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CharlesPhipps wrote:Eh, a lot of people die around Hawke in general. Templars and mages. Anders isn't seeking them out but I'm assuming if any Templars did identify him and try to go after him then the result would be pretty obvious. I imagine by the early part of the game he's inclined to run from them but by the end of the game, he'd just lie about any murders he committed.
Besides, a lot of Templars die in Kirkwall.
Mages too.
That's part of why it's the powder keg which ultimately destroys the Mage-Templar detente. They are already in a state of Cold War by the time the game begins. Hawke doesn't find out about ALL of the murders and guerilla war but he finds enough.

There are many corpses around Hawke, yes, but Anders would draw the attention if too many Templars would disappear in Darktown. This would against his causes: to keep his clinic safe place, and working on the Mage issues. I don't deny he able to kill who directly attack him, but as long as they just snooping around his clinic, I suppose he just try to avoid the open conflict and the massacre, he doesn't want to lose the control and scare the people. This wouldn't serve his purpose. He can not risk it. At least according to my opinion this wouldn't too logical. True, sometimes he passionate and hot-headed, but he even fears from his own/Justices anger, so: try to restrain. And in the scene of Meredith's quest, if Hawke let Anders provoke Meredith, Meredith can say to Hawke: Anders in safe just because he's the Champion's companion. So: Meredith's Templars at first doesn't arrest him, probably because he's "useful" (and perhaps, the Carta –Varric– and Aveline's guards also help him), later he's untouchable, as Hawke's friend. He doesn't need to risk. But of course, this is only my opinion, there are many explanations. (Don't get me wrong, I have no problem if he kills Templars, only I think, he don't do it.)

There are many plotholes in DA2... I just try to explain these with more or fewer successes...

Maybe that's the case.

Mine is just Kirkwall is a violent awful place where people die on both sides of the Templar-Mage conflict on a regular basis.

Plus all the time in general.

It's a horrible horrible city.

CharlesPhipps wrote:Maybe that's the case.
Mine is just Kirkwall is a violent awful place where people die on both sides of the Templar-Mage conflict on a regular basis.
Plus all the time in general.
It's a horrible horrible city.

You're right about it: Kirkwall is the mouth of Hell. The Tevinter Magisters weakened the Veil, and the Wardens closed Corypheus near the city. Kirkwall was doomed. And the Chantry makes a Tevinter prison to a Circle tower, as we saw, without any significant alterations – you can see the instruments of torture in the inner courtyard (the place of Orsino's fight). Hawke can ask for the reasons, from Elthina, why the Chantry closed the Mages in a real prison. The answer something like this: it was practical, a big, safe building... so: cheap and "functional"... depend on, what for... this anything but not a good place for the effective, stress-free education and "home" to dangerous people... The fact: many mages went mad here, with many Templars. Or... the Chantry intentionally used some cruel, paranoid madmen as Templar in the responsible positions, saying they are more alert (Meredith, for example). In Kirkwall, all this has been intensified, but the other Circles were not much better, including the Calenhad Tower.

I do kinda wish that DA2 had more story DLC's like Legacy and Mark of the Assassin. I actually would have been okay with six DLC's in total, two for each act though like Legacy and Assassin you can play them at any time you want. As for the stories of these none existing stories, well for starters I would like for them to have all been set outside of Kirkwall and set in places like Lothering, which has Hawke looking for a few family heirlooms only to find they have been stolen. A Pirate adventure because I'm a sucker for that sort of stuff, a Murder Mystery that takes place at a Circle somewhere in the Free Marches that shows both sympathetic Mages and Templars and one about Varric having to deal with Dwarven Merchants Guild because Varric is awesome.

Winter wrote:I do kinda wish that DA2 had more story DLC's like Legacy and Mark of the Assassin. I actually would have been okay with six DLC's in total, two for each act though like Legacy and Assassin you can play them at any time you want. As for the stories of these none existing stories, well for starters I would like for them to have all been set outside of Kirkwall and set in places like Lothering, which has Hawke looking for a few family heirlooms only to find they have been stolen. A Pirate adventure because I'm a sucker for that sort of stuff, a Murder Mystery that takes place at a Circle somewhere in the Free Marches that shows both sympathetic Mages and Templars and one about Varric having to deal with Dwarven Merchants Guild because Varric is awesome.

Actually, that's one of the issues with Dragon Age II in the fact it's not really a game with a story. Stuff happens but there's no real arc. Act I, Act II, and Act III are all really separate games. If you think of it as a Telltale Game, it's actually something that almost works and you could have put Mark of the Assassin and the planned Exalted March on Kirkwall as actual endings.

I like Dragon Age II, I really do, because I actually didn't need all the travelling and new environments because the story really did forgive a lot of sins.

But the game felt directionless and could have used MORE stuff.

How different would things have been if EA didn't force them to churn the game out in a year. If they'd had even one more year to work on it.

The decision to stick in Kirkwall the whole time was obviously made early on, but something more could have been done.

THe character stuff was mostly solid at least.

I like toying with the idea DA shares a universe with Trek and there was a lost TOS episode where the crew comes down and helps someone fix a fence or something so they name it after the captain. over time the name was shortened to kirkwall drom from Kirk's wall. you know how these things go.

Bumping this on account of Chuck resuming the DA2 reviews.

In terms of the illusion breaking, I maintain that a major part of the problem is that the setting is so awful that I really didn't want to maintain the illusion. I neither the bleak atmosphere of cosmic horror, nor the vibrancy that comes with a hive of scum and villainy (say what you want about hives of scum and villainy, the locals seem to genuinely enjoy being scum and villains).

Every faction was genuinely awful, but in a way that was neither immersive nor particularly interesting. Basically, it was a city of... jerks. Banal, boring jerks.

Independent George wrote:Bumping this on account of Chuck resuming the DA2 reviews.

In terms of the illusion breaking, I maintain that a major part of the problem is that the setting is so awful that I really didn't want to maintain the illusion. I neither the bleak atmosphere of cosmic horror, nor the vibrancy that comes with a hive of scum and villainy (say what you want about hives of scum and villainy, the locals seem to genuinely enjoy being scum and villains).

Every faction was genuinely awful, but in a way that was neither immersive nor particularly interesting. Basically, it was a city of... jerks. Banal, boring jerks.

So, Kirkwall is just like 24th Century Starfleet? :/

...You know...it hurts when my sarcasm fails on account of accuracy. Still, at least we're not talking about DA:I...

Breaking the illusion is a big one for BioWare games at the moment.

Mass Effect 2 was great in that it managed to have an ending with real consequences for an entire game of building a team for a suicide mission.

After that, it's been one disappointment after the other. The Mass Effect 3 ending was the moment we knew everything had gone seriously wrong. KotFE promised "choices that matter" that didn't to the the point I made a video about the problems after chapter 16. Andromeda was a mess they tried, and failed, to salvage from a procedural exploration game made by the C-Team with an unfamiliar engine.

It's a combination of managerial incompetence and lack of resource. KotFE expecially had more planned from what we know of the datamined content where there were branching options that were orphaned. Other things though had to be a result of terrible choices by management. Which includes making KotFE's Chapter 16 final choices irrelevant and having one in Chapter 1 of KotET matter instead. Or the entirity of Andromeda's development cycle.

We may just have to admit that BioWare was hollowed out of its original team long ago and the twitching body on life support is already dead. Those signs of life we see are just gas escaping.