If you killed the High Dragon, you can take those dragon scales to Denerim where is smith who can forge Dragon Bone Plate for you, which is rather good.

So does anyone know how much content we can expect from Awakening? Since apparently you'll be able to start from scratch in Awakening with a new character and an origin story completely unrelated to the current main story, I thought that would only make sense if there is at least as much story and game-play as there is in the current main story... But then again, I may be wrong.

I'm 99.9% sure about one thing: new romances. :lmao:

Not quite from scratch, the new character you can bring in begins at a high level, with the story being that he/she is an experienced Grey Warden commander from Orlais.

I think you overestimate Anora's power, Cailan's lack of personality. I go with Wynne on this one. The King is a good man. You cannot wipe out a castle garrison without the story getting out. Years of history tells me that, peasants will know and are often ignored. Bryce Cousland is one of the top five in Ferelden society and well liked. Ferelden isn't in Anora's or Loghain's pocket, as this adventure proves, they depend on popular support and far from omnipotence, Anora stumbles from blunder to blunder. Many Bans are directly loyal to Cousland, it has to be at least a third of the land. Topping Highever under Cailan, who regards Bryce as his ally and more crucially his friend is at best civil war, bear in mind that Fergus disappears taking the largest contingent of troops outside Loghain to reinforce the King and we are talking treason, high treason. Howe wasn't at Ostagar (he stayed at Highever to massacre the Couslands and then it seems marched directly to the capital, because he has no time to get to Ostagar. (I know this from the timeframe presented in the game). Therefore he expected Loghain to take the kingship, otherwise he is just gallows material. Loghain planned it. Loghain wouldn't support someone who weakened him in front of the Darkspawn if he had gone into action at Ostagar, which is what Howe did, short of killing Cailan, Howe did the next worse thing. It all makes no sense whatsoever, even for a conspiracy theorist, unless, there was a conspiracy after all. And then the writers decided that wasn't edgy and grey enough, and tried to sanitise Loghain after the plot horse has already bolted. Which is what I believe happened. Gaider is the Maker!

Oh well that kinda sux.

Not so much, with the level apparently going to be 37~ it's about a 50% increase game, and an easy 20 hours of game, unless you direct route. This is backed up by the only comment to come from Bioware on the subject. This will be at least 30 hours for most humans who don't want to brag on forums how they already finished da game and actually read stuff, absorb it, and consider their choices (and keep loading after they were killed ).

So a five minute addition, eh?

No seriously they have promised at least 20 hours if you don't cut corners. And Bioware always says that. Try to remember how long it took you to do Hordes of the Underdark, they said that was 15 hours too, and it was the best part of the game (and started at high level) . There is actually precedent for a good game.
Edit: Bugger I'm late for dinner. Damn this Dragon Age.

Well, BioWare's villains have never made much sense in any of their games -- save perhaps in Jade Empire. Even Irenicus was just basically somebody who wanted revenge... but in the most irrational, convoluted way possible.

Loghain's irrational behavior is basically exactly the same behavior of Aribeth after her lover boy got hanged.

As much as they are lauded for their stories, what BioWare does best is writing party banter.

I swear, this game is a drug and I am one of the biggest addicts on this planet...

:facepalm:

I know, I was just joking.

Bioware are one of the good guys, along with Valve and, I don't know... EA and those kind of guys. But seriously, all it takes to be a good and fair game developer is not to do stupid things and be fair (and make decent games, of course). How difficult is that?!

Speaking of being immersed in Dragon Age, I was reading a book a couple of days ago (http://www.amazon.com/Um-Slips-Stumbles-Verbal-Blunders/dp/0375423567, to be exact), and in it there's a passage that went like this, I cite from the book:

Do I need to explain why I read those last two words as "elven servants"? :rofl:

Unfortunately, Bioware has actually provided an excellent motivation for Loghain's behaviour, and now seems to have rejected it. In RTO So Gaider had planned it all, but now he wants something else. Too late dude. Please don't spoil the background for people with literacy. I lose respect for writers who change the entire plot on some kind of caprice.

And yes, for someone who writes so well, he does seem to pander, how disappointing.

Yay I just managed to keep Morrigan sweet about me kissing Leliana. I daren't talk to Leliana yet in case she dumps me

Could have been worse, you could have said 'A MALE CHAPLAIN! Aha another foul Dragon Cult!' Or 'Damn Trevinter heretics!'

