I just don’t care much for Sebastian. The other rogues are more fun and interesting characters and compared to Shale in Origins he doesn’t fit into the narrative very well at all. When it came to his added dilemma at the end of the game I really didn’t care about how he’d react.
I don't even remember this guy's name or anything about him but he was one of my favourite companions in Dragon Age 2. This is only because all the companions in Dragon Age 2 suck, except for the redhead girl.
Divisive new companion who in any case complements the main party with a unique perspective and decent if short storyline.
I can't believe I don't get at least a little kiss during the whole sebastian romance <3
i love the idea of sebastian, i just wish he had been given the care that other characters got from the writers
I enjoyed having Sebastian in the party and found his perspective as a Chantry character helpful in giving that conflict some weight, but he's poorly integrated into the game. Hawke is sitting there wondering why he couldn't be bothered to show up to the love interest scene.
While Sebastian is a decent character and his story is interesting enough, he should have been in the base game
For a long while, I considered Zaeed to be the worst of Bioware's companion DLCs, but after finally finishing Sebastian Vael's questlines, I'm now retracting that sentiment. At least Zaeed has a bit of a personality beyond his initial archetype unlike Sebastian who doesn't really feel like he's grown one way or another, and at least his one quest does everything necessary with an indicative moment of character growth for both you and him, compared to the three separate ones Sebastian hands you in each arc that doesn't necessary reach a concrete endstate.
Really, Exiled Prince is a microcosm of all the issues plaguing DA2. His quests revolve around basic dungeon crawling of (majorly) samey environments that (majorly) take too long to finish, his backstory - an evangelical Chantry follower due to the rather belligerent upstart he had as a Starkhaven royal - and the arc that's proposed from this doesn't come into full fruition, the lore and worldbuilding that he and the Chantry introduces never materialize into anything substantial within the context of the main narrative, and the Friendship-Rivalry points regarding these spokes are harder to nab due to complications arising if they happen to contradict with the personality and mindset you established upon Hawke (eg: my Hawke is mainly a mage advocate due to his upbringing and only rebuts if absolutely necessary, yet feels as if the Chantry is not the best place for Sebastian and wants to push him back to Starkhaven; his Act 3 quest is able to give a grand total of 45 extra Rivalry points, but only if I kept besmirching the Mages), and considering you can't even properly recruit him until the start of Act 2, that makes fully cementing him as a Friend or Rival that much harder. This is the second time I had to use console commands to increase the side I wanted, but at least in the other case that was just me being lazy and not wanting to redo hours of progress to gather a measly 5 points before the cutoff point, and doing so got me to better appreciate that companion's ordeal which made it worth the cheat; here I felt like I could've just left the bars as they were, and would've lost absolutely nothing. All of this would simply be a bitter pill to swallow if he was, at the very least, a decent combatant, but even in these terms he falls short. He's the ugly middle of Isabela's DPS hit-and-run approach as well as Varric's jack-of-trades strength/support archery - the same style Sebastian has, btw - meaning I never felt inclined to bring him along unless I absolutely had to.
I read on the DA Wiki that this was supposed to feature Nathaniel Howe, and that the narrative would've revolved around these two, but this had to be dropped due to contingencies regarding his potential passing in the Awakening expansion. I checked its sourced link, and while I've yet to find anything else to back this up, the fact this was released day-and-date with the base game (yea this means this is another awful case of that practice), knowing that ME2 and later ME3 would have similar change of plans, and Nathaniel's Act 3 cameo appearance feeling rather phoned in while occupying space with another, vaguely related Act 2 questline if he didn't make it after Awakening's conclusion, I can't exactly say I'm surprised something like this was theorized to begin with. Would this have helped him? Who knows, but at least it would've been nice to have a bit of chewing on if everything else was this unexciting, aside from the super brief cameo Leliana had at the tailend anyway. Nowadays, on PC, you're able to get every DLC of this game alongside every new purchase, so I can't say it's too frustrating of a deal, but at the same time the content within is so bare, you might as well just pretend it doesn't exist. In fact, here's something comedic: this and Black Emporium were the two D1DLCs for this game, yet the latter is (was too iirc) free with all new copies, it also had more beneficiary gains and inclusions that makes the overall ride a tad smoother to complete. Sebastian got beat out by a dog and an enigmatic old fuck of a Greek allegory. That's just, downright pathetic and hilarious.
