33 réponses à ce sujet

[Asdara]

 Ok, I've just about had to say this since my first play through.  Some quick facts: I'm playing on PS3, this pertains to Awakenings ending so PLEASE if you don't want to have that spoiled, stop now.  I'm giving you all possible opportunity here to cease reading if you don't want to hear my thoughts about the final end thing.

Gone yet?

Super good.

Just in case, last chance.  Seriously.  I hate spoilers too but people need to talk about thing sometimes.
















Ok, I did not like that I seem to be damned if I do save the city - because I lose Vigil's Keep every time no matter what I have done to buff it up, build new walls, get merchants to come in and provide trade, gotten every ore deposit, etc. etc. etc.  Firing the town was equally disheartening, since it produced bad epilog notations and I seemed to have to "rebuild" the keep anyway.

If this is a bug, it's long overdue for a fix - I've been sitting on this expansion since it came out for the semester to end at college, and now that I am playing it, I feel like it is pointless to play it only to lose-lose.  Is anyone else hesitant to believe in future expansions after this sort of thing happening?  Or am I just over-reacting because my Warden couldn't have her cake and eat it too?  She worked hard enough for it, I think.

[EnchantedEyes1]

No, it's not a bug and it is disheartening but I think this brings to the forefront what a GW's life is about, some very hard choices at times and sacrifice - not just yours but others'. For me, Awakenings had a darker feeling to it. I always save Amaranthine, that is what comes naturally to my characters - but the one time I did choose the Vigil just for variety's sake - I hated the epilogue and the rumor that my Dalish Elf did it for revenge against the humans. That was so wrong and she did not deserve that, those ungrateful jerks!

[Asdara]

Maybe I would have been less disappointed it if didn't seem like the ONLY important action I took the whole expansion was the choice between the city and the keep. Everything else seemed to just "do whatever" without the intense reactions from my companions to let me know what the general opinion was. When your only major choice is a lose lose... I just didn't like the feel of it. How can we call ourselves heros - and BTW - what the heck with my walls, soldiers, companions who are the same level of awesome I am (some with the same abilities for pity's sake) can't hold a week when I cleared that place like wiping dust off the mantle?!



That would be like, when I left Sten in charge of the city defense I kill the archdemon only to find that the entire civilian population is dead anyway. And he wasn't even a Warden!



And yes, it was my Dalish Rogue I protected the keep with... and it turned out the same, and I was pretty insulted. Like it was easy for her to do, which it wasn't - her companions argued her down from saving the town (I brought Nat, Oghren, and my fellow Dalish)

[Aielwar]

I agree that the ending was less than satisfying, but I think if they had filled out the story of the game a little more( they had a great story and decided to give us the highly abridge version), it would have made a great deal more sense and given all of us loyalists a little more satisfaction, and sense of our goal,duty,mission,etc... being worth the price we paid for it,losing one or the other.

[Rhys Cordelle]

My game must have been bugged. I chose to save Amaranthine and I got the message that the Vigil had fallen, but then the epilogue included what happens to my characters that had stayed back in Vigils keep and it talked about them saving it. Very odd.



But yeah, Dragon Age is not the game to play if you're looking for happy endings. It's gritty and it's realistic about tough choices. I find it refreshing from the cliche where your character is able to resolve every conflict in the best way possible.

[Asdara]

Oh yes Rhys, I'm not complaining about it being "unhappy" I'm complaining about it being dissatisfying. There's a difference to my mind. I can be satisfied with an unhappy choice if it has to be made - but I didn't feel that way about this choice. I felt like I was led through a series of hoops to safeguard the keep and that it fell to a force I single-handedly wiped out pretty much. Now, had it been set up as a choice all along to fortify the town or the keep to save one or the other ultimately, or that in saving the town I allowed some more massive force to fall on the keep, or some explanation of that sort - different feeling entirely.



Aielwar yes, I agree. There is much that this expansion lacked for me that I loved in the main module. They dropped the ball in a few places (Dreams for dwarves, lack of significant character interaction, lack of impact from choices - or more specifically all but one line of choices resulting in negative leaving the player feeling hand-tied to a specific course of events, the inability to do the three sections in any order if you want to ensure the people you promise will become wardens actually do so, the introduction of characters so close to the end that you may as well not have met them, and so on). The end though. That's the part that is really sticking in my craw and making the whole thing difficult to carry on. I almost don't even want to go and play through the original again with the two chars I started and didn't finish before homework took over my life again just because I don't want to take them through the expansion - which I feel like I overpaid for as well.



I really liked this game, I still do, but it has lost something in this expansion that I am not sure I can get back immediately.

