The defences of the new origins on the DA subreddit are hilarious. It's either 'Well, the origins that are clearly trying to frame Rook as a heroic rebel who prioritizes saving the innocent above all else are totally going to give the player the option to roleplay them as more selfish or evil reasonings for them', or 'Well, of course your guy HAS to be a heroic goody-two shoes. Varric wouldn't hire the player if they were evil.'
A) Varric still holds Hawke in high regards even though Hawke can do shit like sell a slave back to his master and take advantage of a traumatized elf to make her their slave, or side with the Templars and watch Meredith execute their sister.
B) It's the fucking end of the world. Varric is pragmatic enough to work with lesser evils for the greater good.
C) No one forced the writers to make the plot hinge on Varric recruiting the Player. Solas is a big deal, you could easily argue why a slew of factions would hire the Player to gun for him, allowing the Player to inadvertently stumble into Varric's mission while chasing their own leads on Solas.
(all 6 origins happens simultaniously, but it is the one you choose, your character that survives. maybe it is divine providence, maybe it is luck or maybe it is full talent that let you survive until Duncan saves you.)
I always how it's such an ominous opening choice in a meta context, your first choice in the game is to decide which one of six people Duncan saves from a terrible fate while the rest are left to be killed/raped/transformed/lobotomized.
As if I needed more reasons to love it, I adore DAO for its origins idea. Nothing annoys me more in cRPGs than meeting all the companions/NPCs with great backstories while my character is blank state that could as well be born yesterday. Origins anchored you to the world and showed a piece of it before you even took your first step on the actual adventure.
It's something I admired about Origins and Kotor 2, how they allow your character enough backstory to give them something to actually talk about with their companions, making it less of a one-sided trauma dump session. Kotor 2 especially excelled in having your character explaining their role in the Mandalorian wars, what they've done, why they did it and how they look back on those decisions.
A Grey Warden "stepped away"?
Remember when Duncan shanked a dude for trying to back out of the Grey Warden initiation ceremony? God, I forgot how pussified the Wardens had become. They're supposed to be a ruthless organisation championing 'Ends justify the means' to the point that they'd willingly recruit scum on death row because their mission is just that important.
ME3 punishes you for doing 'renegade' or pragmatic choices. It provides a DEGREE of morality effecting outcome. That's both unrealistic and defied the fucking point. Your choices don't matter if all the not nice ones lead to bad outcomes...
I swear I remember someone actually calculating all the War Assets you can amass and proving that, prior to the Extended Cut, it was actually impossible to get enough War Assets for any of the endings' 'good' versions, without touching the multiplayer, if you didn't go full paragon throughout the trilogy.
Don't get me started on the game's shitty rewrite of the mythology. The second act completely negates the moral question of the final act. It's the literal opposite of what the Reapers are saying always happens. Which isn't an issue if they'd executed the actual ending the series was planned for back in ME1. But that would have involved actually allowing real choice without moralistically limiting choice.
The ending for ME3 was doomed the moment the writers decided to save it for a monologue in the last five minutes where Shepard just stands there nodding along and taking everything at face value with little to no curiosity. Whether they went with the dark matter idea or the 'Organics will always come into conflict with one another. Making them all cyborgs will somehow fix this.' idea, nothing could save the ending when none of it or it's themes has any real build up in the story (the dark matter problem being briefly hinted at in a side tangent in ME2 does not count as legit build up). An ending should be the culmination of a journey, of themes and questions that have been pervasive in that journey. You don't get to the end of a story and then tell the audience that the story was actually about all this shit that happened off screen and was never mentioned until now.
