninstalled it. Then DAI came out and I became pretty much obsessed with it.

But, lately, I've wanted to revisit DA2. I actually want to properly romance Fenris this time, as he definitely falls into the category of my type. I also am not playing as mage, which I think will more align with my ideas for the character of Hawke. Also I've never had Bethany in my party, since I've always played a mage!Hawke.

Going forward, this is going to be a series of posts were I talk about each act in more detail. Part of this is meta for theorycrafting in relation to DA4, but also to help keep my thoughts organized. Perhaps others will also find them interesting! But this part is only meant to help set the stage for my original mindset to see if my thoughts have changed. Also, it helps give anyone new here a chance to see what my experiences were before, since I have no doubt I will reference these things in future posts.

And hey, if it goes well, I may do a similar thing for the other games, though those may be more for theorycraft and meta than personal feelings, but who knows at this point. 🤷‍♀