I didn't necessarily need this guide since I've got the series fresh in mind, but thank you for doing this! This is going to be incredibly useful for anyone who needs to freshen up their memory, or perhaps if someone is jumping into the story starting with Inquisition. Great job, PC Gamer!
@@jbfarley huh. alistair - warden or king? oh wait. the game picks that randomly, does it? oh, silly me. Hawke's companions staying with him or against him? Wait, you pull cards and it chooses your past playthroughs, right? Your comment sucks.
Another correction: The "Second Warden" (the Orlais Warden) isn't a Keep exclusive. If you played Awakening without playing Origins, or if the Hero of Ferelden died, you played as The Orlais Warden in Awakening. As a curious thing, you can play The Golems of Amgarrakand and Witch Hunt as The Orlais Warden.
This was so ridiculously fun and it felt like creating a character with friends as you're going through the story. Beautiful refresher on some important things as hopefully we will see DA: Dread Wolf in the near future
Thank you for making this. I played Origins YEARS ago and I started playing DA II but was never able to finish since I was playing on a friend's gaming system and I've never owned a system to support either game. My current roommate has DAI on our PS4 and I LOVE it! I'm so thankful for your video because I really wanted to go back and put in the choices I could remember from the first two games and you really helped me fill in the blanks of things I couldn't remember or never got the chance to do. I'm excited to start my new play through with my world uploaded to the keep! Let's hope it goes through!
Even though I've outlived my use of the keep, this is still fun to watch. All two hours of it. Don't know why, but I also don't care why, this is some fun banter. :D
Thank you so much for taking the time to explain in great detail all the choices of keep, some of which i didn't even know you could do in the game. I am now going to do my keep ready for when Dragon Age Inquisition comes out. Once again, thank you very much.
Leliana's Song is quite good. It just happens to not have any choices to make on the Keep. But I'd say that narratively it's good as well as gameplay. It lets you know what Leliana was like before she becomes religious.
DeathDealer1997 According to what the description says, yes it does. And you are checking there because you heard rumors about her returning from wherever she has been after DAO
Cesar Garcia Personally, I consider the Orlesian Warden as something that should not exist. "Oh, you killed off you player character? Well too bad, no story continuation for you"
Amber Cook Quoting official description: "Nearly a year has passed since the Archdemon's death, and word has reached the Wardens that Morrigan has returned to Ferelden"
1:43:22 If you take the blame for yourself, you and Merrill are exiled. It is the only way that that Dalish clan survives their acquaintance with Hawke.
Just wanna say thanks for making those, not only because it’s helpful but I’ve listen to this so many times to help me fall asleep you don’t even understand
This is brilliant guys. Thanks, much faster way of getting a refresher than playing all of it through again, or trying to weave together hundreds of wiki articles.
I'm pretty sure that even back when Awakenings was released, you could play as an Orlesian Warden rather than the Warden from Origins, especially since Awakenings was a standalone expansion pack.
He didn't phrase it correctly, but what he meant was that if you import a Warden from Origins that died by killing the Archdemon, you do not get the option to play as Orlesian Warden but instead the game pretends the Warden did not die. The only way to play Orlesian Warden was to not import your Origins character, which also meant not importing your choices.
1:32:57 Fun Fact: If you hand over Isabela and the book, she escapes en route to Par Vollen (Qunari homeland, essentially). With the book. Yeah, the Arishok gets forcibly retired between 2 and Inquisition.
RE: Urn of Sacred Ashes decision. Technically speaking, you aren't sure that the ashes of a dead martyr will have any curative properties whatsoever (This is especially valid if you aren't RPing an Andrastian). The dragon blood is to make sure that there is magic of some kind in the ashes. However, this position is weakened by 3 things: 1) the mountain is chock-full of lyrium, if Oghren is to be believed, meaning it's been steeping in magic ever since it was placed there, 2) the enchantments you needed to get through to get to the thing are still in working order (up to and including the Maker's-truth *artificial intelligence* that greeted you on your way in), so there's no reason to believe that the ashes would have lost any of their magic, assuming there was magic in them to begin with, and 3) the guy who puts this idea forward (of defiling the ashes, tbc) is an obvious whackjob.
Added some annotations to address my most egregious errors. When I say 'errors', I mean 'things I believed at the time for no discernible reason'. - Chris
+PC Gamer so.... basically this system lets you piece together the story how ever you see fit instead of beating the game from scratch every time you want to change something? (or am I wrong, if I'm right though this is pretty sweet, lets you experiment with the game and see all the outcomes without going 50+ playthroughs).
