The BIG Dragon Age: Origins Retrospective | ft. David Gaider 

I still prefer DA2 but only because it was one of the first PC games I played and then I played Origins and I can see why people were disappointed with the second one though I still love the characters and sarcastic Hawke always made me chuckle

The Dorf origin is lit and I want more dorf stuff like it. Simple as.

Because it's the only good one lmao

Origins has the most fun mages. The city elf origin is my favourite. It has very strong themes and writing. I especially like the personality of the Warden. I think DAI has better character writing, but the rest of the game is not as good.

It's actually DA2. I know it's the worst game out of the 3, but was the first one I played and it got me hooked on the rest of the series, and eventually CRPG's in general.

This video makes me wanna go for my 38th time

@@iCantEditBro you know I forced myself to play my backlog before starting any game I´ve beaten again. so to cope for notplaying dao again I watch this video

This inspired me to go for my 269th run

Literally me

Yeeeees

It's almost exactly one-half of a Peragus!

Yeah he was great

Fun story: Many years ago I was an artist on a Hearts of Iron IV mod named Kaiserreich. For background, I'm a writer and a *massive* Dragon Age: Origins fan - it literally got me into writing in the first place, I have a tattoo of the box art dragon on my boob. David Gaider is my Beyoncé. So I'm an artist on this game mod, and I don't get along great with the Lead Artist. Just not great vibes, it wasn't anything super hostile, but just didn't get along super great. Time went on and after (an admittedly short) time on the mod, one of my own projects took off independently and I started focusing full time on that and slacked off my artist duties. The Lead Artist fired me more or less, I told them to F themselves over it, and that was that. Several months later I am reading David Gaider's Twitter and he posts pictures he made. Pictures of Hearts of Iron IV-style art, for the mod Kaiserreich. Motherfucking David Gaider was the Lead Artist the entire time. I tried to slide back into the DMs and he ghosted me 😓, which was fair, lol.

@@LonelyKnightess they say you should never meet your heroes, but I guess collaborating with them anonymously can be worse lol. Although damn, didn't realize there are people of his professional caliber working on these mods. Easy to imagine someone who's made a career of game development being used to a certain level of dedication that comes off as unreasonable to people working on a mod in their spare time.

Incredible

​@@LonelyKnightessI like these little slices of life in yt comments, thanks for telling

This is actually how I've always done my playthroughs, I don't think it's particularly "unique" but it does require some forethought and planning. Hardening Alistair always felt like a no-brainer normally because his level of naivete, while adorable, is borderline "puppy in human form" levels half the time. Hardening him makes him an actual adult, without losing his sassiness. Easy decision. I usually harden Leliana too since canonically she clearly becomes more hardened as the game's progress. Having Alistair marry Anora is the most logical way to keep the realm stable and unite everyone against the Darkspawn. Anora's political mind along with Alistair's leadership and lineage prevents any kind of succession disputes while also giving the Kingdom a royal wedding to be distracted by during the reconstruction of the Kingdom. Alistair leaving is easily handled thanks to Loghain showing up and filling out the exact same role (while also bringing the more useful champion specialization intrinsically instead of Templar which is a nice spec, but not as good for tanking as Champion is) so the final run to the Archdemon doesn't get extra complicated. While DA:O's supposed canon warden is a Dalish Elf Female who sacrifices herself, I have to assume the devs picked that just because it would affect follow on stories the least. I tend to think Human Noble is the canon warden, who becomes Warden Commander and Arl of Amaranthine under his older brother who does survive Ostagar and takes over as Teyrn of Highever. And given the Witch Hunt DLC and her appearance in DAI I think Morrigan is the canonical love interest who the original warden decides to go with through the Eluvian and spends his days with her raising the son, then dies either from the taint or something else. It should also be pointed out that sparing Loghain and him surviving the fight against the Archdemon has a special interaction with him in Awakening where he drops by and mentions he's serving as the Ferelden Grey Warden representative to Orlais which is ironic considering his hatred of the country thanks to fighting against them along with King Maric during the Orlesian occupation.

That's one of the better outcomes IMO. I always harden Alistair if I put him on the throne because he's a terrible ruler otherwise, and realistically there's no reason to kill Loghain rather than putting him through the joining aside from Alistair's tantrum. Throwing a coup d'etat to dethrone a very popular and competent queen also feels inappropriate, but everyone approves of Alistair and Anora ruling together. Except maybe for the two of them, but Anora will respect a hardener Alistair and he'll dedicate himself to being a king rather than a puppet.

My best ever run was with an arcane warrior

The best origin for a mile

After all these years, I never played the Noble Dwarf. I played Human Noble tons of times though. I felt like it's the "canon" experience.

@@neansath I play the human noble as default, the dwarven lore is sick too! Like holy hell these people have been fighting a losing battle for a millennium since the dark spawn arrival in the deep roads and if you remember the horror elements like the brood mother in those dwarven dungeons The Trench like got dayum!! Better play it safe and be a human noble to get all the good gear early on.

@@Enimorj second best, the best is female City elf.

​@@MaetMen I can't imagine a way in which you could be more wrong.

this is exactly me. wanna watch so bad but the only time i get to really sit down is before i sleep and i end up falling asleep and wake up 4 hours into it, having to figure out where i left off the next day

Never thought of it that way, good point

Apparently this ends up not being true in the lore in the future

@@SuperRADLemon Yeah, especially what Cassandra tells about the Seeker ritual.

From what I remember you literally need to save them from possession and they turn into demons if you don't defeat enemies quick enough.

