I finished the quest to unlock Shale, and I’m pretty happy with him so far.  He reminds me a bit of HK-47 from KotOR.  He’s got the same kind of disregard for life.  The same kind of malicious streak.  The same kind of insulting humor.  He’s also missing memories…  And I suspect there’ll be quests available to restore them, which should prove interesting.

I also completed the Soldier’s Peak quest…  Was a little disappointed in that.  It was interesting enough, especially with the darker slant on the Grey Wardens…  But I guess I expected more.  Maybe it’ll be more impressive if wait for the place to be fixed up or something.

I was curious enough after playing through the origin story for my Dalish Elf character that I decided to roll up a couple more new characters and see how they start out.

First up was a Dwarven Noble.  Amazing just how bloodthirsty and treacherous they are.  All sorts of backstabbing and double-crossing.  Within the first 5 minutes I had the opportunity to have  several people executed just for talking to me.  Amazing.  I can’t wait to get back to Orzammar and take revenge on the bastards that got me exiled.

Then I rolled up a Human Noble.  Very nice, peaceful, idyllic start…  And then everything hit the fan.  Again, betrayal.  Again, I can’t wait to get back to seek my revenge…  But this time it’s going to be in the city of Dennerim.

Very cool stuff so far.  And I still haven’t gotten around to the Awakenings expansion yet.

So, I’ve been playing Dragon Age again.

This time around I rolled up a Dalish Elf, an archer, instead of the Casteless Dwarf MeleeRogue I had before.  And I’m really impressed with the differences.  Sure, I’m still playing a rogue.  The mechanics really haven’t changed much.  I’ve been putting points into archery instead of melee skills…  But I could pick up some swords and start swinging them if I really wanted to.

What’s impressed me is the difference in storylines.

My Dalish Elf started out in some wooded area – out hunting with a friend, or something.  We ran into some humans how were ranting about a demon in a cave, so we went to check out the cave.  In the cave we happened across the remains of some human architecture, some elven artifacts, and a tunnel that looks like it used to go down to the dwarven Deep Roads.  There’s a fantastic sense of history and untold mysteries.  A suggestion that all three cultures met in interesting ways, and nobody remembers when or why it happened.

We also found a mirror that somehow infected the two of us with the darkspawn taint.  Duncan found me, got me back to the camp, I healed up.  Then I went out looking for my buddy back in the cave.

Turns out the mirror was used for communication once upon a time, but it’s become corrupted by the darkspawn taint.  So Duncan destroyed it.  We never did find my buddy.  And then I left with Duncan for Ostagar.

And I’m left very curious about how the rest of the game will play out…

When I go to Orzimmar, for example, I will have no ties to anyone there.  I won’t have to worry about my childhood friend betraying me, or my sister marrying a noble.  I won’t have that added burden in the decisions I have to make there.  And I wonder how that will alter the story.

When I meet humans there’s always an assumption that I’m somebody’s slave.  There’s always that added friction.  It hasn’t amounted to much yet…  But it’s definitely there.

And when I go to the Dalish Elves, I wonder if I’ll see the same kind of ties in to my origin as I saw with my dwarf going back to Orzimmar.  Will the elves know me?  Will my buddy show up again, now corrupted by the darkspawn taint?  Will there be new side-quests, new moral dilemmas?

I’m also playing through some of the DLC that came with the Digital Deluxe version that I purchased.  Right now I’m working on recruiting the golem Shale into my party.

I really kind of expected it to be a very simple and straight-forward process.  Install the DLC, click a button, and I’ve got a golem in my party.  But that isn’t how it worked.  It’s actually been integrated into the world fairly smoothly…

I found a merchant out on the road, standing by his cart.  His mule had run off, he’d been having some bad luck, and he just wanted to get rid of a dwarven artifact – the golem’s control rod.  I took it off his hands.  He gave me directions to the town where the golem was.

I arrived in town to find it overrun with darkspawn.  So I had to fight my way through quite a few of them before I found the golem.  But the control rod didn’t work.  He didn’t wake up.

I went looking for more information in the basement of the golem’s previous owner…  Turns out he was some kind of important mage.  And the town’s survivors were hiding in his basement behind some kind of magical shield.

The mage guy is dead, killed by the golem years ago.  Only his now-grown child is left.  He knows the command word to activate the golem, but he won’t tell me until I rescue his daughter who has wandered off into the deeper recesses of the mage’s laboratory.

So I fight through some more monsters and eventually find the girl…  With a talking cat.  I’m going to assume that the cat is not, in fact, a cat.  I’m guess it’s a demon.  But now I’ve got to separate the girl from the demon and get her back out to her father…

And the reason I’m doing all this is not because I want a big ol’ rock guy fighting along-side me.  I’m sure he’s a decent fighter, but that isn’t my motivation.  I want to see what interesting things happen when I bring him into Orzimmar.  I want to see what the dwarves think of having a golem around.  I want to see if he remembers anything interesting when I go looking for Carridan’s Forge later on in the game.