+Genetics80 you are right, since there is no way for Xbox One and PS4 players to save transfer, this system lets you set up the game how ever you want (with in reason, it won't let contradictions after all)
still cant find a explaination on why 7 of my 10 different world states from playing Origins and DA 2 are automatically changed when I do Import them, this includes choices in Origins that affected content in DA 2... this includes the ending where Alistair kills Loghain, is then Executed followed by me dying killing the Archdemon, If you Romance Morrigan then dont do the Ritual you survive the Archdemon when landing the killing blow and she has a human baby (playing Origins) but in the Keep someone else has to kill it for you to survive (this was not a bug it was an actual official ending for Origins until they made Inquisition) for all side quest and things like picking Stens lock, you just needed a rogue in your party to start them also when playing Origins Irvin can die and you can save the Mages, but in the keep if you select Irvin dies it forces you to side with the templars When you "spoil the ashes" in origins you pour dragon blood on them and your reward is the Reaver Specialization, unless you have Awakening this is the only way to get the Spec. the Ironbark in Origins could be used to make a Bow, a Shield or Armour the official ending for Harrowmont if you killed Branka is that Orzammar goes into a Civil War after the Archdemon is Killed, regardless of whether or not Branka is killed the Keep and Inquisition do not take this into account. the Dwarven rule when it comes to caste is that the child is the same caste as it same sex parent, and its opposite sex parents caste is either raised or lowered.. for instance the Woman the Dwarf noble can sleep with in its origin is casteless so if she has a son (which she does if you sleep with her) she and her son will become Noble Caste but if she had a Daughter you would go from Noble to Casteless the Marjoline option is Leliana's Hardening (or non Hardening) choice for morrigan to have the Old God baby you need to kill the Archdemon not Alistair or Loghain, plus im pretty sure you could pick Riordhan to kill the Dragon in the game itself if you recruit oghren in the main Game he becomes a Grey Warden in Awakenings, but if you didn't recruit him in Origins he doesn't appear in Awakenings if you have the baby with morrigan the choice is to stay or go with her and meet your baby
in my opinion they removed alot of the non bug results and claimed them as bugs because they couldnt be bothered to create alternative versions of the background info based on all possible endings and choices during the previous games... which is a joke because I was so looking forward to seeing how everyone of my world states created and reduced down to 10 (basically every possible ending reduced down to 1 dalish elf, 2 city elves, 1 elf mage, 1 human mage, 1 dwarf commoner, 2 dwarf nobles, 2 Human Nobles) basically all but 2 possible landsmeet endings are available to every origin (the last two being you becoming queen or prince consort), their is a specific Epilogue version for each origin if the warden dies, and multiple choices if you survive (some of these choices are altered due to Origin), and then there is the sleep with casteless prostitute or not as dwarf noble and then if you do reinstate sons caste (or not) Effectively I had a saved world state for every conceivable option and choice in both Origins and DA2 only to have to reduce these down to 10 to fit in the Dragons keep only to have 7 of these massively changed so it is no where near any of the world states I created bearing in mind that every choice I made in DA:O that affected anything in DA:2 was registered OK in DA:2... I have had this problem since the keep was first launched, and have been waiting for Bioware to give an actual reason or fix what I see as a problem but they are not going to do either... so so much for carrying over the world state I remember...# btw the only 3 it left fine was the 3 safe saves.. i become prince consort, morrigan has god baby, loghain dies... I became Queen, loghain kills Archdemon, and Alistair and Anora rule and I die
Really helped clear up my questions about Dragon Age Keep. Also saved me a lot of time! I loved Origins, but there was no way I was going to remember all those side quests. Thanks so much!
I had planned on replaying the games before picking up the new one but I just haven't had time so this was an utterly fantastic way to get back up to speed with what happened in the game and remind me of the choices I'd made in my playthroughs so thanks for that!
Lol I never understand how people do this it's like watching the 3rd lord of the rings movie but not watching the first 2 only getting a quick summary like yeah you'll enjoy it but your losing so much context and lore
@@jimmy564321 DAI is my first DA game and I have no idea how I even got the game in my hands. I tried playing DAO to see the full story, but it just bores me so fast. I think because DAI was more modern at the time it soured my experience for how DAO played when it came out. It's kinda like what would have happened if I played ME2 or 3 first. I probably wouldn't have been able to enjoy ME1 because of how it played.
@@GreenWolf2k I could understand that but can you not play any older games like if I said you should play chrono trigger would you enjoy it despite being older. It could just be the fact that you've seen some of the story play out already. Like leliana is just chilling at the start of dai despite her being present during the 5th blight. Anyway guess it doesnt matter I just wanted to warn against doing that if it mattered that you missed a lot.
Thanks fellas for doing the video, just watched the whole thing and helped me remember a lot of what happened in the first two games. Great humor on the video too, had some good laughs while listening.
Thankyou so much for this, I have put off playing the game till I made all these decisions so you really helped me out big time. I can start playing the game tomorrow! Much respect to you both.
1:36:50 There is another way. If you have Anders with you he will somehow heal him just long enough to talk with him and then Varric kinda feel bad for him so he doesn't want him killed.
What I found really interesting was that I didn't import the keep in my first DA:I play through, so seeing what the developers decided was the default state was really interesting. A lot of it doesn't show up in the story, but the warden is implied to be a female dalish elf who died, alistar becomes king, loghain is killed, and morrigan does not have a child. Hawke is a male warrior, and defaults to 'charming'. i did find it weird that even though Hawke showed up as a warrior, he talks about carver being a warden now, not bethany, which doesn't make much sense to me. I think my favourite little call back in the whole game though though was dagna being your artificer, which was so sweet to see
I thought Default Hawke was a mage? I'm pretty sure he has a staff? This is weird, I only started importing custom world states relatively recently, because I'm one of those heathens that started with DAI and I didn't want to meddle with the keep until I'd played through both previous games and understood what the choices required character-wise. And then I took ages deciding what my canon should actually be. So I've seen Default Hawke A LOT and still can't say with certainty that he's a mage. But he must be, they wouldn't screw up something like Carver/Bethany. Also I think I see his staff in front of me. And I don't have mage!Hawke in any of my custom world states so that must be the default. Why do you think he's a warrior?
