Haha, I guess I must be biased because I'm pretty sure Lavellan is the one saving the world and Solas is the one destroying it. At least that's how it seems so far unless new information comes out. With the information we have so far, I just don't find Solas' actions very defensible or even relatable.

Well Lavellan, and by extension us (since we're playing from her point of view) certainly thinks she's in the right, and she's going to do everything she can to save her world; but what if we were playing as Solas instead?  Is it really so hard to imagine that you'd sacrifice anything  and everything to save your people form the terrible fate that you,yourself inadvertently doomed them to?  We may not think Solas is trying to save the world, and maybe even, in that great, nebulous, meta-game of the universe he is ultimately not trying to save the world, but Solas clearly thinks that's exactly what he's trying to do.  I think that intentions matter, when we're debating the philosophical matter of whether a character is "good" or "evil".  Some people don't- and that's valid too, but I think that it makes for a much more interesting and (heh) human character to portray the good intentions and ardent belief in the righteousness of his chosen cause.  I think it's valid to classify Solas as an antagonist, since no matter how fervently a zealot of any kind believes he's right- he's still a zealot who ends up killing a bunch of innocent people; but is he really a bad guy?  Is he really unlikable?  Not for me, personally; but I ALWAYS fall for the sympathetic villains, antiheroes, and rebels-with-a-cause of the fictional world(s), so I'm a bit biased in that regard.

Also, I couldn't help but think of this as I was writing the bolded words bad guy:

What annoyed me more was the hypocrisy in one of our earliest conversations with him in Haven;

 

Spoiler

How can he seriously stand there and present an argument that Spirits are "real" people (not that I disagree with him), when he attempts to divorce that notion entirely as applying to anyone living in modern Thedas. Perhaps easier for him to believe they're not real so he can carry on his plans with a cleaner conscience, but it's still extremely jarring.

 

I feel like we should have been able to lampshade it, plus it'd have made for a great bookend thematically.

Oh agreed; well, not that it annoyed me exactly, but I did think to myself- "Yes, we're not even people, because we're only half of what we're intended to be; but spirits, who are similarly denied a connection to a part of themselves (as proved by Cole's comments as well as the Librarian's in the Crossroads) are somehow more people-y than us?  Oooooooookay.  Yeah, no; that totally makes sense Solas, sure ."  I also thought "You know, I've often pitied the Tranquil, but I've never considered them sub-people; and I certainly don't imagine that their lack of emotion and connection to the fade makes it okay to slaughter them en masse in order to make way for the more people-y people.  That fact that you, Solas, do consider this to be an acceptable proposition is worrying, to say the least."  I think its part of his arrogance.  He thinks that the people of modern Thedas are beneath him- he doesn't want to hurt them, but he clearly cannot imagine them as equals.  I don't think he even truly imagines Lavellan to be capable of becoming his equal- I think he just loves her anyway. 

I love his character and writing for these flaws and nuances- but I understand why others wouldn't and don't.

Exactly. People are saying that it would be selfish to give up on your plans for the sake of Lavellan, but I think it's pretty selfish to take unilateral actions that will result in the deaths of millions of people. Honestly, I think his feelings for Mythal are stronger than his feelings for Lavellan. The death of Mythal was the catalyst for him to put up the veil, seal away the Evanuris, and take away the elves' magic and immortality. But Lavellan's life and her love is not enough to sway him from his current plans.

I think the two "loves" are not comparable, to be honest.  His love for Mythal is akin to that which people feel for individuals like beloved monarchs, or benevolent religious leaders (like the pope or the dalai lama), or maybe even the love that some people feel for their deity.  The love he feels for Lavellan is on a more personal level.  I mean, if a bunch of people kill your spouse, you plot mad revenge, grieve, maybe blast a few asses; but if someone kills your king and threatens to enslave you and everyone you know, you initiate a scorched earth response.  I can see your point of view, of course, and of course I plan on stopping the cray-cray; hopefully by convincing him that he'd much rather be dancing with poor Lavellan than blowing up the world...again; but ultimately I'd stop him at any cost.  Because just like Solas, my Lavellan couldn't let her personal feelings, no matter how real and strong they are, interfere with saving her people. 

