TITS MCGEE.

anonymouscatastrophe:

ademska:

isabelaismyhomegirl:

Only because they skipped 6 years. And in those 6 years NOTHING HAPPENED. Nothing times 80,000, absolutely nothing. Like your Hawke and companions spent those years in isolation, no fights, no friends, no shit.

lmfao no tho

they never skipped 6 years, like where are you getting that? the timeline goes:

year zero: escape from lothering, employ of athenril/meeran, Act I
year one: gathering funds and friends, deep roads expedition, Act I
year four: qunari assail city, hawke defeats arishok, Act II
year seven: anders destroys chantry, champion flees city, Act III
year ten: cassandra interrogates varric, Epilogue

there’s plenty of reference to events during the lapse, too. hawke’s relationships with anders and merrill, aveline marrying donnic, aveline’s satinalia party, hawke teaching fenris to read, fenris and isabela hooking up, the entire progressing of the mage-templar conflict and kirkwall political tensions. and that’s just act 2 to act 3!

and that’s to say nothing of the (kind of silly) assumption that hawke just woke up one day and decided to visit each and every one of their friends and then do every act quest in a day or two’s timespan.

some of the timeskips could have been handled better from a tightness standpoint, like scripting was occasionally very abrupt, but the writers did their best to breathe life into companions and make the time skips mean something

The game does span over a decade if you take into account that each Act is an entire year, and that the names of the years that the game uses are off.

Prologue: escape Lothering—> get to Kirkwall 2+ weeks later—> recruited by Athenril/Meeran—> live in Lowtown with Gamlen.

The actual first year: Hawke, Aveline, and sibling work for Athenril/Meeran—> meet Worthy, Lady Elegant, and Tomwise—> Avelive goes to work for the City Guard—> Anders, Isabela, and Fenris arrive in Kirkwall—> Hawke and sibling leave Anthenril’s/Meeran’s gang just before their year is up.

“Year One” is actually the second year: Hawke and sibling and approach Bartrand about the expedition—> recruited by Varric—>Aveline is a guardswoman—> meet and recruit Anders and Merrill—> Qunari and Isabela shipwreck near Kirkwall—> meet and recruit Isabela and Fenris—> Deep Roads Expedition, which lasts over a month (likely closer to two)—> sibling dies/ recruited by the Wardens (or, if not on the expedition is discovered/enlists with the Templar Order)—> Bartrand leaves Kirkwall for Rivain—> if living, sibling survives the Joining/is taken to the Circle/begins Templar training.

The actual third year through the fourth year: Hawke and Leandra reclaim the Amell estate and rename it the Hawke Estate, moving to Hightown without Gamlen—> Aveline becomes Guard Captain—> Varric takes over as the head of the Tethras family and takes Bartrand’s seat in the Merchant Guild—>Anders starts to become paranoid and reclusive, and joins with the Mage Underground when not working at the clinic—> Merrill has difficulty adjusting to life in Kirkwall and frequently gets lost—> Fenris takes up mercenary work, and Isabela searches for the relic—> Qunari become restless, Meredith beings cracking down on Orsino and the mages—> the Starkhaven Circle burns.

“Year Four” is actually the sixth year:  The templars have a stranglehold over the mages, dozens have been assaulted, murdered, and made Tranquil—> The Starkhaven mages are brought to Kirkwall, and Anders attacks Ella—> Aveline and Donnic begin their relationship—> Leandra is murdered  Fenris kills Hadriana and finds out about Varania—> Merrill begins work on the Eluvian—> Isabela recovers the relic and causes the Qunari uprising, which becomes the First Battle of Kirkwall.

The actual seventh year through the ninth: Aveline and Donnic marry—> Anders becomes increasingly paranoid and prone to wild mood swings, and is having difficulty interacting with others and behaving normally, and has taken up the cause of mages again—> Merrill no longer gets lost wandering Kirkwall, but she spends most of her time with the Eluvian—> Fenris tries to contact Varania and continues to take mercenary work—> Isabela leaves Kirkwall for a time once the Qunari conflict is resolved—> Varric officially takes his place as the head of House Tethras.

Act III is the tenth year:  Fenris confronts Danarius—> Isabela confronts Castillon—> Merrill’s clan is left without a Keeper and is killed/leaves Kirkwall—> Anders begins to prepare the bomb he’ll use to destroy the Chantry—> The mage-templar conflict comes to a head—> Anders destroys the chantry and kills Grand Cleric Elthina, sparking the Second Battle of Kirkwall, which is the first battle of the Mage-Templar War.

Cassandra’s interrogation of Varric is anywhere from months to a handful of years after Act III ends.  

…what?

year seven isn’t year ten, it’s year seven. that’s why they called it that.

each act is named for its final quest, eg, “year one - the deep roads expedition”, so it follows that the deep roads expedition itself is year one, the demands of the qun that require kirkwall’s razing is year four, and the actual last straw of the chantry’s demise is year seven. everything that happens within those acts happens at some point before the act’s namesake. we can pretty easily infer that, for instance, hawke probably doesn’t go mountain climbing for merrill in the same week that he helps anders in the tunnels or fenris on the coast.

(i personally always interpreted that the acts start roughly six or so months before the act finale, give or take a few.)

the prologue, escaping lothering, happens before time begins to count, and the epilogue, when cassandra interrogates varric, is explicitly stated as three years after kirkwall’s fall - year ten.

you don’t need to finagle time around to make it work; it already works, and it’s already laid out for us