I’ve also got a different party going this time around…

Previously I generally brought Alistair, Leliana, and Wynne along wherever I went.  Alistair was the tank, I was melee DPS, Leliana was equipped with a bow and did ranged DPS, and then Wynne kept us all healed.

Well, Wynne isn’t in my party yet…  And once she is, I’ll likely user her again for healing.  But I’ve been bringing Sten along for more melee DPS this time around, while I handle the ranged DPS.  And it’s resulting in some different conversations already.

All things considered, the game feels almost completely new at this point.

The first time I played Dragon Age, I was playing a pirated copy.

I grabbed some package and downloaded it.  I didn’t have any DLC installed because I didn’t have a legitimate copy of the game.

Now I’ve actually paid for the game.  Not just the retail version – the Digital Deluxe version.  The version that would, I assume, include some extra goodies.

Now, I realize that additional DLC has been released since the time the game first game out.  There’s the Darkswpawn Chronicles and the Feastday Stuff, for example.  And I’m fine with that.  I like to see a quality game expanded with additional stuff.  Add-ons and DLC and mods and whatnot.  That’s a good thing.

But it annoys me a bit when they’ve got DLC ready the very day the game ships.  This was the case with Dragon Age, because there were hooks in-game to DLC in the pirated copy I played.  The retail disc, right out of the box, had some NPCs that offered you quests you could only take if you paid for DLC.

It annoys me even more now that I have the Digital Deluxe version of the game, and it doesn’t include some of that DLC that was available on the day that the game launched.  It seems to me that a deluxe edition of the game ought to include pretty much everything available at the time.  But it doesn’t appear to.  There’s still DLC being offered, that I know was available when the game launched, and it is not in my game.

This kind of sours me on the whole DLC concept.  It seems less like a way to extend and expand a game, than a way to squeeze a few more dollars out of your customers.

Yesterday, for Father’s Day, Terri got me the new Aliens versus Predator game.  The same game that I bought myself a few months back.

So, we returned it, and I picked up the Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe + Awakenings package on Steam.

I played Dragon Age through to completion a few months ago, but I didn’t purchase it.  I’d pirated the game.  But it was a good game, and I’ve enjoyed BioWare’s games in the past, so I wanted to support them.  And now I’ve not only purchased Dragon Age: Origins, but also a pile of DLC and the Awakenings expansion.  All of which are sales that they would not have made if I’d never pirated and played the game.

Once again, piracy winds up benefiting the content creators.

As you play through Dragon Age there are various specializations you can unlock.  These are refinements of the three basic classes.  Rather than just be some generic warrior, you can be a champion, or a templar, or a berserker.

Some of those specializations take a good amount of time and effort to unlock…  Which means that you won’t generally get them until towards the end of the game, making them rather useless.  In order to combat this, a specialization isn’t unlocked just for that one character – they’re unlocked on your computer in general.  So you can roll up a new character and use those specializations from the start.

A side-affect of this is that you can game the system a bit…  You can save your game, purchase a specialization book for 15 gold, and then go back to your previous save.  You’ve still got the specialization unlocked, but you also have your money back.

This is handy for the specializations you can buy with gold, because it saves you some money…  But it’s insanely helpful for the specializations that require you to take dramatic action.

Over the weekend, I was given the opportunity to unlock the reaver specialization.

This requires you to do a very bad thing.  I won’t say much more than this, as my wife reads this blog, and I don’t want to be gutted with a rusty fish knife…

But, before I did the very bad thing I saved my game, because I didn’t want to live with the consequences of my actions.

At the time my party consisted of Wynne, Leliana, Alister, and myself…  When I did the very bad thing both Wynne and Leliana were horrified.  So horrified, in fact, that they drew their weapons and attacked me.

Frankly, I’m surprised Alister stayed by my side…  I can only assume that he’s required for some event or cinematic later in the game.

Well, I fought back…  And killed both Leliana and Wynne…

They did not get up after the battle.  Which makes sense, because they’re enemies.  It’d be a pretty annoying game if your enemies kept getting back up after you killed them.

But that’s kind of the point.

The fact that they didn’t get back up after the battle was a clearer indication of their rebellion than their shouted words and drawn swords.  Whatever magical protection allowed my party members to get back up after being felled in battle no longer applied to them.  They were now, officially, badguys.

Seeing them lying there after the fight was truly odd.  Especially when their bodies started sparkling.  And when I looted them, I was able to remove all the gear I had equipped them with.  It was so strange to see a character go from a trusted member of my party to an enemy – no different than all the swarms of darkspawn I’ve killed.

That, more than anything else, conveyed the awfulness of my actions.

More than the horrified looks on their faces…  More than their shouted objections…  More than the monsters appearing to punish me for my transgressions…  More than the dramatic cinematic sequences…

The fact that those two characters had changed from being party members to just another enemy to kill spoke volumes.