A Whole Lot of Silence and Trousers - Lothering: 3 Kinds of Fight

DRAGON AGE ORIGINS [DAO] STORY/MECHANICS
Content - Robbery/Shakedown, Killing Refugees.  Violence against Sex Workers.  I'm really bad at predicting what I'm going to get to in each post, let alone what parts are going to be triggering.

ROUND 1 - FIGHT! Sooney, Alistair Morrigan and Mr. Bitey get accosted by a group of bandits along a raised road, structure that kind of looks like someone Hi-Lined Roman aqueducts.*  They engage "The Pretty One" (Sooney) in conversation, assuming she's the leader and offer safe passage for a nominal fee of ten silver.  This fee is kind of nominal, technically, and I believe they're as good as their word if your pay them.  I never have, and Sooney isn't about to either.  Fortunately, you can talk your way out of the fight, assuming you have been taking Coercion every time it comes up as a level-up option, like it's your job (and she has).  Unfortunately, if you touch any of their stuff** after you've talked your way out of the fight, it automatically talks you back in.

The fight ends when you've landed what would be a killing blow on the leader.  You go into a cut scene where the remaining bandits beg for you to not beat the XP out of them.  Sooney let them go.  I was feeling magnanimous, and I see Sooney as someone who won't just kill someone she doesn't have to.  The bears later made me regret that choice.  I might have leveled before I met them if I'd killed those bandits.

ROUND 2 - FIGHT! Sooney and the others go into the inn, where a couple of Loghain's men correctly identify them as Wardens, tell them, if they didn't already know, that there's a bounty on Wardens and Loghain wants Sooney and Alistair dead, in specific.  One wonders how he knew they survived.  I'll give it to them as Loghain starting to realize that every decision he'd made up to that point had turned out worse than he could have reasonably been expected to imagine, so two surviving Wardens with a hate on for him was just something he was going to have to assume from now on.  Despite the fact that you get dialogue prompts, here, there's no way to talk yourself out of this one.  But hey, you get backup*** in the form of Leliana, a Chantry lay sister who's going to be joining your party and speaking delusional religious nonsense at you all the way to the top of that big tower in Denerim.****

This one ends as the bandit fight did, with Loghain's men surrendering, and Leliana strenuously persuading you to accept that surrender.  Sooney kind of didn't want them to report back to Loghain that a) they were alive and b) they'd passed through Lothering, but actually talking your way back into that fight is nigh unto "but thou must" territory with Leliana, and Sooney eventually settled on letting them take a warning to Loghain that she and Alistair were, as his clairvoyance had foretold, coming for him.  Then Leliana asked to join, and Sooney, genre savvy enough at this point, to know whither plot lies, accepted.  To which Morrigan, quite reasonably inquired if Sooney had been concussed in the fights.

FINAL ROUND - FIGHT!  Sooney and company (active party + Leliana, - Mr. Bitey) must have wandered into the rough part of Lothering, because up jump a bunch of refugees who really want some sweet Warden bounty.  There's no way to get out of this fight, not even dialogue options.  Cut scene and then rush.  The fight ends when you kill the refugees.  Yep.

You also fight bandits, darkspawn, wolves, spiders and bears, none of which you can really avoid if you are in their area, and which will Benny Hill you all through the village of Lothering (as a bear did to Morrigan) endlessly, once aggroed.*****  There are also fights that I haven't gotten into, like against the Chasind doomsayer.******  I bring up those three above because the first two are there for a reason and the last might... be...?

In the first fight, you're allowed to talk your way out of the fight to show that you can talk your way out of some fights.  And by some, I mean like four.  And only if you maxed out your coercion.*******  Also, that you can choose to spare guys you fight.  I think.  Maybe later on in the game.  I think I remember you can not kill some werewolves.********

In the second fight, it's mostly to get a feel for the character of Leliana, only she really doesn't act that much a pacifist in the rest of the game, and she becomes Darth Fucking Vader by the end of Inquisition.********* Also, I think that making you feel like an asshole for insisting on the deaths of Loghain's men gives them a chance to escape and justify why Evil McJerk hires Hot Bisexual Assassin to come after you.  Not that the inn wasn't full of people who couldn't report the same thing, including the bards that switched to fight music when swords got drawn.**********

The third fight is... I don't know.  Maybe as punishment for not being quieter about being a Warden?  Maybe punishment for revisiting parts of Lothering you've already looted for sparklies when you get lost?  Maybe to GRIMDARK GRIMDARK about how GRIMDARK can convince a desperate group of men to attack a far better armed party and fight to the death?

There's an interesting game mechanic implied in avoiding Loghain's notice, but not used in DAO.   I would love to see the idea actually used somewhere, though; it's something that I think could actually work as the backbone mechanic of an RPG.  You need to be careful and stealthy and leave no witnesses or buy off people in order to avoid official notice, and the more notice you get the more often you get in tough encounters with groups that are annoying to face and give off ever diminishing returns of XP and gear, such that there's no real mechanical benefit to fighting them.  GTA has something similar with the wanted meters, but I think this could actually sing in an RPG, since there would be actual consequences for just causing all sorts of destruction.

Of course, I also want sandbox games like GTA to spawn implacable killers to stalk characters whose players think it's jolly good fun to kill of npc sex workers and other background NPCs just because.

Ones who then erase the game's save files and email the players' mothers.

* They do look like you should be able to walk in them.  You probably even could, but I bet it was a bad idea.

** And of course you will, since everything shiny you encounter goes in your inventory and this is the only time in game that there is any consequence for the rampant larceny you engage in as passed down through the generations from Link.

*** For very poorly equipped values of backup.

**** The capital city, where you fight the archdemon at the end of the game.

***** Aggro (v) To Aggro, Aggro, Aggroes, Aggroing, Aggroed.  1) To activate in pursuit or with violence toward a designated target in the vicinity.  2) To cause an entity to activate in pursuit or with violence toward you upon entering the vicinity.  Sooney aggroed the bear when she found that little refugee boy's dead mum.

****** I don't think I ever have, but I assume you can, since he's standing around howling with a big old battle axe on his back.

******* And Sooney has.

******** But you can't get werewolves in your army without being a massive shitheel :(

********* You can think of Leliana in DAO as wee Annikin, in DA2 as grown up - ish Annikin (and unlike him, she only has 2 minutes screen time tops in DA2) and in DAI as EASY THERE SATAN.

********** Don't think I didn't notice that, you assholes.  Or that I don't appreciate it.