DAO, how to get the good side ending Bioware stole.
 

Spoilers.

DAO story and characters develop though out the duration with the best case, the player's choices affect/effect outcome at all levels. There's nothing better than a RPG with well done choices and consequences.

What's really painful and annoying is when a game makes a choice so utterly ridiculous it goes against every choice made and every story development. Not to mention nothing like that would ever happen in rl where intelligence is involved and breaks the game belief immersion.

I'm not saying a developer can't make their game their way but do you really want your customers saying, "what a stupid choice and consequence" about your game, really? The problem is they FORCE prevent you from getting the most logical and emotional ending. Then to make matters worst, they go out of their way to prevent you from getting the real good side ending, you worked for the whole game with a False Choice.

What should be a choice, is to "Force Loghain to become a Warden and Sacrifice himself to atone for his crimes and arrogance OR Death by Execution as a Treasonous Coward". Choice as in option, NOT to force everyone to use it, since that would be as hypocritical as Bioware. :p

With that in mind here is how to get the good side ending. Full credits go to Thandal for the insight. :party:

One point I think is incorrect (replaying atm), is you CAN adjust Loghain. All you need to do is Click On Him outside of the menu system, then enter the menu for Tactics and Character (if you used the Companion No Auto Level mod) to do everything manually.

In my game Alistair ended as king married to Anora and Loghain became Grey Warden and was present at the post-coronation.
I´m pretty sure that if I´d refused to do the ritual it would be possible for him to make the sacrifice.
Granted, this conclusion was likely only possible due to how I dealt with Alistair´s personal quest, but I don´t think making him more pragmatic was really all that "evil", at least not compared to a lot of other stuff possible in the game.

I also don´t think that playing a rigid goody two-shoes should always net "optimal" results and I think the Alistair/Loghain dilemma was rather well done for both possible Alistair states (idealistic or pragmatic).
And since there´s quite a lot of possible outcomes, what constitutes "the most logical and emotional ending" is rather disputable anyway.

Okay, but if you go from the perspective of a player who just "wants to save the world" (again", then there is only ONE solution (which I guess will be most likely frowned upon by most players nowadays, where dark and grim themes are "king") : Get the best and at the same time the most positive result from everything …

I often have the feeling that Bioware just wanted to do a grim dark fantasy game, regardless. Or that someone in an upper position within EA/Bioware demanded this (I think I had read this somewhere ??).

I often had the feeling as if this game was developed rather NOT for "saving the world" (again), BUT instead for giving the player the experience of a grim world, where everything is just grim, regardless of the choices.

It will be dark nevertheless.

I think that was their premise or so. Not giving the player a satisfying experience, but rather to let the player live or experioence a world where - to use a sentence by Terry Pratchett - "no matter where Light tavels - Darkness is already there - and waiting for it !" Or, to put it into other words : The character is a walking candle within a dark tunnel. Darkness stys all around, and if you move away from a place, it will become dark again.

In this respect, this game isn't much about "choice & consequence" at all - it's rather about the Overwhelming Darkness - which could even swallow the character himself/herself - and that quite literally.

The fact that you have to use the console to accomplish it is what kills that idea for me. I can't get over the feeling that I'm cheating if I have to use console commands to change the events/story in a game.

I felt being cheated by Bioware anyway, after I found out how my decisions affect the long-term look-out for the Dwarven population …

I felt cheated by Bioware, because I had the impression that they wanted to spoil my "good outcome experience" definitively. My impression was that I SHOULD NOT have a positive feeling of the game like "the world is saved again".

They did - in my opinion - everything to mix a slight poson or a bitter taste into everything, so that I just couldn't rejoice or have a good feeling with this game.

(Example : The Ghost boy and hi mother, as I call them, deep within the ancient Elven ruins. They were never meant to be united by the developers, or otherwise they would have done so. Or someone just forgot them. This is my personal strongest example of how they tried hard, very hard to instill into the player a feeling of sadness, of morbidity, of helplessness, and of several other negatiove feelings as well. It's as if they were not only destroying my sand castle, but also taking away all tools with which I could build and rebuild it, to use the cliché.)

And as I realized that, I "paused" this game.

I'm still unsure whether I want to play it to the end, and buy the "ultimate" version of it … Simply because I can sense that "sweet poison" throughout the whole game …

Especially as you supposedly can get the same conclusion through legit gameplay as per DeepO's playthrough…

Personally I'd like to see more choices like this one. Goody two-shoes or outright bastard should be a choice with tradeoffs. Playing mr Niceguy without cost save a few coins for completed quests makes the "choice" feel less special.

