I dont know where youre getting that, I got the "mabari dominance is active in this area" (paraphrasing) message the very first time he did it.

Great, now I'm making myself want to jump right in again. I'm trying to stay away so I can see it through fresh eyes but…I doubt I will hold off.

For a character that didn't talk, they did a wonderful job with him. Sten and the dog, Wynne giving the dog a bath…he spoke volumes :)

Ok, I may have misread that. I guess they don't have a landmark in the Circle Tower huh? Oh wait, did you try using the dog for the break out from Fort Drakon? I ran through all the characters. The dog peed on one of the guards :D

The break in at Drakon was great with Dog. I took Dog and Morrigan … and if I recall correctly Morrigan got fed up and I just let Dog take the lead on the rescue. They did a really good job on that.

I always set him up to overwhelm mages on sight … my favorite part of his combat.

On the DLC with Morrigan … I loved her reaction to seeing Dog again as well.

Yeah, I hope to use my dog as the mage killer ;) What did she say in Witch Hunt? I didn't download that one.

Dogs = Love.
Cats = Ego.

Have a nice day :)

I know I am super late to the party… but hey, I finally made it. I am reposting my post from the "Last game you finished" thread. If anyone feels like reminiscing about this game a bit with me, I am game :)

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Finished Dragon Age: Origins last weekend, just in time before The Witcher 2. Overall it was a great game. Been playing it since christmas. It took me 105 hours - quite an achievement to get through such a sprawling game for me these days, with little time and often weeks without any gaming at all. To me looking back, the Origins, Ostagar, the Landsmeet, and the ending really stand out, these sections gave me a great feeling of agency, of freedom to shape my own story. I browsed the wiki a bit after I finished on the endings, and was impressed on how many different ways the game ends and how many different ending slides there are. I also noticed that I had done only a single personal quest for my characters…

The main part of the game is quite a bit weaker compared to these bits, IMHO - the epic feel that is built up in Ostagar does not carry through in this, although it is all solid, and there were always some memorable moments.

What always dissapoints me to an extent in Bioware games is the non-interactive environments. It alwyays ends up feeling a bit like running through a film set. Also I thought the loot drop system was really weak. I don't know how many times I picke up elfroot and deep mushrooms out of treasure chests (!), but I don't remember finding a single distillation reagent, for example.

So I need a break from bioware now, although I still have Awakenings and ME2, unplayed on my steam account.

Some additional random thoughts: I thought they did too little with the Archdemon. While Loghain makes a great opponent through most of the game, the final adversary IS the archdemon, and he is interesting - it would have been nice to use the "Witcher Sense" more to flesh him out a bit.

Magic felt really powerful in this game, awsome AoE spells. In comparison, the melee characters felt mostly like movable roadblocks that are there to keep enemies from rushing the mages - Is it different if you play a melee character?

The codex is terrible to navigate, which is unfortuante since there is some nice background in there. They did a much better job on that in ME.

Still, the game ranks quite high with me, and the ending was really moving. Too bad that the sequel doesn't seem to be on par, from what I am reading.

The sequel is quite a bit better than what you are reading. I'm playing it right now and, other than the insane re-use of sets, it's been quite good.

So you barely did any of the companion quests? Did you .. have a little chat with Flemeth at least?

It can be different by not using an optimized mage character, you need at least one but could focus more on healing and support. Then there's various combination that are working well, a killer rogue with both high attack and high defense is the best known but two 2H warriors can be huge too and make mostly all kills. A funny trick is using two 2H and earthquake, or have both 2H constantly attack and incapacitate a dangerous opponent.

It's too bad the game doesn't record the stats per character as it was in BG series. And I wonder why no mods ever offer that.

For the game ranking in my heart, well with time it lowdown a little bit but it's certainly ranking high and in fact higher than BG1 (and BG2) but also because I replayed DAO and second time I dig a lot the companions relationship and discovered some great point even if in end I hope never get another game like that with two games badly merged into one.
Myself I'd suggest try replay DAO and this time give a deeper check to companions at camp. It's what I did, during my first play I quickly end mostly skip their camp dialogs and give up trying too much get their acknowledgment. But when I replayed I dig that camp dialogs and got quite surprised by the depth and quality.

Awakening have many good points, a better difficulty management, and better approach of companions, and some more. It has also some bad points like the awful new craft system. But the problem of Awakening is to not be build at its right length, it's not that it is too short, but the development is too short and seems like a story hurry up (not the game developing like DA2). But it's just impossible to not play it after DAO, possibly after some replay of DAO.

I won't really comment DA2, flawed but some good points but I'm bored comment it against some haters. For sure you can skip it. But if you really enjoyed DAO fights AND didn't constantly paused in DAO not using at all tactics and controlling fully and constantly all members, then give it a try and don't believe the demo. More clearly fights can be great too if you use tactics and stick control a lot only one or two members at same time. But unlike Awakening, I would advise skip it if you aren't really a fan of the fights in general, or of the series, or curious of RPG design in general because they clearly attempt something original but alas it's not an attempt really successful, still it can gives some good design idea better realized for some future RPG.