Its possible but unlikely that Warden Commander Clave is the bearded grey warden we keep seeing. He may be a main character but not necessarily a companion.
I know it tend to go in contrast of everything else we have seen
I thought Loghain could possibly be the commander of the Gray in Orlais if he was spared, Perhaps isn't relevant to that questline in particular but its something i noted.
Character records are returning!? I missed that part about DAO. It felt nice knowing how many things my characters and their party have killed.
It was a nice feature, but it instilled in me the urge to reload whenever it wasn't my character to slay a boss...to the point where I just ordered the companions to stay put without attacking while I slashed away/fireballed to death said boss. 
It was a nice feature, but it instilled in me the urge to reload whenever it wasn't my character to slay a boss...to the point where I just ordered the companions to stay put without attacking while I slashed away/fireballed to death said boss.
...I did that so many times with the Archdemon.
I'm like Damn it Alistair/Loghain quit kill stealing!
...I did that so many times with the Archdemon.
I also had to unequip Leliana's bow and Wynne's/Morrigan's staff and deactivate their tactics when the archdemon was almost dead...you couldn't believe how many times they would steal my kill if I didn't do that. 
I also had to unequip Leliana's bow and Wynne's/Morrigan's staff and deactivate their tactics when the archdemon was almost dead...you couldn't believe how many times they would steal my kill if I didn't do that.
Oh i generally had the majority of my party fighting off the never ending horde of Darkspawn that are spawning in the area, I usually just kept the Tank near me to distract the beastie so i could stab it with out getting smacked around too much.
Oh i generally had the majority of my party fighting off the never ending horde of Darkspawn that are spawning in the area, I usually just kept the Tank near me to distract the beastie so i could stab it with out getting smacked around too much.
I think they stop spawning after a while...at least, I seem to recall that I ended up killing every darkspawn and then concentrating myself on Archie; altough it's been a while since I last played, so my memory might play tricks on me. 
I think they stop spawning after a while...at least, I seem to recall that I ended up killing every darkspawn and then concentrating myself on Archie; altough it's been a while since I last played, so my memory might play tricks on me.
The Darkspawn will come at different intervals, when you have the dragon at 50% health and it flies over to the ledge and begins ranging you. The dark-spawn will appear out of the southern entrances, best bet is to gang up on one entrance and destroy all of the dark-spawn there, then move on to the other entrance and destroy them there. Once that's over, you can focus balista fire on the dragon. At 25% when the dragon enters back into melee range, they'll begin reappearing from the northern entrance, but by this time you can down the dragon in about a minute.
o-o A post i put out on this very subject Years ago in the old forum!
The Darkspawn will come at different intervals, when you have the dragon at 50% health and it flies over to the ledge and begins ranging you. The dark-spawn will appear out of the southern entrances, best bet is to gang up on one entrance and destroy all of the dark-spawn there, then move on to the other entrance and destroy them there. Once that's over, you can focus balista fire on the dragon. At 25% when the dragon enters back into melee range, they'll begin reappearing from the northern entrance, but by this time you can down the dragon in about a minute.
o-o A post i put out on this very subject Years ago in the old forum!
I stand corrected, then.
Guest_Terrian_*
Cassandra as the Templar view is possible, provided they really pull it off that way. However, she has so far been presented more as a Chantry/Divine character than a Templar.
The issue with using her instead of Cullen would be you get what we had in Alistaire. The "He never took the vows, he isn't really a templar and isn't a good example of what templars are really like."
Sorry, I just think it is time we had a real deal templar in the group. If cassandra feels that role, fine, I just don't think so far she has been presented that way or filling that role.
Yes, that's why I'll be very disappointed if a true templar is not included in the base game. As a Seeker, Cass is trained to be suspicious of both mages and templars, there's no reason she'd be supportive of one side over the other. And true that she acts as the Chantry-perspective of the party, like Leliana for DAO and Sebastian for DA2.
Whether Cullen would be the templar, or someone completely new, I don't care. We really need a real templar this time!
I think Gaider said that they will always try to give players an equal amount of LI choices: ideally he would like to have 2 straight, 2 bisexual, and 2 gay/lesbian choices so that everyone has an equal amount of possible LIs. However if it's not possibile for them to go that route, they will use the "all LIs available to everyone" so that again every player has an equal amount of choices. That's a sensible approach, if you ask me, and one I hope they never let go.