@@Valyrianalien he was using a sword and shield, no staff in sight. he was 100% a warrior in my first DAI playthrough, and i didn't even set up a dragon keep account until my second. maybe it was randomised?
@@kthxbi That is so freaky! I don't think I've ever seen Hawke with a sword+shield. It doesn't really make sense for it to be randomised though, exactly because there is Carver/Bethany. And it's not just Hawke's dialogue either, I think Varric has some differing banter depending on what Bethany's situation is. And I think all the warden allies use sword and shield as well, I know Stroud and Loghain do and it would make sense for Alistair too since that's what he uses in Origins. So if Hawke defaults to warrior I thought he would use a 2h just to be different from the warden. Anyway, my keep default is long since gone so this will have to remain a mystery.
There's very little appeal to using the right of annulment in Origins, a "good-guy" save aims to save as many lives as possible. Having the circle purged just sets a precedent for future reactionary chantry controlled Templars to kill Mages at the drop of a hat and further escalate potential mage uprisings. Granted that that's a "good-guy" mentality, when siding with Templars their support at the end of the game is not really as effective after destroying the Fereldan circle, even on nightmare the best path to success is using mages, golems, elves and Arl Eamon's knights. Bhelen is the best choice as his ascension is quintessentially dwarven, but his actions afterward are for the greater good of the dwarves by dragging them into the modern age under a traditionalist system. Then again it's all about choices and as an experiment so I can see why alternate timelines are interesting to playthrough if not cringeworthy at times, anyway cool intro for newbies.
Unless you want a "... future reactionary chantry controlled Templars to kill Mages at the drop of a hat and further escalate potential mage uprisings."
Joshua Weber I understand the reasoning haha, having a Thedas that is in total chaos is pretty entertaining to see. I just look at what's more useful in an endgame situation and if it happens to be generally good I tend to side with that.
I consider all decisions in Dragon Age to be more like roleplaying a character rather than finding the optimal team to fight the Archdemon. For example, one playthrough I played a dick-head Dwalf Noble who hated mages and elves out of principle and was pro-Branka, even though all those choices are less than ideal.
Like MCPaddyB said, choices should be in terms of roleplay(hence the RPG game DA series is). I don't think there's any ideal choices, just the ones you feel are right. I personally chose Harrowmont, as I felt I had the need to honor the dying wish of my father (playing Dwarven Noble).
I was actually pissed that Behlen turned out to be the better king because I picked Harrowmont and the Drwarves did not do so well. Yeah he may be a little "tyranical" but he didn't purge the castles or died by poisone leaving Orzammar in political hell. He took back as much of the lost cities as he could, then banned the Golems when he realizes they're too dangerous, and actually try to build relations with outside countries. I felt lied to by Bioware because they gave me no reason to support him. They did mention he was progressive but that was mentioned once if conversation about how he probably killed his brothers and that even his own father didn't trust him.
Awesome vid guys.. really enjoyed going through this comprehensive step by step with you both! Also totally rekindled my love of Dragon Age Lore!!! Cannot WAIT for DA:I! Cheers!
I signed on with Inquisition. And while I'm having a lot of fun with it despite the fact that I don't have a super firm grip on the backstory, I can't help but think that I'm really missing out having not played the first two. The Keep and videos like this certainly help (thank you for taking the time. seriously.), but there's just so much detail that I feel lost sometimes. I guess I'll have to go back and play the first two.
6)Varric I think can persuade the templars to leave in Act 1 - them storytelling skills are sometimes useful he can also spin a tall story about Fenriel the half elf being the Viscount's bastard son which means the slaver lets him go without having to pay him.
Thank you very much for this. I havent played DA:O since it was new, and I only got to Act2 in DA2. So I had obviously forgotten many of the choices. And the main reason why I watched this: I am massively hyped for DA:I! I usally do not get hyped for ANY games, but DA:I.... I just cant wait.
IDK if you covered this (cause its TWO HOURS LONG) but ill say it anyways... if you make a decision thats contradictory, UNLIKE a save editor (which this more or less is) it warns you what choices that decision will reverse... ergo you cant make contradictory decisions, but it does warn you.
If i remember correctly, dwarven castes work as follows: -You become instantly casteless if you leave for the surface (I think some merchants are not tied down by this) -A child born of two dwarves becomes the caste of the same-sex parent. This being said, Zerlinda was exiled to Dust Town because she had a Boy and not a Girl
25:01 When I first played DAO I romanced Alistair but wasn’t able to convince him to sleep with me before the final battle. However, I was able to somehow convince him to punch his v card with his least favourite companion. Oh man I miss old wacky bioware 😪
2:13:56 Actually, the kidnapped person is either your surviving sibling, your romance option (if that romance option isn't in your party during this quest) or the companion that has the most friendship with you.
definitely needed a memory refresh, aggravating that it can't load this data automatically since it can load your saves and character profile 🤦🏼♀️ without this i'd be reading the wiki for much longer - thank you so much
I like how these two set the standard for mage culling: The person has to be a) a mage and b) wearing robes. And they subconsciously justify sparing Morrigan and Matthias because both were not wearing robes and therefore exempt from the rule.
Outstanding video. I found this very useful in refreshing my memory on my choices in DA:O and DA2, and providing background on some of the DLCs I missed out on. Thanks PCG!
Thanks so much for this, I haven't played DA:O in so long that I completely forgot about 90% of the choices I made. I didn't complete DA:2 so I've just left that part alone, I might try playing it again at some point but it couldn't hold my interest the first time around.
