Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
Perhaps I'm just a cynic on this matter (I certainly am on plenty of others), but I write off such setup of the main character as an inherent part of Bioware's approach to their main characters, and something better off totally ignored. The main character is never the worthwhile part of a Bioware game for me - everyone else is.
This sort of view would be fine... if this were a traditional Bioware narrative. Hawke is certainly not a blank slate and she's certainly not simply an avatar of the player. The entire narrative revolves around Hawke's personal story; Her "rise to power" as the game's promotional materials so often advertise. The 3 acts (the deep roads expedition, the qunari crisis, and the start of the mage-templar war), the story of Hawke's family (which I would argue is the real main plot of DA2, and not the 3 acts), and even the companions are all framed in their relationship to her. Flaws in Hawke's character arc are flaws in DA2's narrative as a whole, because she is Dragon Age 2.

That Hawke's character simply does not work as a protagonist is a fatal flaw that cannot be ignored.