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I think it's also a matter of time constraints, the more they put in the game the more time it takes, the more money is needed to pay salaries, and so on. A company like EA waits only so much before wanting to start gaining money out of a project and stopping paying for its development. I'm actually surprised Bioware got a whole extra year to polish things up.
Also, adding more romances needs writing, coding and scripting, more voice acting, more testing for bugs, even more voice acting and coding and testing for other party members acknowledging your romance and the "jealous lines", checking flags to see who is romanced/was romanced before but ended/was not romanced, and a host of other things all the while you're racing to complete an entire game. It's not as easy as everyone seems to assume it is. Not to mention that there'd be a lot of people complaining why those other 3 companions are not romances as well.
Are you sure DG is only writing two companions? Because it's odd that he'd say he wrote two romances (meaning that it was probably for companions he wrote), which would mean he admits that any character that would be revealed to be written by him would be romanceable.
With that in thought, if Cole is in the game, then he wouldn't be written by DG, even though it was a character from his books. Since DG has said that Cole is like a kid, he implied that it would be impossible for him to be a romance. So I'm not so sure about that. Unless he only wrote the romances for other companions originally written by others (could be the case). Anyway, we'll see. I just hope we get the Grey Warden guy as a romance, hahah >.>
As I said I don't have a source for the amount of companions he's writing, other than DragonAging. I'm actually surprised he's writing more than one, considering that he's the Lead Writer and has a lot on his plate already.
I don't know about Cole. Other than the survey, why is everyone assuming he'll be a companion? It would make sense, because he can give interesting insight to fade and all that, but I don't know...
Grey Warden would be lovely, as he has me intrigued due to concept arts!
Its possible but unlikely that Warden Commander Clave is the bearded grey warden we keep seeing. He may be a main character but not necessarily a companion.
I know it tend to go in contrast of everything else we have seen
I don't know, I assume he's a companion due to GI video footage, and the concept arts. And if wardens are involved in the game's plot, having a GW viewpoint helps explaining and adding more to the conflict. But who knows?
I thought Loghain could possibly be the commander of the Gray in Orlais if he was spared, Perhaps isn't relevant to that questline in particular but its something i noted.
Seeing Loghain again would be nice, but considering his alternate paths, it's highly unlikely to see him beyond a cameo. I'd be very miffed if we don't see him and Anora, though!
As I said I don't have a source for the amount of companions he's writing, other than DragonAging. I'm actually surprised he's writing more than one, considering that he's the Lead Writer and has a lot on his plate already.
I don't know about Cole. Other than the survey, why is everyone assuming he'll be a companion? It would make sense, because he can give interesting insight to fade and all that, but I don't know...
Grey Warden would be lovely, as he has me intrigued due to concept arts!
I personally don't want Cole as a companion at all (don't see how it would fit based on the info we know now, and I just didn't personally like him in the book). But since we've seen info about him from the leaked survey etc, lots of fans seem to want him, and from what I gathered DG likes him as a character, then I wouldn't be surprised if he is a companion in the end.
Glad to see I'm not the only one that likes the Grey Warden 8D
Are you sure DG is only writing two companions? Because it's odd that he'd say he wrote two romances (meaning that it was probably for companions he wrote), which would mean he admits that any character that would be revealed to be written by him would be romanceable.
With that in thought, if Cole is in the game, then he wouldn't be written by DG, even though it was a character from his books. Since DG has said that Cole is like a kid, he implied that it would be impossible for him to be a romance. So I'm not so sure about that. Unless he only wrote the romances for other companions originally written by others (could be the case). Anyway, we'll see. I just hope we get the Grey Warden guy as a romance, hahah >.>
I'm beginning to wonder if DG took over the companion/LI that JH (Ms. Hepler) was working on before her departure last year. We know from reading her LinkedIn profile that she wrote 3 large critical path plots and one major follower and romance character. I'd like to believe this character was given to another writer rather than scrapped.
Anyway, in regards to who this character might be is anyone's guess, really, but I'm hoping it's a human male. Preferably a Knight of sorts who likes moonlit walks on the beach, snowball fights, and strawberry parfaits. Oh, and cats, 'cos, you know, they're awesome.
