Mark Finishes ‘Dragon Age: Awakening’: Hour 15

In the fifteenth and final hour of Awakening, I discover where the Mother came from, and it is the biggest pile of NOPE this game has even served me. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to finish Dragon Age: Awakening.

Hour Fifteen

Oh my fucking god, this game, y’all. HOW. HOW???

• Total. Chaos. Much like the end sequence of Origins, Awakening goes straight for the absurd. Wave after wave after wave of enemies. God, it was so fun with all my enchanted gear and weaponry, too! MY PARTY WAS EXCELLENT! Not even these fools could stop us:

• They melted underneath our power. My group pushed our way through the inn, and I was so excited that I would finally be able to go in that trap door in the floor of that back room. SMUGGLER’S COVE WOULD BE MINE.

• LOOK HOW COOL THIS PLACE IS. THERE IS A GODDAMN PIRATE SHIP. Well, that’s my headcanon for that thing. Shush. And then I found this thing down there, too:

• What the hell? Why is this here? It’s never explained. Flemeth. You are secretly everywhere, and I should have killed you. Now I can kill a high dragon with ease. Come back! I’ll annihilate you!

• Fighting this new boss ogre sucks. Nathaniel decided to Feign Death within the first thirty seconds of the fight, so it was just Anders and yours truly the whole time. Since Anders is a mage, that meant I had to fight him by myself with the occasional assistance from Anders. NATHANIEL. WAKE UP. I KNOW YOU’RE NOT DEAD. STOP IT.
• It was a little repetitious, but I finally killed the Ogre, clearing out the darkspawn from Amaranthine. Victory! Except then my victory is short-lived for two reasons. A messenger arrives with information about the Architect: the Architect needs me to go to The Mother’s Lair because he wants to kill her, too.
• but
• wha
• but the
• But he took all my stuff! He did mean things to me! He can’t be on my side!
• Okay, well, I’ll head to the Lair after I go take care of Vigil’s Keep.

• OH, FUCK. FUCK!!! Damn it, it was an either/or situation! Save Amaranthine or save Vigil’s Keep! UGH THIS ISN’T FAIR. What about all my companions I left behind? Or those awesome merchants??? Or the seneschal? WHY AM I SO UPSET ABOUT THIS?
• oh
• oh shit
• Y’ALL
• IT’S THE DRAGONBONE WASTES. It’s the same place where Witch Hunt ended!!! THIS IS SO COOL TO ME.
• Can we talk about the codex? It’s a genius idea that seriously need some work in terms of UI. I was lucky enough that when I picked up a codex note titled “Drake’s Fall,” I remembered the name of it. There is no easy way to view a new codex addition or an update without knowing the name of it. Often, I’ll get a new update, but I won’t catch/recall the name of it, and then I can’t find it. There needs to be an easier way to read this! Anyway, I did read this one, and learned that this place was where DRAGONS WENT TO DIE. Which explains everything.

• WHAT THE FUCK. YOU AREN’T DEAD AT ALL. YOU ARE ALREADY BREAKING THE RULES. Wait. Allow me to rectify that. BOOM YOU ARE DEAD.

• HOW ARE THERE SO MANY RED DOTS ON THE SCREEN. This is evil, I swear. Thankfully, this wasn’t too hard! The only challenging foe was this:

• And I discovered that if you took out the Children mutations first, your whole party could focus on the Disciples and taken them down extremely quickly.

• I didn’t understand these things, but by gods, I was going to do anything that would give me an advantage against the Mother. I kept this in mind when the Architect finally showed up. He had a proposal for me. All right, I admit that I was curious. Why wasn’t he trying to kill me?
• What? You need Grey Warden blood for what?
• WAIT, THE DARKSPAWN AREN’T ACTUALLY EVIL ENTITIES CHOOSING TO BE EVIL?
• WHAT THE FUCK, THEY NEVER HAD A CHOICE, THEY WERE MERELY OBEYING A MYSTICAL CALL FROM THE OLD ONES.
• NO, OH MY GOD, THAT’S HOW THE DARKSPAWN BECAME INTELLIGENT. THE ARCHITECT FED THEM GREY WARDEN BLOOD. THAT’S WHERE THE GREY WARDENS HAVE BEEB DISAPPEARING TO.
• 1 trillion percent done with EVERYTHING. I never in a million years expected Awakening to re-contextualize THE ENTIRE STORY IN ORIGINS. This is incredible. INCREDIBLE.
• The Architect made the Mother. DONE. Done.
• So what do I do??? The Architect is sure that this is the way to permanently end the Blight, at least on a mass scale. If I help him, then that means the darkspawn can at least have a choice. Plus, do I really want to fight this guy? As much as Sigrun and Anders disagreed with me, I had to do something. How would others treat me if they knew I had the chance to end the Blights of the future but refused to take it?

• It’s so great that this is the same location as the end of Witch Hunt. I imagine that if I’d done this in the correct order, it would have been just as mind-blowing. Also, look, there’s the mother! Oh god, how hard is this fight going to be??

• why why why why WHY WHY WHY WHY. Fighting the Mother proved to be REALLY FUCKING HARD. Thankfully, all those weird crystal-activated circles I messed around with? They gave me this:

• YESSSS, I CAN CALL ON TEVINTER ASSISTANCE. This rules!!! I ended up using two of them: the Fire Blast and the one that stunned creatures in a specific area. That allowed me to take out all of the tentacles rather quickly so I could focus on the Mother herself. Without all her tentacles, she wasn’t so difficult to beat.

• LOOK AT THAT MAJESTIC ARC. God, Roslin rules so much.
• This immediately cut to a scene where the Mother bemoaned her inevitable death, but not before she dropped a bombshell: the creature I assisted, the Architect, was responsible for the appearance of the archdemon in Origins. Great. GREAT! Why don’t you make me feel even worse about my decision? THANKS FOR THAT.
• The end of this game did have a huge cut sequence. Instead, it was just images of various places and characters with summary bubbles.
• The Architect kept his word! Amaranthine was restored after a year, Vigil’s Keep after five!
• Voldrik’s work on the walls of Vigil’s Keep actually helped! Of course it took Voldrik years to finally approve of a human built wall, though.
• Anders left the Grey Wardens. :(
• YES, HE CAME BACK AFTER TWO MONTHS.
• Where did Velenna go???? I hope she’s in Dragon Age II.
• Justice died :( :(
• Sigrun left me :( :(
• Oghren took on TWO OGRES AT ONCE. YES. But he was a total dick to his child and Felsi. BOOO.
• And then the story ends with my disappearance. No one knows where I went! How ~mysterious~.

Bless Awakening. What a fantastic DLC! So, next I’ll tackle the remaining DLC, and then we’ll do a week of Mark Plays The Walking Dead (!!!!!!!), and then MARK PLAYS MASS EFFECT STARTS!!!! Oh god, I can’t wait!

Mark Links Stuff

– You can follow me on Twitter for any updates and live commentary on upcoming reviews I’m writing.
– You should read this very important post about supporting Mark Does Stuff!
– Video commissions are just $25! You can commission me to read, watch, or play anything for current, past, or upcoming projects right here!
– The glorious Mark Watches Doctor Who: Series 4 ebook is now out and available for only $3.99!
– I’ve started reading The Shoebox Project for Mark Reads, the first fanfic “series” I’ve ever covered!
– Both Mark Reads Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince are now available in paperback form!