Golem Hunt

All right, this one will be shorter…

I conclude my journey through Dragon Age: Origins' DLC with The Golems of Amgarrak and Witch Hunt. As I've previously noted/complained, Witch Hunt was the first expansion I did after Origins, only to later discover that it's actually supposed to be the last. That's mildly frustrating on a couple of levels. There's absolutely no in-game guidance I was able to find anywhere that described the order in which you're supposed to handle the expansions; I eventually found a cogent description from a Bioware employee in their forums, but they can't expect everyone to trawl through threads to find this sort of information. It's also a bit weird from a story point of view, since I think they actually did a good job of making the three additional adventures (Awakening, Golems, and Witch Hunt) independent from one another: each of them would refer back to things you did in Origins, but there was virtually no connection between expansions, so story-wise it would make sense to handle them in any term.

This probably wasn't a big deal for people who were religiously buying each new piece of content as it came out, but it's quite annoying for someone like me who specifically bought the Ultimate Edition to take a character through the complete set of games, only to find too late that I'm doing it wrong.

The one factor that slightly cheers me is that, of the three, Witch Hunt was the fastest and easiest to play through. I think my initial play-through was somewhere on the order of three to four hours; that was with a weaker character fresh out of Origins, and I definitely took my time with combat. After beating Golems with my Awakening character, I was at a stat-capped level 35, and more importantly, I had already learned how to best use the new abilities and specializations from Awakening. As a result, I breezed through the game in a bit under two hours, even while watching most of the cut-scenes and dialog.

But, I shall refrain from getting ahead of myself: let's start with Golems. Golems is an unabashed dungeon crawl. There's a bit of story and some new companions, but the focus of the game is clearly on combat; to a lesser extend, it also rewards exploration and problem-solving. I'd say that it probably has even less story than previous Bioware dungeons like Durlag's Tower and Watcher's Keep. It isn't a BAD story, certainly, but it also doesn't break any new ground lore-wise, and is a bit thinner than the meaty plots in Origins and Awakening.

That said, there is something to be said for the intense focus of a dungeon crawl; there's a real sense of claustrophobia and dread here, which I rarely experienced in the more wide-open worlds of the earlier installments. Imagine the section near the end of the Orzammar quest, and extend it for a bit longer, and you'll have an idea of the tone here.

I'd read before that Golems has difficult combat, and boy, were they right! Most of the other games have multiple fights with easier enemies, then periodic tougher fights against bosses. In Golems, almost every single fight you endure will be a challenge. Practically every enemy is a Lieutenant or higher, and it isn't at all unusual to have a fight against multiple Boss-level enemies. (One particularly exciting/nasty battle has THREE bosses, plus additional lieutenants, all of whom hit very hard. That was the only time in any Dragon Age game that I've ever needed to kite.)

I was stat-capped coming into Golems, and I never actually lost a fight, but I had to pay much, much closer attention than I have since very early in Origins. I carefully cycled between AOE approaches, crowd control, and direct damage; in some fights, it worked best to kill off the weakest enemies first and work my way up to the more powerful ones; in other fights, I had to focus on the biggest threats; in still others, I had to keep multiple enemies engaged simultaneously to thwart their ranged or magical attacks. It was nice to not just absent-mindedly run through the same combat rotation over and over again, and instead carefully monitor the battlefield, frequently muttering "Oh, shoot!" and frantically healing my party while adjusting our strategy.

Sadly, while the fights are very entertaining tactically, they were useless from a gaming perspective. Since I had already reached max level before starting the expansion, I couldn't gain any experience from my kills; and since enemies almost always vanish after death, I couldn't even get new equipment, not even for my companions. That was a little frustrating… I haven't done any exploits or anything to get this much experience, and grinding is impossible in Dragon Age anyways, so they should have known that players would be that high, and at least let you gain a few levels in the expansion. Probably not introduce new abilities, just let you fill out your tree even more.

I shudder to think what these fights would have been like if I wasn't a mage, though. Actually, that's kind of a problem for both expansions: in Witch Hunt, you're kind of screwed if you aren't a rogue (since there are a fair number of locked chests and doors with no means of entry), and in Golems, you'd probably screwed if you aren't a mage. This is SLIGHTLY mitigated by one character who has some limited mage-like abilities, most notably healing and revival, but certainly no substitute for the utility of a dedicated mage. If you AREN'T a mage, I hope you imported a character who was carrying tons of poultices and potions. You'll need them.

Speaking of importing with items… it's weird. You keep all the items that were in your inventory, but none of the items your companions were wearing. (Unless your companion rejoins your party, but that only happens with one person in Awakening). And, while Awakening had a ton of stores selling a variety of very powerful items, Golems has absolutely no shops, and Witch Hunt has just one, which sells a couple of useful items, but no weapons or armor. So, it's basically impossible to significantly upgrade your new companions' equipment, UNLESS you happened to be carrying some high-level gear in your unequipped inventory when you beat the previous game or expansion. I imagine that makes it hard to balance the game's difficulty.

Oh: I don't think I addressed this in my Awakening recap, but gold is VERY useful. I initially kind of regretted burning all my gold to get experience from the Arl's army, since there's so much great high-level expensive gear in Awakening. By the end, though, I was able to get everything I wanted to buy, and even bring along several hundred gold into Golems. Golems is weird, since you can't buy anything, and most enemies don't drop any items, other than the occasional random trash like Frozen Lightning. In Witch Hunt, when I got to the store, I knew I would never have any use again for my precious gold, so I went on a shopping spree, snapping up the awesome new runes and the Master poultices and potions.

Combat in Witch Hunt is infinitely easier than Golems. It's much more similar to the fights in Origins and Awakening, and there are fewer of them in general. The final battle is the only one that's particularly hard (though another fight might be tough if your main character isn't a healer), and even it paled in comparison to almost any of the fights in Golems.

Witch Hunt is definitely more story-oriented than Golems; you learn a chunk of new stuff about the world, get to tease out some interesting historical mysteries, and (most importantly) briefly reconnect with one of your old companions. I don't think that there are technically any new environments - you revisit some of the same locations from Origins and Awakening, and even when the maps are new, they're clearly recycled textures from other existing areas - but I did enjoy having the travel component, and at least a token nod to non-linearity. (Let's call it bi-linear.)

Hmm…. I was gonna talk about the plot under "mega spoilers", but honestly there isn't THAT much to say, particularly in comparison to Awakening. Instead, I'm doing my standard screenshot annotation, which talks through the story and my opinions on events. In comparison with the last two albums, these are positively svelte: Golems had a paucity of cut-scenes and thus few things that felt worth grabbing, while Witch Hunt has a bit more but still far less than Awakening. As always, enormous spoilers are scattered throughout the albums.

I doubt that I really need to give any buying recommendations; the Origins Ultimate Edition is already so cheap that anyone who is curious about these games will likely pick it up with all the expansions, and if you like Origins, you're going to play all of these. If I were somehow forced to rank the quality of the DLCs, in order of enjoyment, it would probably look something like this, from most impressive to least:

• Awakening (insanely good, probably as much content as everything else combined)
• Warden's Keep (excellent in-game benefits, offset by some unfortunate bugs; terrific lore that foreshadows some of the themes in Awakening)
• Leliana's Song (largely driven by my appreciation for the title character)
• Witch Hunt (provides some tantalizing context for events in Origin)
• Stone Prisoner (love the village, don't care too much for the companion but do really like the lore it reveals)
• Return to Ostagar (short and mildly interesting)
• Golems of Amgarrak (fantastic fights, but would have loved more stories or puzzles)
• Darkspawn Chronicles (cool concept, but makes me feel ill)

To be clear: I do recommend playing all of them at least once, even Darkspawn Chronicles; there isn't a bad game in the bunch. And now I have a comprehensive character who has experienced everything Origins has to offer, ready to seed the creation of a new adventure in Dragon Age 2, should I ever choose to do so!

Sketchish

This has been my best Sketchfest experience yet, in large part because I've done more events than in previous years. The last weekend rounded out with two very different programs: Army of Darkness and Celebrity Autobiography.

Army of Darkness was held at the Castro Theatre. This is an awesome movie theatre of the old-school design: it seats over 1400 people, and is absolutely gorgeous, with ornate walls, an elaborate ceiling with a grand chandelier, and a Wurlitzer organ that ascends before the program to play for our amusement. Even with the big capacity, the event sold out more than a week before the program.