Awesome video, just finished DAI a few weeks ago after coming back to it for the 100th time and never finishing it with the default settings cause I hadnt played DAO since I rented it as a kid lol.
A couple of things 1)in defence of Cullen and his admirers - the guy had issues - torture and mental torment and my reaction to your choice was "oh the guilt" for him in DA:I. and actually it's an achievement that he didn't go totally insane and he does redeam himself in DA2. 2)Hardening Alister isn't so much "don't trust people" as "grow a pair" - I actually did it to recruit Loghain without turning Alister into a drunk and in character I felt he needed to assert his more as I think he needed to put his foot more over Isolde and stuff and I wanted him and Anora to co-rule as her practicality and his idealism seemed like a good combination for Feralden. 3)Seb is worse than Leilana without the interesting side actually because he's a sanctimonous prick about it too.
Fatih Aydoğdu There's an option to defile the ashes before taking a pinch of the ashes. I haven't done it yet but you should be able to do that which ends up killing Eamon I guess.
Ah, now I remember why as a kid I had so few companions. I’m playing through Inquisition now and basically just giving everyone ONE chance. 2/3 of these characters need to be forgiven several times to reach a conclusion. Edit: not a criticism, I enjoyed myself. If anything it’s kind of annoying to have people around in inquisition only because “why not”.
You make it in the game. Basically, if you're logged in to the Dragon Age server or whatever, and you're playing on console, your custom character will be transfered to Keep. The warden might have transferring problems (or at least mine did on multiple playthroughs) so what you could do is take a default hero of the right class and gender, take the photo of your custom hero from the Dragon Age files and put it in the picture slot of the right default hero you pick. Make sure you change the name as well, as the default hero will have the default name.
Do the smaller decisions here figure into Inquisition at all ? Like if you choose to seduce the elf girl or guy in the Dalish camp in Origins, what does it affect in Inquisition ? Also is there mention of Wynne or Oghren or Sten in DAI ?
+ayf1983 I think they added the small decision to not spoil inquisition, because you see, if they had only the decisions that mattered on the Keep, you'd know what would happen. For instance: Did you do the ritual would obviously mean that Morrigan would have a kid. Did you seduce the elf girl? Well... maybe the elf had a kid as well, and we all have a party! Very ridiculous example, but I hope you understand.
If you are a female human Mage you can meet Cullen in the tower before it goes crazy. And the guy is totally in love with the hero, though he does not want to admit it.
5)If you donI't give Merril the tool but help her in the final quest to find the demon then she destroys the Eluvian. You have to max out rivalry to get her to destroy the Eluvian.
![Party banter [complete] | Dragon Age: Inquisition](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/b0zNyv_WdH0/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm about 8 years late to the party, but thank you so much for making this video!
I didn't necessarily need this guide since I've got the series fresh in mind, but thank you for doing this! This is going to be incredibly useful for anyone who needs to freshen up their memory, or perhaps if someone is jumping into the story starting with Inquisition. Great job, PC Gamer!
I thought this was going to explain what change each decision makes in Dragon Age Inquisition. Someone needs to make a video of that.
B Norrish well, for that to reveal, we need Dragon Age 4 to see the difference, right?
@@DonArlem no. Choices in bioware games never mean a damn thing
@@jbfarley huh. alistair - warden or king? oh wait. the game picks that randomly, does it? oh, silly me. Hawke's companions staying with him or against him? Wait, you pull cards and it chooses your past playthroughs, right?
Your comment sucks.
Jb Farley The dragon age games are one of the only games where choices actually matter and affect gameplay
@@jbfarley I feel very sorry for you obviously never having played any bioware game.
Another correction: The "Second Warden" (the Orlais Warden) isn't a Keep exclusive. If you played Awakening without playing Origins, or if the Hero of Ferelden died, you played as The Orlais Warden in Awakening. As a curious thing, you can play The Golems of Amgarrakand and Witch Hunt as The Orlais Warden.
This was so ridiculously fun and it felt like creating a character with friends as you're going through the story. Beautiful refresher on some important things as hopefully we will see DA: Dread Wolf in the near future
Thank you for making this. I played Origins YEARS ago and I started playing DA II but was never able to finish since I was playing on a friend's gaming system and I've never owned a system to support either game. My current roommate has DAI on our PS4 and I LOVE it! I'm so thankful for your video because I really wanted to go back and put in the choices I could remember from the first two games and you really helped me fill in the blanks of things I couldn't remember or never got the chance to do. I'm excited to start my new play through with my world uploaded to the keep! Let's hope it goes through!
Even though I've outlived my use of the keep, this is still fun to watch. All two hours of it. Don't know why, but I also don't care why, this is some fun banter. :D
Thank you so much for taking the time to explain in great detail all the choices of keep, some of which i didn't even know you could do in the game. I am now going to do my keep ready for when Dragon Age Inquisition comes out. Once again, thank you very much.
Leliana's Song is quite good. It just happens to not have any choices to make on the Keep. But I'd say that narratively it's good as well as gameplay. It lets you know what Leliana was like before she becomes religious.
jackskellingtonsora you also see the city elf's mother.
Just to correct what you guys say, Witch Hunt takes place roughly a year after Origins, according to official description and events in game.
DeathDealer1997
According to what the description says, yes it does. And you are checking there because you heard rumors about her returning from wherever she has been after DAO
Ariescz Ironically, you CAN play as The Orlais Warden in Witch Hunt.
