Alistair is not amused.
SGR editor Chris came in town this weekend to 1) hang out, 2) drink beer, and 3) take family photos. While he was here, he hooked his PC up to my office TV to show me just how awful Vlad the Heartless is to Ferelden and everyone who falls in his wake.
I promise I didn’t backseat game; well, I did after I had a few beers in me, but that’s to be expected.
What’s most amazing to me is not how awful of a Grey Warden Vlad the Heartless really is, but how different our games were in so many ways. Everyone reacts to him so differently, he has different dialogue options pop up, and holy cow I didn’t know Alistair could be so mean. Since I worked toward romancing the guy, of course he was always nice to me, so I never witnessed the side of him when he hates someone like he hates Vlad. It was chilling. Even more chilling was seeing what it was like when Morrigan likes someone. She hated me because I was such a paragon, but apparently when you give a fuck about no none except yourself and your mission, she finds that hot.
Vlad was running through the Temple of Andraste’s Ashes to obtain a pinch of ashes to cure the Arl of Redcliffe (although he would have let the Arl die if he could have) when I started my viewing session. Vlad’s MO is to kill anyone he is able to kill. If the option ever pops up to attack a person, he will, whether he’s talked to them first or not. The amount of dead bodies he left behind was staggering. First he chased off Brother Genitivi, then he told the cultists he’d defile the ashes, defiled the ashes, and then he killed the cultists after they brought him into their order and praised him. He killed Zevran as soon as Zevran tried to join the party. He didn’t try to talk Leliana into staying after he defiled the ashes. When he went to the Circle of the Magi, he honestly debated killing all the mages and he would have if the idea of having a healer in his party didn’t appeal to him so much.
I was either in a state of shock at how awful the game could get or laughing really hard at the responses to his choices. It also made me want to start another playthrough or two of Dragon Age: Origins. God that game is just so amazing. I truly wonder if Inquisition will have that kind of hold on me where I’d want to see how different choices affect the outcome. DAO just seems to have so many more moving parts than DAI.
I kind of wish I could watch Chris play the rest of the game. I can’t wait to hear what he chooses at the end of the Circle of Magi and the Orzammar main quests. I’m dying to know how his endgame is going to go. It’s going to be so vastly different from my own.
Hulk says SMASH ALL , TRUST NO TINY PPL !