Hoo boy, if you thought the base game was buggy, check out what’s infesting Awakening! You know what that means, alongside most of the mods I had detailed in the base game’s review, there's now additional mods to pick up, those being listed on this entire set over at PCGamingWiki, as well those contained within the Awakening Fixes And Tweaks modular modpack, namely the Missing Codices, Vigil Chars Fix, Grey Warden Justice, and Approval 100 Bugfix folders. Oh yea, you’ll also need this tool to successfully transfer DLC items as well, lest you want your Warden to appear stark and empty-handed. I have like, NO idea why it’s this borked by comparison, I’ve actually faced two quests hitting a dead end just from doing things out of order, repairing one with a folder from another mod and then using a console command for both! What is it with (western-hailed) RPGs and erratic nonsense?
With all that out of the way, I should come clean and say that this is actually my first time playing this. This is another one of those cases where being young sort of cursed me, although this time I’m not exactly sure as to how. Either because I was too young to work out the money necessary to pay for it, I somehow didn’t know about this existing until way after the fact, or perhaps some mixture of the two, all my knowledge and insight about this whenever I learned of its existence had to come from wikidives and whatever the Dragon Age Keep service was talking about in December 2016 due to its requirement for Inquisition. Having to piece together all the whos, whats, and hows blindly meant that the mechanical and moment-to-moment contextes were utterly lost on me, something I should’ve rescinded when picking up the Ultimate Edition on Steam several years ago but have only now done so, remnants of my memory perking up when appropriate. This also meant I had to gauge and adjust my expectations for this one before diving headfirst, since this was now gonna be a callback to their Tales Of The Sword Coast and Throne Of Bhaal releases combined with having a downscaled pool of writers, so I figured that being able to go through this in about 30 or so hours if I wanted to do everything, which was indeed the time I allotted. From all my time spent, I could only come to the summation that, if Origins was the best case scenario of a project’s internal mishaps and compromises affecting the endgoal, then Awakening was the worst of it. It’s not bad or even middling, but it’s… complicated, to say the least.
The setting and focal vibe this time around focuses on a small quadrant of Ferelden, the sinuous arling of Amaranthine located somewhat above where Denerim is. You converse with the people in either the capital or the ramshackled fortress, Vigil’s Keep, to get a clue about where and how the Darkspawn are preoccupying and running rampant despite the Blight having ended half a year prior, and branch off into three peculiar leads, all while juggling responsibilities as the newly appointed Warden-Commander as either your character from the main venture or a new Orlesian Warden should that one be perished (or if you’re initially starting here, but why do that?). This sort of acts as an extension on the Redcliffe Village scenario of solving any qualms to boost morale and reinforce the equipment, and more importantly as a parallel to their sister team’s execution of the same concept as the Suicide Mission ordeal in ME2. As a result, a bulk of the quests pertain to just going around and fulfilling anything that pushes this mentality in both the ruling interjections, and the main trek trots outside these two places’ walls, making for a refreshing change of scenery and motivation from the doomsday clock before. It also switches up the tone, downcasting a melancholic and grim atmosphere trickling with morbid events, which instills the grimdark aesthetic and tone that was sorely needed with the base game mainly exhibiting heroic fantasy outings. Dubious cases of infidelity, the uproot of either guardsmen or smuggling shadows for the capital amidst a miscreant prankster, sycophants hidden amongst the royal crowd you converse with, ominous portends as to who or what will slink above seeping throughout the vapor as you march towards the key tumultuous points, and a mass conscription of ne’er-do-wells and delinquents into the Warden command solely to acclimate and embattle the weakened forces of what’s inevitably about to come. Even potential returning faces, your PC potentially included, seem to have waned and rescinded their drive, focusing more on other duties that are now thrust upon them as the once mighty battle has splintered and driven many away. All of this is a perfect continuation as to what was established in Origins, and once again helps to address the haphazard and lacking uniqueness of the worldstate…
….which makes me even more bummed whenever I felt that I was simply plodding along to the drum, all my needs lacking in meat. For every time I was engaged and attentive, there were others were I was simply lost from how fast everything was chugging along, or zoned out purely from obligation instead of chilled enjoyment, like a Post-Oblivion Bethesda goading me to do the Content because it’s Content in this RPG, and I shouldn’t ever miss out on Content. This time around, hotspots to procure these side quests are in Vigil’s Keep and the Capital. An understandable move, keeping inline with what the expanion’s goals are regarding the Keep and the Capital, but the problem comes in the execution. In Origins, you had two sides of side content: Major Side Quests, pertaining to places within that specific arc or party members, and Side Side Quests, which is everything else like the Blackstone Irregulars, Mage’s Collectives and so on, sometimes being a recurring and ongoing background note as you progress the main story. In Awakening, you now majorly have the former, with very few of the side stuff diverging from it. It’s not this detail that I’m bothered with, it’s mainly that some of these are clearly supposed to be the fodder, menial chores and not the Somewhat Important requests. Maybe I don’t want to go to Wending Woods and pick up silk carpets, maybe I just want to pick up supply crates off the coast and hock them off for big gains, or intimidate some thugs that I’m Tough As Fuck that they piss themselves. What’s that, I need to pay 80 sovereigns to upgrade my walls? Yawn, I’m trying to help the smugglers overtake the city here! What’s that, a group of nobles are conspiring to overtake ME?! Where’s this Grey Wolf - that I’m temporarily lending the mantle due to the circumstances - so that I can handle this! See, those are the ones I’m talking about, and were also the ones I alluded to about the melancholic tone. A better balance of this could’ve been appreciated, especially since it seems like they were onto something regarding how Wade’s armament quests, some of the arc-specific stuff like Queen Of The Blackmarsh and the Avvar Statues in Wending Wood, and Dworkin’s bomb creations are handled.
