Terribad design by BioWare or am I too picky? [Awakening end-game spoiler]

Remove all ads!

After you save Amaranthine, which takes you no more than several hours, considering how little you have to do and how fast it's paced, you are free to ask Garavel for news from the keep. He says nothing definite but what they do have isn't good. However, the only option you have available is to go kill the Mother. The absence of an option to go to the keep results from the choice kept, where you had to choose to save the one or the other but not both. However, at this point it's pretty obvious that there is no storyline justification; in fact, it's pretty obvious the only reason you can't go to the keep is because you aren't supposed to. Neither is there any pressing reason to go after the Mother without checking on the keep first.

 

I suppose the haste in attacking the mother can be justified - the warden wouldn't want to give her enough time to rally her forces and send another wave of darkspawn into the surrounding farmlands, but yes - the game goes about this quite hamfisted, without giving you a real reason or sense of urgency to go after the mother immediately.

Awakening feels a bit more rushed and limited in scope overall which can be noticed at multiple points throughout the story, but I don't feel like it's a terrible problem - it only takes away from the pacing somewhat. Perhaps returning to the keep was planned but cut because of a lack of time/money before they had to ship the expansion, who knows.

 

I think it's possible the responsible designer's mind (and it having been a single designer isn't really out of the question given how companies cut corners to save costs) was filled with the idea that you had to act on the Architect's warning, hence he or she took it for granted, like a no-brainer. However, the game fails to externalize that. It is a naked exclusive-choice trope instead.

The bitter reflection is that all the beautiful visuals and sounds and concepts and initial ideas etc., and sometimes even the quality of writing (which can be good if you have the money or talent), distract our attention from the low quality of the design in modern games, not only from BioWare.

Perhaps, but another hour or day for the writer to come up with a convincing dialogue fix/cover-up would have been perfectly viable and almost free in the scale of the entire budget of the production.

Right now, I'm facing the one more ill-relayed choice — whether or not to ally with the Architect. The game provides you with not nearly enough information to make the choice, but without giving the impression of doing it by design.

(1) According to the Architect, The Withered misunderstood his command, but in The Withered's words: 'It has ended just as he has foretold.' They must have talked about the details, the Architect must have been precise, and The Withered must have been paying attention. Being a little slow in the head explains how the Mother's 'First' got confused, but it fails to explain the initial Assault on the Keep convincingly.

(2) Next, the attack is described as a surprise and slaughter. I don't think the hot tempers and low IQs of awakened darkspawn can support the idea of a spontaneous melee leading to general slaughter. This could be intentional, actually, but really, would the Architect simply have sent The Withered off with an army just telling him he wanted to talk to the Warden? Seriously… It doesn't add up, and not in a way that appears to have been logically, conciously planned by the designer.

(3) The Wardens the Architect bled dry are supposed to have already been dead. And yes, voluntary blood donations from Utha are true. But what did he need a (i) torture chamber full of spikes for, in such a case? And why distribute the Warden party's gear to experimental darkspawn if he only wanted to talk? Also, (ii) Keenan is alive, and speaks about (iii) what was done to other Wardens and how they have a (iv) different plan for the Commander. Would the Architect have been unaware of what was done to Keenan?

Perhaps I'm harsh as an armchair critic, but it's quite disappointing.

 

The architect is not 'good' - if dragon age had alignments, he'd be lawful neutral at best.
Though it seems he has no active knowledge of his old self, the Architect once as the high priest of Urthemiel, one of the old gods, and one of the seven magisters that entered the golden city, leading to the creation of the darkspawn in the first place.

Despite not being under the effect of the call of the tainted old gods, and having the ultimate goal to bring peace between darkspawn and humans, he is willing to go to any lengths to accomplish this.
In the novel The Calling it is revealed he believes peace only to be possible if all humans (and elves /dwarves for that matter) are infected with the darkspawn taint.
Utha is also introduced in the novel - being one of several wardens that initially join his cause, though under false pretenses, as they think the Architects sole goal is killing the old gods.

The architect is fully aware that subjecting all living humanoids to the taint would kill the majority of them, similarly to how not all people survive the Joining, but he is perfectly okay with that.
Similarly, i assume he has no qualms at all lying to the warden to further his goals. The initial attack on the keep might well have been planned, and his admission of it all being a misunderstanding simply being the politicians way of washing his hands of the matter in favor of a possible alliance to further his own goals.

 

I haven't played Awakening, not after the mediocre slugfest that was DA:O, but from what you're describing xosmi, he sound more like lawful evil, lawful neutral sounds like an awful stretch.

Also, this sort of information should be readily available in the game, not only to be gleaned by reading some novel based on the series (which I would be unlikely to ever read, given how novels based on games tend not to be very well written).

This is also a bit of a problem with game design. You put the guy in a dungeon, and you have some assets that look like a torture chamber. Why not put it in, it's the same tileset, right? As a gamer, I would just think a torture chamber to be just part of the tileset and wouldn't read further into it. Unless it was somehow specifically mentioned to be a torture chamber and how someone was brutally tortured there.

