I replayed Dragon Age 2

When I started up Dragon Age Origins again I was only planning on playing that one, but as I finished with DAO I realized I wasn't done yet. So I started up Dragon Age 2.

DA2 is interesting in many ways, especially because it's the thing that connects DAO with DAI. If you skip DA2 you'll have no idea how the events of DAI came about, but it's all due to a certain Fereldan refugee and their apostate Grey Warden friend. 

So this time I was adamant that I would complete Fenris's romance and not be impatient and not flirt with anybody else whatsoever. Fenris is amazing. I love him.

But because I chose to romance Fenris I also chose to support the templars and not the mages which ultimately doesn't make a difference in the outcome or end-game boss battles. I'm just pleasantly surprised that I managed to get Anders at max friendship while also getting Fenris at max friendship. I usually choose the mages, but anything for Fenris.

All of Anders's dialogue comments about past events in Awakening made me smile. Every time. Every mention of the Warden. Hell, even Cassandra interrogating Varric throughout the game made me smile. So much nostalgia everywhere. 

Fenris and Merrill look absolutely amazing in the elf style they chose for DA2, Zevran does not. What did they do to you?! Alistair's cameo was fun, but same question there: what did they do to you?!

DA2's story is good in how it perfectly paves the way for DAI while keeping the events of DAO relevant. And considering how often a certain red lyrium idol shows up in the trailers and teasers for Dreadwolf, DA2 might also be paving the way for the fourth game. Honestly, can't wait!

However I do understand the complaints for DA2. It's the same few areas to explore. Every dungeon looks the same, every house interior looks the same. So much copypaste. I wish I didn't have to re-discover the map for every place in every act. Doesn't make sense that Hawke doesn't know the layout of the Wounded Coast after six years. 

I wish they'd kept the gift system from DAO, and I wish the companions could wear different armour too and not just Hawke. 

DA2 is fun and casual and breezy in a way that DAO isn't. In DAO, even if you play a happy-go-lucky kind of Warden there's a constant sense of doom hanging over the whole game. Which is understandable, considering. But in DA2, half the fun is playing a punny, humoristic and completely inappropriate Hawke. And everyone just goes along with it! 

And let's not forget that Hawke is the one who awakened Corypheus to begin with. "Had some dealings with him in the past", my ass, Hawke! You got us into this mess!

If they had kept DA2 more like DAO, with more diverse interiors and environments, maybe DA2 would've been better received and more people would play through the gloriousness that is this story. 

My last 5 books: Mostly fantastical stuff

1. Fool Moon, by Jim Butcher. So I don't enjoy the werewolf schtick and I don't understand the world's obsession with them. What I did enjoy was how Butcher took every version of the werewolf legend and made them all valid for his own universe. I like that. I also really liked how Murphy held her own even though I wanted to scream at her for being and idiot when she decided to not trust Harry again. And was that a hint towards a juict family mystery on Harry's part? I'm gonna eat that right up. If the previous book did a lot of world building, this book did a lot of relationship building (and thank you to Harry's subconscious for pointing out the absolute obvious chemistry between Harry and Murph). The crime in this book was fairly obvious with Butcher adding in several layers just to make it complicated but it ends up just being convoluted. That said I had a lot of fun reading this book. Butcher's brand of humour is right up my alley and I'm excited to dive deeper into this series. 

2. This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. Everyone was talking about this book a couple years ago and so I decided to read it. I was so confused when I first started reading it. The narrative just throws you straight into a finished world, no introduction, nothing, but the world-building happens as you go along and by the end you have a pretty solid idea of how it works. It's half-epistulary, half-narrative and it just works. And it's so beautiful! And that final in-your-face is so satisfying! When I first started out I did not expect to come away thinking this was one of the best books I read this year, but damn. It's perfect. Two quotes that really spoke to me: "A desire to be apart, sometimes, to understand who I am without the rest. And what I return to the me-ness that I know as pure, inescapable self... is hunger. Desire. Longing, this longing to possess, to become, to break like a wave on a rock and reform, and break again, and wash away." And also: "But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive against and for. I want to live in contact. I want to be a context for you, and you for me." This book is a love story; a tragic, impossible love story in a sci-fi setting in a far-flung future. And it's amazing. 

3. Lethal White, by Robert Galbraith. In acknowledgements at the end the author states that this was a hard book to write, and it’s noticeable throughout. The first hundred pages draaaaaaaag. The prologue picks up exactly where the last book left off and everything seems amazing, but then there is a timeskip in which the two main characters create a divide between themselves by not communicating and while it’s definitely realistic it’s also very hard to read. Strike and Robin get called upon to investigate the source of blackmailing that's targeting a Minister and while it’s interesting and things just entangle themselves more and everything keeps getting more complicated, it doesn’t feel like the plot really starts moving forward until halfway through when the murder happens. The murder is related to the blackmail which is somehow related to the mentally ill person who barged into Strike's office at the very beginning. There are so many plotlines going on at the same time, so many seemingly disparate threads that somehow connect to each other and I love seeing them come together. I have never figured out a Strike novel before the conclusion and that just makes them all wonderfully engaging reads. I just wish it didn’t drag so much for the first third to half. I'm really excited to read more now and I have the next two books on my shelf.