As for the unusual haste, there seemed to have been some accidental presses of the fast forward button, leading to things feeling undercooked if all the previously established bugs weren’t already an indicator. To kickstart this train are the companions, which might just be the biggest mixed bag I can immediately recall in a Bioware title thus far. Sigrun and Justice are both great outlooks onto the meaning of place and ideals, the former being uprooted from a penurious and troubling youth into joining the Legion all with the perkiest mindset and outlook you could potentially have in mind, and the latter being a benevolent spirit of that exact pursuit unconsciously and irreversibly brought onto the land of the living, inquisitively looking at everything the mortal realm has to offer and struggling to understand the differences between the two, his planted root of being on the corpse of a dead Grey Warden, and what even could justice be delivered as. Oghren’s back, and he’s actually a bit better than he was before. Still stereotypical as ever and his “flirtatious” manner with the women are Awful as usual, but contextualizing them as a burdening anxiety and regret over his failing of becoming a father is a start for some development. Nathaniel was someone I was hoping would be great, especially since I was playing under the Human Noble origin which had connections to the Howe-Cousland squabble, but he doesn’t come into full fruition unfortunately. He’s still a cool guy, and it’s nice to see how he ruminates over what he could do to drag his family name up from the muck that Arl Howe threw them into, but not much was ever really done with this angle, and the amount of unique opportunities for HNs to participate in are shockingly poor. Velanna’s… fine? I don’t really think Sheryl Chee did much to provide a different take on the “elf that hates human” archetype, and other times she becomes quite annoying, but there’s some semblance of regret and turmoil within her interactions that make her alright. Weird to think how distant the power gap is when Sheryl Chee wrote both her and Sigrun though. This was the debut of Anders, someone I first experienced with in DA2, and though my memory about that game is foggy I do remember not being able to stand the man, so it's extremely disappointing to witness his initial personality is being the absolute worst of the entire studio's Whedonism infatuation. For every one interaction with him that was enjoyable and seldom, there were four others containing a stupid, sarcastic, snarky quip at you or someone else, which makes it very, very hard to give a shit about his plight about the Chantry/Templar's iron grip on the regulations at the Mage Circle. Maker's breath, at least Alistair knew when to cut the act and/or got the receiving end of belittlements! Overall, this is the same predicament I faced in Jade Empire; the crew itself is alright, but it’s clear that most could’ve had better arcs if given just a bit more legroom.
And see, that’s the thing I’m so exasperated by when it comes to Awakening. The more time I put into this, the stranger and enigmatic it becomes. Shouldn’t Oghren’s approval meter from Origins have transferred over onto the new one, considering it can be established we knew each other beforehand if he stayed for the entire duration? How is it that I can complete Nathaniel’s and Anders’ personal quest not even 3 hours after recruiting them and making small talk, while everyone else requires more effort for them to open up? On that note, I know Amaranthine’s capital is an important place and all, but surely they wouldn’t have made it so that every single important detail is just connected there on a whim if they made unique encounters and quests. What is it with these cutscenes centered on The Mother doing the barest minimum of telling me “she’s evil and freaky!” when they had raised the interest of a darkspawn civil war between the malcontent and awakened beings? How are there so many reused maps in this yet never a peep about them was uttered, could it be from DA2 becoming more infamous for that scenario? Why is it that we’re retreading the same arc sprouts from the base game, when it’s clear from the codices and sprinkling of info that there could’ve been more to it? Why are the dialog options written in such a way that I’m now goaded into becoming a nice commander, when there’s clearly options and flag checks before and after to allow me to roleplay as anything but, harming one of the best things about the base game? Wait, hold on, why is Velanna’s personal quest triggered via a random encounter on the world map - which, if events were done improperly, has a chance of never activating and thereby requiring a console command to fix? Instead of the alluring writing and strong intrigue superseding the mired implementation and blatantly rushed nature of the package like most other ‘broken’ RPGs I’ve played, including KOTOR2 which I had finished a little over a month prior, the lackadaisical ongoings and this gnawing repetition of what I’ve done before is being setdressed and reused again only serves to heighten the fact that this should’ve had more time to cook in the oven. Considering that they had Golems Of Amgarrak, Witch Hunt, and DA2 all released one by one nearly a whole year after this, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the DA team were on crunch mode the entire time, and all these niggling compromises broke over and stained the franchise, doubly so considering what happened with Inquisition.
