Duration: 10:42

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With our points allocated, we head over to the meeting. Both King Cailan and Loghain are present, and they’re having a heated argument. Cailan feels it’s his duty to personally fight in the battle, which Loghain thinks is too dangerous. In addition, Cailan’s bringing in troops from Orlais to assist against the darkspawn, which Loghain is strongly opposed to—the Orlesians once occupied the country and he fought a war to drive them out, after all. In both cases, though, the king overrules him and discussion turns to the upcoming battle. The darkspawn army is expected to launch a frontal attack against Ostagar, so Loghain has his personal army hiding from cover outside the fortress. At the key moment, the beacon at the top of the Tower of Ishal is to be lit, signaling Loghain and his men to charge the enemy flank and hopefully trigger a rout. The key element of the plan is the beacon, and Cailan assigns Alistair and our character to light it.

During a final briefing with Duncan, Alistair expresses dismay that we won’t actually get to fight, but we’re bound to our orders. Duncan gives the two of us some last-minute instructions and heads off to join the king. We’re now on our own, and once we leave the king’s camp it’ll trigger a cutscene showing the battle starting. Before doing that, I inspect our equipment and make some changes. We managed to capture a darkspawn staff from the emissary we killed earlier, and I decide to equip our character with that. It’s a bit better than our current staff statistics-wise and every little bit helps. I also give Alistair a helmet we started the game with and give him a bow and arrow as a secondary weapon—that way he has the ability to make ranged attacks should the situation call for it. With that done, I leave the king’s camp, and we see a genuinely epic cutscene marking the start of the fight. The darkspawn army approaches and charges, and our side fights back with fire arrows and a war hound charge. It’s on!

We, of course, aren’t going to be in the thick of the fighting, but we have a job and it’s important. Alistair and our character head across the bridge connecting the king’s area to the eastern part of Ostagar where the Tower of Ishal is, but complications quickly come up. Two soldiers run out to greet us, with dire news. The darkspawn have made a surprise attack on the Tower already, and have succeeded in defeating Loghain’s troops stationed there. The entire tower is now occupied by darkspawn, and our only chance of the beacon being lit is for us to fight our way to the top. It looks like we’ll be doing some heavy fighting after all.