DA:I - Jaws of Hakkon thoughts

I presume everyone who follows such things knows about the final DA:I DLC coming out next week, Trespasser. I'm looking forward to playing it, because I think it's good that they're bringing the Inquisitor's story to an actual end (rather than providing a bunch of different possible directions as they did Hawke and the Warden). However, it's been announced that it's a post-game DLC, meaning that once you play it, you can't go back and finish any of the open world stuff -- including the two other DLC stories, Jaws of Hakkon and Descent. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I picked up Descent right away because dwarves, but I'd been putting off Jaws of Hakkon. I was unable to buy it right away because it was a Microsoft exclusive then, and once it came out for PlayStation I had sort of forgotten about it (and remained somewhat irritated by the exclusive release). And I started Descent with Kendra, not Malika, and there was just no way I was finishing Kendra's complete game in time (What Pride Had Wrought is up next). So suddenly I was feeling the pressure to get Malika through both Descent and Jaws of Hakkon... by Tuesday.

I just finished Jaws of Hakkon tonight, so that's not going to happen. (I'd have to play literally all day tomorrow, and I don't think that would go over very well with certain people who I'm married to.) But I did want to talk about JoH, because I really enjoyed playing it, and I'm very interested in the revelations about the history of Thedas and the Last Inquisitor. There were a lot of things I was into: spending more time with Scout Harding, learning more about the Avvar, some fun puzzles and gameplay (I could have done without the easily-triggered hostile wildlife, though, especially those goddamn spiders), many of the new characters (Kenric -- does anyone else think he's sweet on Harding?, Svarah Sun-Hair, Storvacker -- I totally recruited Storvacker). I ran the area with Blackwall, Dorian, and Varric, and that made for a great combination, both in terms of banter and their comments on events. Almost all of the side quests helped expand our knowledge of either Ameridan or the Avvar, and it had some of the most beautiful and compelling environments in the entire game.

But yeah, Ameridan's story is particularly of interest, and mostly what I wanted to talk about.

( Major spoilers behind the cut. )

Anyway, big rec, for anyone who's playing or has played DA:I. Like DA2 and Legacy before it, a DLC is now officially my favorite part of the game.