It’s not like I don’t have other things to praise. I find that the Architect is a fascinating creature, a hyper-amoralistic being whose agendas and coercion habits has shaded his demeanor that you can’t tell if he’s actually achieving the shared goal of destroying the Blight cycle in his own way, or just a massive self-centered douche. Despite my near-apathetic remark, I welcome that every party member are able to make unique comments on specific objects in the map, instilling more life and personality into them than Combat has better paced encounters and differing scenarios to alleviate the dullness, as well as sporting several new mechanics and branches resulting the OP nature of your entourage becoming even better. Who doesn’t love being able to cast two Storm of Century combos thanks to a cooldown reset, or defeating high-level bosses with but a few techs and little to no damage received? You’re also now able to craft your own runes, with newly leveled tiers and the ability to insert them into your chestplates, allowing your tanks to become tankier and your DPS rogues to have higher (critical) damage outputs! Because of the leaner length, XP and money drops are way more abundant, which means you can go nuts with all the things you want to do, as well as a new respec book in case you want to metagame even further. A majority of the new worldbuilding and specific lore nuggets are better than ever, my eyes glued to the Codex so that I can piece together, learn, or otherwise infer on anything that’s on offer… as I remind myself a good chunk of it is either overhauled or thrown out in succeeding entries and DLCs. Whoops! OK in fairness I can kind of understand it, but still, bit of a bummer nonetheless. Altogether, I’m well and truly satisfied with the amount of time I put into this, and I wouldn’t exactly mind making this one of the few DLC add-ons I redo in my future replays - it’s just a shame that all the cracks are so easy to spot on something that was so desperate and willing in becoming a great bookend to an already great game, and is instead the culmination of how all over the place the quality of these add-ons are.
With all that out of the way, I should come clean and say that this is actually my first time playing this. This is another one of those cases where being young sort of cursed me, although this time I’m not exactly sure as to how. Either because I was too young to work out the money necessary to pay for it, I somehow didn’t know about this existing until way after the fact, or perhaps some mixture of the two, all my knowledge and insight about this whenever I learned of its existence had to come from wikidives and whatever the Dragon Age Keep service was talking about in December 2016 due to its requirement for Inquisition. Having to piece together all the whos, whats, and hows blindly meant that the mechanical and moment-to-moment contextes were utterly lost on me, something I should’ve rescinded when picking up the Ultimate Edition on Steam several years ago but have only now done so, remnants of my memory perking up when appropriate. This also meant I had to gauge and adjust my expectations for this one before diving headfirst, since this was now gonna be a callback to their Tales Of The Sword Coast and Throne Of Bhaal releases combined with having a downscaled pool of writers, so I figured that being able to go through this in about 30 or so hours if I wanted to do everything, which was indeed the time I allotted. From all my time spent, I could only come to the summation that, if Origins was the best case scenario of a project’s internal mishaps and compromises affecting the endgoal, then Awakening was the worst of it. It’s not bad or even middling, but it’s… complicated, to say the least.