[Asdara]

Also, just for some more QQ : I missed my warhound. Why in the name of the Maker would I have not brought him?! I cannot think of one good reason.

[Rhys Cordelle]

You make a good point Asdara. I must admit, I did find myself wondering why the bloody hell I wasted 80 sovereigns on fortifying the walls of the Vigil if it doesn't give me an opportunity to rescue it after Amaranthine. You would think that would be the whole point of fortifying its defences.

[Rhys Cordelle]

Asdara wrote...

Also, just for some more QQ : I missed my warhound. Why in the name of the Maker would I have not brought him?! I cannot think of one good reason.

Also a good point. There really is absolutely no reason.

[Asdara]

Precisely. I mean, even if the 80 sovereigns only afforded me the opportunity to go back to the keep after saving the village to pull out the remaining defenders or assist them or drive the darkspawn from the rubble at the very least! Nope - straight to the Mother, who's been there the whole bloody time in the same spot flailing her tentacles in madness. That couldn't have waited a day? I didn't get the impression she was going anywhere in a hurry.



I ended up killing the Architect out of sheer spite for my loss. My Dalish Elf Rogue made a decision when she fired the town that she would not suffer a single darkspawn to draw breath in her presence. Killed that messenger too. Even though I KNEW he did good if I let him go - killed him. Insufferable monsters shouldn't live while I am firing arrows at my own townsfolk, no matter how well intentioned they may be. Very sad.

[Rhys Cordelle]

He does good if you let him go? Lol, didn't see that coming. I also killed him and the architect. I don't make deals with darkspawn.

[Asdara]

Well my Human Noble Warrior did. She is all about moderation and fair-play without exception, darkspawn or no. In the Epilog it said he was a mysterious traveler who helped people in need. Fine and well for him since that character saved the city (and I also had the "bugged" Keep Lost/Kept stuff that first time round) but... all the same. I try to play my various wardens according to their patterns - and a bitter decision made for a bitter action.



I have a lot more "whine" stuff about the expansion, but it serves little purpose but to get it off my own chest. Frankly, I didn't like the half-and-half kept/lost thing any more than firing the town outright. I couldn't tell if I'd kept the keep or lost it and it seemed to conflict with itself, which made me think it was bugged. It told me of everyone's bravery and how their lives carried on, but also listed my people as dead. I could have been ok with the "new" people dying, but accidentally leaving Oghren to die... that sat all wrong with me.

[Rhys Cordelle]

It's not really Oghren anyway. Just a poor immitation doppelganger.

[Asdara]

Fair point. And another one of my gripes. I never did get him to pay attention to his kid - you'd think since he liked me SO much already I could have been a little more buddy-buddy with him. Slaying the archdemon together obviously had no sway for him though and by the time I got him to like me again - away from that cask - it was already time to make war. Oh well. Kid's probably better off without him.

[Dawnielle]

Awakenings did not make any SENSE.
SO MANY PLOT HOLES!
No dog, No recognizing the queen or addressing her, wedding already happened (alistair says'thats why I married you) dreaming dwarf's, Nathaniel does not know me, although I had met him years before (human noble), Oghren LOVED me when I left court, and now hes only halfway there? That makes NO sense! Carry things over Bioware, even I know better than that!!! ( i am not a hardcore gamer by any means but I know better).
And guess what, I kept almost all of the gifts, because the ones I did give, gave lackluster responses. Nothing you do makes any outcome, the choices you make mean really nothing. To top it all off, what makes me more angry- had nothing to do with the above. Its the hurt Mibari that I CANT SAVE! And why not? GRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Modifié par Dawnielle, 26 mai 2010 - 06:25 .

[BigBad]

I think the thing that made me angriest about Awakenings wasn't the massive plot holes, the game-breaking bugs, the vastly different tone from the original campaign, the arbitrary and unintuitive party dialogue system, Oghren's new ventures into being horrendously more annoying than he used to be, the sporadic and half-ass carryover of continuity when importing a character, or even the short-ass length for an expansion with a full-game pricetag.



It was Mhairi. Not to mean that I hated her character. On the contrary, I loved her. She was a perfect Warden recruit, both competent and eager, in contrast to the ragged band of reluctant misfits and tortured blowhards we wound up with. This was a strong female warrior, not a rogue or mage, but a warrior. A tank, even. And of course, she gets dumped and we get Sigrun (awesome, yes) and Velanna (boo, hiss, DIE!). A rogue and a mage. Gah.