This is part of why I love the set up for the next game so much with a romanced Solas- the duality is lovely an poignant.  Lavellan will "save the world" (or o she thinks), even if it costs her the man she loves; and Solas will "save the world" (or so he thinks)  even if it costs him the woman he loves.  Ahh- the tears and drama!  They nourish my bitter-loving soul!

 

 

Solas ‏@TheRealFen'Harel  10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000008h

OK, srsly #uthenera sucks.

 

 

Laughing SO hard right now!  Srsly- that's priceless!

Maybe Corypheus' attempt to jailbreak the Orb, our intrusion and the Orb flying around the room before we picked it up, caused the magic to spiral out of control and create the Breach, meaning Corypheus might have been a tad right that we did sort of "spoil it with our stumbling!"

 

I've always rather thought that Solas knew the explosion was coming- not that he relished it, nor even that he necessarily thought that it would happen at the Conclave.  However he absolutely knew that Corypheus was more powerful than he [Solas] was after his long nap.  He flat out says that he figured on Corypheus being killed by the energies unleashed when the orb was unlocked, and that he was shocked that a Tevinter had figured out "the secret of immortality" (which ties in to another crazy theory about how the Blight, the Tevinter Old Gods, the Elven Pantheon, and how they were locked away; but I digress).  I've always imagined the timeline thusly:

1.  Solas arranges for Corypheus to find out about and acquire the orb.

2.  Solas follows Corypheus and waits for the giant explosion so he can go reclaim the orb, manifest the anchor, enter physically into the Fade, and tear down the Veil.

3.  Solas is a bit put off by the fact that Corypheus' intended blood magic requires the ritual sacrifice of a being whose level of spiritual energy (namely faith) is high due to both her own level of faith and the faith that the whole of Southern Thedas has in her- however, it's not as if this chick is really a person, and neither are the people meeting with her on a mountaintop- so hey, regrettable but acceptable losses.

4.  Cue Inquisitor, who effs things up not only for Corypheus, but also for Solas himself.

5.  Begin events of Inquisition.

Spoiler

Solas casts time magic. Inquisitor manages to get sucked into it too. Both of them end up somewhere in the Elvhen Empire, pre-fall. Inquisitor then chases Solas. Inquisitor stops Solas from reaching his goal, somehow (this could be tricky - a character as powerful as Solas means that direct confrontation won't work if you're planning to kill him: what could happen is that Inquisitor could ally with an Evunaris to stop him instead). End result: nothing's changed, Solas is either dead/banished, or returns with the Inquisitor as the world begins to fall apart.

 

Oh my glob- how much fun would it be for the Inquisitor to play that scene?  If the next game does have a split protag, or at least gives us the ability to occasionally play scenes as Quizzy; this one would be so BADASS!  Especially w/ a romanced Lavellan.

Spoiler

 

 

However, I suspect the plan will probably not involve time magic. Corypheus could not return to prior to the breach. It's possible this magic is limited by the bounds of the system it exists in. Also, Solas is quite skeptical of the idea in Hushed Whispers. I think I'd prefer him to alter the reality he already exists in.

 

Of course, it could also just be that an avid fan of the last Time Lord like me is incapable of giving up the idea of Thedosian time travel.  My views are almost certainly colored by love of the good Doctor, even if I really think I'm keeping him out of head during specualtion like this

 

Spoiler

I have a question about Solas' final master plan and would like some opinions. Solas says this world must die/burn essentially. Do you think that he literally means absolutely everyone is going to die and only ancient elves (or whomever he is thinking about) remain?

 

Or do you think it's a bit of a hyperbole. Meaning a lot of people are going to die in the chaos, governments scattered and broken, etc. He would then take advantage of this and restablish his empire.

 

My thoughts lean towards the second because

A. It's really difficult to kill everyone

B. They obviously had human and other people during the Artlathan

C. Hinting that Inquisitor may not survive would simply be that he know she will fight and it will be for naught.

 

Just looking for speculation.