The main feature was a conversation between Bruce Campbell, the star of Army of Darkness and the best B-movie actor of his generation, and possibly of all time; and Patton Oswalt, noted comedian. Patton revealed that he first heard of Bruce Campbell in a Fangoria review of Bruce and Sam Raimi's first movie, Evil Dead. He immediately went to the video store to rent the movie, and was transfixed by what he saw. It was the most terrifying movie that he'd seen in his life, but he kept thinking, "Who is this handsome, handsome man, covered in blood and screaming?" Fast forward thirty years, and Patton landed a recurring role on Burn Notice, a cable drama co-starring Campbell. Patton had to overcome his horror-fanboyish-mode, so he asked if he could see Bruce. He went into the trailer, and thought "Who is this handsome, handsome man... covered in blood and screaming?"

Bruce wore an incredible white suit. Patton "was dressed like Bruce's groundskeeper," to use his own words. They sat on two chairs in front of the screen: Bruce would frequently spring to his feet and stride forward to directly address the audience, perhaps gesticulating as he made his point. Patton lounged insouciantly in his own chair; he was technically interviewing Bruce, but there was a lot of back-and-forth, and Patton seemed largely content to sit back and let Bruce continue when he got going on one of his rants.

Their interplay was really fun. Bruce had a much more acidic wit than I had expected, which was hilarious: he described all the awful aspects of making the movies, the ignominies of life on the road, the unsettlingly banal conversations one enters whilst attending a fan convention. I felt like he was probably playing a character, a sort of parody of himself, but that he also had a deep well of material to draw on. He unabashedly preferred interacting with the female members of the audience, cheerfully insulted everyone, and insulted himself as well. Patton would drop in with periodic quips or one-liners or insults of his own, or would run from the set in tears when Bruce said something hurtful. "Payton," Bruce said. "It's... Patton" Patton whispered, before arising and fleeing the scene of his embarrassment. Seizing the opportunity, Bruce jumped over into Patton's vacated seat, adopted his lounging pose, and did a brief but hilarious impression of Patton's horror-nerd interviewing style.

Patton described how incredible it had been to watch Evil Dead 2: "So you basically took the original movie, which is arguably the darkest, scariest movie of all time... and you made a parody of your own movie as the sequel. I don't think that's ever been done before!" Bruce leaped on that, ranting about the inanity of the situation: Crimewave had bombed ("Nobody here saw it!"), and so they had to do Evil Dead 2 to make money. But they couldn't get the rights to the footage from their own movie, so they had to re-shoot the flashback scenes. And on and on. I actually found this incredibly informative, just because Evil Dead 2 is such a confusing movie to watch: it starts off seeming like a sequel to Evil Dead 1, but at parts feels like a remake instead, and obviously the tone is very different.

After maybe a half-hour or so of conversation, they took questions from the audience. First, they asked if anyone had a cool Evil Dead tattoo to show. A pretty woman (of course!) came up to show off hers, a skull on her upper arm. "How much long did that take?" asked Bruce. "Eight hours," she said. "And how much did it cost?" "Five hundred dollars." The crowd gasped, then applauded. Bruce dug in his pockets, and pulled out a bill. "Here: that's such a great tattoo, I want to pay back one percent of what it cost you." She hugged him, and descended "the dangerous, OSHA-condemned stairs". Patton stage-whispered, "And, if anyone had a tattoo of a cake, I might have a Ben Franklin for you."

Someone yelled out something about Karo syrup, prompting Bruce to go on yet another entertaining rant about how awful the filming of Evil Dead was. He described how, after a night of shooting on location, he wasn't able to take off his costume because the caked syrup had bonded it to his skin. So, he had to sit in the back of a pickup truck while Sam and the rest of the crew drove back into town. Of course, it was Sunday morning, so the people coming out of church stopped and stared at this bloody, wounded, ghastly horror of a man coming through their streets. When he got back to the hotel, he stepped into the warm shower with all his clothes still on to try and soften the syrup so he could change his clothes without ripping his skin open. So, yeah... thanks for bringing up such great memories!

At one point, Patton asked, "Have there ever been moments when you've had to do something in a film, and you know that it's going to suck while you're shooting - it'll be painful, or difficult, or whatever - but you know that it's going to be awesome in the final movie?" Bruce responding, ".... yes, in, like, every movie I've ever done." He explained that the movies that are hard to make are the ones that end up being incredible. "And, when you're able to relax on the set and joke around with your friend Patton, well, you probably aren't making something wonderful that will keep people excited for years."

There were tons of other anecdotes and stuff that came up... Sam Raimi's car, the forward to "If Chins Could Kill," the un-sexiness of chainsaw hands, the tiny fraction of money that Bruce makes as a producer of Evil Dead ("If you see that movie a thousand times, I'll make twenty cents"), the difference between a cult movie and a mainstream movie ("A mainstream movie, fifty thousand people see once; a cult movie, one person watches fifty thousand times"), doing effects in pre-ILM days, the tiny (but growing) number of women at horror conventions, the relative attractiveness of various females in the audience, and on and on. At last, they said their goodbyes, dropped the lights, and brought up the movie.

Oh! I almost forgot: before Patton or Bruce arrived, the theater showed the new red-band trailer for the remake of The Evil Dead. (Hyperlinks deliberately omitted.) I have to confess that I couldn't watch it, and did the think where my head faced the screen but my eyes look down. I'm actually pretty ambivalent about horror movies in general... some of the best movies I've ever seen have been horror movies (The Shining, Psycho, The Haunting, Silence of the Lambs, Dawn of the Dead, The Orphanage), but I have absolutely zero interest in slasher films, or torture porn, or 95% of the other horror movies that come out. (Which is part of why I love stuff like Tim Brayton's Summer of Blood, which lets me learn about horror movies in an entertaining way without needing to actually watch them.)

So... yeah. Army of Darkness itself was really fun. I don't think I've seen the movie for nearly a decade, but I could remember every single fight scene, every single one-liner (and, heck the movie is basically a nonstop string of one-liners). Army of Darkness is my favorite of the trilogy: I don't want to ever see the original Evil Dead again, I would be willing to watch Evil Dead 2 if viewing with others, and I would be glad to keep watching Army of Darkness. While the original Evil Dead was pure horror, and Evil Dead 2 primarily a horror movie with a surprisingly strong comedy component, Army of Darkness feels primarily like an adventure movie, sort of a swords-and-sorcery mini-epic, with minor elements of horror and comedy tossed in.

What was really fun, though, was seeing it in this sort of environment, with over a thousand other hard-core fans of the movie. There wasn't a lot of audience participation - this isn't something like Rocky Horror Picture Show - but everyone knew the movie, everyone knew its beats, and seemed positively giddy at enjoying it with other people, laughing and cheering at all the appropriate parts. (It was particularly fun to see the scene where Big Ash was chasing Little Ash; early in the program, Bruce brought up a "large-breasted" woman from the audience to act out the shooting of this scene, which Sam Raimi had insisted he perform backwards.)

So, that was awesome! I hadn't had any idea what to expect, and was very happy with how it went.

Next, Sunday night was the finale of Sketchfest. We got a large group together to see Celebrity Autobiography. This is a program that's been running for about a decade; it has shown in LA, and on Broadway, and they've done a movie of it. During that time, the material regularly changes and the cast rotates frequently based on who's available. For the San Francisco show, they had a wonderful lineup of female comedians, including Rachel Dratch, Janeane Garofalo, Maria Bamford, and Laraine Newman. They were scheduled to have Fred Willard as well, but unfortunately he'd had to fly back to Los Angeles earlier in the day; they got a replacement who did an incredibly impressive job, especially considering that he probably had had very little time to prepare.

Oh, yeah: the concept behind the show is simple, brilliant, and hilarious: funny comedians read from the autobiographies written by celebrities (or their publicists). We heard dozens, including people like Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Ivana Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nancy Reagan, and Mr. T. In the early part of the program, a single person would read a large chunk of an autobiography: my favorite was probably Rachel Dratch who did an amazing job with Ethel Merman's autobiography.

Everything was great, and I was impressed at how differently each person approached the same concept. It seemed like the SNL alums were particularly good at doing impressions: Dratch's Merman used dramatic gestures and her distinctive speaking cadences to totally sell you on the character; Newman's Cher was a dead-on impersonation of her voice (and the hair worked well, too!). Other times, they would just let the material work for itself. When Janeane Garofalo read from Britney Spear's "Crossroads" diary, she didn't try to imitate Britney's voice, but delivered it with the perky vacuousness we connect with her. And, more so than other performers, Janeane enjoyed giving little cues that showed when it was okay to mock the subject.