Cesar Garcia
Personally, I consider the Orlesian Warden as something that should not exist.
"Oh, you killed off you player character? Well too bad, no story continuation for you"
Ariescz It takes place 2-2 1/2 years after Origins.
Amber Cook Quoting official description: "Nearly a year has passed since the Archdemon's death, and word has reached the Wardens that Morrigan has returned to Ferelden"
1:43:22 If you take the blame for yourself, you and Merrill are exiled. It is the only way that that Dalish clan survives their acquaintance with Hawke.
Just wanna say thanks for making those, not only because it’s helpful but I’ve listen to this so many times to help me fall asleep you don’t even understand
Just wanted to say thank for taking the time to go through this with people who are interested!!! :D
This is brilliant guys. Thanks, much faster way of getting a refresher than playing all of it through again, or trying to weave together hundreds of wiki articles.
This is making me want to replay the games again.
I'm pretty sure that even back when Awakenings was released, you could play as an Orlesian Warden rather than the Warden from Origins, especially since Awakenings was a standalone expansion pack.
He didn't phrase it correctly, but what he meant was that if you import a Warden from Origins that died by killing the Archdemon, you do not get the option to play as Orlesian Warden but instead the game pretends the Warden did not die. The only way to play Orlesian Warden was to not import your Origins character, which also meant not importing your choices.
1:32:57 Fun Fact: If you hand over Isabela and the book, she escapes en route to Par Vollen (Qunari homeland, essentially). With the book. Yeah, the Arishok gets forcibly retired between 2 and Inquisition.
RE: Urn of Sacred Ashes decision. Technically speaking, you aren't sure that the ashes of a dead martyr will have any curative properties whatsoever (This is especially valid if you aren't RPing an Andrastian). The dragon blood is to make sure that there is magic of some kind in the ashes. However, this position is weakened by 3 things: 1) the mountain is chock-full of lyrium, if Oghren is to be believed, meaning it's been steeping in magic ever since it was placed there, 2) the enchantments you needed to get through to get to the thing are still in working order (up to and including the Maker's-truth *artificial intelligence* that greeted you on your way in), so there's no reason to believe that the ashes would have lost any of their magic, assuming there was magic in them to begin with, and 3) the guy who puts this idea forward (of defiling the ashes, tbc) is an obvious whackjob.
In the quest the "Nature of the Beast" the keeper is played by Tim Russ - who is the same person who plays Tuvok in Star Trek.
Added some annotations to address my most egregious errors. When I say 'errors', I mean 'things I believed at the time for no discernible reason'. - Chris
+PC Gamer so.... basically this system lets you piece together the story how ever you see fit instead of beating the game from scratch every time you want to change something? (or am I wrong, if I'm right though this is pretty sweet, lets you experiment with the game and see all the outcomes without going 50+ playthroughs).
+Genetics80 you are right, since there is no way for Xbox One and PS4 players to save transfer, this system lets you set up the game how ever you want (with in reason, it won't let contradictions after all)
Can you guys update this video with DA:I and the DLCs for it??? It's been over a year.
still cant find a explaination on why 7 of my 10 different world states from playing Origins and DA 2 are automatically changed when I do Import them, this includes choices in Origins that affected content in DA 2... this includes the ending where Alistair kills Loghain, is then Executed followed by me dying killing the Archdemon,
If you Romance Morrigan then dont do the Ritual you survive the Archdemon when landing the killing blow and she has a human baby (playing Origins) but in the Keep someone else has to kill it for you to survive (this was not a bug it was an actual official ending for Origins until they made Inquisition)
for all side quest and things like picking Stens lock, you just needed a rogue in your party to start them
also when playing Origins Irvin can die and you can save the Mages, but in the keep if you select Irvin dies it forces you to side with the templars
When you "spoil the ashes" in origins you pour dragon blood on them and your reward is the Reaver Specialization, unless you have Awakening this is the only way to get the Spec.
the Ironbark in Origins could be used to make a Bow, a Shield or Armour
the official ending for Harrowmont if you killed Branka is that Orzammar goes into a Civil War after the Archdemon is Killed, regardless of whether or not Branka is killed the Keep and Inquisition do not take this into account.
the Dwarven rule when it comes to caste is that the child is the same caste as it same sex parent, and its opposite sex parents caste is either raised or lowered.. for instance the Woman the Dwarf noble can sleep with in its origin is casteless so if she has a son (which she does if you sleep with her) she and her son will become Noble Caste but if she had a Daughter you would go from Noble to Casteless
the Marjoline option is Leliana's Hardening (or non Hardening) choice
for morrigan to have the Old God baby you need to kill the Archdemon not Alistair or Loghain, plus im pretty sure you could pick Riordhan to kill the Dragon in the game itself
if you recruit oghren in the main Game he becomes a Grey Warden in Awakenings, but if you didn't recruit him in Origins he doesn't appear in Awakenings
if you have the baby with morrigan the choice is to stay or go with her and meet your baby
in my opinion they removed alot of the non bug results and claimed them as bugs because they couldnt be bothered to create alternative versions of the background info based on all possible endings and choices during the previous games...
which is a joke because I was so looking forward to seeing how everyone of my world states created and reduced down to 10 (basically every possible ending reduced down to 1 dalish elf, 2 city elves, 1 elf mage, 1 human mage, 1 dwarf commoner, 2 dwarf nobles, 2 Human Nobles)
basically all but 2 possible landsmeet endings are available to every origin (the last two being you becoming queen or prince consort), their is a specific Epilogue version for each origin if the warden dies, and multiple choices if you survive (some of these choices are altered due to Origin), and then there is the sleep with casteless prostitute or not as dwarf noble and then if you do reinstate sons caste (or not)
Effectively I had a saved world state for every conceivable option and choice in both Origins and DA2 only to have to reduce these down to 10 to fit in the Dragons keep only to have 7 of these massively changed so it is no where near any of the world states I created bearing in mind that every choice I made in DA:O that affected anything in DA:2 was registered OK in DA:2...