My wibbily-wobbly timey-wimeytheory:

On the other hand:

Oh gawd, you guys. I'm so glad I had this thread and the 20-odd pages to read through. I came home earlier today and found my dog dead on the floor. She wasn't old, so it was completely wtf unexpected and out of nowhere. I've been a wreck. But all the lore, debates, and duckfaced Lavellans have been great. Really. I'm so grateful for all you smart and wonderful people having good discussions. It's been the right amount of distraction.

 

Best of all? Watching low approval Solas. That is the Best. Thing. Ever. inside of a one minute conversation. I laughed so hard.

 

I am so playing through Trespasser again tomorrow.

Oh no!!!!  I'm so, so sorry to hear about your fur-baby.  I can't even imagine how terrible.  Plenty hugs and Aloha to you!

Yes Teagan was a giant cloaca.  I don't think he was necessarily OOC, since (as Sifr said) we've seen him get feisty with Heroes and former allies before when he thinks a power grab is in the offing; but he was awfully quick to go from respectful disagreement to out-and-out douchebaggery, even with a level headed and goody two-shoes Inquisitor. 

I think, however, that we are forgetting Teagan's most egregious crime of all.

So, I also just want to say that Trespasser left my Lavellan feeling like this:

Someone with more skillz than me really needs to paste A Lavellan head on Joey and a Solas one on Chandler

 

Also Batman. But Garrus is cooler

A woman after my own heart

Spoiler

I think we may yet see double protagonist - or at least portions of the game where we'd be back to controlling Inquisitor. The DA devs mentioned in one of interviews that they were intrigued by three protagonists of GTA5 and the way of telling the story through multiple eyes. Then there's the success of Witcher 3, which had sections during which we controlled Ciri.

 

Aloha Wolf Pack!  Haven't been back to crawl into the Blanket Fort for a while and I missed you guys!  I just had to come check in after Trespasser though; oh my gosh!!!  It was as bittersweet and tragic as I hoped! 

So tell me guys

There was one bug that nearly broke the DLC for me.

 

Enemies kept disappearing into the walls and I couldn't kill them, hit them or get out of combat as a result. 

I had this problem as well.  Had to reload 5 times for that fight with the two eathshakers in the narrow corridor.  Finally I just had all my people hold position at the mouth of the tunnel while Cass grappled them out one by one and I mindblasted them off the edge of the cliff.  Felt kinda cheap, but I was so sick of reloading that I just wanted the battle to be over.

Five words I never thought I'd say: "I agree with the Kaiser" . 

Seriously though, When a company makes an exclusive title, it doesn't bug me unduly; it also doesn't bother me when paid subscribers get exclusive content or earlier access.  However, it really freakin' bugs me when a game that was advertised for MORE THAN A YEAR before release as available across a multitude of platforms suddenly switches gears and says "By the way, this platform is currently giving us more money, so even though you paid the same price for your pre-orded deluxe game, and even though you have been a loyal customer of our games since we became a company, you fans who use those other platforms can go hang."  It's even worse when crazy (possibly rabid) fans like myself don't even have a date to look forward to, just a vague promise of "someday". I feel bad for the folks w/ XBoxes who love Destiny, but at least with that game, we all knew from the beginning that it would basically be a SONY title.  Same with ME and Xbox- it was Xbox exclusive first, so it sucked for Playstation owners who never played ME1, but it's not like they could say "We never expected you to leave us out in the cold!"  Dragon Age though, has always been a cross-platform franchise, and I'm pretty annoyed with this exclusive crap.  I mean, come on Bioware/EA!  Your game is fantastic, but anyone whose even taken marketing 101 can tell you that early access to a single, one-time, add-on DLC with less than 10 hours of playable content is not going to suddenly spark the masses to buy a new console or subscribe to some new service.  I wonder what it is that Microsoft expects to gain out of this exactly, or if it's just hoping to be able to point to little pieces of exclusive content like this in its quarterly report and say "Our Xbox Ones still aren't selling great but look, we sold x amount of dollars on this shiny exclusive content!"

