I finally beat the game tonight! Spoilers below pictures, so don't read if you don't want anything ruined.
SPOILERS BELOW:
I feel kinda torn about this save file. I let Alistair break up with me after making him king, because I'm not the type of person to be with someone who is married. I'm sure in the game's time, stuff like that isn't frowned upon too much, but I personally would feel wrong letting him cheat on his future wife. That, and I wouldn't be happy being relegated to a "fling" status. If I'm going to be with someone, I want to have a real future with marriage and babies and stuff. I almost thought about going back to re-do the Landsmeet so I could let Anora stay queen and have him stay a GW, but I feel he'll ultimately be the better leader.
I'm the type of person that can get over breakups; I mean, I've been through several in my own relatively short lifetime. The GW and Alistair have only known each other for about a year, so it's not like they've been together for 20 years or anything. I've had relationships of that length in my own past, and I was still able to move on and am now happily married. Ashriel will be able to move on since I'm playing her as myself, basically. She's a strong character that's already been through a lot, and she can accept that it just wasn't meant to be. However, it feels weird ending the game without an active romance. I'm wanting something like
The Ultimate Dragon Age Import to use in DA2 and DAI, so I'm unsure if I want a romanceless file to be that one, know what I mean? But then, at the same time, it sounds like any active romances are only temporary as far as the game's concerned anyway. Zevran and Leliana eventually leave to go do their own thing, Morrigan leaves through the portal (although a male can follow in Witch Hunt), and it sounds like in DA2 your GW just disappears with Alistair left behind.
I dunno. I still have Faeris, my archer who's with Zevran, so I could use her instead I suppose. It's just aggravating to have come so far in the game and have it end kinda merf like that. I mean, it's not a bad ending per se, it's just weird for me. I always have a main squeeze at the end.
Then I also wondered about maybe making a female noble so I can marry Alistair, but then what I hate is having to do the ritual at the end to save us both. That's kinda why our breakup didn't bother me too terribly much; it made that whole situation a lot easier to deal with. Ashriel agreed to the ritual to save Alistair so he could take the throne. And, my character wasn't exactly ready to die, either. She wasn't in a relationship with him anymore, so while it stung, it didn't make me nearly as rabidly furious as it would have otherwise.
I also have thought about starting over with a male character and running off with Leliana, and letting Alistair take the throne.
But the problem with
that is that I'd rather my Super Ultimate Save File be females first (since I'm female), and I'll play a male later.
But then, the thing I kinda like about this file is that it's
not like my other ones. This ended well from an overall standpoint, but both my character and Alistair have had to sacrifice a lot. It almost gives it a feeling that they've both matured quite a bit, as opposed to an ending where they ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after. They came together in a very dark time, were there for each other as friends and lovers and for support, but once the sky cleared, their individual circumstances took them on different paths.
See what I mean? It's kind of a good ending in a way, but kind of sad. I have mixed feelings about it.
Well, Awakenings is relatively short (about 20 hours), so perhaps I'll play through that and see how I feel at the end before I start up DA2.
*sigh*