5: Sekiro - One of the best modern works of gothic horror in any medium (yes better than Bloodborne and Souls). A tight central narrative tied into a much deeper lore than is apparent at first glance. Also informed by Buddhist morality, which is pretty cool.
4: Ark - You can shoot a rocket launcher at robots from the back of a Giganotosaurus. What's not to love?
3: Spec Ops: The Line - A controversial game, but one of the only shooters in existence to actually critique the bloody imperialist power fantasy that all modern shooter games inherently are. It spat on Call of Duty and gave the finger to every ooh-rah Marine dipshit who thought they were buying another game to fellate themselves with.
2: Disco Elysium - self explanatory
1: Journey - Less a game and more an interactive therapy tool. Helped bring me out of a major depressive spiral way back when. Play it on mescaline and it becomes a spiritual experience. Also a playable deconstruction of The Hero's Journey story framework, which I just enjoyed aesthetically.
Smh Anders did nothing wrong.
Spoilers for inquisition.
spoiler
Recently I have really been feeling that it would have been to cool to have a whole organized group working with Anders because him being the only person masterminding it all is in hindsight not as compelling. But yeah I really admire 2 for how much of a (interesting) dramatic departure it is from origins and made in such a short time. I have similar misgivings about the Solas stuff too. While he as a character might be somewhat interesting, his whole addition takes the whole political edge out of the Elven rebellion - it just gives such a cop out answer for being against it (and resolving it because now the rebels are being 'tricked'). They handled the mage rebellion similarly in inquisition with Corypheus just taking away any direct resolution of each conflict. Oh well.
I used to hate Anders a lot. I was totally swayed by all the arguments about how evil he is. But well, when you become a leftist... it's like LMAO what else was he going to do... ESPECIALLY since he had a spirit literally twisting his judgement. I support him unironically :/ He is definitely in my top 5 fav characters of the series.
spoiler
DA:I messed up a lot. It's sad too because it felt Inquisition was dead set on kind of painting the Dalish as bad or ignorant. And after 2 games of seeing them being genocided (like the Origins' city elf origins... played that my first playthrough and was blown away). I agree about the idea of Anders working with a group though. I have an entire plot in mind for DA4 where he survived and is so fully entrenched in Justice's vengeance and helps Tevinter mages fight back against a slave rebellion. Think it'd be cool to see him again especially if like Fenris came back too but helping the slave rebellion. But I doubt we will ever see Anders again despite the fact he is arguably like the second most important companion in terms of the plot.