Similarly, sometimes comedy was made by fully inhabiting and enhancing the absolutely bonkers nature of the material: Miley Cyrus writing about getting her period while she wasn't carrying any tampons, or football player "The Boz" writing about how much he enjoys inflicting pain on other people. ("It isn't that I want to mess up someone's knee or something like that. I would never want that to happen. I just want to hit them so hard that, when they're back in the huddle, they don't know what city they're in any more.") Other times, they used intonation to create new meaning from the text, or even invert it. A selection of passages from Tiger Woods that's talking about putting becomes something extremely dirty when matched with a certain reading style and our new knowledge of his marital infidelity. And the Cher passages are meant to talk about the joys of eating well, but Newman brilliantly undercuts the end of each sentence, making it sound as though Cher is resignedly, halfheartedly trying to convince herself about how delicious vegetables can be.

After the single-reader performances were over, they moved to the celebrity mashups. These were organized by theme: sport (Schwarzenegger, Woods, Boz, etc.); Mother's Day (Nancy Reagan, Ivana Trump, Kardashian, etc.); living well (Cher, Gwyneth Paltrow, Celine Dion [Maria Bamford with an awesome French accent], etc.); catching your first big break in acting (Mr. T, George Takei, Beyonce, Elaine Page, etc.).

The finale was a tour-de-force that described the same story as seen from three separate autobiographies: the tale of the Richard Burton / Elizabeth Taylor love triangle. They gave it the phenomenal title "Rashomon and On and On." This was incredible: it has all the funny elements of the other Celebrity Autobiography projects, but the concept of revisiting the same story from multiple (highly flawed and skewed!) perspectives felt very fresh, and they put a lot of work into the staging of this. Most of the rest of the show had the actors at their microphones; there was much more movement here, with people receding to the background or walking to the foreground (or, in Richard Burton's case, staggering forward). Pretty much everyone was involved in this, too: I initially thought that Janeane wasn't in it, but at a couple of points she would dart onto the stage, deliver a brief piece of dialog from a random character ("Say, Debbie doesn't know, does she?"), then leap back off again.

It was wonderful. The crowd loved it!

The show was excellent. The actors were all wonderful, across the board. If I had to pick one favorite, it would probably be Rachel Dratch: she did such a good job, and could bring so much to the performance with even little things like a sudden dart of her eyes or a perfectly placed pause. Plus the incongruity of watching this tiny woman read the words of Mr. T was wonderful.

So, that was Sketchfest 2013! I can't wait to see what next year brings us!

SAUNDERS SAUNDERS SAUNDERS

George Saunders, possibly my favorite currently-working short-story writer (with periodic competition from Haruki Murakami), recently came through San Francisco to promote his new book, Tenth of December. When I first saw the news on his Facebook page, I was initially delighted, then slightly aghast. "They're holding it in Book Passage?" I thought. "There's no way they'll be able to fit everyone in there!"

Anticipation built in the lead-up to the event. Tenth of December has received glowing praise from some major outlets, including the New York Times, which proclaimed it "the best book you'll read this year." My brother went to his talk at Lincoln Hall in Chicago back in January, and reported that it was packed with throngs of fans. That should have tipped me off to arrive extra-early to the event, but for whatever reason I left work around my normal time, and arrived at Book Passage around a quarter to six.

It was already clearly bursting with people. Enough were standing just inside the door that getting inside would be a challenge. And, standing patiently just outside, was... George Saunders! He was speaking with a woman who seemed to be helping coordinate the event - perhaps a publicist or agent. He seemed calm, amused, and curious, gently smiling at people nearby while they discussed whatever they were talking about. Not wanting to shove past the guest of honor, I hung back for a bit until they moved on, then wormed my way to the counter and picked up a copy of Tenth of December. While the clerk was ringing it up, George worked his way back past me. Gesturing towards the variety of his books on display, he said, "I recommend you buy one of each of these." Everyone laughed. "For your own best interest, of course," he added, still shyly smiling. "Nothing wrong with self-promotion," the woman added.

I made myself as skinny as I could and endured the flow of human traffic while waiting for the event to start. Fortunately, Saunders seems to attract fans like himself: kind, patient people who accept discomfort with good grace. I didn't hear anyone complain or see anyone leave before the event was over. There's a certain sort of sacramental quality to author events, and a small element of pain can help heighten the experience.

Another woman who may be an owner or manager of the store welcomed everyone and thanked us for coming out and supporting independent bookstores. Saunders was standing nearby, and I noticed that he started off a round of applause for those independent bookstores. Neat! She gave a glowing introduction, recapping the recent praise from the Times, NPR, and various other critics and outlets; she also talked about Saunders' influence on a new generation of writers and his admirable personal qualities, then welcomed him to the microphone to the loud sound of clapping. People who had arrived even later than me were standing outside, and they had thoughtfully hooked up a sound system so everyone could hear. (Thanks to the glass walls, at least some of them were hopefully able to see him as well.)

Saunders thanked everyone for coming: I think he said that this was the first time he'd been to San Francisco since his first book tour (which, if my miniscule research is correct, would have been over 15 years ago), and that he appreciates how supportive the city has been of his books. He also showed some wonderful, self-deprecating humor. "Let's all make a pact to not read another book all year. It will save Joel Lovell some embarrassment."

He said that, since so many people were standing, he would pick a shorter reading, and then answer questions. His reading was a diary excerpt from The Semplica-Girl Diaries.

Tenth of December is a collection of short stories, most of which I've read previously in The New Yorker and a few of which have appeared in other magazines (including McSweeney's Quarterly Concern!). I'm pretty sure that Semplica-Girl is the most recent, since it was just published in the New Yorker last fall. It's an incredible story. Like many of Saunders' stories, it seems to occupy a near-future time, where recognizable trends in contemporary American life have metastasized into something something slightly more horrifying. Also like some of his recent stories, it strikes this really fascinating and challenging balance, where you strongly empathize with a character while (hopefully) rejecting their worldview. (See also the excellent Victory Lap, another story that destroyed me when I first read it in the New Yorker. In Victory Lap, we see a young boy who has accepted the values system enforced by his parents; it isn't an evil system, but one that's probably harmful. The boy is confronted with an awful situation, and every thing about his ingrained sense of morality tells him to walk away from it. He somehow overcomes it, finding within himself a spark of pure morality that tells him that he needs to act. What's so brilliant about Saunders' story is that, within the context of the tale, the boy thinks that he is sinning, thinks that he is doing the wrong thing, which makes his actions all the more brave. I want to praise him and weep for him at the same time.)

Anyways! He read the excerpt, after prefacing it briefly: he explained that this is an excerpt from a diary, and that "when I say 'equals,' in the text there's an actual equals sign there. It's funny if you read it. Trust me." He launched into the story, in which the narrator writes about the sudden, surprising death of a co-worker, the strange and disturbing (and inadvertently funny) funeral service, and the way it made him freshly appreciative of his own family life, his wife and his children.

I hate to admit it, but I actually don't remember reading this. I'm not sure if this was a passage that was edited out of the New Yorker version, or if the later events in the story crowded this entry out of my mind. I think I do recall the co-worker's death and how it creates an impulse to do something nice for his family, but most of the other elements in the story (the priest, the brother's eulogy) seemed original. Maybe it was Saunders' wonderful reading voice that made it seem fresh.

There's a lot of humor in that passage, leavened with sadness, and there were appreciative chuckles throughout the reading. When he was done, he asked for any questions. When nobody immediately raised their hand, he commented, "I have to say, I've been doing this for a while, and I've noticed that, invariably, the first person to ask a question is the person with the highest sexual energy in the room." Everyone laughed. An older woman faked out asking a question, but a younger man did it for real. ("Congratulations," Saunders said.)

As is my wont, I'll write up the questions and his responses, to the best of my recollection.

"I understand that you're a practicing Buddhist. Feel free to not answer this if you don't want to, but I was wondering how it has affected your work?"

Saunders has been a student of Nyingma Buddhism for many years. He used to talk about it a lot, but as he got further along, he realized that you're not supposed to discuss it. So, he can't directly address it, but will talk around the question.

Religion is important to him, and has been important to his writing. He grew up Catholic and attended a Catholic school. "And Catholic, in Chicago, is the most Catholic you can get!" While in school, the nuns would make the children go through the Stations of the Cross. It was interesting, because they would direct the children to vividly imagine being participants in the story, and specifically, being Jesus's persecuters. They would tell the children to imagine that they were a Roman soldier, and try to imagine what they were thinking, and how they would have felt about what they were doing. Saunders thinks that this kind of sacramental activity opens up a space in childrens' minds, which can be very valuable later in life.

