Mark Plays ‘Dragon Age: Awakening’: Hour 6

In the sixth hour of Dragon Age: Awakening, I discover what’s at the bottom of Kal’Hirol. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to play Dragon Age.

Hour Six

I actually tried to find something to complain about, just to demonstrate that I’m willing to find fault in something I’m enjoying, and I CAN’T DO IT. At least not yet! There are things in Dragon Age that aren’t perfect, and I’ve addressed them before. (Holy white people, there are so many white people in this game.) I’m also just enamored with Awakening because it’s so rich, dense, and entertaining. I’ve never played a DLC quite like this before!

So let’s talk about everything that happened this hour:

There were lots of ghosts, and I’m not sure I totally understand what happened here, though I appreciated the parallel to what I had already discovered. Some of the dwarves were trapped, others tried to escape to the surface, and most didn’t make it. At one point, I even walked in on a ghostly battle. You know, now that I’m writing this, I just realized that perhaps one of the new codex updates explains this. I SHOULD GO READ THAT. After killing some darkspawn, I finally came upon some of those super creepy dudes:

Okay, what the fuck are you talking about? Clearly, there are two warring factions of darkspawn. But why are they fighting one another? Oh shit, what are they fighting over? I’m not going to like what I discover, am I? What is The Lost? Is it an unaired season of that show???

HAHAHA, HOLY SHIT, STEEL GOLEMS. Thankfully, they weren’t as difficult to fight as I expected, and good lord, this entire part of the map is full of some of the most ridiculous loot I’ve seen in the whole game. That’s particularly the case when I started to find all of Hirol’s armor, which Oghren was more than happy to wear. The first bit of that was in Hirol’s Sarcophagus, which could only be opened by completing a fairly simple matching puzzle. Okay, so if there’s armor here, that must mean the rest of his gear is spread about this place, right? The game always has complete sets. IT’S TIME TO SEARCH EVERY ROOM EVER!

SO THAT IS WHY I KEPT FINDING SMASHED WEAPONS. Wow, what a nice golem! Of course, then I started thinking of the implications of this guy standing there, and it disturbed me. Did this golem just hang out in that room forever? That seems… really fucked. Considering that this place was abandoned, was the golem left behind??? Oh god, probably. Am I developing feelings for a non-speaking, non-human character. Oh god, probably. Someone write a fic about this golem’s lonely life.

Hi, Steafan! I was nice to you. I could have killed you, left you to rot in that cage, or given you up to the darkspawn, but I set you free. Thanks for the Masterpiece Flame Run, by the way! I wonder if I’ll see him again.

Hey, why are there a lot of red dots on my little map? Oh, there’s a cutscene? I wonder what’s around the next corn–

NO. NOPE. No, the Childer Hatchlings are fucking awful. It’s like H.R. Giger threw up all over this level, and I hate it. I watched one of them jump on Anders and knock him to the floor, and it FED ON HIS FACE. What the fuck, Dragon Age? WHY MUST YOU INSIST ON DOING SUCH THINGS TO ME? On a more positive note, I did find a lone anvil down here, and it spawned a touching conversation with Oghren about how he missed Branka. Oh, so this game will attack my fear and my heart? I see how it is.

Eventually, after fighting too many of these unsettling “Children” things, I made my way to the lower level. Look at the design of this place!

Even creepier was the super long hallway:

I kept expecting something to burst out of the walls, so I took the hallway at a snail’s pace. What would trigger a pack of ruthless pugs or something? I don’t know, this game always surprises me, I WAS TRYING TO PREPARE MYSELF. And even when a group of tentacles did burst from the ground, I thought I was prepared. I wasn’t. Oh god, I wasn’t.

WHAT THE FUCK WHO ARE ALL OF YOU. It turns out The Lost is one of those super smart darkspawn, and he’s got an Inferno Golem named the Architect? Or is the Architect someone else? And who the fuck is The Mother? WHO ARE ALL THESE AMBIGUOUSLY NAMED PEOPLE??? Oh god, wait, The Lost is fighting the Golem. Okay, now I am fully bewildered by this. I don’t understand what I’ve walked into! That’s not a complaint. If anything, I’m more curious than ever to find out what the hell is going on with the darkspawn. Why were they down here in the first place?

Oh, right, to utterly annihilate everyone with fire.

Does The Lost have every fire-related spell ever equipped or something? Thankfully, only Anders died during this part of the battle, which is understandable, given that he has the least amount of armor. Still, I was worried myself because The Lost kept igniting the floor like this. You asshole! I did finally beat him and the Inferno Golem, and holy loot:

look at that +75 STAMINA ARE YOU SERIOUS!!?!?!?!?! Oh god, YOU COULDN’T TAKE AWAY MY JOY IF YOU TRIED.

what the fuck WHAT THE FUCK WHY ARE THEIR BROODMOTHERS JUST HANGING AROUND NO. NOPE.

Part of me was disappointed that I didn’t get to fight the broodmothers. I just had to drop those weird rocks on them. The other part of me was thankful because one broodmother was bad enough. Right? YES.

I did end this hour on a good note: Sigrun agreed to come along with me!!! HELL YES, NEW PERMANENT COMPANION. I shall romance the hell out of her.

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