Dragon Age II, Part 2: The Qun is pretty deep, you wouldn't understand it.

[Zevox]

As for the gameplay / story separation moments... I don't like them. A good game should show what it tells.

And yet that is not always possible. Gameplay cannot always account for everything that can occur in a story, and vice-versa. The concept of gameplay/story separation is an essential ones for video games in general, simply to make them work.

And this is a matter of taste, of course. The way it was done, however do not work for the majority of players; it is one of the complaints that Bioware officially have said they agree with and will change in DA3: Your choices should matter much more in the end.

A pity, I think, but as I said earlier, I think we all knew that would be the case, because the lack of that in DA2 is most likely due to it having been rushed out the door in barely over a year, not due to Bioware actually changing their MO.

For many of us, the lack of ability to affect the story is rendering playing the game pointless. Why give the illusion of choice when there is none?

Actual answer: as mentioned above, most likely because the game was rushed, and that was one victim of that. Ironic that this should be a plus for me, I suppose.

My personal answer: don't. Simple as that.

Just to respond to a few things that have been brought up:

Zevox, I've noticed that you take a different approach to "blank slate" characters than I do. I like to roleplay a bit with such characters, as do most of my friends when they play video games of that sort. For example, in ME I wanted my Shepard to be based loosely on Captain Piccard (a friend of mine is playing his Shepard like a Commissar from Warhammer). That is to say, he was respectful of sentient life and tried to resolve things with as little bloodshed as possible, but he wasn't afraid to get angry and slap people around when they deserved it. My Hawke was a bit of a smart-ass, but only as a way to cope with the screwed up events of his life. He got serious when the situation called for it. Due to this approach, it's difficult for me to think of the blank-slate characters I play as blank-slates, because I take those slates and carve what I want into them.

That's the way it's intended, of course. For me though, it just comes across as a character that isn't really a character, yet is put into an important position in the story anyway. I want the game to tell a good story centered around interesting and/or enjoyable characters, not pretend that I'm in control of the story when it's impossible by the very nature of the medium for that to be the case. I see attempting to emulate tabletop RPGs in video game ones in that manner as a waste of time which merely holds the stories back.

Zevox