Notes on Dragon Age: Origins #10 — I killed a dragon

I KILLED A DRAGON

I had just finished with killing off the leaders of the Cult of Andraste because those guys were crazy and just jerks. When I went outside afterwards, I hit the gong without even really thinking about it and then OH SHIT THERE’S A DRAGON.

And I killed it. It took some time, and I found myself playing the healer, which is kind of unusual for me, but as the only mage in my normal combat party, it’s kind of how it goes.

At the very end, Alistair leapt into the air and sunk his sword into the dragon’s head. It was, overall, a really well-designed, epic encounter in a game that does most of its work in small pieces. It made me feel like a badass, especially when I did my research after the fact and the wiki advice was “Do not fight the dragon. You’re not ready yet.”

Not ready? Well I guess I better go apologize to that dead dragon for killing it before I was supposed to. NOPE MOVING ON WITH MY BAD SELF

And then after killing the dragon, I had to face “The Gauntlet,” which was actually not as bad as I thought as it was going to be, given that it came after killing a dragon and was called “The Gauntlet.”

Speaking of which, it did strike me as just a bit weird that defeating the dragon led to a drop of full-fledged armor pieces. Dragon Age so far has been really good about tying dropped loot to the particular enemy defeated. Animals drop skin or scales, you’ll generally only get a staff from an enemy mage, and high-level loot from defeated NPCs will generally have something to do with their specific class/role — Tevinter robes from a mage from Tevinter, Warden Commander armor from the possessed commander of Soldier’s Peak.

But a dragon wouldn’t normally wear humanoid armor, right?

My working theory is that the dragon had some sort of malevolent fanny pack carrying the armor which the player discovers upon searching its body.

Either that, or dragons in Dragon Age are marsupials. Big, fiery marsupials with armor in their pouches.

Originally published 5/7/15 on Medium