I have had this problem since the keep was first launched, and have been waiting for Bioware to give an actual reason or fix what I see as a problem but they are not going to do either... so so much for carrying over the world state I remember...#
btw the only 3 it left fine was the 3 safe saves.. i become prince consort, morrigan has god baby, loghain dies... I became Queen, loghain kills Archdemon, and Alistair and Anora rule and I die
Really helped clear up my questions about Dragon Age Keep. Also saved me a lot of time! I loved Origins, but there was no way I was going to remember all those side quests. Thanks so much!
Oh geez. Don't listen to this in public. I was dying of laughter and everyone was staring at me. I loved this video.
Dragon Age 2 starts at 1:18:00
You can actually kill wynne the moment you meet her. When she and about 4 mages are holding the hallway you can pick an option to cut through them.
best two hours spent on one video ever, you guys rock
I had planned on replaying the games before picking up the new one but I just haven't had time so this was an utterly fantastic way to get back up to speed with what happened in the game and remind me of the choices I'd made in my playthroughs so thanks for that!
this video is super useful to me because i never played 1 and 2 but i am beginning DAI and i'm making Keep decisions now.
I know this is an old comment, but I'm currently in the same position!
Lol I never understand how people do this it's like watching the 3rd lord of the rings movie but not watching the first 2 only getting a quick summary like yeah you'll enjoy it but your losing so much context and lore
@@jimmy564321 DAI is my first DA game and I have no idea how I even got the game in my hands. I tried playing DAO to see the full story, but it just bores me so fast. I think because DAI was more modern at the time it soured my experience for how DAO played when it came out. It's kinda like what would have happened if I played ME2 or 3 first. I probably wouldn't have been able to enjoy ME1 because of how it played.
@@GreenWolf2k I could understand that but can you not play any older games like if I said you should play chrono trigger would you enjoy it despite being older. It could just be the fact that you've seen some of the story play out already. Like leliana is just chilling at the start of dai despite her being present during the 5th blight. Anyway guess it doesnt matter I just wanted to warn against doing that if it mattered that you missed a lot.
And this has been Dragon Age: Abridged, a comprehensive, concise, bullet point walkthrough.
Hey guys thanks so much! Y'all did a bang up job, and this is exactly what I needed as someone who hasn't played since 2011!
This is still one of my favorite videos on TH-cam! I still watch it again (I'm a dragon Age addict) because it's so entertaining :D
CRAZY amounts of information,i watched and followed along with it all.Thank you guys.Hope Inquisition will be more immersive now.
This is depressing to see after Veilguard.
Thanks fellas for doing the video, just watched the whole thing and helped me remember a lot of what happened in the first two games. Great humor on the video too, had some good laughs while listening.
Thankyou so much for this, I have put off playing the game till I made all these decisions so you really helped me out big time.
I can start playing the game tomorrow! Much respect to you both.
You are the refreshingly enthousiat about this series! Great video, of great help!
1:36:50 There is another way. If you have Anders with you he will somehow heal him just long enough to talk with him and then Varric kinda feel bad for him so he doesn't want him killed.
Thanks for this! The video's amazing! Inquisition was my first Dragon Age, I'm now delighted to start a new playthrough with a different world state!
What I found really interesting was that I didn't import the keep in my first DA:I play through, so seeing what the developers decided was the default state was really interesting. A lot of it doesn't show up in the story, but the warden is implied to be a female dalish elf who died, alistar becomes king, loghain is killed, and morrigan does not have a child. Hawke is a male warrior, and defaults to 'charming'. i did find it weird that even though Hawke showed up as a warrior, he talks about carver being a warden now, not bethany, which doesn't make much sense to me. I think my favourite little call back in the whole game though though was dagna being your artificer, which was so sweet to see
I thought Default Hawke was a mage? I'm pretty sure he has a staff? This is weird, I only started importing custom world states relatively recently, because I'm one of those heathens that started with DAI and I didn't want to meddle with the keep until I'd played through both previous games and understood what the choices required character-wise. And then I took ages deciding what my canon should actually be. So I've seen Default Hawke A LOT and still can't say with certainty that he's a mage. But he must be, they wouldn't screw up something like Carver/Bethany. Also I think I see his staff in front of me. And I don't have mage!Hawke in any of my custom world states so that must be the default. Why do you think he's a warrior?
@@Valyrianalien he was using a sword and shield, no staff in sight. he was 100% a warrior in my first DAI playthrough, and i didn't even set up a dragon keep account until my second. maybe it was randomised?
@@kthxbi That is so freaky! I don't think I've ever seen Hawke with a sword+shield. It doesn't really make sense for it to be randomised though, exactly because there is Carver/Bethany. And it's not just Hawke's dialogue either, I think Varric has some differing banter depending on what Bethany's situation is. And I think all the warden allies use sword and shield as well, I know Stroud and Loghain do and it would make sense for Alistair too since that's what he uses in Origins. So if Hawke defaults to warrior I thought he would use a 2h just to be different from the warden. Anyway, my keep default is long since gone so this will have to remain a mystery.
