My favorite companion is Merril, even wound up convincing her to move in with me the second time around.
“You rather remind me of Paival Heien, Varric.” “Do I?” “Well, a bit shorter, and more chest hair, but you tell stories, and he tells stories. Although, most of his don’t start out, ‘No shit, so there I was…’.” “Really. Well I’ll have to give him pointers some time.”

I’m sad Ser Pounce-A-Lot is not around, too.

Fenris, see, throws people off. There’s a few types of characters out there; okay, more than a few. But you have a guy like Varric; he’s interesting without even having to chat him up too much. Then you have the opposite; they’re dull as dishwater no matter what you do. Then there’s guys like Fenris; characters who don’t SEEM that deep, but the more you use them and talk them up/hear them talk, you get to know a LOT more about them. I think because he’s that ‘brutal murdertrain’ archetype he gets lumped in with the ‘dull’ but it’s far from the truth I think.

In other words, some characters have more Tamagotchi in them than others. You need to put into them before they give back. (My mage game has a Carver/Fenris/Varric. Problem is-I love Fenris and Varric so much I can’t bear to leave them out. I just know I’ll never get an elf and dwarf like this again in a fantasy game so I want to take advantage.)

I’m going to disagree on Anders, I think he’s quite an interesting chap. He does have empathy, and a lot of internal conflict but I forgive him a lot because he was so damn nice after my in game mum died, exactly the sort of emotional support you might want from a real love interest. He even sat there and took it when I was saying that mages were just too dangerous, and pointed out that the killer did it because he was nuts, not because he was a mage.

Sadly there wasn’t a dialogue option where you got to cry on his shoulder, but I kind of felt that it would have fitted and that’s — for me — a really interesting emotional response for me to have to an NPC.

All the characters are good though(though Anders….) with cool personalities. Aveline and Izzy have hilarious banter, though Fenris and Varric also have great banter. Playing again with a female mage Hawke and mages are MAD fun. You can build for AoE, some ST, Control, Healy, Shieldy Healy, and all kinds of stuff. Knowing how much you like the support mage archetype(gleaned from many of your blogs) I think you’ll fall in love with it due to it having the most options in the game.

I think I liked this more than DA: O all told; I know I like the cast and how they synergize more, and the overall gameplay as well.

Varric is all kinds of awesome and I am having serious affection for Aveline. I keep trying to make choices that will make her more my friend but I guess wrong half the time

I didn’t really like Anders in Awakening so no real comment about him here except he seems kind of… stereotypical.