Quick "Mark of the Assassin" thoughts

[owlmoose]

It... was okay. Not amazing. Especially not in comparison to Legacy. It felt shorter. More sparse. Too focused on Tallis. I found her interesting enough, would have enjoyed seeing her developed over a longer game, but as drop-in character who's basically the star of the show? That's my main issue, now that I think about it: too much Tallis, not enough Companions. A good chunk of MotA, maybe as much as half, is Hawke and Tallis without the rest of the party along. Compare that to Legacy, which -- at least for a party of Bethany, Varric, and Anders -- integrated the companions much more thoroughly. That may account for a good bit of my disappointment. Admittedly, I'm more likely to find a Grey Warden story compelling than a Qunari or Orlesian story. Not that the Qunari and Orlesians aren't interesting, but it's not the same. So maybe I was primed to like Legacy better.

As with Legacy, it was nice to get a change of scenery. Some interesting enemies, and a couple of actual puzzles made for a good change of pace. From my party, I brought along Anders (because LI) and Aveline (because Orlesians), and that was a good combo banterwise as well as for balancing combat. Not a lot of dialogue or banter, but what there was, I enjoyed, especially one cute and hilarious moment between Anders and Hawke toward the end.

Probably I missed some things -- I know I didn't complete all the sidequests. And I expect I'll play again at some point, just for different party combinations, especially as I replay the full game. But now I know to moderate my expectations for the DLC a little more. They can't all be Awakening or Legacy, after all.

Comments

[lowkey]

It sounds like MofA is similar to the "Stolen Memory" DLC for Mass Effect 2. I'm not certain how well the heist genre translates to fantasy, but I know I really, really enjoyed "Stolen Memory," in part because it a self-contained mission that involved only myself and the DLC character Kasumi.

[owlmoose]

Was it only the self contained mission, or did other characters from the game come along at certain points? On further reflection, maybe that's it: in DA:O, the DLC missions were either in-game stories that focused on the existing companions and/or introduced new ones that stuck around for the rest of the game, or they were post-game stories that you played with an entirely new team (or almost entirely, in the case of Awakening, which carried over one character). MotA is somewhere in between, and maybe that's what's less satisfying about it for me.