Guest_Terrian_*
Character records are returning!? I missed that part about DAO. It felt nice knowing how many things my characters and their party have killed.
Isn't that nice?! I always set up this one-sided competition with my followers, to see who'd get to kill the hardest bosses! Which was why I gave up on two-handed warriors though, they were so sloooow back then!
First, it's TOTALLY freeing to finally get all of this speculation off of my chest, too! Glad to meet a kindred spirit. Now, onto the meat of this post...
To go on a slight tangent for a second, I'd like to address something about Cullen. A lot of people assume that he shows up in that war-room concept art, but I don't think it is. Here's a post I made a week or so ago that didn't get a lot of attention (at least, not for the point I was trying to make):
"I'm going to attempt to make the argument that the guy that we see in the War Room concept art that we all thought was Cullen is actually someone else, and we might just know who.
My rationale is basically that the War Room concept art is probably really old at this point, and some of the characters featured in it may have gone through some major changes to their appearance.
So, what about this guy, our supposed-Cullen?
Another thing I've picked up just from reading the forums for a while is that apparently Bioware is not big on giving three mage followers, since that would allow for an all-Mage party with a mage player character. That's why I went with the 4:3:2 ratio. I think four makes sense for the warrior class, since historically (DA:O) they made up the largest proportion of followers. IF Mr. Moustache turns out to be a follower, AND he's still got that ballin' trident, then I think he'll have to be a warrior with a non-standard moveset. Hard to tell at this point, that trident really could be a mage's staff and he'll end up some sort of warrior-mage hybrid, which would ALSO be awesome!
As far as romances are concerned, I'm kind of amping myself up to have maybe six romances. I know that sounds crazy, but ME2 had six romances with ten followers! With the DLC companion, six would be at least within the realm of possibility, although I'm certainly being optimistic. My current picks would be:
Cass, Viv, Sera, Mr. Moustache, Ex-Warden, and Iron Bull (please, please, that romance would be incredible). That's definitely all speculation, though, and doesn't include the possibility of Traynor/Cortez type romances.
I would comment on your Writer-Companion matching, but we're pretty much on the same page there (yes, I've definitely been trying to track that).
All I really have is that Patrick tweeted that his follower gets along with Sheryl's, but not (one of) Mary's. So this could mean Sheryl's only writing one.
Here's what I have:
DG (Cole?/Cass), JH (?), LK (Sera), MK (Var/Viv), SF (ScGirl?), PW (Iron Bull or Trident Guy?), SC (Grey Warden/Bald Elf?)
Meaningless speculation for the most part, hahaha, but it's a lot of fun. Enjoying this thread a lot, guys.
Sorry for removing parts of your comment and bolding stuff.
For the War Room guy, I don't think he looks like Cullen at all. I always thought he looks a bit like early Alistair concept arts, myself:
Nice catch with the armor though! It's very likely that you're right about about him being an early iteration of the GW.
I don't know about the class ratio though. All I know is that they've said that kind of imbalance like DAO's won't happen again, DA2 featured an almost balanced party (not considering Bethany/Carver/Sebastian), and some talk/rumor that having a party consisted of only one class would have some sort of bonus. 9 is too good a number for an even class ratio to pass up on!
There has been no talk about hybrid classes. So far, they've only said that mages won't be able to wield swords and such. Might have changed though. Also, I would absolutely love for a dual-wield warrior to be a possibility again!!!
My personal picks are: Cassandra, Vivienne, Blonde Elf, Grey Warden, Bald Elf, Templar and Fancy Face (lol, I like the shortened nickname even more!) If only four choices are availbale, I'll pick: Cassandra, Vivienne, Grey Warden, Templar. Which won't happen because they would all be human that way.
So far, they have been really averse to including dwarf and qunari options. Now that playable races are returning, I think it's unfair for dwarf/qunari inquisitors to not have someone of their race available to them as well. With the chance of Varric being the only dwarven companion though, I suppose dwarves are out of luck again. The qunari do stand a chance though! It'd be nice should they include it. I don't know about the Cortez/Traynor type of romance. DG already talked about why it's a bit harder to include them.
