To be honest, I'm already a little unsettled by as much as they've already done with the HOF. Neither DA:2 nor Inquisition has made me feel as much like the character I played was my character as Origins did. Part of that was because she didn't have a voice. When she said something, I could imagine it in any way I want. Whatever accent, tone, and personality she held was entirely for me to decide. With Hawke, it became strange. She was sarcastic and funny a lot of the times, but there were points where she spoke automatically in that same way that just didn't fit.
"What happened to that awful murderer who killed my sister?"
"His killing days are over. B)"
Generally she's the type to make stupid comments like that, but the personality system didn't let me take into consideration something very important - the situation. So appropriate or not, Hawke was silly. There was seldom room for real grief or anger because the game knew she was usually funny, so when it made her speak automatically, that's what she was.
The Inquisitor is a whole new problem entirely. This could very well just be the voice I chose, but she always speaks so neutrally, like she isn't actually holding a conversation with a friend or another person so much as she's interviewing somebody, or something. She always shows too much emotion, not enough emotion, or no emotion at all. I've chalked this up to me intending for her to have a tone where she doesn't. Because we don't know whether she's usually supposed to be aggressive, apathetic, angry or whatever, the safest route is that she can be any of those things. The result of this is that I feel disconnected with her. She says things, but I don't feel like this is the story of my character.
Suffice to say, the HOF was my character through and through. She didn't make inappropriate jokes when I didn't want her to, she didn't speak in a tone that didn't fit the situation. She said what I wanted her to say and how I wanted her to say it. Giving her a voice, any voice, would take that away from me, and it would make her Bioware's character rather than mine.
Dragon Age has moved on from what it was in Origins. I like the voices. They give character and life, they make you feel like the person you're playing is truly involved with the world around them, like they actually have cause to be noticed. They took that to such great lengths even to the point where you can sometimes contribute to party banter. It's a next step, a better step, but it's not a step my HOF was involved in. The only good thing to do with our characters in Origins is let us decide what happens. Does he/she and their LI go off and live happily ever after? Does he/she die somehow? Does he/she simply disappear? Those should be left up to me, just like the fact that my warden now searches for the Calling should have been up to me, not Bioware. Bringing Hawke into the game is fine. I'd love to play Hawke in a DLC (and kind of wish I could keep playing her through Inquisition, if only because that armor is so damn great) because she's Bioware's.
The HOF is just that - the Hero of Ferelden. She stopped the Blight in a year and did a lot of Mary-Sue things. She deserves a break. I'll let my Inquisitor become the Hero of Thedas (?), then I hope to move onto a new character in Dragon Age 4.
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