@minithugfille960 that was the final boss battle room. Those were normal mages you had to save

@@misternich4935 That's not the one I mean, tranquil mages are in the room with three statues (one of them is a part of the side quest) on a third floor (great hall). If you save them, one of them will thank you and say how unpleasant it was (in a very calm, not emotional tone). ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-go3mPeiyKCo.html

This one still holds up. Maybe not graphically, but everything else still works great. The story, characters, and the level of choice in character builds are fantastic.

Nothing wrong with enjoying all 3 games. Hell, I do too, even if I do think Origins is better than the other two. The thing is, Origins came out as kind of a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights and made a lot of people happy because of it. Crpgs were not the most popular genre and people had been wanting something like DAO for years, a modern take of the old formula with cinematic storytelling and (mostly) great voice acting. It was great to have another high profile RPG in a somewhat niche genre and we couldn't wait to get more of it. And then we never really got more. As the series went on, instead of building upon the new system and adding more intricate mechanics, they kept stripping away the RPG elements in an effort to make the games more accessible to a wider audience. DA2 and DAI play like action games with light RPG elements instead of the the classic CRPG DAO was still aiming to be. Gone were the origins, skills, attribute allocation, crafting, tactical combat with systems like physical and mental resistances, proper dialogue choices, etc. People loved DAO and wanted more of the same, but instead we kept getting less while the series moved on to something else. A lot of people were really disappointed with that and for me personally, it took me years to start appreciating the newer games for what they are instead of disliking them for what they aren't.

You are not wrong to like DA2 and DAI. I love DA2 and I mourn it's lost potential. I'm not bothered by same locations, weird looking characters and the like. I love Kirkwall, it really is interesting when you actually start looking at it and reading about it. I love how terrible the place is i love how lower city is so dusty and dirty because it's the old quarry, I love how the powerful and the wealthy live in old mansions and palaces of Tevinter slave owners. I love how the chantry never bothered to remove the old slave statues from the Gallows and how they keep calling the circle the Gallows. And despite how terrible and dystopian the city is it becomes a home for Hawke and their companions. I'm just a sucker for found family and found home

No, you’re not wrong for enjoying the whole series. And if you look back at the reviews of the games when they first came out people were a lot kinder then. These days BioWare’s fall from grace has made a lot of people want to claim that they “always knew they were bad”. There’s a good reason Inquisition won multiple Game of the Year awards though, and there are good reasons to like DA2. They’re games with wonderful characters and a lot of heart put into them. None of the Dragon Age games are perfect, but all are worthy of love.

I played through all 3 not long ago either, and I love them all for what they are. I did struggle to make it through da2 most recently, though - I couldn’t wait to wrap it up and move to DAI. I also find I enjoy DAI’s combat the most, especially on high difficulty. While the base story is weak, like mass effect 3 the subplots are fun even if the overall wrapping is weak, and 2 of the DLCs are my favourites in the whole series (Jaws of Hakkon and Trespasser). So you’re definitely not alone in liking all 3. DAO is probably to most cohesive and quality package, and very understandably the most appealing to those who enjoy a good CRPG. But the other games are appealing in different ways.

Alistair was my favorite romance of all the games I played. It always pleases me how Alistair was a favorite to most players. And you are right about BG3. It feels like a spiritual successor. But none of the characters really hit that sweet spot that Alistair did.

Totally agree

Just curious but what areas do you think the game has aged poorly? I did my 7th playthrough of this game recently and tbh I still had more fun with it than any modern game I have played. It's my favorite game ever, and i'm obviously "biased" towards it, but I think it has aged extremely well due to how unique it is.

@@Skumtomten1 The models and the UI namely, and the loading screens. I've always played this game on Xbox so my experience is definitely hindered because of it. I will be buying it on steam soon tm.

@@Skumtomten1 But seriously? I really don't care about those things much, DA:O is a game I could replay infinite times I love it that much. I love discovering new things, EVEN NOW, side quests I never found out or treasures. Its amazing how vast and endless this game is despite it being based on set pieces.

@@nikkikah2356 Oh, you played on console, that explain things haha. I have played it console and while the writing and story is just as good as the pc version, everything else is definitely worse. It's pretty obvious the game was designed for pc, then ported to consoles, which is pretty much the opposite of what most AAA game do today. I highly reccommend getting it on pc, and it's best to get the GOG version, bust steam also works. One important thing though is to 4gb patch the game, or LAA patch it. Otherwise it runs like crap on modern computers. There are also many fantastic mods for it on pc. But yea I agree, I have close to 500 hours of this game and I still see new stuff and hear new dialogue, its pretty incredible.

I haven't said it, but I kinda took this back as I wrote it and voiced the script. I like shale

It's still dumb

@@adeptdamage3669 not really. Just say you dont like it and rhats fine but its pretty consistent with lore

@@godshenron9306 Nah it's a cheap way to walk back player choice.

​@@godshenron9306its quite Cheap brother. Even if the lore actually acommodetad it. They valued Leiliana way more than player and thats a fact. Even in Dragon Age Inquisition.

@@godshenron9306 They literally broke players choices because they gave players the choice of being a murderhobo and then decided, "Huh, being a murderhobo is bad. Oh well, screw player choice then."

Yeah, looking at the end screen and the carnage wrought by Bhelen and sucking my teeth saying "real sorry 'bout that fellas"

I'm not sure yet but currently no plans

I appreciate that!

Man arcane warrior so OP christ totally forgot how much of a menace my Wynn was.

@@Nastara I ended up rocking an arcane warrior for over half my first playthrough back in the day, used the juggernaut set for the rest of the game as well, so I could face tank every single fight lol

I killed the high dragon with my warrior as reaver and Wyne as arcane warrior on nightmare arcane warrior is broken

Hello, my clone. Or maybe I’m _your_ clone. 🤔

Took me 4 days but I did it

Id watch that on replay!

They definitely get much better and more useful when you aren’t just playing on normal.