uchidachi:

Imagining that Dragon Age 2 is actually Cassandra’s mental image of Varric’s story helps to reconcile a lot of the discrepancies in the game:

• Every dungeon looks the same? Varric only took the time to describe one, and Cassandra’s not imaginative enough to come up with others on her own.
• Likewise, Fenris squats in his mansion for years with dead bodies because Varric never bothered to tell the story of “That Time We Rented a Cart and Dumped the Corpses in the Sea.”
• Kirkwall seems way too small for all the people who live in it because Cassandra is imagining only the places Varric mentions specifically or she’s been to herself.
• Lowtown in particular was probably in somewhat better condition than we see it, but because Cassandra has only visited post-mage uprising she doesn’t know what the Hanged Man looked like before some of the rooms were full of collapsed debris.
• Doors and stairways are sometimes roped off because that’s the only reason Cassandra can think of for Hawke not going in them when they usually are so thorough about exploring.
• Enemies always appear in waves because Cassandra is much better at keeping track of battles than Varric is.  Six thugs attacked but they ended up killing twelve? More must have shown up later.