Morwen Eledhwen wrote...
[Hear, hear. Whatever I might think of Cailan, I would think less of myself if I chose the "leave him to the Darkspawn" or "throw him to the wolves" options. And yet so far my characters have all been commoners, and they would have given a pyre to anyone stuck up there. I resent the fact that I was forced to break character and infer that Cailan's merit of a pyre had to do with his rank or family name, not just because he was a person and I'm a decent person and it's the decent thing to do.
I don't like to break character to harden Alistair, either, but I do it anyway (when appropriate to the playthrough). The dialog choices are unfortunate, but the results, I feel are worth breaking character for. Anytime you think to yourself, "My character wouldn't say any of these things..." you somewhat break character and pick something anyway... so in my view I've broken character for far less reasons. In my opinion, if the decent thing to do is to give him a pyre, regardless of the dialog choice that gets you there, then the decent thing to do is also to break character. Again, just my opinion.