maybe more people survive the joining ritual if they didn’t let those poor bastards just fall straight to the ground and let their skulls hit concrete full speed after drinking darkspawn juice. like lay down a pillow at least
[ID: a digital bust painting of a woman in ¾ view. She has brown skin, brown eyes, and black hair set in a low bun. She is wearing a light purple top with a flowy neckline, a crown of purple flowers, and silver earrings shaped like the Circle of Magi heraldry (a circle with a double barred gap at the bottom). End ID.]
You will see on the back (right & left side) a dark stripe. That’s because I had to delete one of the layers. Actually only to be seen with very light hair colours, otherwise it looks quite natural.
My sister-in-law told me that, when playing Dragon Age Origins, she no longer saves Connor with the circle mages, since that feels cheap (and it doesn’t seem likely that you’d have enough time to go get them and come back).
So I was inspired to plan out a tweak to each of the main quests so that the dilemmas are actually dilemmas. As is, there’s a right answer to just about everything, and that’s among my biggest complaints for that particular game.
I don’t actually know how to create game mods, so this is all theoretical for now. It would be the #1 mod I’d want to make, though, and I would certainly like to learn sometime! In any case, I’m trying to think of conservative solutions - making the dilemmas harder with relatively minor changes.
My ideas so far:
* Only Jowan can perform the ritual to save Connor (i.e. Isolde or Teagan will die if Connor doesn’t)
Partly because I agree with my sister-in-law, partly because Jowan is an underrated gem and I want him to shine. All hail Jowan, dabbler in excellence.
* Just as siding with Branka forces you to kill Shale, siding withCaridin forces you to kill Oghren, since you’re killing his wife
Granted, this is frankly yet another reason to side with Caridin for a lot of people. There is dialogue for Oghren turning hostile (albeit it takes some doing!), so this one actually shouldn’t be much trouble.
*Remove the option to just kill Zathrien and the Lady of the Forest
For similar reasons as with Connor - why pick anything else? It also feels a bit pat that you can just resolve an ancient grudge and settle the whole war in everyone’s favour with a decent speech check.
* Andraste’s ashes, mixed with High Dragon blood, are needed to conduct the Dark Ritual.
There’s currently no reason to take Kolgrim’s deal (Reaver is a bad subclass for a bad class!). Even if you don’t want to kill the cultists, you have to kill them by the dozen beforehand. Conversely, there’s no negativeconsequence to the Dark Ritual. This would fix both. The big problem is lack of Morrigan voice lines. I’m thinking maybe you’d get a discreet letter from Morrigan to inform you of this out of earshot of the Andrastians in the party.
I’d also considered making the deal give you the High Dragon, or the cultists, as an army (like how the Anvil gives you golems). This would make sense, but isn’t elegant and the (more interesting) former would be either busted or rather disappointing. If it didn’t just crash the game.
I don’t currently have a clear idea for the Broken Circle. As-is, there’s no upside to telling the templars the tower isn’t safe, which leads to the bad ending for the Circle and is only even a choice if Irving is alive (in which case the tower is safe). Unlike the Brecilian Forest and Redcliffe, there’s no better third option to just cut - only the mage outcome is good.
My best idea is something like a Tower Safety track, like the points-based Landsmeet debate, where you have to get your hands dirty to make the tower safe. This seems like the least elegant and most intensive solution of the ideas here, though.
If anyone has any suggestions, or just wants to vent about the dilemmas, please let me know in the notes!