"You grew up on the Southwest Side of Chicago Chicago. I read that you had recently gone back and visited the old neighborhood. What do you think you got from the experience of growing up in that part of the city?"

"Is your name Brian?" It turns out that George recognized the questioner: apparently, they had attended elementary school together! That's pretty incredible. (I would end up a few people behind Brian in the signing line, and overheard him say that he had lost track of Saunders, and only recently started reading about him and realized that he had become an author.) To the question: Saunders got a lot out of their neighborhood. It always struck him as a Russian neighborhood, and was one that valued quippy humor: if you could tell a good joke, and make people laugh, then the adults would take you into your circle. So, from an early age, he learned that there was value in amusing people.

"How do you strike a balance between writing based off of your life experiences, and drawing from literature?"

There ended up being a LOT of questions about writing, and even when the question wasn't directly about writing, Saunders often smoothly segued into some fascinating insight. This was unusual - many authors are famously reluctant to talk about the process of writing, and loathe questions like "Where do you get your ideas" - yet it made sense the more I thought about it. After all, Saunders is, by profession, a creative writing teacher, and he has spent decades talking and thinking about how to write good stories. At one point, he asked the audience, "How many people here are writers?" before immediately interrupting himself with, "I bet everyone here is a writer." He quoted someone (I wish I could remember who!) as saying, "America has finally reached the critical moment in its history when the number of writers equals the number of readers."

He said that, for him, life experience is the key. You need to have something to say, something that can energize your writing. At Syracuse, he often sees that when young people come into the program directly from college, they're often very bright but don't have a whole lot of experiences from the real world to draw on; because of this, they usually fall back on technique. In contrast, the people who come into the program after working for a few years are just slightly more grizzled, and seem to have some extra direction and energy that they can put into their work.

But, one of the best novels that he's read in years is from a very young man (again, I wish I could remember the name!), so it isn't as if you need to have "gone out into the world" to write something wonderful. As with many of Saunders' observations, he pointed out that he can describe what has worked for him in the past, but cautions that other people may find they work differently.

"How do you know when to stop revising a story?"

In general, he thinks that people should revise more than they do. People generally don't like doing it, but they should continue to practice revising, and they will get better as they do it. You should be merciless. He's reminded of something a musician/composer friend of his said: "When you make a new piece of music, you should immediately go and listen to one of your musical idols. Like Bob Dylan or whoever you most admire. Think about how your music compares to this. You'll think that it sucks. And that's important: it proves that you still have taste! But, you'll start asking yourself why it sucks, and how to make it better. It's a painful process, but absolutely necessary if you want to be a good writer."

This may also have been when he gave an example of tightening up a sentence. It starts with, "Bob entered the room and sat down on the blue couch." Okay. A little wordy. What does the word "down" add to the sentence? It's a bit redundant with "sat". So now, it's "Bob entered the room and sat on the blue couch." A little better. Is it important that Bob entered the room? Does it give anything new to the story? No, not really. So let's cut it out. "Bob sat on the blue couch." This sentence is working better now. Can we make it any better? Well, why is the couch blue? Am I going to do anything with that? No? Well, let's cut it out. "Bob sat on the couch." (Long pause.) Do we really need the couch? Is it integral to the story? (Long pause.) "Bob." Well, all that we have left is a noun. But it's a good noun!

"What is your favorite story that you've written?"

He claims to not be very fond of any of them, though he's grateful that people enjoy them.  He named one exception, and I'm kicking myself for not remembering which one, but he says that he didn't understand the story while he was writing it, and still doesn't understand it now, and because of that it's still interesting to him.

"You mentioned that you had discovered that you could make your stories better by setting them in a theme park. How did you come up with that idea?"

Incredibly enough, it was from a dream. He had written a story that wasn't quite working - there was something there, but he couldn't figure out how to make it good. Then, in this dream, he was in a living room, and looking out the window. He saw a button, and pressed it; suddenly, all of the objects in the room began floating up, as if they had escaped from gravity. It was a wondrous sight. Then, all these other people came into the room and started touching the objects. He got irritated, and said, "Sir! Please don't touch those!" And then he woke up. That vivid sensation he got in his dream was something he decided to put into his story, and from then on it was a tool he could draw on.

"'Adams' is one of my favorite stories. I was wondering if you could say a little about how you wrote it?"

It kind of came out during the time that George W Bush was making the case for the Iraq was by claiming that Iraq had WMDs. Like a lot of good liberals, Saunders thought, "No... no, they don't!" But he couldn't be totally sure. But he was pretty sure that they didn't, and it seemed like a lousy case for starting a war. So, "Adams" started as a piece that he wrote to try and work through the political issues he was thinking about. Over time, it transformed into something different, but that's where it started.

"As a bookseller, I've noticed that a lot of people are connecting with your work, and what's interesting is that, they often read it as poetry. Is that something deliberate that you've done?"

George is very gratified to hear that. In a way, it is what he's trying to do. When he's writing, he's very focused on language, and very focused on trying to make the words as strong they can, which is something that poetry tries to do. However, he points out that he's often working with deliberately ugly language: technical speak, bureaucratic talk, commercials. So, it may be a kind of poetry, but it's the ugliest kind of poetry.

"I heard that [a female author's name - argh, why do I write these things when I don't take notes!] taught with you at Syracuse. I was wondering whether you learned anything from her?"

Yes! They only worked together briefly, and that was eight years ago, but she was very influential, and he still thinks often about what she taught him. One thing in particular had to do with the intersection of psychology and literature. By analyzing the brains of people while reading or listening, scientists have been able to demonstrate that people have similar reactions to poems, short stories, and jokes: in all cases, the instant that you read that final period, your brain immediately jumps back to the very start of the poem, story, or joke, and rapidly replays it, analyzing it for efficiency. There's something biological that makes us evaluate the piece, and determine how necessary it was; people will know immediately after reading it whether it had unnecessary digressions, or whether something early on proved to be important later. That insight has definitely affected the way he writes.

"How important do you think it is for you to develop your own voice?"

(Warning: this paragraph contains profanity.) Everyone seems to go through the same process. When you first start writing, there's probably some writer you admire most. Maybe it's Margaret Atwood. You decide that you want to be like Margaret Atwood, and start scaling that Margaret Atwood mountain. You climb higher and higher, all excited - "I'm going to be a great writer, like her!" But, the stuff you write is shit. You keep trying to get higher, but get discouraged. "Whenever I try to write like Margaret Atwood, all I can write is shit!" Dejected, you come back down from the mountain. "I guess I can't become a great writer by imitating Atwood... how about Toni Morrison?" And then you try climbing the Toni Morrison mountain. Sooner or later, you realize that you can't compare with any of these great mountains of writers. All you make is shit. But... but it's your shit. So, you pile your shit into a little mound, and stick a flag in it that says "George." It's small, and it's awful, but nobody else is on your mountain. So, over time, you start piling on more shit, and gradually turn your mound into a hill.

(Incidentally: these written words are in no way any sort of substitute for Saunders' speaking. I can't capture his funny phrases, facial expressions, all the things that make him such a wonderful speaker. Sorry. If you ever have the opportunity to see him in person, I highly recommend it!)

So: finding your unique voice is crucial. It's hard, but if you're going to write anything worth writing, you need to learn how to write like yourself. (I won't recap the well-reported and very interesting tale of Saunders' own idolization of Hemingway as a young wannabe writer.)

"When I was in college, my professor was also a good liberal guy, but he didn't care much for Kurt Vonnegut. He specifically disliked Vonnegut's fatalism, like when he writes 'So it goes.' I was wondering if you have any thoughts about that opinion?"

Saunders said that that's a question he'll need to think about, and he doesn't have an immediate answer to it. And that's fine. More generally, he says, he finds that one of the most powerful forces you can get in writing is being able to keep two contradictory ideas in your mind without making a decision about which one is right. Doing this can lead you to do some very interesting things in your writing.

As an example, he gave an experience he'd had when he agreed to write about the Mexican-American border for a travel magazine. Being the good liberal he is, he already knew the answer: open up the border! So he confidently accepted the job, figuring, I'll just head down there, maybe grab a couple of facts to support my case, and then just type it up. Well, once he got there, he was confronted with stories that immediately shook his convictions. On his very first day, he spoke with a pastor who told him about a family that tried to cross the border into Texas. They were pursued by Mexican criminals into the States. The criminals murdered the father and raped the daughter. The mother was already pregnant, and died when giving childbirth. Well. That was all clearly horrifying. So, he had a new position: "Close the border! Lock it down!" The very next day, he met a man who had come over illegally decades ago, and had literally built a seven-room house out of cinderblocks. He had a family and was living a successful life. What message do you take from that? "Open up the border! Give better opportunities to more people!" At the end of his trip, he was far more confused about the issue than he was when he started. And, he thinks, that led him to write a much better and more interesting piece.