[Pookieroo]

For me there was not enough interaction between the characters. No camp where you could get friendly. The end game came too fast and abruptly for my liking, I still had errands to do and I hadn't had enough time to work out the rune skills and upgrade my weapons. I thought that there could have been more stuff to do before the end battle. So much talk about darkspawn roaming the country but we seldom came across them and they all just vanished after the mother was killed - unlikely. I also chose to save the city and the people but I would have like to have been able to have returned to the Vigil and lifted the seige or at least help before going after the mother. In my ending Vigil took a battering but survived. Ogran, Sigrun and Velanna were left at the Vigil, don't know if that made a difference. Ogran lived to be a hero - might have something to do with his wearing the Hirol armour. I felt there was a possibility of a confrontation with the Architect who I joined forces with temporarily but planned to go after once the mother was out of the way. Intelligent darkspawn - sounded like big future trouble. But the game abruptly ended and this was not developed. Yes I got the feeling that the developers decided that it was long enough and stopped the story too abruptly. And yes, where was my dog!!! He would never have left my side. And also the end of Origins. Alistair's reaction was over the top. He abandoned his vows and love and everything he had sworn to honour because the main character behaved as she had always done, mercifully. Loghain saw he had been wrong and said as much and with all the trouble facing the GW's he was more valuable alive and fighting as a strong GW than dead. I expected Alistair to eventually get over himself and felt it was out of character for him to become a useless drunk.

[asaiasai]

I just finished a MHN who married Anora and what i noticed is that when you first meet her there were 3 responses to her you could give, a negative, a we are fond of each other, and a neutral one. As i RPed it my warden Anora and he were happy together, so i can not really complain because the game allowed me to set the tone of our conversation, which she followed along the lines i selected. I agree on the whole hound thing and was extremely irritated that Mhiri died in the joining, i would have preffered if it was Oghren, who incedently i sent packing with Anora when she left. I would up doing the game with Me (which was also the characters name as it looks kinfd of like me IRL), Sigrun, Anders, and Nat, epic party to say the least as i respecced both rogues to rangers, plus Anders had animate undead, so i had quite to crowd following me around. Hint here spiders are brutal when it comes to dealing with the children, the spiders would sometimes kill a white named one faster than i could which blew me away.



All in all though i liked Awakenings, some of the concepts introduced were nice to play with, conscription, running an arling, building up the arling, holding court. I really liked sending the smug knight to his death as he got all uppity with the captain, i was saying to myself yea sport i am noble born and the king consort i can do what i want, to whom i want, when i want, so whine to Bann Esmirelle she is next. I would like to see some expansion on the concepts from Awakenings expanded on in another DLC or DA2 here is to hoping.



Asai

[Asdara]

Asaiasai: Yes, I liked "ruling" the keep. I use the quotes though because, unless you want to run your keep into the ground and kill your own peasants (which some might, not knocking it) there are really only a very few actual choices you get to make. It is more the illusion of ruling the keep than having any real authority or control over what happens. I can't even call my soldiers back from the farms after I realize they are burning anyway, for instance. You get a few opportunities to make decisions, but they don't have the impact they had in the original module. Which, of course we are going to compare this to, since Awakenings is an expansion and I feel like we should be able to expect some consistency.



Pookieroo: Yes, the hurts of the past. I totally understand the reaction to having Alistar act like a child when you even consider showing mercy to Loghain - then again, he had a point. The man was the reason we had to do all the things we did alone, had no king and no armies to fight the darkspawn, and essentially murdered Duncan and all the other Grey Wardens we never met before but he apparently knew like brothers. So... yes. Tantrum was bad, and maturity would have flattered him more, but I understand that mercy doesn't apply to all situations. Sometimes you just need to let the Maker sort it out after the bodies fall.



Big Bad: Mhairi made me sad too. Not as much for my warrior as for my rogue who didn't get a 'proper' tank until Justice plays puppeteer with that poor corpse. I was highly displeased that I had to spec Oghren for 'tank' duty to preserve my mages.



Overall I wasn't pleased with just about anything all the way around. Some things gave me a glimmer of hope that it would turn around and be something like before, but that was always dashed in a plot hole or underdeveloped glimmer of character development.

[Bitterfoam]

To answer in regards to the original post, if you're -losing- the Keep - and I'm talking about epilogue text here - then you haven't done everything to upgrade it, and that's why it falls. If you're talking about the journal updating you to tell you the Vigil has fallen and then you can't go back there, that is in regards to what you're told in dialogue upon saving Amaranthine. The Vigil was attacked by an overwhelming Darkspawn force and the reports are grim and it may have fallen, or has fallen, or something like that. As it turns out, these reports are false, but it's nonetheless what you're told and so the journal updates based on information available to your character. It's not so hard.