:P

Since he's talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Archibald_Spooner there (the "father" of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoonerism), it may also be that he's a relative of that lady in Denerim that I've already mentioned, the one saying wrong stuff while chanting the Chant of Light...

I've started reading Gaider's novel "The Stolen Throne" and it fills in Loghain's background a little more. I didn't realize it, but the "Rebel Queen" of the painting that you can buy from a merchant was Maric's mother. Anyway, Loghain's family were farmers until the Orlesians [censored] and killed his mother and dispossessed his family, so his father Gareth became a partisan, gathering other refugees and forging a community of nomads (I wouldn't go so far as to call them "bandits", more like Robin Hood's people). When Maric's mother is killed, the new king is saved by Loghain and the rest of Gareth's people.

I'm not that far into the book yet, but it could be that power and wealth weren't good for Loghain in later life. Maybe he was better suited to the days in his youth when he lived like William Wallace, despite the poverty and danger of those years. Along with that, his son-in-law Cailan getting in bed with the Orlesians was the last straw. He still shouldn't have abandoned the king at Ostagar, but Loghain was forever trapped by the memory of what happened to his parents and Ferelden under the Orlesian occupation.

A different topic: last night I went back to the ending of "Dragon Age", just before your character leaves the Landsmeet (ending the game) and was amazed to see that Shale's appearance had changed. Shale speaks the usual line, but the appearance is that of a large, twisted set of armor (or at least the cuirass) instead of a stone golem. My mage character had never gone to Honnleath and gotten Shale, so maybe that's the factor in changing Shale's appearance at the end -- it could be a "placeholder" image? To check, I loaded an earlier save and sent my mage character to the village of Honnleath, where Shale stood, looking normal.

Well, I'll continue the game with other characters and see if Shale looks different at the end.

You'll get more info as you progress... It was an okay book, but not particularly groundbreaking. Gaider is a good writer, I think, but I have to agree with Yiasemi and Xetirox, in that his writing vs. some of his public statements... I think he suffered from what a lot of Hollywood script writing hacks suffer from - that they have a character who is doing bad things - and they can't "own" that - they end up trying to make the character somehow just "misunderstood" or make attempts to soften the bad things he did. I love a nuanced "villain", I don't need the red-eyed evil overlords. I wish Gaider/Bioware had just let Loghain's late in life irrationality and paranoia, which brought the nation to the brink of civil war, cost him his daughter and ultimately the respect of the very people he claims to want to protect.

I have seen, particularly on Bioware's forum, people going on about how Loghain is not evil, that the game will have you understand why. Fine, he's not "evil." But he's paranoid, ambitious, irrational, deeply angry (and actually, in the book referenced above, his constant undercurrent of anger is probably the character's most consistent feature. imo.) Ultimately, he's dangerously misguided and lost the pulse of the people and ignores the larger threat (darkspawn invasion) over the paranoid hatred (however justified by his past) of the Orlesians.

Basically, any case for Loghain being anything other than an irrational, powerful, angry [censored] gets immediately broken by the game actions. If his quitting the battle without participating was to be justified by seeing that the battle was already lost -
Even at the end, when

I think they ended up trying to wiggle out of the fact that they set it up so that Loghain snapped, and his loyalty become horribly skewed, at a cost of many lives...

I had that happen too, when I loaded an older save, post archdemon - it happened on two saves - but loading an earlier save in the same game, Shale was normal. And later, completing a separate game, Shale was fine all the way through, no more weird glitchiness. :shrug: Weird.

I don't see how you can't call him evil.

I haven't played with a male character yet (and probably won't) because it's just impossible to make a male that's even remotely good-looking. Each male in Ferelden looks like either a hick, or an oaf. It's even worse than Fallout 3.

But, Leliana prefers girls anyway and I hate Morrigan, so...

What kind of guys are you making? Mine look great (waaaaaay better than Oblivion).

I meant "eeevil" in the usual fantasy dark overlord sense, I supposed. Loghain's evil is rather banol, and thus probably more insidious.

@abnaxus - I've made a nice decent looking male characters.

OK, I've been trying to find this on the Dragon Age wiki, but I just can't, so I'll ask here:

What does "radiates cold", which is the effect of some staves, mean? :-/