So, going back to the original question: he doesn't have a good answer about how to reconcile an admiration of Vonnegut with a disapproval of his fatalism... but reconciliation may not be necessary, and perhaps not even desirable.

(A side, personal note: I think this is a really interesting topic. Not necessarily the question as phrased, but just the idea about how Vonnegut and Saunders might relate to one another. I enjoy both authors a great deal, and I think they both have a lot in common: both came from the midwest, had technical backgrounds, wrote from a strong moral compass that came from their own experiences, yet wrote in interesting, creative settings that seem tinged by science-fiction while still reading as literary. And I also think they're two of the most impressive humanists of the past century. Vonnegut is more explicitly humanist than Saunders, but I think both of them have, at the core of their writing, a deep love of man. Both are often described as satirical, yet I don't think either of them truly are... they see the ugliness that people are capable of, and it distresses them all the more because they also see the value of each person's life. They can use dark humor to make their points in shocking and effective ways. All that said, I would never confuse one of their stories for the other's: their styles are very different from one another, as is the way they construct their plots and how they depict their characters. I'm also intrigued by the idea that Vonnegut is a fatalist. I wouldn't use that word to describe him. I tend to take "So it goes" as a kind of quiet prayer for the sad things that have happened. The past is past; we can mourn it, but can't change it. I feel like so much of Vonnegut's writing is actually stressing the importance of action, of being good citizens of the planet, of showing compassion for our brothers and sisters. It's an obligation that he frequently depicts being broken, but that remains no less important for us to try and honor. "There's only one rule that I know of, babies - God damn it, you've got to be kind.")

"Your characters have such interesting voices. Do you find them getting into your head, or spilling into your own life?"

Saunders has always enjoyed coming up with voices, even in a literal sense. When he was in school, he was on the basketball team. He never actually played basketball, just sat on the bench. He and one of his friends would make fun of players on the other team: they came up with nicknames, and would invent whole back-stories for them, and give a unique funny voice to each opponent. For example, there was one team with older kids, including one kid with facial hair, and facial hair on his facial hair. They called him Mister Mustache, and would crack wise whenever he went past the bench. Eventually, their coach told them that they sounded fey and to knock it off. So, he stopped doing those voices. But it isn't totally different from what he does now: he actually has a particular sound in his head for each of his characters, and if he can get that sound entertaining enough, then it will come through in his writing.

Unlike some other writers, he isn't into Method Writing or something of that sort. Other people will say something like, "I create my characters, and then they speak to me and tell me what to do." Nope. His characters are strictly one-way creations, and never talk back. And, once he's done with a story, he puts the voice away.

Finally, one anecdote from him that may have been attached to one of the above questions, or might have come from another one that I've forgotten:

I'd read in other contexts about his evolution from an Ayn Rand-worshipping young idealistic libertarian into his current liberal humanist self. I had NOT heard, though, that at one point he was in a band! I think he said that he played guitar. Another person in the band knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew someone who was in the Eagles... so obviously they were going to be huge. At one point, he had a very specific thought that ended up motivating him to change his course in life: he saw himself on a college campus. It was a very idealized college campus, with, like, men wearing sweaters with a single large letter on them. But he just got this really powerful idea that, "I'm going to go to college, and become an intellectual." While he now despises Ayn Rand ("Well, not her personally, because she's dead. I just think that her philosophy has caused so much harm."), he loved her novel since it was the first novel he'd ever read, and from her he got this ambition to become an intellectual writer, which set him on the course that has led to today.


I'm sure there were many more questions that I've forgotten, and I already feel bad about not capturing his tone correctly in his responses to the ones I did remember. He was very generous with his time and each questioner, and, as the owner/manager/whoever said at the end of questions, it felt like we'd all just completed a seminar on writing. Very cool!

The whole program, including reading and questions, ran for almost exactly one hour, after which he signed books. I always stick around for these things, and I always end up near the end of the line - not intentionally, I just either am standing in the wrong place, or move to the wrong area when the main program ends, or else am just not aggressive enough in entering the line. It was a pleasant line, but pretty long - I think I was there for about ninety minutes before I reached the front. It's all good, though. The reason it took so long was because he really engaged with each person in the line. It was pretty incredible - he shook hands with almost everyone (which might not sound like a big deal, but in my experience is actually very rare at author events - most people are understandably apprehensive about catching a cold from a stranger) and chatted for a while with each person: about his books, or about their lives, or whatever. I saw him give Brian a hug, which was awesome. George seems like one of the kindest people I've ever met in my life.

As usual, I was very self-conscious about not taking too much of his time. I gladly shook his hand and thanked him for sticking around. He asked if I was a writer. "Um, not really... well, I've done some technical writing," I stammered, then blurted out something about how much I'd enjoyed CommComm. That was the first short story of his that I'd ever read, and it made a big impression on me. He listened graciously, then said, "Well, you know, I used to be a technical writer, and we did a lot of work with the Department of Defense, back when they were closing military bases." He talked about how CommComm was inspired in part by his work at that time. "Wow, so a lot of that bureaucratic language and doublespeak came from your own experiences there!" I exclaimed. We talked for just a little more before I took my leave.

I'd been daydreaming a little about writing while I was waiting in line. I've always loved writing stories, going all the way back to "War with Venus" in the second grade. It's always been an ambition of mine, but never anything I've pursued with any diligence, and it's been years since the last time I worked on any fiction. The last piece I was even vaguely proud of was "Empty," a short story I wrote for a creative writing course back in college. Reflecting over the things Saunders had said, I realized that my own mountains that I had been attempting to climb at that time were the mountains of Thomas Pynchon, Daniel Orozco, and Robert Anton Wilson. Those are all writers who I particularly enjoyed (and enjoy!), and I was trying to recreate the wonderful chilly strangeness of their works, and became discouraged when I couldn't. I'm pretty sure that I'll never become a writer of fiction, and kind of doubt that I will give it a serious try, but I feel like if I ever do, it will be thanks to the wonderful guidance that George Saunders so generously imparted on this night, delivering an impromptu master's seminar in the process of creating a story.

Awoke

I fear I'll need to put Shadow of the Colossus on indefinite hold. It's a gorgeous game, with one of the most amazing, wide-open worlds I've ever seen, and I love the concept (a game with nothing but epic boss fights), but in practice, it has proven extremely frustrating. The boss fights are essentially puzzles, but they're puzzles that also require precise timing and aim to solve. I get very annoyed when I know exactly what I need to do, then fail in my repeated attempts to do that thing. The game scans as a strategic experience, but requires fine-tuned reflexes to progress, and the rewards so far just haven't been worth the irritation.

So instead I'm returning to the fertile ground of Dragon Age. This has been quite wonderful - after a very long period spent essentially retreading old ground (albeit with a different character and a very different tactical experience), I'm finally moving into new territory, experiencing for the first time the story's extension beyond the finale of Origins. I've been very impressed at what I've seen, and I think that largely has to do with my lowered expectations. While Origins was released to great praise, its DLC generally received middling reviews. There was a great deal of righteous grumbling over the day-one DLC that set a poor tone. Later entries generally received favorable reactions, but were often described as poor values for the price. (Which nicely sums up my own contemporary feelings about the Mass Effect: Omega DLC: a great game, but hard to justify at that price.)

Awakening, in particular, inspired a bit of a backlash: priced at $30, it was close to the cost of a new game, and may have been one of the more expensive expansions ever. So people compared it to other full games, and found it wanting: a shorter story than Origins, no romances. Where most people were expecting a full game and were disappointed, my reaction has been the opposite: I'd essentially gotten it "for free" in the Ultimate edition, and was expecting a slightly-longer version of other DLCs like Leliana's Song or Darkspawn Chronicles. Instead, I've been delighted to see that it's, well, actually more like a whole new game. There are a bunch of new companions, a major new quest line (with a lot of mystery in its arc), and a huge number of side-quests. Not to mention all the new art! Totally new environments, some cool effects (a marshy area that starts out gloomy, and becomes even darker later when rain starts to fall), very detailed character models (I like the darker-skinned look to Amaranthine citizens, which contrasts with the English pallor of much of Ferelden), and mostly new monsters.