I'm a crazy fan-girl, but I have my principles; if I think a company is engaging in crummy consumer related practices, I won't buy their product.  I didn't buy an XBox one (even though I vastly preferred my 360 to my PS3) because I thought that Microsoft's original design and sharing/ always online policies were bogus and the foot-in-mouth back pedaling that MS did in the wake of its tsunami of criticism was not enough to make up for the fact that their original schtick convinced me that they are a bunch of poopooheads who care even less about the consumer than their competitors (and that's saying something, since I think the average electronics and entertainment company probably gives about 2 farts for me as a customer).  This timed-exclusive DLC for a game which debuted simultaneously on multiple platforms is helping to solidify in my mind the opinion which has been brewing over the last decade: EA cares even less about me as a consumer than all the other game industry labels out there, and as a result, I may pass on this DLC, which I 100% surely would have purchased the second it was available if it had come out at the same time as the Xbox 1 version.

Has the missing piece from The Fall mosaic been patched in yet?  I skimmed through the patch notes and didn't see it, but I certainly could've just missed it.  I'm on a PS4, so please don't recommend the PC mod.  Arrgh!  The missing piece is driving this poor, sad, 100%er crazy!  Must... finish... mosaic.  Must... have... every... codex... entry!

I like that "...with the condition she's not in charge" statement.  See, I still like her, like I have said multiple times in here.  However, I want to point out that she's only in de facto in charge, she holds no official authority anymore.  She says this herself when you ask her about still leading the mages, she's like, "They still call me Grand Enchanter despite that position no longer existing.  And should the position ever return, someone else shall take the title."  Or at least something along those lines.  In my opinion, this means that any other mage who earns the respect of the other mages could decide to take over leadership.  At this point, it seems to me that Fiona would welcome someone else doing it, but no one else wants the burden that she bears.

Yeah, I get that you like her.  She did seem a bit special snowflake-y in the book to me, but I thought that was relatively well balanced out with the other characters- they all had some element or another that seemed over the top.  I have a few friends who can't help but love her b/c "She's Alistair's mooooommmmm!"  I was always jest kinda 'meh' about her, tbh.  As far as her continued leadership in DAI goes, I remember the convo- and my thought was that if this was an actual business situation, and I was merging companies or something similar, I would've insisted that this matter be settled right away.  Old leadership would be gone, because whether she is "de facto in charge" or not, the mages are still looking to her for guidance and leadership- and her leadership has already been proven to be inadequate to the point of negligence.  I really want my Quizzie to be able to tell her right from the beginning that the rebel mage group is welcome to partner with the Inquisition, but she, personally, is not; or at least be able to express express her [Quizzie's] outrage at Fiona's actions, but sadly for me, the option doesn't exist. 

@BlueGloves: Really appreciate you going to such lengths to educate me on the matter of socializing with people, but in your example of the bolded sentence you clinged to a wrong word.

 

You concentrated on the Who where I meant the acting word of the sentence to be How. 

 

And my answer to that How is: Adorable.

 

Still offensive- still generalizing - and the rationalization continues.  No one ethnic group or gender fits so nicely into any box that the phrase "We all know what [insert gender/ ethic group/religion here] are like."  However, I really don't want to the derail the thread, so I'm going to climb down off my soap box now.  Not sure why I said anything in the first place- it's not like I really expected anyone to change his or her mind and start to try and think about what effect his or her words might have.  Unfortunately, gaming forums are a great place to see casual and unintended racism/sexism/classism/whatever else-ism in action, but a pretty fruitless place to try and change inappropriate behavior. 

Shouldn't have even said anything in the first place.  Sorry.  Will try not to let it happen again.

Anywho- back OT.  I don't hate her but I do think Fiona's a twit for signing up all her people for indentured servitude without even a by-your-leave, especially since (as others have said) she's already in the most defensible situation she could possibly hope for.  My big beef with the situation is that I cannot offer the mages a partnership with the condition that she not be in charge.  She has failed, on a massive level, and its beyond time to relieve her of her command, but by offering the mages a partnership rather than a retread of the Circle-situation (which I feel has already proven itself untenable), the game sets it up to look like tacit approval of what I consider a monumentally stupid series of actions, regardless of timeline shenanigans.  I seriously wish I had the option to offer the mages something differnet, and then immediately fire Fiona and promote someone else. 