Very useful video walkthrough, thanks a lot for taking the time of being so thorough!
2+ hours hoooleeeshit ! I'm in! Can't wait for DAI
Thank you guys so much. I just bought inquisition and wanted this background lore explained. ❤️
There's very little appeal to using the right of annulment in Origins, a "good-guy" save aims to save as many lives as possible. Having the circle purged just sets a precedent for future reactionary chantry controlled Templars to kill Mages at the drop of a hat and further escalate potential mage uprisings. Granted that that's a "good-guy" mentality, when siding with Templars their support at the end of the game is not really as effective after destroying the Fereldan circle, even on nightmare the best path to success is using mages, golems, elves and Arl Eamon's knights.
Bhelen is the best choice as his ascension is quintessentially dwarven, but his actions afterward are for the greater good of the dwarves by dragging them into the modern age under a traditionalist system. Then again it's all about choices and as an experiment so I can see why alternate timelines are interesting to playthrough if not cringeworthy at times, anyway cool intro for newbies.
Unless you want a "... future reactionary chantry controlled Templars to kill Mages at the drop of a hat and further escalate potential mage uprisings."
Joshua Weber I understand the reasoning haha, having a Thedas that is in total chaos is pretty entertaining to see. I just look at what's more useful in an endgame situation and if it happens to be generally good I tend to side with that.
I consider all decisions in Dragon Age to be more like roleplaying a character rather than finding the optimal team to fight the Archdemon.
For example, one playthrough I played a dick-head Dwalf Noble who hated mages and elves out of principle and was pro-Branka, even though all those choices are less than ideal.
Like MCPaddyB said, choices should be in terms of roleplay(hence the RPG game DA series is). I don't think there's any ideal choices, just the ones you feel are right.
I personally chose Harrowmont, as I felt I had the need to honor the dying wish of my father (playing Dwarven Noble).
I was actually pissed that Behlen turned out to be the better king because I picked Harrowmont and the Drwarves did not do so well. Yeah he may be a little "tyranical" but he didn't purge the castles or died by poisone leaving Orzammar in political hell. He took back as much of the lost cities as he could, then banned the Golems when he realizes they're too dangerous, and actually try to build relations with outside countries. I felt lied to by Bioware because they gave me no reason to support him. They did mention he was progressive but that was mentioned once if conversation about how he probably killed his brothers and that even his own father didn't trust him.
Awesome vid guys.. really enjoyed going through this comprehensive step by step with you both! Also totally rekindled my love of Dragon Age Lore!!! Cannot WAIT for DA:I! Cheers!
I signed on with Inquisition. And while I'm having a lot of fun with it despite the fact that I don't have a super firm grip on the backstory, I can't help but think that I'm really missing out having not played the first two. The Keep and videos like this certainly help (thank you for taking the time. seriously.), but there's just so much detail that I feel lost sometimes. I guess I'll have to go back and play the first two.
I liked this video as well as Phil & Chris's commentary.
6)Varric I think can persuade the templars to leave in Act 1 - them storytelling skills are sometimes useful he can also spin a tall story about Fenriel the half elf being the Viscount's bastard son which means the slaver lets him go without having to pay him.
Rip dragon age keep
It's been forever since playing Origins and II, thanks for this.
really loved this guide, great way to refresh before veilguard. thanks to you both!
Thank you very much for this.
I havent played DA:O since it was new, and I only got to Act2 in DA2.
So I had obviously forgotten many of the choices.
And the main reason why I watched this: I am massively hyped for DA:I!
I usally do not get hyped for ANY games, but DA:I.... I just cant wait.
Three cardinal rules of Dragon Age. Don't touch that, don't put it in your mouth, and but the Qun.
What does "and but the Qun" means?
IDK if you covered this (cause its TWO HOURS LONG) but ill say it anyways...
if you make a decision thats contradictory, UNLIKE a save editor (which this more or less is) it warns you what choices that decision will reverse... ergo you cant make contradictory decisions, but it does warn you.
If i remember correctly, dwarven castes work as follows:
-You become instantly casteless if you leave for the surface (I think some merchants are not tied down by this)
-A child born of two dwarves becomes the caste of the same-sex parent.
This being said, Zerlinda was exiled to Dust Town because she had a Boy and not a Girl
Man I came here to brush up on my DA lore so I could skip to the latest one but this just really makes me want to replay those games.
The year is 2021 and this helped A LOT.
25:01 When I first played DAO I romanced Alistair but wasn’t able to convince him to sleep with me before the final battle. However, I was able to somehow convince him to punch his v card with his least favourite companion. Oh man I miss old wacky bioware 😪
2:13:56 Actually, the kidnapped person is either your surviving sibling, your romance option (if that romance option isn't in your party during this quest) or the companion that has the most friendship with you.
I AM AN HOUR IN AND I’m LAUGHING SO HARD YOU GUYS ARE AMAZING
definitely needed a memory refresh, aggravating that it can't load this data automatically since it can load your saves and character profile 🤦🏼♀️ without this i'd be reading the wiki for much longer - thank you so much
39:10
lol the "poison the urn" option, is to unlock the Reaver spec........... XD
I like how these two set the standard for mage culling:
The person has to be a) a mage and b) wearing robes.