There's also a quest with Jowan (who was originally supposed to be able to be recruited as a companion) that can only be activated via the console.

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Jowan%27s_Intention

It's kind of a shame because that quest actually provides closure for his character. Seems a waste that they overlooked fixing it.

Interesting..

To be honest, I couldn't even remember who he was until I followed your link.

He figures prominently in the mage origin but makes a minor reappearance later no matter what origin you went with. The girl in the elf ghetto is like that too for the city elf origin.

I really like that they went with the completely different origins with wholly different scenarios and characters. I can't imagine Bioware ever doing that again though.

He helps you with the situation in Redcliff Castle, and iirc he's a Blood Mage, right?

I'd really like to do another playthrough of DA:O, but one thing I didn't like about the game was its length. Imo it should have been at least 1/4 shorter than it was. There were too many filler areas for my taste.

I did enjoy it though, and I agree that we probably won't see anything like that from Bioware again.

Might just be a different world view thing, but I fail to see how sacrificing yourself to save everyone else can't be the best ending possible. Forcing someone else to sacrifice themselves, isn't exactly a noble act.

You can make the game a bit shorter bu using the Skip-Ostagar-Mod someone has made. It lets you skip Ostagar completely, but it still lets you play the origin story of your choice, say a Human Noble, a Dalish Elf, or a Dwarf Commoner.

I, too, would like to play DA:O again some day, but when I think about the Deep Roads; I look like this…. :sleep: and like this :wall:

There's skip Ostagar, skip the Fade, but AFAIK, no skip the Deep Roads. It also is one of those areas that make me not want to play the game again, although you could always have one character separate from the party and stealth by most of it. :p

I don't know why anyone would want to skip Ostagar.

Now The Fade on the other hand… completely understandable. :)

I completely agree. Ostagar was pretty amazing in terms of atmosphere and story exposition, so I can't for the life of me figure out why someone would want to skip it - unless a player isn't interested in story at all and just wants the gameplay experience; the Ostagar portion of the game is low-level, so purely gameplay focused players might not like that, despite the important story bits. The Fade, on the other hand… it was interesting the first time, but on subsequent playthroughs, it felt pretty sluggish and tedious.

So you owuld have prefered if it had the same trite pulp-fiction romance (Groschenhefte) level writing that we get all too often? As much as I value you as a forum member, I hope nobody listens to a word you say about storytelling in games! :)
To me this was what actually made DA:O a memorable experience, and that is doubly true for the ending(s).
I'll put the rest in spoiler tags, just in case:

Promise me that you'll never EVER attempt to play Mask of the Betrayer! If you think that DAO is bad then you'll have a heart when you see what MoB is like :devil:

I've already heard enough to decide that I won't be playing MOB.

And regarding Groschenheftromane : Yes, Drakensang 2 was in a way such a thing. And that's exactly why I liked it.

Remember : I play games for relaxation, not for being reminded of real-life affairs …

You'd be a fool not to play MOTB, and a pussy to boot! The game's tone has little in common with DAO's "grit".

Close to necro, but MOB got me started.
Some parts of it had the best atmosphere ever of any bioware bioware orginated games (stands to fact that obsidian developed it, please come back after south park, I want another alpha protocol or MOB).
Hated the spirit meter though.

On topic, there should always be tradebacks. I hate to leave or sacrifice something when I play but i wouldnt liek to be without it.

C

I think that the developer wanted to show you that no matter how hard you try, you can't always get the best/perfect result. That's something I like very much because it makes the game realistic, believable and mature. It was one of the prominent reasons that made games like The Witcher 1/2, Tactics Ogre, DA:O, Arcanum and … so enjoyable for me.


===Edit===
And I am quite satisfied with the [first] ending that I got in DA:O.
As a human noble, I talked Anora into marrying me. I was to be the king, mostly because neither Anora nor Alistair would make a great ruler. Alistair was a fool and Anora was a dictator.
I refused Morrigan because I did not want to bring a demon into this world.
In the end, when I learnt about the great sacrifice that had to be made, I could not let Alistair sacrifice himself, because although he was a fool, he was my [character's] friend. I killed the Archdemon myself and got the ultimate sacrifice ending, Anora became the queen and Alistair ceased his claim to the throne. I would have done otherwise and supported Alistair instead, only if I was aware of the sacrifice before the lands-meet, but in the end I got the best result (and not the perfect result) based on the information that my character had in the lands-meet and my (his) available options at the lands-meet and after the final battle, and even though it was a very bitter ending, the feeling of realism and real choice-consequence made it a very satisfying ending for me.

I really don't dislike the existing endings. At this point, though, I'll take anything over the Mass Effect 3 endings.