Not to mention all the new systems, which I had first encountered in my anachronistic run at Witch Hunt but came to appreciate in Awakening. I touched on this a bit in my earlier post, but the new abilities and skills open up a lot of new options for your characters. If you wanted to, you could build a Rogue as a tank. Two new specializations are available for each class, and you'll get an extra specialization available to spend at level 22; the new specializations are intriguing without feeling unbalanced. For lore reasons, I was delighted to be able to make Kiriyon a Keeper, and thus connect with her Elven heritage.

One note on combat: I'd earlier noticed a more dynamic flow of combat in Witch Hunt. That's also the case in Awakening, but in addition to that style of combat (where you keep running forward through further rooms of enemies), there are also other types of fights where reinforcements arrive. This adds another interesting layer of strategy, especially for mage characters like myself. If I unload all my spells early, I can take down the first enemy before reinforcements arrive, which can help us avoid getting swarmed. However, if I use up all my magic early, I might not have as many Area-of-Effect spells available that could be used against groups of enemies later in the encounter. From a design perspective, I like it when enemies arrive to the battlefield organically (wolves running down from the hills, skeletons climbing up from the earth). However, there's also an unpleasant tendency to spawn enemies directly behind you, from an area you just cleared. I can accept some of this if the lore supports it (like Shrieks), but when it happens too much it begins to feel artificial. I think I now have a better understanding of where Dragon Age 2's system of "waves of enemies materializing" came from, and can now see the good instincts that prompted it, while also seeing the line they crossed that made it such a hated type of battle.

But, man oh man, what I wouldn't give for a wider or taller quickbar. It isn't too bad for my rogues or warriors; even at nearly level 30, they can fit on all their abilities and craft skills, and still have a good number of slots left over. My spell casters, though, have been full for a long time now, and any time I learn a new spell, I need to figure out what old spell I'll get rid of. (Yeah, I know that technically they're all still available from the Abilities window, but in practice, if I don't see it in my quickbar, I don't remember that it exists.) I think there's a mod for an extended quickbar, but I haven't bothered installing it yet.

Oh! Speaking of mods - for a while, it really bummed me that the No Helmet Rulebook didn't work in Awakening, and I was rudely reminded of the fact that all mage caps exist somewhere on a continuum between hideous and comical. Fortunately, I found an old post that explained how to make this mod (or any other Origins mod) work in Awakening, and after a quick trip to my text editor, I had it working again. Another mod I had some belated trouble with was JB3 Textures - they looked great, for the most part, but I noticed that in some of the new Awakening maps (notably Amaranthine and the Blackmarsh) the ground texture was completely black. After some more forum-hunting, I found that this could be resolved by removing some of the JB3 files (specifically the ones ending in _pam), and after that, the default textures showed right back up. Once again, I'm pretty impressed at how… modular DA's mods are, so they can support this kind of tweaking when something goes wrong.

Okay, I think I'm finally ready to start talking about plot now!

MINI SPOILERS (for Awakening, Mega for Origin)

It took me a while to realize that Awakening wasn't just another DLC. The first mission throws you right into combat almost immediately, and while there are other NPCs, it's a very action-oriented affair. The new companions seemed interesting and well-designed, but at first glance they don't appear much more fleshed-out than the couple I had briefly traveled with during Witch Hunt.

The complexity of the game started to dawn on me after I had rescued the keep from the invaders. I really, REALLY like what they did with the story here: Bioware has managed to pull off the rare feat of letting you make a character one of the most powerful and influential people in the world… and then remain in that status. Even the incredible Baldur's Gate series, which let you raise a character up to near godlike status, would start each new expansion by kicking you out of the place where you had become famous and making you start over again (socially, if not in skill).

In contrast, your role at the start of Awakening is clear: you are the hero of Ferelden, a close confidante of the monarch, famous enough that people either recognize you on sight, or else don't believe you when you claim your identity. Not only that, but you're entering a unique situation: in my game, Queen Anora has given me ownership of Arl Howe's ancestral lands. (Of course, the details of this will play out differently depending on your own choices; at least one bit of dialog early in my game referred to 'The King', which made me worried that the game wouldn't recognize that I had put Anora alone on the throne, but fortunately that was an isolated mistake. Also, apparently if you create a new Warden just for the expansion, you have a new origin: an Orlesian. It would be interesting to re-play as that sometime to see how it affects others' reaction to you.) This makes you essentially of an equal status with a Fereldan Arl, with all that implies: you own the lands, and are responsible for making major decisions: how to allocate your limited number of soldiers, whether to invest personal gold in upgrading your keep's defenses, and, coolest of all, navigating the intrigues of your court. I suppose that some players might be bored at the prospect of focusing on making merchants happy, keeping open supply lines, and other high-level objectives; but personally, I'm delighted to have an RPG that does this, and it's some of the most fun I've had in a while. (It isn't entirely unprecedented, even for Bioware - there are some nice parallels between the de'Arnise keep in Baldur's Gate 2 with your experiences as an Arl in Awakening).

This situation also has some interesting, resonant implications for the politics and history of Thedas. The Grey Wardens have historically eschewed any political position in Ferelden, largely because of the disastrous experiences of Sophia Dryden at Warden's Peak. However, as we have heard before, that isn't an intrinsic obligation of Wardens generally; for example, the heart of the Grey Warden order in Weisshaupt (!!) is obsessively involved with power struggles in the Anderfels. So this is a big opportunity for you, and, if you do well, it could have significant implications on how the order is perceived in the future, and what kind of influence it can wield.

Let's talk about companions!

I liked Mhairi, and wished she would have stuck around for longer. But, since her death roughly coincided with the moment I realized that I was playing a very long expansion and not a short DLC, at least I hadn't invested a lot of gifts or anything into her. Anyways. I like the wide range of opinions people have of your warden, and it seems appropriate that at least one person would be frankly in awe of them.

Anders definitely grew on me throughout the game. I didn't like him much from the beginning - that stupid earring of his, plus his casualness and glib demeanor, all annoyed me. But, I kept him in my party since I like mages, and over time I came to like him more. I should have remembered that Bioware tends to do complex characters, and if someone seems like a self-involved prick, there's probably something more going on; in his case, I started to get that he had more layers once I realized that he didn't support the Libertarians. And I REALLY enjoyed his interactions with Ser Pounce-a-Lot, even if it did seem like a particularly egregious example of the game stealing from George R. R. Martin. That said, as soon as I had a choice for another mage in my party, I dropped Anders without too much worry (though I'd already gotten his Affection up to nearly 100, and did enjoy my later talks with him).

Similarly, I initially only took Nathaniel because I needed a rogue; it was annoying to play through the first few maps and find multiple chests that my party couldn't unlock. I thought the game did a good job with his evolution, and gave a pretty realistic portrayal of a man starting with absolute certainty, maintaining it against reasonable evidence presented by a stranger/enemy, and then having that certainty abruptly torn away by a few words from a trusted family member. His ongoing reflection over the incident was surprisingly thoughtful and introspective, and I was a bit surprised to realize that, ultimately, he turned out to be one of the most "good" members of my party (a true Neutral Good type, I would argue), at least judging from his approval of decisions I made.

Oghren was funny, as always, though hardly my favorite of the original companions. I can see why they picked him, though. The romanceable characters probably didn't make sense, considering that they weren't adding any new romances for new players. Wynne already has a role to play. The Secret Companion may be dead. Shale is DLC-specific. That leaves Sten, Oghren, and Dog. Of the bunch, Oghren is the most entertaining. I kept him in my party for longer than I would have liked; since I had spec'd him as a damage-dealing character, my party was very squishy after Mhairi died, but fortunately he has tons of Constitution, so I could generally burn down my enemies before he died. Anyways. He has some of the most fun banter of the party. It's a lot of fun to get an inside (but very unique) perspective on the Grey Wardens. I don't think I got to experience everything in his story line - at one point, his lady-love showed up, and the game suggested that he would have more to say later, but that story line didn't develop any further before the game ended. I think I might have needed to journey more with him, or maybe raise his Approval higher; I think he was just a little over 50 by the end of the game, unlike most other companions who I was able to get up to 90+.

I was delighted to get Justice, mostly because it made my life much less stressful to have a real tank again. (I'd compensated a tiny bit by making Nathaniel a Ranger and having him constantly keep around a Giant Bear, but while the Bear is described as a tank, it's very bad at actually drawing aggro from your enemies.) His background is really interesting, too… he seemed much more like a character from Planescape: Torment than like a typical Dragon Age / Baldur's Gate character. The idea of him occupying a body with its own history was intriguing as well. He was a bit of a hard-ass - I guess he's basically the personification of Lawful Neutral - but we generally got along well. His relationship with Kristoff's former life (and former wife!) was fascinating.