And they subconsciously justify sparing Morrigan and Matthias because both were not wearing robes and therefore exempt from the rule.
Outstanding video. I found this very useful in refreshing my memory on my choices in DA:O and DA2, and providing background on some of the DLCs I missed out on. Thanks PCG!
Thank you guys for this thorough walkthrough!
Thanks so much for this, I haven't played DA:O in so long that I completely forgot about 90% of the choices I made.
I didn't complete DA:2 so I've just left that part alone, I might try playing it again at some point but it couldn't hold my interest the first time around.
Awesome video, just finished DAI a few weeks ago after coming back to it for the 100th time and never finishing it with the default settings cause I hadnt played DAO since I rented it as a kid lol.
Loved this Video - can you do an updated video explaining the choices of Dragon Age Inquisition?
Thanks, I forgot a lot of these so it really helped when choosing. Lets hope they do something similar for DA 4.
Thanks a million guys! Helped me enjoy the game a lot more!
Tremendous help! Thank you for taking the time to do this, it was even entertaining :)
I enjoy the argument that broke out about Bhelen and Harrowmont
I know this is old,but thank you so much,i couldn't play inquisition back when it was just released,so i'm about to do that now,and this helped!
RIP Dragon Age Keep
A couple of things 1)in defence of Cullen and his admirers - the guy had issues - torture and mental torment and my reaction to your choice was "oh the guilt" for him in DA:I. and actually it's an achievement that he didn't go totally insane and he does redeam himself in DA2. 2)Hardening Alister isn't so much "don't trust people" as "grow a pair" - I actually did it to recruit Loghain without turning Alister into a drunk and in character I felt he needed to assert his more as I think he needed to put his foot more over Isolde and stuff and I wanted him and Anora to co-rule as her practicality and his idealism seemed like a good combination for Feralden. 3)Seb is worse than Leilana without the interesting side actually because he's a sanctimonous prick about it too.
I have a slow phone took me 2 weeks before I could successfully log in. The site is cool but the struggle hurt my desire to play for a bit.
If you poison ashes, you will open a specialization and don't worry Warden gets a little bit of ash before poison it.
Fatih Aydoğdu There's an option to defile the ashes before taking a pinch of the ashes. I haven't done it yet but you should be able to do that which ends up killing Eamon I guess.
"it's too orangey for crows" - brilliant little side quote :0)
Thanks for the video guys. I enjoyed every second.
I want them to come back and include the 3rd tapestry so bad. Even though it’s mostly yes and no’s
"You're a wizard Harry, but no, no crown for you."
😂👍😂👌😂👏🏼
Great video. Helping me out a lot since i didn't play Origins or DA2
1:48:41 GOD! DAMMIT! ANDERS!
4)the dying sibling is also I think to give you a mage if you aren't one and a warrior if you're a rogue and another warrior if you're not.
Ah, now I remember why as a kid I had so few companions. I’m playing through Inquisition now and basically just giving everyone ONE chance. 2/3 of these characters need to be forgiven several times to reach a conclusion.
Edit: not a criticism, I enjoyed myself. If anything it’s kind of annoying to have people around in inquisition only because “why not”.
Could someone please tell me how you do the custom heroes thing for Dragon Age Keep?
I second this
You make it in the game. Basically, if you're logged in to the Dragon Age server or whatever, and you're playing on console, your custom character will be transfered to Keep. The warden might have transferring problems (or at least mine did on multiple playthroughs) so what you could do is take a default hero of the right class and gender, take the photo of your custom hero from the Dragon Age files and put it in the picture slot of the right default hero you pick. Make sure you change the name as well, as the default hero will have the default name.
Amazing job guys! Thanks so much! Loved every minute of it. Very helpful.
Alistair would prefer that you saved the mages and isolde :P
Could you make a video about the choices for Dragon Age Inquisition now that they've added it to the keep?
Cheers!
So glad they did this I played the first dragon age long ago on Xbox.
Lol, you guys made me play Origins again as a jerk Warden :)
Absolutely love this video!
Do the smaller decisions here figure into Inquisition at all ? Like if you choose to seduce the elf girl or guy in the Dalish camp in Origins, what does it affect in Inquisition ? Also is there mention of Wynne or Oghren or Sten in DAI ?
+ayf1983 I think they added the small decision to not spoil inquisition, because you see, if they had only the decisions that mattered on the Keep, you'd know what would happen. For instance: Did you do the ritual would obviously mean that Morrigan would have a kid. Did you seduce the elf girl? Well... maybe the elf had a kid as well, and we all have a party! Very ridiculous example, but I hope you understand.
Mogwai! It was like listening to Adam Buxton talking through every decision in Dragon Age, minus the comedy songs!
Merrill the Mogwai
Mogwai! Of course!
what is mogwa?
The pre-transformation gremlin. When they are furry and look like a Furby.
If you are a female human Mage you can meet Cullen in the tower before it goes crazy. And the guy is totally in love with the hero, though he does not want to admit it.
"she really thinks she'll be able to touch that". LOL!
1:24:55 "What are they called before they're gremlins?"
Mogwai.
This was helpful, and hilarious! Thank you ~ ♡
The most important rule of Dragon Age is "Do not deal with demons". Because it never ends well.
thankyou both very much for grinding through this (y)
5)If you donI't give Merril the tool but help her in the final quest to find the demon then she destroys the Eluvian. You have to max out rivalry to get her to destroy the Eluvian.