I don't know about how many companions each have, only that Sheryl used to write lots of companions (Oghren/Wynne/Dog for DAO, Oghren/Sigrun/Velanna for DAA, but only Isabela for DA2). Also, we should consider that DG/MK/LK/PW may have yet another companion as well.
I personally don't want Cole as a companion at all (don't see how it would fit based on the info we know now, and I just didn't personally like him in the book). But since we've seen info about him from the leaked survey etc, lots of fans seem to want him, and from what I gathered DG likes him as a character, then I wouldn't be surprised if he is a companion in the end.
Glad to see I'm not the only one that likes the Grey Warden 8D
I'm not very keen on having Cole as companion either. Am a bit surprised that everyone likes him so much, though I do understand why.
Out of all the unconfirmed-but-possible companions, the GW is the one that I like most!!! Hope he turns out alright!
I'm beginning to wonder if DG took over the companion/LI that JH (Ms. Hepler) was working on before her departure last year. We know from reading her LinkedIn profile that she wrote 3 large critical path plots and one major follower and romance character. I'd like to believe this character was given to another writer rather than scrapped.
Anyway, in regards to who this character might be is anyone's guess, really, but I'm hoping it's a human male. Preferably a Knight of sorts who likes moonlit walks on the beach, snowball fights, and strawberry parfaits. Oh, and cats, 'cos, you know, they're awesome.
I really liked JH's work on dwarven lore, and Sebastian. Didn't really appreciate her work on Anders as much though, but a lot of people absolutely loved him. She's a very capable writer and it's really sad that she's no longer on the writing team. I also don't think the character is scrapped either.
I'm not very keen on having Cole as companion either. Am a bit surprised that everyone likes him so much, though I do understand why.
Out of all the unconfirmed-but-possible companions, the GW is the one that I like most!!! Hope he turns out alright!
I personally don't understand why. Is it because he is invisible? Is his kid mentality attractive? I don't know.
Agreed! I love the Grey Wardens, and having one as a companion will be great! ...Plus dat beard.
Guest_Terrian_*
I personally don't understand why. Is it because he is invisible? Is his kid mentality attractive? I don't know.
Agreed! I love the Grey Wardens, and having one as a companion will be great! ...Plus dat beard.
I don't understand those who want Cole-romance at all! It's creepy 
. But I do understand why people like the character/want him as companion, because he's sort of a unique fade creature and such (isn't he a shade though? he fits the description).
It was a really good move with the beard! I was getting tired of all the clean-shaven male humans strutting about.
Are you sure DG is only writing two companions? Because it's odd that he'd say he wrote two romances (meaning that it was probably for companions he wrote), which would mean he admits that any character that would be revealed to be written by him would be romanceable.
Well, they normally don't reveal who wrote who until after release. It was odd confirming Vivienne's writer and the blonde elf's (but I suppose DG didn't know about GI footage at the time), but it made sense for confirming that Varric and Cassandra are being written by their original writers considering the Anders controversy and such.
I got Origins a little while after it came out, and wasn't around for DA 2 reveals and such. Do they confirm who's also a romance option when revealing companions or does it happen closer to the game's release?
I don't know, I didn't know about the DA series until DA2 came out. I don't know when they revealed the companions, but I think I read that they revealed the romances on Valentine's day or something the last time (but that opportunity is gone anyway).
I got Origins a little while after it came out, and wasn't around for DA 2 reveals and such. Do they confirm who's also a romance option when revealing companions or does it happen closer to the game's release?
I think for DA2 we knew Isabella, and had strong implication that Merril would be a romance option (there was a Dev Diary that played footage of Merril as Jennifer Hepler was referencing a "girl next door" type of romance).
I don't remember if we found out about Anders and Fenris being romanceable before the game was released, but I know there were definitely threads advocating for a Fenris romance hahaha.
if you look at the fireball on the right, it looks like it's coming from the fade tear/sky
it looks similar to the way husks arrived in ME3, I have a THEORY that this is how demons are coming out of the veil.
I think for DA2 we knew Isabella, and had strong implication that Merril would be a romance option (there was a Dev Diary that played footage of Merril as Jennifer Hepler was referencing a "girl next door" type of romance).