The setting and focal vibe this time around focuses on a small quadrant of Ferelden, the sinuous arling of Amaranthine located somewhat above where Denerim is. You converse with the people in either the capital or the ramshackled fortress, Vigil’s Keep, to get a clue about where and how the Darkspawn are preoccupying and running rampant despite the Blight having ended half a year prior, and branch off into three peculiar leads, all while juggling responsibilities as the newly appointed Warden-Commander as either your character from the main venture or a new Orlesian Warden should that one be perished (or if you’re initially starting here, but why do that?). This sort of acts as an extension on the Redcliffe Village scenario of solving any qualms to boost morale and reinforce the equipment, and more importantly as a parallel to their sister team’s execution of the same concept as the Suicide Mission ordeal in ME2. As a result, a bulk of the quests pertain to just going around and fulfilling anything that pushes this mentality in both the ruling interjections, and the main trek trots outside these two places’ walls, making for a refreshing change of scenery and motivation from the doomsday clock before. It also switches up the tone, downcasting a melancholic and grim atmosphere trickling with morbid events, which instills the grimdark aesthetic and tone that was sorely needed with the base game mainly exhibiting heroic fantasy outings. Dubious cases of infidelity, the uproot of either guardsmen or smuggling shadows for the capital amidst a miscreant prankster, sycophants hidden amongst the royal crowd you converse with, ominous portends as to who or what will slink above seeping throughout the vapor as you march towards the key tumultuous points, and a mass conscription of ne’er-do-wells and delinquents into the Warden command solely to acclimate and embattle the weakened forces of what’s inevitably about to come. Even potential returning faces, your PC potentially included, seem to have waned and rescinded their drive, focusing more on other duties that are now thrust upon them as the once mighty battle has splintered and driven many away. All of this is a perfect continuation as to what was established in Origins, and once again helps to address the haphazard and lacking uniqueness of the worldstate…
….which makes me even more bummed whenever I felt that I was simply plodding along to the drum, all my needs lacking in meat. For every time I was engaged and attentive, there were others were I was simply lost from how fast everything was chugging along, or zoned out purely from obligation instead of chilled enjoyment, like a Post-Oblivion Bethesda goading me to do the Content because it’s Content in this RPG, and I shouldn’t ever miss out on Content. This time around, hotspots to procure these side quests are in Vigil’s Keep and the Capital. An understandable move, keeping inline with what the expanion’s goals are regarding the Keep and the Capital, but the problem comes in the execution. In Origins, you had two sides of side content: Major Side Quests, pertaining to places within that specific arc or party members, and Side Side Quests, which is everything else like the Blackstone Irregulars, Mage’s Collectives and so on, sometimes being a recurring and ongoing background note as you progress the main story. In Awakening, you now majorly have the former, with very few of the side stuff diverging from it. It’s not this detail that I’m bothered with, it’s mainly that some of these are clearly supposed to be the fodder, menial chores and not the Somewhat Important requests. Maybe I don’t want to go to Wending Woods and pick up silk carpets, maybe I just want to pick up supply crates off the coast and hock them off for big gains, or intimidate some thugs that I’m Tough As Fuck that they piss themselves. What’s that, I need to pay 80 sovereigns to upgrade my walls? Yawn, I’m trying to help the smugglers overtake the city here! What’s that, a group of nobles are conspiring to overtake ME?! Where’s this Grey Wolf - that I’m temporarily lending the mantle due to the circumstances - so that I can handle this! See, those are the ones I’m talking about, and were also the ones I alluded to about the melancholic tone. A better balance of this could’ve been appreciated, especially since it seems like they were onto something regarding how Wade’s armament quests, some of the arc-specific stuff like Queen Of The Blackmarsh and the Avvar Statues in Wending Wood, and Dworkin’s bomb creations are handled.
As for the unusual haste, there seemed to have been some accidental presses of the fast forward button, leading to things feeling undercooked if all the previously established bugs weren’t already an indicator. To kickstart this train are the companions, which might just be the biggest mixed bag I can immediately recall in a Bioware title thus far. Sigrun and Justice are both great outlooks onto the meaning of place and ideals, the former being uprooted from a penurious and troubling youth into joining the Legion all with the perkiest mindset and outlook you could potentially have in mind, and the latter being a benevolent spirit of that exact pursuit unconsciously and irreversibly brought onto the land of the living, inquisitively looking at everything the mortal realm has to offer and struggling to understand the differences between the two, his planted root of being on the corpse of a dead Grey Warden, and what even could justice be delivered as. Oghren’s back, and he’s actually a bit better than he was before. Still stereotypical as ever and his “flirtatious” manner with the women are Awful as usual, but contextualizing them as a burdening anxiety and regret over his failing of becoming a father is a start for some development. Nathaniel was someone I was hoping would be great, especially since I was playing under the Human Noble origin which had connections to the Howe-Cousland squabble, but he doesn’t come into full fruition unfortunately. He’s still a cool guy, and it’s nice to see how he ruminates over what he could do to drag his family name up from the muck that Arl Howe threw them into, but not much was ever really done with this angle, and the amount of unique opportunities for HNs to participate in are shockingly poor. Velanna’s… fine? I don’t really think Sheryl Chee did much to provide a different take on the “elf that hates human” archetype, and other times she becomes quite annoying, but there’s some semblance of regret and turmoil within her interactions that make her alright. Weird to think how distant the power gap is when Sheryl Chee wrote both her and Sigrun though. This was the debut of Anders, someone I first experienced with in DA2, and though my memory about that game is foggy I do remember not being able to stand the man, so it's extremely disappointing to witness his initial personality is being the absolute worst of the entire studio's Whedonism infatuation. For every one interaction with him that was enjoyable and seldom, there were four others containing a stupid, sarcastic, snarky quip at you or someone else, which makes it very, very hard to give a shit about his plight about the Chantry/Templar's iron grip on the regulations at the Mage Circle. Maker's breath, at least Alistair knew when to cut the act and/or got the receiving end of belittlements! Overall, this is the same predicament I faced in Jade Empire; the crew itself is alright, but it’s clear that most could’ve had better arcs if given just a bit more legroom.
