30 Days of DA: The Crying Game

[owlmoose]

Day Twenty-five: Scene that made you cry.

It is really quite rare for a game to make me cry. Or a movie, or a book, or a TV show, or any other form of media. I could probably sit down and count the ones that have, if I tried, and usually it says as much about my state of mind at that particular moment as it does about the game/movie/book/etc. So it's no knock against Dragon Age when I say that the answer is that there isn't one. No scene in any of the games has moved me to literal tears.

That's not to say that there weren't moments that I found affecting or upsetting. A few that come to mind: Leandra's death, particularly the conversations with Gamlen and the LI afterwards; when Hawke let Carver go to the Grey Wardens in the Deep Roads, and also their reunion during the Qunari uprising; Duncan's death; Alistair walking out of the Landsmeet; the sacrifice of the Couslands; learning that Fergus survived; the final defeat of the archdemon.

Also, I suspect that if I ever play a game where Alistair sacrifices himself for my Warden, it might well bring on the tears, even though I would have knowlingly maneuvered my characters into those circumstances.

Complete list of questions

Comments

[sarasa_cat]

Leandra's death & Gamlen: my Hawke selected the most evasive, detail-free options while talking to Gamlen about that. -_-

While I will *eventually* metagame my way through a run that involves Alistair sacrificing himself for the Warden, I suspect that will be a watch once and only once scene (much like what my Hawke had to but did not want to do with Anders... -_-;;;) From what I have read (not watched!), the Alistair sacrifice was extremely painful to watch for players who were not expecting it.

BTW, the day after finishing DA:O, I reloaded and replayed the part where your Warden talks with Morrigan about the 3rd option. I played through by first agreeing with Morrigan to speak with Alistair, next "convincing" Alistair to do it (my Alistair really needed no convincing and all of his talk appeared just for show), and then walking with Alistair into Morrigans room to (surprise!) turn her down. I wanted to see what would happen next when speaking with Alistair when he and the Warden returned to his room. omg. it was so sad. very subtle (the feined sleepy resignation) and so sad.

I couldn't continue. o_o

[owlmoose]

I've never managed to turn Morrigan down, not even in my most recent game when my m!Surana recruited Loghain -- because he's a pragmatic fellow who had accepted Loghain's honorable surrender and couldn't bring himself to go back on that, and saw the sense in Riordan's suggestion -- and was ready to either die or let Loghain take the final blow. But Morrigan pulls out all the stops to convince you, and when she suggested that Zevran (with whom Surana was head-over-heels in love) might be upset if he died, he cracked.

So I've never seen that scene you describe, and now I'm curious! (And a little scared.) The next time I romance Alistair, I may have to create a save for the express purpose of seeing it.

[sarasa_cat]

That scene is a very subtle heartbreaker. Far more so, imho, than any of the epic sad face Alistair scenes that fandom tends to point to.

BTW, when I played DA:O, I was (unfortunately) spoiled very early on to two facts: it is possible to make Alistair king (although I didn't know why or how) and Morrigan will offer to save the wardens' lives via a sex ritual (which clearly indicated to me that *something* about the final battle was going to kill one of the wardens). Despite being spoiled on those two facts (but minus the nitty gritty details going with them), I had no trouble remaining in character and feeling the drama and surprise when things actually happened. As it was, when Morrigan finally made her offer, me and my warden had no fear in telling Alistair the fully, complete, blunt truth, which ended up playing out in a really awesome manner because Alistair pretty much made clear that he was fully willing to Do The Deed and do absolutely *anything* to keep his warden-lover relationship going. That, to me, was the real surprise. I would have probably played it more cautiously had I not been spoiled.

[owlmoose]

I think I knew the first but not the second. I wouldn't say Riordan's news came as a huge *surprise* to me -- the hero's sacrifice is a pretty common trope, DA played it pretty straight, and it's foreshadowed in various ways -- but I didn't know it was coming for certain, and I certainly had no idea that Morrigan's sex ritual was going to provide the third option.

My understanding is that Alistair will always do the ritual without a persuasion check if he's still in a romance with the Warden -- which makes sense, it's very logical for his character that he would do anything for his love. What I don't know is how hard it is to convince him if they broke up or never got together in the first place (no romance or the Warden is male).

[sarasa_cat]

Riordan's news: Wynne foreshadows it a bit too methinks.

Alistair and lack of persuasion check: very believable. I remember him saying something about being wrapped around the warden's finger and looking like he was about to sprint down the hall to make it happen. The whole dialogue was actually sort of cute (in retrospect, of course), even during the parts where Alistair starts shrieking (!!) about demon god babies. XD