I don't remember if we found out about Anders and Fenris being romanceable before the game was released, but I know there were definitely threads advocating for a Fenris romance hahaha.
They officially announced the non-Sebastian LIs on Valentine's Day, so about three weeks before the release of the game. IIRC, that was also when they revealed that they would all be available to romance by both male or female Hawke.
Modifié par Spectre slayer, 06 mars 2014 - 03:09 .
I don't know if it'll stay in the final game, but I really liked that it showed the sword's flame enchantment appearing only during combat. While in most games I like walking around with a flaming sword at my back, in Origins I avoid flame enchantments like a plague because it makes the companions and my warden have a really odd lighting affect on them, hahah.
Do you think we'll see crazier staves? In Heroes of Dragon Age, they make the staves have glowing spots on them or flames at the tip etc. I think I would like to see something like that in Inquisition too.
i have a feeling if EA had the resources of the EU behind it would still claim "resource shortages" for content being cut.
I mean is having the wealthiest publishing company in the entire industry not enough to get a game complete with most of its features?
._.
We will always want to have more in the game than will eventually make it into the game. Always.
I think it was Mark Darrah that mentioned it post Baldur's Gate 2, but it was effectively show him a game with infinite budget, and he'll show you a game that never ships.
I don't know if it'll stay in the final game, but I really liked that it showed the sword's flame enchantment appearing only during combat. While in most games I like walking around with a flaming sword at my back, in Origins I avoid flame enchantments like a plague because it makes the companions and my warden have a really odd lighting affect on them, hahah.
Do you think we'll see crazier staves? In Heroes of Dragon Age, they make the staves have glowing spots on them or flames at the tip etc. I think I would like to see something like that in Inquisition too.
Thank you very much for all of the contributors here! Dissecting, and reading other's dissections, of pre-release material was my favorite part of the ME2, DA2 & ME3 wait.
I'm getting a weird SimCity vibe from those Espionage/Commerce/Military keeps...as if we'll have tiny "demand" bars in the corner to show us how the region needs more commerce if we have one too many espionage/military keeps, etc.. I hope it's not something annoying of that nature, trying to balance for the sake of behind-the-scenes percentages. I like the aesthetics, though. I hope each one is visit-able after we conquer and convert it.
As far as the possible companions, I'm always eyeballing who DG is writing but I'm also very excited to see Patrick Weeke's voice in the DA world.
That guy in the war room is likely Cullen in a different outfit and it seems people are forgetting the survey where that blonde guy ( probably Cullen ) in a templar outfit appears alongside the long rumored grey warden companion with beard.
The people in the war room.concepts and the survey are not all companions, they could be npc's or they might not exist or have changed a lot, also Leliana doesn't look like herself either even though she's in the war room.
Keep in mind all of that stuff is very outdated and they may have scrapped, or changed significantly.
I won't say you're wrong, because everything I've come up with is just my own take on the materials that have been released so far, but I don't agree with you either.
My argument really hinges on the clothing staying consistent from concept to concept, in spite of other changes to the characters' appearances (as I illustrated with the elf in the war-room morphing into the elf in the New Home concept art). With that in mind, Cullen clearly has a (totally awesome) new look, and I just don't see that reflected in the depiction of the guy in the war-room. Why would Cullen be wearing anything other than his Templar raiment? On the other hand, the man in the war-room does have some consistent clothing with the Grey Warden character (huge belt strap across the chest, with a single shoulder guard in some concepts, and a blue shirt). I also think that the guy in the war-room has brown hair, not blonde, but the lighting in the scene is kinda funky so that makes it hard to tell.
In the end, it's not a huge deal either way, since there's definitely still contested spots on the companion list whether the guy in the war-room is the Grey Warden or not.
And as Terrian pointed out, Cullen may even be hiding in the New Home concept art:
I'm getting a weird SimCity vibe from those Espionage/Commerce/Military keeps...as if we'll have tiny "demand" bars in the corner to show us how the region needs more commerce if we have one too many espionage/military keeps, etc.. I hope it's not something annoying of that nature, trying to balance for the sake of behind-the-scenes percentages. I like the aesthetics, though. I hope each one is visit-able after we conquer and convert it.
I had hoped that i was just being paranoid by thinking along similar lines, it likely will be a headache to manage.
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