Dragon Age: Mark of the Assassin

[alias_sqbr]

I enjoyed this. It's very fluffy and light and insubstantial, but I liked that. You go to a party at an Orlesian mountain villa at the behest of an elf assassin created, voiced, and based on Felicity Day. Shenanigans ensue. I would have enjoyed it more if it had more depth/thought, but I don't regret the purchase.

The (non-compulsory) stealth section was just easy enough that I could do it after several tries, I think next time I'll just murder everyone (I'm planning on bringing my Azula inspired mage, so it's in character :D) I haven't done enough stealth games to be able to compare, it wasn't super fun but it was nice having some variety.

I took my Isabela rivalmancing rogue, with Isabela and Merril. The lack of a warrior didn't seem to cause too much trouble (on easy, at any rate), and they had fun at the party as I thought they would. I didn't realise I could have brought Bethany, though, I think she'd have enjoyed a break from the Circle /overinvestment in fictional characters

Some of the puzzles were a bit tricky, but mostly non-compulsory. I've looked up some hints and will see what happens if I solve them all next time. They seem to tailor the sidequests slightly to your party, I'm tempted to replay the same game again to finish Isabela's sidequest, it niggles at me.

All the wandering around pretty countryside, doing puzzles, and french accents reminded me of Gabriel Knight 3. I kept waiting for Andraste's secret heir to turn up, or maybe some vampires.

Ok, now for some spoilery thoughts.

Finally, a female Qunari! You can design a new monster but not female versions of humanoid aliens, is that it Bioware? Still, it was nice to be reminded that Qunari are not all warrior men, something DA2 was much worse at than DAO. I thought Tallis was fairly well characterised as a devout but not totally dogmatic convert to a rigid religion. She makes an interesting contrast to Fenris (also a Tevinter ex-slave) and Merril (also a non-Andrastean elf) Plus Isabela got a chance to be slightly less bigoted towards Qunari. Not that the dialogue explored any of that as much as it could have (I haven't done my Fenris playthrough yet, but I'm not expecting much) Apparently there's Tallis related online episodes? I'm vaguely curious to see them now.

Wait, don't Qunari tell women not to be warriors? I guess she wasn't a warrior exactly?

The ending. So silly. Also despite having poison hocked on me every now and then, and my only mage being Merrill, my health never went down very much at all, which reduced the sense of urgency a bit. Not sure what was up with that.

Only a Dragon Age game would have me thinking "Oh no! I forgot to have sex with the trans prostitute!". (You bump into Serenity from the Blooming Rose, and if your awkwardness isn't explained by having slept with her it comes across as transphobia) And Tansy is the only Hawke who hasn't finished the game and thus is in a position to visit the Blooming Rose, hmmph. Still, at least Serenity and Bran seemed pretty happy together.

When I saw you could flirt with Tallis I was curious to see if that would go anywhere, especially since Isabela is hardly the jealous type. Isabela pouted a little (probably didn't help that Tallis is a Qunari) but was ok with it in the end, but Tallis was still all "Ah, what might have been" regardless. I wonder what she does if you're single. Cam was all "Wait, you can flirt with Felicity Day's character o.O" and I pointed out that he only has one Hawke and Merrill is not the sharing type :D

Comments

[darkrose]

Apparently according to the Qunari, the Ben-Hassrath don't count as warriors because they fall under the command of the Ariqun, the (female) head of the religious caste.

I felt like there was too much "OHAI GUYS ITS FELICIA DAY ISN'T SHE COOL!" with her character. I did like having her be a convert to the Qun, but when she was going on about how awesome the Qun is, I wanted mage!Hawke to have the option to say, "Yeah, not so much for me, since I like NOT HAVING MY MOUTH SEWN SHUT." There were some cool moments, but overall I was pretty meh.

[sqbr]

Having played through a second time with a mage, those aspects did stand out at me, yes :/

[willow]

I'm waiting to see what the modders do with her costume model, and if there's a brown head to stick on her. I only knew of FD in passing, didn't even know her name, and thus don't give much a damn about her. Gave less when I saw some of a let's play yesterday (by one of my favourite players no less) and ended up switching off. And it was a live steam!

I ended up agreeing with him that her whole intro was a whole lot of 'OMG! It's THIS PERSON! And look how cool she is!!!!'. Cause he kept going 'Wait, are my guys just standing there? Why are they just standing there? There's no way a fight would be going on and they'd just stand there. Why is Isabella not getting violent. There are people to stab and rob!'

I ended up looking her up on the wiki because I wanted to know if she got more interesting and apparently she doesn't, really.

And while poking around, I walked right into blogs talking about whether or not there'll be a patch cause some writer didn't see the cissexist mocking attitudes and situations down one branch path.

I'm still waiting until DA2 is a reasonable (for me price). Because odds are likely my comp's too old for it. And so far the DLC hasn't really caught my interest much at all - outside of things like 'Oooh, the modders'll have fun with that - pretty please!'

PS: Am I the only one staring at that exposed underbelly and going - what armour doesn't stop evisceration? Is sexiness more important than non death?!

[sqbr]

The "Look how cool Tallis is! Let's focus on her!" aspects got more annoying to me on a second playthrough, when I'd seen them before and was hoping for a focus on my companions (a new set whose interactions with the DLC I hadn't seen yet)

[lian]

I liked the fights in this one. (I play on hard, so I needed a couple of tries to beat the alpha wyvern b/c I tend to be more careless for the other fights.) The final battle was probably too easy, or I was overprepared, but it was generally pretty fun -- slaughtering my way across the castle was IC for my asshole mage Hawke, so that was alright.

I also liked the environments, and Tallis, and her kind of abrupt change from easy-going to devout (I kind of recognized myself in there? as in, I come across as pretty ditzy, but hit one of my switches, and I will go all hardcore srs bsns on you in 0 sec flat.)

But speaking of srs bsns, I would have liked to be able to argue the Qun with her in more depth, since only about the uncontroversial parts we addressed, and that's like only talking about what a nice guy Jesus was when it comes to the Catholic Church. Er, it's a biiiit more complicated than that?

I also would have enjoyed Fenris getting more Qunari-related dialogue; he's so much better versed in the theology than Andraste is. *wry*

The about three LI-related lines made me go all awwwww. I am so, so easy to please, sigh.

Still, I did like Legacy better.

[sqbr]

Yes, I thought Tallis's personality was interesting, but would really have liked to have seen her talk with Fenris about the Qun, or with my mage about magic.