This Is Why I Need A Spreadsheet

Today I finished running my latest character through Trespasser, which means that I have created THIRTY DRAGON AGE PROTAGONISTS. That is really a lot. (I mean, one largely exists as a theoretical possibility in the Keep and another as a Keep worldstate and a cameo in Inquisition. But they're baked into a worldstate that includes a real Inquisitor, so I count them anyway.)

So far I have made fifteen humans, six dwarves, six elves and three qunari. Eleven warriors, eight mages, nine rogues. Sixteen female characters and fourteen male. Nine Heroes of Ferelden, three Orlesian Commanders, nine Hawkes and nine Inquisitors. I have smooched all seventeen love interests, plus Dairren and Iona, Teli AND Mardy on the same night, Gorrim, Bella and Kaitlyn, Gheyna, Jethan and many inhabitants of both the Blooming Rose and the Pearl including a couple of nugs. I would have smooched Scout Harding, too, but the game does not let you get that far. One of these days I will make a female Dalish who loves Tamlen and someone who sleeps with that one lady in Josephine's quest just so I can say that somewhere, in some universe, one of my protagonists has snogged everyone. (Except Cammen, I guess. Not touching that with a ten foot poll.) As of today I've beaten every fight on Nightmare, and have every achievement but one. (My desire to get all achievements is fundamentally incompatible with my desire to play DA2 on Nightmare so friendly fire stays on. I guess there are people out there good enough to get through a whole act without anyone falling in battle on Nightmare, but I am not one of those people. The Origins achievement for playing the whole game without the main character falling unconscious was so much easier.)

So far this has all taken me ... somewhere north of two thousand hours, I think? I've spent nine hundred in Inquisition alone, and I know DAO took me around eighty the first time I played. (After all these years I can finish DAO, Awakening and all the DLC in less than sixty, but that's because I die a lot less and don't read the codex entries any more because I know them off by heart.) I guess some people would feel like that was wasted time, but the truth is I enjoyed almost every one of those two thousand hours immensely and can think of few things I'd have been preferred to be doing. It's certainly been a big part of my life these last (almost) ten years.

I am already antsy at the idea of lasting until DA4 without making a new character, but I am sort of out of worldstate ideas at this point. I guess I could make another Mahariel, Tabris or Surana or maybe an Aeducan who makes it to the end of the game alive, or friendmance Anders or Isabela, but at this point I have seen most of the content and pretty much every scenario I'm really interested in.

I do have a theoretical Perfect World State in mind, but I feel like I at least need to know a hell of a lot more about #The Dread Wolf Rises before I commit to that, and I may even need to wait until I've played it. Just for starters: if I don't know what the race options are or even if there are any, how can I choose what race the Inquisitor should be??? (I mean, obviously the Warden should be a dwarf, because the dwarf origins are the best ones and if you play as Brosca you save them from an even worse fate than what happens to the other origin stories. Also, you get to be a Paragon, dwarves are the best, Q.E.D.)