I'd avoided any spoilers about Awakening, but accidentally stumbled across brief mentions of some of the companions. This actually made me kind of happy; it was too bad to miss the surprise, but on the plus side, I was able to prioritizing visiting the places where I was likely to meet them. This let me acquire them relatively early (although still not early - this is a VERY long game!), which (a) let me have them in my party for longer and for more events, and (b) gave me more guidance over how to level them. (For some reason, which I don't really understand, the game seems to automatically assign all stat points when you acquire a new character, and also assigns many, but not all, skill and ability points. Its decisions tend to be very poor in general, and borderline catastrophic if you intend to use a character in a specialized role like a tank or a healer.)

Anyways: since I'm all about the elf women, after I did the bare minimum of stuff in Vigil's Keep and finished all the early plot in Amaranthine (and retrieved my essential tank from the Blackmarsh), I headed to Wending Wood to meet Velanna. I was predisposed to like her, and did so despite the deliberate provocations the game throws at you. Her build ended up being pretty much identical to Kiriyon, since she started as a Keeper and I needed to give her Spirit Healer if I wanted to use her Revival and Cleansing Aura spells; however, I eschewed making her a Blood Mage, which seemed quite out of character, and instead made her a Battlemage (more for the stat bonuses than the spells). She's very interesting-looking, too… not just different from Kiriyon, but also from the other Dalish I've met, like Lanaya the First or my dear Shianni. Velanna is less serene, less smooth, more agitated, somehow sharper-looking (in the sense of pointy, not [just] intelligence). Her personality matches her looks: she's prickly, and one of the more difficult members to get along with, since she'll respond negatively to any attempts at flattery. It pays off, though, and once you start gaining more insights into her past, she becomes one of the most interesting companions.

Not my favorite, though. That role is reserved for Sigrun. (Incidentally: why does the game give you all but one of your permanent male companions up front, and require journeying for the ladies? That doesn't seem very fair.) She has the best personality of the group, and combines a cheerful disposition with wide-eyed wonder at the glories of the surface with an implacable ferocity towards darkspawn. She doesn't even hate darkspawn with the same fervor as, say, Justice; she seems more duty-driven than anything. Killing Darkspawn is her job and her main purpose in life, while enjoying company and trinkets is her hobby. I do kind of wish now that Seberin had had a chance to meet her. Given their shared background coming up through Dust Town and undergoing a journey from thief to Grey Warden, I think they would have gotten along great.

One thing that I did not love about Sigrun was her initial build. I badly wanted to make her my main Rogue, but the primary purpose of a rogue is to detect traps and pick locks, and she sucked at both of those things. Thank goodness for the Manual of Focus! I hadn't thought to buy one in advance, so I suffered through the chasm with her before returning to the Keep to pick one up (and finally springing on one for Kiriyon as well, just so she could shift her Skills away from the Herbalism and Tactics she'd burned them on in DA:O and into the infinitely more relevant mana- and health-boosting skills from Awakening). Sigrun's makeover was more extreme: I loved the dual-wielding thing, so kept all those abilities, but reapportioned to give her the crucial Device Mastery skills. I also gave her a much-needed revamp of attributes. Seriously, why is the AI SO BAD at allocating this stuff? I've never gotten a high-level character with sensible allocation of attribute points. She had an absurd amount dumped into Strength and almost nothing in Cunning; granted, that fits her persona well, but made her almost useless as a rogue. I dialed back her Strength to 25 (I wish now that I'd brought it back even further, but at the time I was thinking she might wear Medium armor), gave a chunk to Willpower, and divided most of the rest between Cunning and Dexterity. Amusingly, since I hadn't yet unlocked the Legionnaire ability, she wasn't able to reclaim that specialization, but I quite like how she turned out with Assassin, Duelist, and Bard. By the end of the game she was equipped in a set of Trickster armor (wanted to give her Blackblade, but apparently there's a bug that keeps the final two pieces of armor from dropping) and dual-wielding some insanely powerful daggers.

Oh, yeah, let's talk about tactics a little…

Anders and Velanna were pure healers, used almost exactly like Wynne in my main Origins campaign. They would toss in an Arcane Bolt if Heal, Regeneration, and Rejuvenate were all on cooldown. Justice was my tank, and besides the standard Threaten/Taunt skills, he also made full use of Grievous Insult; I was interested in Aura of the Stalwart Defender, but acquired it late and didn't put it in his main rotation. Nathaniel was an archer who I mostly built like Leliana. He suffered from the same archer AI problems as she had; when enemies got close, he would endlessly switch weapon sets until I took control and manually moved him away. I also gave him Bard and Ranger. Bard is a very useful specialization since it cheaply gives mana and stamina regen to your party. His Summon Bear helped my tanking a little until I recruited Justice; after I had Justice, he switched over to Summon Spider, which wasn't super-effective but seemed to help a little with damage. Finally, Kiriyon had a vast array of deadly spells at her disposal, and she tended to focus on debuffing damage-over-time spells, while occasionally pitching in with healing when Velanna was getting overworked. I found the Sleep/Waking Nightmare combo a little less useful in this game than in Origins. However, I fell into ecstatic love with the Keeper tree. I generally avoid AOE spells since most of them (with the notable exception of Sleep) have friendly-fire. The Keeper tree (ha!), though, lets you do AOE centered on your caster that only affects enemies. And it can REALLY hurt them; I found that a single blast of Thornblades could instantly kill a whole swarm of weak enemies; Nature's Vengeance could finish off all enemies lower than Elite. This proved particularly useful for bosses with summons, since Kiriyon could get in close, root into place, then clear the field so the rest of the party could concentrate on the Big Bad. Kiriyon also discovered the awesome power of the Mana Clash spell, which she learned near the end of her time in Origins but never put into use until late in Awakening. There are some insanely powerful spellcasting bosses in Awakening who can be one-shot killed with Mana Clash. Kiriyon now holds my damage record with over 5000 points of damage in a single casting.

Back to the topic of useless skills: I like the idea of crafting, but after two full (and long!) play-throughs of the game, I have yet to actually do any significant crafting. The tradeoff simply isn't worth it for me: stuff like Combat Training is just too valuable to sacrifice; Rogues get more skills to play with, but they also need to invest more in things like Traps and Stealing. In retrospect, what I should have done is selected some characters who I didn't plan on making a key part of my party, and then dumped their skill points into crafting. From what I can tell, some very high-level items are only craftable; for example, I never got a Master Lyrium Potion, and throughout the entire game I only found three Armor runes. I do hope that future games give you avenues to craft without directly sacrificing your character's tactical usefulness; it looks like a good system, and I'd like to experience more of it.

There's a ton more to cover, so I'll just hop around randomly and make observations.

Returning to the Fade ruled! As I've previously noted, the Fade is one of my favorite parts of the original game. I just love the cool look and surreal design of the place; every once in a while I remind myself to just stop and take a careful look around, and I'm never disappointed; there's always something bizarre and delightful hidden in plain sight. And, from a gameplay perspective, it's awesome to once again have access to Essence fountains to permanently boost stats.

I LOVED the political aspects of your rule. Making tough calls about desertion, and managing treacherous banns, and deciding how to allocate your limited number of solders made for painful trade-offs. More so than in Origins, I felt like there wasn't a "perfect" path that would lead to the "best" outcome, so I had to weigh different values and decide what was most important. (Mercy is great, but is it worth the risk of weakening your army? Should you honor the obligations of your office impartially, or reward those who have supported you and punish those who did not?) I would have really enjoyed having a couple more of these situations, but everything it presented was very well-done.

The game also presents the dynamic world very well. I felt like a lot of Origins was about exploring the lore: you gradually learn about the composition of the world, and how it works; who lives where and how they feel about each other. Awakening starts shaking things up a bit, challenging what you've already learned about the Darkspawn. It's cool to have a mythos established to the point where you can make meaningful and interesting changes within that mythos. (In contrast, the Elder Scrolls games actually have an extremely complex and well-thought-out mythology, but it's highly static. Each game has the same Daedric princes and gods, and they act similarly throughout the centuries over which Elder Scrolls games take place. Similarly, Khajit always act like Khajit, and Nords always act like Nords, and so on. That isn't necessarily bad, but I strongly prefer the world of Dragon Age, where entire nations' characters can seem to shift over time, much as they do in our world.)