Regarding the epilogue text, if Vigil's Keep is upgraded fully, then the walls hold and the defending force survives long enough to inflict tremendous losses until such a time (a week, I believe) as the sieging force breaks upon its walls and is dispersed. This is Vigil's Keep surviving, not falling.



As for the rest of the game, eh, I had fun with it. My Orlesian Warden got the happy ending - improved relations, saved Amaranthine, Vigil's Keep stood, and the defending force lived. The only bugs I encountered that really bugged me (ha, pun!! were attached to characters, notably Sigrun's personal quest and Velanna's personal quest, which may or may not be a bug.

[Asdara]

Hm, Bitterfoam, I didn't encounter it as cleanly cut as that either time. (I 'cheated' and saved the town on my second game as well but when all my char's were reported dead in the log again I went back and said screw the town). I am pretty sure I did everything you can do to improve the keep, and after losing it once I did go check online for anything I might have missed, but perhaps it will turn out better next time I play through... I kept getting all mixed messages, which is one reason I asked if it might be a PS3 bug - the whole thing is pretty buggy on my system even with the patch they had us download (which, by the by, says is downloaded but still is listed on my 'to install' list - when I try to install it says it already is - could be my problem right there I guess). Everything in the Epilog coming up on a black grey screen doesn't lessen my confusion with the information I've gotten either.



It is just under my skin I guess. Good games and bad games, they both get under our skin sometimes; I am just trying to decide which kind this one is.

[Bitterfoam]

I guess it could be a PS3 bug. I don't think there's any 360 or PC bug dealing with Vigil's Keep/Amaranthine/epilogue, and I did a lot of research into it while I was, with a couple other people, figuring out exactly who the best Keep defenders are, as in who lives and who dies. I never heard a single problem about the stuff bugging or glitching.



No idea what to tell you, other than the journal update is only half the story. I can fill in the tidbits for you, if you want.

[Asdara]

If it offers me an opportunity to save my keep and city I'm all ears. I new to the forum so I haven't seen if it has PMs but if that's preferable for you to relate the information I'd welcome one, or putting it here would also be fine - I'm sure others who have posted in this thread might have a keen interest as well since the general tone has been mutual lamentation of the loss. And thank you kindly. I hope it isn't my system that is dooming me to being ineffectual. That would make me a sad panda. Though - I do hear from some people that I ought to just switch to the PC version (but I'm on a mac, not sure if that's going to fly) because of the vast difference in controls and the level of involvement you can maintain in battle more easily on the computer version. Radial menu constant pausing is a little... clumsy.

[Bitterfoam]

You should look over at the PS3 Tech Support forum. I think there's one, anyway. See if there are any documented problems like that, or else make a post stating them.



Off the top of my head, the "strongest" Vigil's Keep is tied to three tasks:



- There's cleaning out underneath the Vigil, which is a two-step process. There's a basement, and then there's a section beyond that attached to the Deep Roads. In the second section, you have to seal off the area to consider it completed.



- There's a dwarf who can repair the walls. Completing this task consists of supplying him with every single sovereign he needs to hire help, and it also requires finding him the supply of granite in the Wending Woods. At least, I think that location is the granite. It's been a few months.



- Last is getting Wade to outfit the troops. There's Iron, Veridium, and Silverite ores, I believe. The Veridium is underneath Vigil's Keep. I forget where the other two are located.



Everything else is inconsequential to the Keep's survival. With those upgrades the walls hold and soldiers are effective. The Vigil endures.



After that, it becomes a matter of which characters survive, of those you left behind. I still think this is a little bit like the "Hold the Line" portion of Mass Effect 2's final mission, but I can't confirm that since I can't look under the hood. The survival rates are probably tied to whether or not you completed the characters' personal quests, as well, just as whether the character gets a good or bad epilogue is tied to whether or not you did their personal quest. I can confirm that Oghren, Anders, and Nathaniel will all survive admirably in defense of Vigil's Keep, if left there. The other characters I cannot comment on, as my Sigrun and Velanna were bugged.

[Asdara]

Thank you. I was right then when I said I did everything I could to defend the keep, but I didn't do Oghren's personal quest, and left him in charge. If that's the loose brick though... seems rather particular. Everyone else was vetted and preened properly. Perhaps it was leaving Justice and Anders with Oghren at the keep while I took Sigrun, Nathaniel, and Velanna to town. Oh well, I'll have to keep playing with it I suppose. Many thanks again, I am more of the mind it is a bug now than I was before - but that's a matter for the PS3 support forum as you pointed out. Thank you again.