4. Everyone's an alien when you're an alien too, by Jonny Sun. This was a very quick but also very cute and heart-warming read. The books is a cross between a comic and a picture-book, but it has some valuable lessons about belonging, happiness and death. The story is about an alien who's sent to Earth to study humans. As the story goes on the alien meets and befriends everything but humans and learns a lot over the course of just over 100 days. The book is full of intentional spelling mistakes that gives the book character and even for a grammar nerd like myself it’s so well done that I hardly even notice it. My favourite quote from this book is: "Look. Life is bad. Everyone's sad. We're all gonna die. But I already bought this inflatable bouncy castle so are you gonna take your shoes off or what?" I also really liked: "Treat every day on Earth as if it's your last day on Earth because it is, until you spend another day on Earth." This book is a perfect example on how to say a lot with very few words. 

5. Skalpelldansen, av Jenny Milewski. När jag läste Yuko som min första introduktion till Jenny Milewskis skrivande så var jag inte övertygad. Yuko kändes taskigt researchad och som om den red på succén från The Grudge. Men att en svensk ens brydde sig om att skriva om något så väldigt japanskt gav tillräckligt med cred för att jag skulle vilja utforska mera. Skalpelldansen är betydligt mycket bättre. Den var seg i starten, men blev sen svår att lägga ifrån sig. Genom första halvan av boken undrade jag om hon skulle köra på "huvudkaraktär som får liv" eller "extrem-fan som utför alla dåd i författarens böcker". I slutändan gjorde hon inget av det och körde på en vinkel som är så kliché att det inte ens kom för mig att hon skulle välja den. Men hon får det att funka! Riktigt bra dessutom! Jag är imponerad.

I replayed Dragon Age Origins

I haven't played this game since 2016 or so, but a few weeks ago I suddenly got a craving for Dragon Age. Put it off for a while, but eventually caved and installed it.

I decided to not go for anything special and just do my canon experience. Got all the companions to max friendship, romanced Alistair, made my Warden his queen and had neither of them die to the archdemon. 

Chose mages over templars in the Circle. Chose elves over werewolves in the forest. Chose Harrowmont over Bhelen in Orzammar. 

The part with Hespith and the Broodmother in the Deep Roads still creeps me out. And I hate the Fade. 

After the main game I turned to the small DLCs. Leliana's song is still the most meh DLC ever. I didn't need to play out her story when she's already told it me once. The Darkspawn Chronicles are pretty fun though. Disturbingly fun. The battle for Denerim but from the darkspawns' perspective and if HoF didn't exist and it was just Alistair and co. 

Golems of Amgarrak DLC remains my most disliked venture in Dragon Age because O-M-G I HATE GOLEMS. Especially inside that teeny tiny room where they've shoved four steel golems and three stone golems and all of them hurl rocks at the team so all the team has time to do basically is ragdoll away until they die. GAAAAAH! So many reloaded saves. It was like managing a goddamn chess board to get every character in a position where they wouldn't get ragdolled about too much so they could do some damage and still I had to use an absurd amount of health poultices and injury kits. Just lucky that the golem I picked up had learned how to revive, but that also meant keeping that golem alive and that was almost impossible... The fight against the Harvester in the end of the DLC was easy in comparison to getting ragdolled around by seven golems. 

Witch Hunt DLC was extremely interesting though. I honestly don't think I've replayed DAO since I played DAI... But there are so many references to the rest of the series. In the Circle two mages are discussing the refugee situation in Kirkwall, which directly references the start of DA2. Morrigan is on the hunt for an Eluvian which correlates with DA2 and Trespasser. And she speaks of a change happening to the Veil and within the Fade which hints towards both DAI and potentially Dreadwolf. Finn is amazing and I want more of him.

Awakening was equally interesting. While Anders is generally a lot more fun and easy-going in Awakening than he is in DA2 there is one occasion where he speaks about "Mages almost needing permission to live" which really sounds like Anders from DA2 and it's one of the sentiments that ignite the whole thing in Kirkwall which spirals into the events of DAI. In the Blackmarsh region of Awakening there are Veil Tears and Fade Rifts/Portals all over the place and that's just a direct reference to DAI imo. In Awakening the Architect says he was born the way he is, but we can probably make a qualified guess and assume he's an original like Corypheus, but just like Corypheus didn't at the start the Architect doesn't remember. There is an end screen after Awakening which says that the Warden disappears, which hints towards their travels as told by DAI. 

I love Awakening. My only gripe is that it should've been longer. I don't feel like I have enough time to really make Vigil's Keep my own or show the people of Amaranthine that I can rule them well before it's time for the final showdown and everything just ends. There isn't even any time to get the companions to max friendship T_T I need Awakening to be longer.

The most interesting thing about replaying now so long after I've played the other games is to see the incredible amount of foreshadowing in the first game. There's so much. So much that I had either forgotten or had gone completely over my head back when I played this game religiously. 

Every companion in one sentence each:

Shale is best girl. Sten is adorable in all his grumpyness. Alistair is best boi. Wynne is hilarious. Zevran is amazing. Morrigan's pain runs deep and I love her. Ohgren is too annoying and too good at destroying anything good he has going for him. I don't care much for Leliana and she exists like an afterthought. Ariane is badass. Finn is my spirit animal. Anders is best friend material. I wish Nathaniel was romanceable. Sigrun is very cute. Velanna is a hardass. Justice is like the grandpa figure who holds your hand with all his wisdom, but is still childish in his wonder of exploring a new world. I wish Mhairi had survived. I like Sketch. Tug and Silas are forgettable. Jerrik and Brogan are also forgettable. 

I was going to only replay DAO, but I accidentally DA2 as well =D