Conversations in the game were awesome. The banters were very well-written, and really showed off the differences in personalities between the companions; interactions between Sigrun and Velanna were particularly wonderful, and I also enjoyed the tense relationship between the prickly Velanna and the implacable Justice. You couldn't just chat with companions in the hall the same way you could chat with companions in camp, which initially bothered me, but I now feel is OK - it becomes very obvious now when a companion actually has something new to say, so you don't start conversations just to immediately end them. One thing that seems new in this game, and that I really enjoyed, was environmental conversations. For example, if you have Velanna in your party in the Vigil's Keep courtyard, you can click on the statue of Andraste, which touches off an intriguing conversation about her surprising admiration for the prophet. I returned to the Wending Wood late in the game, to hunt down the final missing silk and sylvanwood; I then noticed a tree that was newly clickable, and hadn't been before, and this time touched off a great discussion with Sigrun about the wonderful smells of the surface. It's totally moments like that which make me love those games so much. Story, and character, and reflection. It keeps me going.

One very minor complaint: I wish NPCs wouldn't say "sir" when addressing a female Warden. I noticed this near the end of Origins, and it happens a lot in Awakening. I now think that it might be supported by the fiction: they might be saying "Ser", which could be a non-gender-specific title. And actually, from peeking at the wiki, it does like like there are some female Sers out there. It doesn't sound right, though, particularly after I got used to Shepard being referred to as Ma'am in Mass Effect. Regardless, Kiriyon is not a knight, she is a mage, and the proper form of address (particularly in Awakening) should be "lady".

Now, for the ending! It's time for some

MEGA SPOILERS

Boy oh boy, did I love the dynamic of the Amaranthine mission, when you need to decide who to bring with you and who to leave behind. It combined some of the elements of the rescue mission in DA:O with the suicide mission of ME2. I shamelessly brought along my most skilled teammates, who also happened to be my favorite characters: Sigrun (I would have brought her anyways, but I couldn't say "no" after she requested to come, anyways), Velanna, and Justice. I liked how Anders reacts favorably to being left behind… his comment is something like, "Awwww, I don't get to come along on the suicide mission?"

At Amaranthine, I decided to press on and clear the town, despite EVERYONE encouraging me to return to the Keep. I'd made all the investments I could in the Keep - paid for wall repair from my own pocket, found granite for new fortifications, kept the mad dwarf in bomb supplies, secured iron weapons and silverite mail for my soldiers - and I was optimistic that they'd hold without me. I was actually kind of expecting for the game to switch back to that party for the attack, similarly to the Battle of Denerim in DA:O's climax. That didn't happen, and I actually had a mini-heart-attack late in the game when I checked my Codex and saw that the companions' entries had all been updated: Oghren died defending Vigil's Keep, Nathaniel reclaimed Howe's honor by sacrificing his life defending their Keep, Anders was swarmed by darkspawn and overwhelmed while trying to defend the Keep… gulp!

During the actual battle of Amaranthine, though, I had a blast and stuck to my self-imposed goal of keeping all allies alive. This is a very intense battle that's simultaneously long-running and fast-paced: you come across groups of guards engaged with darkspawn, and whenever you clear one group, you can usually see another set of threatened guards just up ahead, with only occasional pauses to catch your breath. Kiriyon and Velanna worked overtime casting Heal, Regneration, and Lifeward on all the distant blue-circled guards; Kiriyon was able to occasionally contribute directly to a fight, usually either via a Sleep / Waking Nightmare combo on a group of enemies, or something like Crushing Prison to incapacitate an Emissary. I'm almost certain that I didn't lose a single guard in the entire fight.

Once again, I was giddily embarrassed at the enormous affection that the little animated computer people show. Running out of Amaranthine towards my next goal, while they clapped and cheered, was simultaneously corny and awesome.

The fight against the dragon in the Boneyard was AWESOME. The mechanics weren't too frustrating, and it was an incredibly powerful single opponent. Sigrun acquitted herself excellently in this fight; I typically just let her AI run itself, but in big boss battles like this one, I check to make sure that she is in backstab position. Justice is a threat-acquiring machine, so Velanna was able to keep him healthy single-handedly while Sigrun and Kiriyon burned down the dragon. Sigrun's Mark of Death helped soften it up a little, and otherwise she rotated through a set of Duelist abilities, filling in with backstabs whenever her stamina dropped low or was waiting for a cool down. Kiriyon kept up the debuffs of Vulnerability Hex, Misdirection Hex, and Death Hex, along with the DoTs of Crushing Prison and Curse of Mortality. Otherwise, she used ranged damage spells (Arcane Bolt, targeted Fireballs, Improved Drain, Bloody Grasp). The animation for killing the dragon is awesome. (Yeah, it's the same as in Origins, but so what? It's still awesome!)

The hardest choice of the entire game was probably the Architect's proposal: help him bring free will and sentience to the Darkspawn, in the hopes of ending the cycle of blights. What made this choice so difficult for me was not knowing the outcome. If, say, I was dealing with my noble duties, I generally had a fair idea of what my choice's consequences would be (conscripting a thief into the army would antagonize merchants but boost my military and reputation, for example). With this one, though, everything would depend on how the Darkspawn, as a whole, would act in the future. Would they establish a separate society and live by themselves? Would they be content to do so underground, or would they seek to coexist on the surface? Would they continue to abduct women to transform into broodmothers? Perhaps most pressingly: would the darkspawn who turned sentient but remained "evil" be more effective than the mindless darkspawn of old? My greatest hope would be that I would help create a new race, one that could eventually live alongside elves and dwarves and men; my greatest fear was that I would transform the world's greatest menace into an even more potent menace, one with the intelligence and brutality and sheer numbers to kill all other life.

I think that Seberin would have taken the Architect's side. Seberin was extremely curious, always wanted to see every side of an issue, and enjoyed creating little pockets of chaos so long as they didn't clearly threaten the good. Kiriyon, though, is primarily devoted to the prevention of suffering. Although the promise of a world free from Blights is compelling, she couldn't stand the thought that her failure to act might bring about a far worse future, one with constant war rather than period blights. And while blights are awful, every one has eventually been defeated; who knows what enlightened darkspawn might accomplish?

I'm still conflicted, even days after making the choice. There are weird resonances with the events of the most recent Doctor Who episode I watched (Daleks in Manhattan), as well as the crucial choices regarding the Geth in Mass Effect 2 and 3. Did Kiriyon save the world? Or did she commit genocide? I usually eventually convince myself that I made the right choice, but this one still haunts me.

The fight itself was interesting; he knocked out Kiriyon's mana before she could use Mana Clash on him, so it ended up being a more physical fight than I expected. He fell relatively easily. The Mother herself was a fairly challenging fight; due to her position, she's impossible to flank. I stayed rooted with "One with Nature" near the Mother for nearly the entire fight, and was able to take out the tentacles and the shockingly large army of childer that arrives halfway through the battle, while Justice and Sigrun focused on fighting the Mother.

The aftermath was very cool. I was delighted to see that the battle-ending animation showed Kiriyon blasting the final boss with her magical powers, rather than incongruously picking up a bladed weapon as at the end of Origins. Afterwards, there weren't the same awesome cut-scenes that I got at the end of Origins, but the slideshow type thing went on for even longer than Origins' did, which was cool and gave a great way to show off the ramifications of your actions. (I think that the ME3 team borrowed this for their Extended Cut.) I was relieved to read that, contrary to the entries in the Codex, all of my companions did survive the attack on Vigil's Keep, and even became heroes in the process. The rest of the stories played out to my satisfaction. I was particularly delighted to read that Amaranthine had suffered less than expected in the initial assault, which retroactively justified my decision to stay. It was a little dispiriting to read that the blights continued, but so be it. Last but not least, I was particularly happy to read the bit about Kiriyon and Leliana reuniting and adventuring. I know she couldn't be in this expansion, but it means a lot to me for the game to continue to honor that relationship.

END MEGA SPOILERS

I had initially planned to wait until I'd finished all of Origins DLC before writing up this post, but Awakening proved to be massive enough that it justifies this entry on its own. I've also collated the requisite gallery of screenshots from this playthrough; as usual, these are filled to the brim with spoilers and should not be viewed by anyone who wishes to remain surprised, or who has better things to do with their time than look through an overlong, uncurated dump of another person's experiences playing a video game.

Next up will be the Golems of Amgarrak, which I hear is quite difficult. I'll probably stop there and recap that and Witch Hunt. And after that - dare I say it - I might, just might, start playing Dragon Age II.