 

Well, on one hand he does ultimately wish for peace, a situation where darkspawn and humanoids can live in peace together and where no more blights occur - he does not pursue evil in and of itself, only his methods can be seen as evil.
He strives to attain a situation where there is eventually order for all - freeing all darkspawn with his modified Joining ritual so they are freed from the calling, and making all other races subject to the taint as well, eventually turning everyone into darkspawn hybrids.
But i can certainly see him as being lawful evil as well, seeing as how things like the life and freedom of others mean nothing to him, as long as his goals are reached he has no regard for who he hurts in the process.

While the The Calling novel does give a lot more exposure to the background surrounding the Architect, i personally feel like enough exposure is given in the Awakening expansion to get the general feel for the Architects general motivations, but a bit more exposure would have been nice for sure.

 

My grasp of the lore is a bit weak, but would humans become darkspawn, or become like the wardens, if exposed to the taint? And a large percentage would just die?

Well, if he's as old as being one of the creators of the darkspawn, he's probably not entirely sane anymore, by human standards.

 

Well, i'm certainly not an expert, though i am currently on a playthrough of all the games (currently halfway through dragon age 2) so it's still fresh in my head.
As far as i understand it, the darkspawn taint corrupts people and animals, and also corrupting and killing off the land and plants.
Once infected, a few cases are known where people were cured, though the few cases that are known were either through the use of blood magic or other magical means to transfer the taint into someone else.

Other means, like a dalish herbal remedy and certain artifacts can slow the progression of the taint. On the flip side, this progression can be sped up as well, as has been done by the architect to some of the grey wardens in the Calling novel.
The Joining is basically another way of slowing down the rate of infection - during DA:O it is mentioned a drop of archdemon blood is as well as lyrium and several other compounds are mixed to the darkspawn blood that new recruits are made to drink - slowing down the infection and giving the wardens a resistance to the cal of Archdemons.
This is why wardens who can feel themselves getting close to succumbing to the taint go on the Calling - one last trip into the deep roads to kill as many darkspawn as possible before they die.

People that get infected with unadultered darkspawn blood either die outright if they have a weak constitution, but the ones that survive slowly waste away and become ghouls - they go mad and become physically deformed, and can sense darkspawn and hear the call of an Archdemon similarly to a grey warden, but darkspawn recognize ghouls as their own kind.
Eventually even ghouls will die from the taint, their corpses spreading the disease to the animals and land surrounding the spot they die in. Animals like bears and wolves have also been seen turning into ghouls.

What the Architect has developed is a modified version of the Joining ritual, that uses blood of a grey warden instead, and confers the same resistance to the Archdemons call to any darkspawn who drink it.
It's probable that even for those that go through this 'faux-joining' the effects of the taint are only slowed done, not stopped completely.
This is the reason why the Architect wishes to find and kill all the old gods before they are turned into Archdemons - even with the resistance to the call, over time darkspawn would succumb to the taint again and start searching out old gods to turn them into Archfiends.

One interesting thing are the Broodmothers - heavily touched upon during the events of Dragon Age : Origins, it seems like darkspawn kidnap females to keep alive and corrupt with their blood, as well as feeding them the flesh of other humans. instead of dying or turning into regular ghouls, these women slowly turn into broodbothers, a form of ghoul that actually births new darkspawn.
Interestingly, the race of the female turned into a broodmother dictates what kind of darkspawn she creates.
A dwarven female broodmother will breed genlocks, while a human female will result in hurlocks. Similarly, elven origins lead to Shrieks, and Qunari female broodmothers birth ogres.

 

Yes, I'm familiar with the Architect's plans from The Callling. I'm not sure they work against him or in his favour, though. On their own, they do cast him in a bad light, but the difference between them and his later plans could perhaps be interpreted as a sign of progress and learning from his mistakes. Hence, if he gets there between The Calling and Awakening, who knows where he might be in 20 more years, especially after continued exposure to Seranni and interaction with the Wardens. Probably not a charitable organization but at least an 'architect' of some sort of society. In other words, The Calling can serve to paint him as someone much in need of learning but also capable of it. This would coincide with Seranni's line about the DS being like children — i.e. adults without the benefit of having properly grown up and been educated by a mother and father. Which is the role she's filling currently, etc. etc.

Still, what looks like bad design on BW's part is how:

(1) the Architect's lab is full of (i) torture devices (bloody spikes etc.) and tortured bodies strewn on the floor, as well as a living and 'testifying' (ii) Keenan in direct contradiction of the Architect's words about wanting a peaceful coexistence;
(2) A shows a nonchalant attitude to The Seeker's actions (provoking the war between Velanna and the humans));
(3) 'The female elf is accommodating, allowing me to take her blood for my work. Perhaps she thinks I'll release her if she cooperates.'
(4) The Withered and The Seeker's actions are devious

… and yet in the epilogue if you slay the Architect it says his disciples meekly go underground without displaying any tendency toward vengeance. Somehow, they must have been bleedings hearts all along, just misunderstood by society, which is really at fault. So now The Seeker is a moral authority and a darling of liberal media.

A bit more work put in the dialogue, with some additional options such as at least exacting a couple of very important promises or clarifying the apparent contradictions — e.g. calling him out on obvious lies (e.g. if you completed Keenan's quest and have 16/30 Cunning) — would have gone a long way.

Edit: Some guy at BioWare forums has brought together a summary, here.