Ah, heck. Why am I trying to explain. Let's just say we all know how women are and leave it at that. Then everyone can reflect their own experiences with women into what was said.

I'm sorry, were you trying to make things worse?  Come on man- try this one simple trick for figuring out whether you are saying something douche-y- anywhere you would use a blanket term to describe one ethnic group or gender, (in your case, the word "women") substitute this term in your mind with the phrase "black people".  If you resay the original statement in your mind with the newly substituted phrase "black people", and it sounds racist or inappropriate (which it should), then guess what? Your comment is douche-y.  This is a trick I think most people would benefit from, since by and large, we are probably not terribly douche-y as a society or individuals; and for the love of all that is holy- if you say something that sounds bad, and you get called on it and are actually smart enough to realize you made a mistake- just be big enough to say- "Oops, that sounded bad.  Sorry."  Don't try to rationalize why your comment was really okay and not offensive after all, yeesh.

Somewhat off-topic, but if we're talking creepy then one thing that increasingly makes my skin crawl is referring to women as "females" when it's used as a noun. It's just something that seems to correlate with certain attitudes a bit too much for a mere coincidence.

Okay, I l know I'm like 7 days late (and probably way more than a dollar short) to this party- but I gotta call you on this one.  The use of the word "female" as a negative is just silly.  Any poster on the forums who comes from an American medical or military background will simply use the terms male and female as a matter of course, the clinical term is the proper and acceptable use in both professional fields, and calling a female soldier a woman or a girl in a professional capacity is a no-go- though I must admit, I don't why that is, it just is.  Also really, in a thread like this, the terms are far more appropriate than ""man" and "woman" since both of those terms are technical descriptions of humanity, and the females described in this thread hale from a number of fantastical races that are not, in fact, humans.

Also- If any of you are interested- it doesn't cost much to help save North American Timber Wolves- or alot of other animals!  Plus- they all come with plushies and are 20% off now- check it out!

Hmmm.... I like where this is going. But would a man really be so cruel as to take advantage of his wife's sorrow over a videogame character?

LOL- I am busier than I could possibly describe, but I just had to jump on here and show you guys my early V-Day present from the hubs!!!!! 

And it comes with this adorable plushie!!!!  I can't believe my husband actually got me a stuffed wolf!  And he doesn't even know this thread exists... or does he ???

Woah, that's new, can you get us screenshot Gloves?

Yep- Give me a sec.  Gotta get breakfast for the man-cub and then do the conversion process from the PS4. 

I've never had Cassandra's card change except the one time she became Divine.  So it's possible some cards just don't change often.  I mean, I know it changes if you romance her but obviously I haven't.  So she has 3 card, Solas has 3 cards (that I've seen), Blackwall has 3 cards, etc. - and obviously you only see some cards if you romance the person.

Right, but I have 2 playthroughs where I've romanced him, and the card still doesn't change.  I just now went back to check some old save game states, and it stays the same until the very, very end, when it changes to the tower card with an X over it.  Also- the wolf in my tower card is white, not black.  Is the same for everyone, or is it another bug?  I've had some other issues with colors and graphics, so it could easily be a bug

Dang it!  I can't find the stupid post.  It is entirely possibly that the whole idea is an alcohol-dream brought on by excessive New Years and Doctoral Candidate Acceptance Letter celebrations (see how I did that, there?  I've been "casually" mentioning that in pretty much every single conversation I've had since January 5th... Pretty sure my husband is ready to run from the house, screaming and bleeding from the ears at this point ). 

Ahem... sorry for the diversion.  In any case- I think that I saw a post on IGN (?) a few weeks back that mentioned that Solas is supposed to have a fourth card- one that appears after All New, Faded for Her is complete.  I assumed it was right because Solas' card has never once changed for me on the character selection screen, only in the codex, through 3 playthroughs.  (2 romanced, 1 not)  I figured it just never showed up b/c ANFFH has never triggered as "complete" for me.