I love a good romance in a video game. If you’re not familiar with Dragon Age Origins, by Bioware, then let me explain. Alistair is your classic handsome, charming, a little cheesy, paladin type hero. You don’t get many choices in DAO, but that was okay with me. I found Alistair a little refreshing, and I cracked up when Zevran gave him love tips during our journey.
Alistair is one complex little cookie. If you want your rating to go up with him, you’ll need to do two things. Laugh at his corny jokes, and don’t do anything that would go against his good boy nature. For eg, (SPOILER ALERT) when you visit Arl Eamon you’ll have a variety of choices. You can kill the boy, sacrifice the wife, or try and get the circle of magi to help. If you fail at the magi tower and the circle gets destroyed, or you do any of the other mentioned, Alastair will be pissed. Actions like that will give you negative points, BUT his rating bar is easy to get back up. Give him lots of gifts (I found alcohol worked good), don’t try to sleep with him, and laugh at his jokes!
These days finding a good romantic plot line is tough. Games aren’t geared to satisfy our chick lit desires. For some reason the gaming industry (who I will refer to as The Man) still seems to think women don’t play video games, and if we do it’s only Cooking Mama, or The Sims.
Overall I think DAO did a pretty good job with Alistair.