Really, Exiled Prince is a microcosm of all the issues plaguing DA2. His quests revolve around basic dungeon crawling of (majorly) samey environments that (majorly) take too long to finish, his backstory - an evangelical Chantry follower due to the rather belligerent upstart he had as a Starkhaven royal - and the arc that's proposed from this doesn't come into full fruition, the lore and worldbuilding that he and the Chantry introduces never materialize into anything substantial within the context of the main narrative, and the Friendship-Rivalry points regarding these spokes are harder to nab due to complications arising if they happen to contradict with the personality and mindset you established upon Hawke (eg: my Hawke is mainly a mage advocate due to his upbringing and only rebuts if absolutely necessary, yet feels as if the Chantry is not the best place for Sebastian and wants to push him back to Starkhaven; his Act 3 quest is able to give a grand total of 45 extra Rivalry points, but only if I kept besmirching the Mages), and considering you can't even properly recruit him until the start of Act 2, that makes fully cementing him as a Friend or Rival that much harder. This is the second time I had to use console commands to increase the side I wanted, but at least in the other case that was just me being lazy and not wanting to redo hours of progress to gather a measly 5 points before the cutoff point, and doing so got me to better appreciate that companion's ordeal which made it worth the cheat; here I felt like I could've just left the bars as they were, and would've lost absolutely nothing. All of this would simply be a bitter pill to swallow if he was, at the very least, a decent combatant, but even in these terms he falls short. He's the ugly middle of Isabela's DPS hit-and-run approach as well as Varric's jack-of-trades strength/support archery - the same style Sebastian has, btw - meaning I never felt inclined to bring him along unless I absolutely had to.
I read on the DA Wiki that this was supposed to feature Nathaniel Howe, and that the narrative would've revolved around these two, but this had to be dropped due to contingencies regarding his potential passing in the Awakening expansion. I checked its sourced link, and while I've yet to find anything else to back this up, the fact this was released day-and-date with the base game (yea this means this is another awful case of that practice), knowing that ME2 and later ME3 would have similar change of plans, and Nathaniel's Act 3 cameo appearance feeling rather phoned in while occupying space with another, vaguely related Act 2 questline if he didn't make it after Awakening's conclusion, I can't exactly say I'm surprised something like this was theorized to begin with. Would this have helped him? Who knows, but at least it would've been nice to have a bit of chewing on if everything else was this unexciting, aside from the super brief cameo Leliana had at the tailend anyway. Nowadays, on PC, you're able to get every DLC of this game alongside every new purchase, so I can't say it's too frustrating of a deal, but at the same time the content within is so bare, you might as well just pretend it doesn't exist. In fact, here's something comedic: this and Black Emporium were the two D1DLCs for this game, yet the latter is (was too iirc) free with all new copies, it also had more beneficiary gains and inclusions that makes the overall ride a tad smoother to complete. Sebastian got beat out by a dog and an enigmatic old fuck of a Greek allegory. That's just, downright pathetic and hilarious.
A straight dude?? In DAII!?
This review contains spoilers
....LOWER.....LOWER.....USE THE FEATHER
A companion that gives you the chantry's perspective on things. And some free marches lore.
Too bad he's constantly defending the chantry that is as back and white evil almost all of the time.
I hate the chantry and I hate this guy.
Too bad he's constantly defending the chantry that is as back and white evil almost all of the time.
I hate the chantry and I hate this guy.
This review contains spoilers
Adding Sebastian to the game was really a narrative necessity, given that the base game was noticeably lacking a character to lend some stakes to the whole subplot in which the Divine tries forge a middle ground between the Templars and mages. But the character himself is such a bore that the narrative dividends never really materialize (this point is perfectly crystallized in the goofy scream Sebastian gives after the Chantry blows up - it's a genuinely funny moment of unintentional hilarity, when they were clearly going for pathos).
But genuinely, there's really nothing to recommend about interacting with this added character. His main concept is that he's pious, which in this game means he mopes a lot and petulantly complains about the Maker's failure to strike down his enemies. Then, when you finally do that for him, he starts thanking the Maker. What an asshole. There's also a chaste romance that female Hawke can pursue with him, which might have been interesting in a game with better writing than Dragon Age II. Add in the fact that the quests added here are basic dungeon crawls with no significant gameplay innovation to make them stand out, and the idea that they charged money for this becomes more than a little vexing.
But genuinely, there's really nothing to recommend about interacting with this added character. His main concept is that he's pious, which in this game means he mopes a lot and petulantly complains about the Maker's failure to strike down his enemies. Then, when you finally do that for him, he starts thanking the Maker. What an asshole. There's also a chaste romance that female Hawke can pursue with him, which might have been interesting in a game with better writing than Dragon Age II. Add in the fact that the quests added here are basic dungeon crawls with no significant gameplay innovation to make them stand out, and the idea that they charged money for this becomes more than a little vexing.
Sebastian is so boring 😭