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[decafchoc]

Not sure if this was the right forum to post in, but it didn't seem to fit elsewhere. I'm in need of some advice for how to handle the whole "personality change" going on in my first DA2 playthrough; my aggressive!Hawke has gotten so OOC it's completely breaking the story immersion for me.

 

So here's the deal: I kind of picture my rogue!Hawke as cunning and resourceful from having spent so many years on the run, trying to protect her family. At the start of Act 1, her entire life centers around doing exactly that; mage/Templar politics, the state of Kirkwall or even fellow people in need don't matter unless they directly play into their survival. She isn't completely without a conscience—she wouldn't turn down helping someone if she has the time and resources for it; she's just very focused on her priorities. I thought it would leave more leeway for (headcanon) personality development depending on things that happen in Act 2 or 3, when the alleged **** goes down and you're forced to take a stand.

 

The problem is that by Act 2, Hawke is a pseudo-noble who's forced to mediate between a host of 2-meter-tall horned beasts just waiting to mow down Kirkwall and a city she couldn't care less for if her family wasn't planning permanent residence in it. (Or well, being forced to, in mage!Bethany’s case.) I would like to think she knows better than to aggravate them. She has known her companions for years and is friendly with all of them (except Merrill), so it wouldn't make sense for her to be curt and angry towards them, at least not prior to All That Remains. But that doesn’t change the fact that at least in my headcanon, Hawke is still a hardass at heart, only not to the wrong people.

 

Unfortunately, by the time ATR ends, we're pretty much at the end of Act 2. And instead of being more world-wise and having learned how to play her political allies to her friends' and family's benefit, my Hawke has instead morphed to the second coming of Andraste, only without a spine. The biggest problem is the automatic extra dialogue/change of general tone, which makes for some crazy mood swings when I choose aggressive/direct again.

 

I know that you have another chance at "restacking" your dominant personality at the beginning of the next Act, but at the rate I'm going, I'm wondering if I should really just push on or give up on aggressive!Hawke entirely. My headcanon-Hawke would obviously side with the mages because Bethany is the only family left still alive, but she wouldn't be (publicly) all up in arms towards Meredith either until the mages have gained more power for fear that they would harm Beth.

 

So I can't keep my Hawke aggressive, unless I a) act like a total jackass to all my friends,

or b ) charge into fights/arguments at every given opportunity, even when it obviously is the stupid thing to do.

She still gets reasonably aggressive with random unimportant douchebags here and there, but apparently not enough, going by what happened in Act 2.

 

Isn't there any way I can play my Hawke as a street-smart hardass who can play nice to the people she likes and still be, well, smart? Or should I just succumb and accept that my Hawke has become a total doormat?

[nightscrawl]

As someone who has been in your same position, I'm sorry to say that there isn't really a way to get the outcome you want. While the DA2 personalities were an interesting concept, I don't think they were implemented well, and not really geared toward the player that wants to pick the appropriate response and tone for a given situation without it affecting your character as a whole. Often the diplomatic is gag inducing, the sarcastic engenders mortification, and the aggressive makes you feel like an a-hole.

 

You can play a bit more moderately if you watch for the specific icons. For blue choose the olive branch (diplomatic) over the angel wings (nice), for purple choose the gem (charming) over the mask (sarcastic), for red choose the gavel (direct) over the fist (aggressive). But that still doesn't fix the problem of auto-dialog still conforming to your most-picked personality choice, which for me does lean toward the blue side.

[decafchoc]

You can play a bit more moderately if you watch for the specific icons. For blue choose the olive branch (diplomatic) over the angel wings (nice), for purple choose the gem (charming) over the mask (sarcastic), for red choose the gavel (direct) over the fist (aggressive). But that still doesn't fix the problem of auto-dialog still conforming to your most-picked personality choice, which for me does lean toward the blue side.

 

Yeah, that's what I did, initially. It worked in Act 1 - my Hawke was aggressive/direct for the most part, so even when I occasionally picked diplomatic dialogue, it still came out more bluntly than the original diplomatic line. (I noticed the difference after one throwaway save that I dumped straight after the prologue because of how bipolar Hawke sounded.) It's just that in Act 2, there are too many situations where an aggressive/direct response would be plain stupid, so it just gradually stacked until her dominant personality changed. And now we're back to bipolar!Hawke again.

 

It kind of sucks because I do want to explore the different personalities, but just picking one all the time renders the character hopelessly one-dimensional/idiotically inappropriate, but it's hard to tell where to draw the line. I don't even know when my aggressive!Hawke changed; I only noticed the difference at the very end of Act 2. 

 

Isn't there some kind of mod that can show the stacked values of the different personalities? I've read in other threads of people who have managed to keep a "sane" Hawke all the while roleplaying, i.e. not just using the same tone over and over. How do you find the balance?

[Sah291]

I don't know of a mod, but if you are playing on a PC, could you not just enable the developer console to reset or adjust the tones as needed? You could reset at the start of the next act, or whenever you like. You can also adjust companion friendship/rivalry if you are worried about messing that up.

As for finding a balance, you can, but it can be tricky. This is one of the weaknesses of the dialogue system in DA2. My canon Hawke was the purple/sarcastic tone, and I was able to find a balance in mixing in blue and red dialogue options in a way that made sense, but it took a couple playthroughs and I knew the dialogue and story really well by then. Sarcastic Hawke is maybe a bit easier too, since a lot of the lines are ambiguous and can be taken multiple ways. Ambiguous is good. Allows you to graft on your own subtext behind the dialogue. But from a roleplay standpoint, you just have to sort of play around with context and figure out what you imagine Hawke's motivations are at each point in the story.