And see, that’s the thing I’m so exasperated by when it comes to Awakening. The more time I put into this, the stranger and enigmatic it becomes. Shouldn’t Oghren’s approval meter from Origins have transferred over onto the new one, considering it can be established we knew each other beforehand if he stayed for the entire duration? How is it that I can complete Nathaniel’s and Anders’ personal quest not even 3 hours after recruiting them and making small talk, while everyone else requires more effort for them to open up? On that note, I know Amaranthine’s capital is an important place and all, but surely they wouldn’t have made it so that every single important detail is just connected there on a whim if they made unique encounters and quests. What is it with these cutscenes centered on The Mother doing the barest minimum of telling me “she’s evil and freaky!” when they had raised the interest of a darkspawn civil war between the malcontent and awakened beings? How are there so many reused maps in this yet never a peep about them was uttered, could it be from DA2 becoming more infamous for that scenario? Why is it that we’re retreading the same arc sprouts from the base game, when it’s clear from the codices and sprinkling of info that there could’ve been more to it? Why are the dialog options written in such a way that I’m now goaded into becoming a nice commander, when there’s clearly options and flag checks before and after to allow me to roleplay as anything but, harming one of the best things about the base game? Wait, hold on, why is Velanna’s personal quest triggered via a random encounter on the world map - which, if events were done improperly, has a chance of never activating and thereby requiring a console command to fix? Instead of the alluring writing and strong intrigue superseding the mired implementation and blatantly rushed nature of the package like most other ‘broken’ RPGs I’ve played, including KOTOR2 which I had finished a little over a month prior, the lackadaisical ongoings and this gnawing repetition of what I’ve done before is being setdressed and reused again only serves to heighten the fact that this should’ve had more time to cook in the oven. Considering that they had Golems Of Amgarrak, Witch Hunt, and DA2 all released one by one nearly a whole year after this, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the DA team were on crunch mode the entire time, and all these niggling compromises broke over and stained the franchise, doubly so considering what happened with Inquisition.
It’s not like I don’t have other things to praise. I find that the Architect is a fascinating creature, a hyper-amoralistic being whose agendas and coercion habits has shaded his demeanor that you can’t tell if he’s actually achieving the shared goal of destroying the Blight cycle in his own way, or just a massive self-centered douche. Despite my near-apathetic remark, I welcome that every party member are able to make unique comments on specific objects in the map, instilling more life and personality into them than Combat has better paced encounters and differing scenarios to alleviate the dullness, as well as sporting several new mechanics and branches resulting the OP nature of your entourage becoming even better. Who doesn’t love being able to cast two Storm of Century combos thanks to a cooldown reset, or defeating high-level bosses with but a few techs and little to no damage received? You’re also now able to craft your own runes, with newly leveled tiers and the ability to insert them into your chestplates, allowing your tanks to become tankier and your DPS rogues to have higher (critical) damage outputs! Because of the leaner length, XP and money drops are way more abundant, which means you can go nuts with all the things you want to do, as well as a new respec book in case you want to metagame even further. A majority of the new worldbuilding and specific lore nuggets are better than ever, my eyes glued to the Codex so that I can piece together, learn, or otherwise infer on anything that’s on offer… as I remind myself a good chunk of it is either overhauled or thrown out in succeeding entries and DLCs. Whoops! OK in fairness I can kind of understand it, but still, bit of a bummer nonetheless. Altogether, I’m well and truly satisfied with the amount of time I put into this, and I wouldn’t exactly mind making this one of the few DLC add-ons I redo in my future replays - it’s just a shame that all the cracks are so easy to spot on something that was so desperate and willing in becoming a great bookend to an already great game, and is instead the culmination of how all over the place the quality of these add-ons are.