Babi wrote...
While I feel like Anders could have used such a wonderful beam of death in a more practical manner, I think that he's probably going to be of more use alive rather than dead. The "innocent" people in the chantry are dispensable, IMO. They're all the same kind of mindless oafs that preach selflessness and doing good for the reward of going to heaven. Killing Anders out of pity for the "innocent" people he killed isn't going to undo what he did. They're dead, and they're not coming back, (unless they're Flemmeth, of course...). Privately executing him isn't going to show the world, "Hey, here's the guy that is responsible, and he's getting punished!" Having him linger about to use him as a scapegoat or sacrificial lamb later... practical purpose. Seeing that Loghain became an asset once you find out a Warden needs to die to kill the Archdemon, it wouldn't be too far out there to assume Anders might be useful later. Killing him on the spot serves no purpose other than to entertain the idea that justice was served or to soothe your ever troubled emotions.
Regardless of what stance you take on the situation, think for a moment that you kill hundreds of people throughout the game. Probably many, many more than Anders killed with his death beam. The people you kill might attack you first, but think of them less as groups and more as individuals-- what if x mercenary was attacking you with the group because he/she had no other means of obtaining food or shelter. Desperate times, desperate measures, right? Would such a person be truly evil, and deserving of death? Hawke him or herself is forced into being a mercenary or smuggler for a year, like those very people you slaughter in countless numbers.
Say that y person has the resources necessary to save people from any sort of political suffering, but then refuses to do so to maintain an illusion of "neutrality". What then? Are they not as bad as those random mercenaries or thugs that attack you to survive, or whatever reason you can imagine? They stand idly for no real reason. It's not like they risk the ire of the templars. Meredith could have potentially been exposed as a nut-job sooner.
Being grotesquely realistic, anybody could have murdered Leandra and cut her up into pieces. Re-animate her? Mage only, sure, but anyone with the strength and/or resources can gut someone and reassemble the pieces. Horrific murders happen all the time IRL and there is no such thing as "blood magic" to blame.
In the end, no character in the game is truly good or truly evil. People do things because they think they will be rewarded in one way or another. Chantry people do good acts with the idea they are going to be rewarded by the Maker. Mercs and smugglers do what they do for more immediate rewards, such as gold or loot. It's all for personal gain, one way or another. If you say that the acts of the chantry help people, well, what if a merc is trying to feed his or her starving family?
What is the real difference between what Anders did vs using an AoE on a group of "red targets" that have not definitely proven their villiany?
For one thing the people in chantry building are not all "preaching oafs" (you seem to have a personal issue with religion), I don't know if you have ever been to any church but most people in a church are just regular folks there to visit, to pray or whatever. So essentially, he is killing not "Chantry innocents" as you call them but really innocents from the city.
Secondly, if you ever look at history, you would see that the "villains" in religious organization are always the ones on top, not the ones actually in church/temple. People down the chain normally do believe in what they preach and that is to help others. Its usually these idealistic "naive" people who are left down in the church/temple while the ambitious religous nut are somewhere else. So essentially Anders killed the wrong group of people. People who actually do want to help.
As for your comparison between Mercs and othe villains, yes I agree that a lot of time we overlook the fact that most people killed are just trying to survive or following orders. Its not only mercs but soldiers,guards, even templars who are just following orders and not personally evil.
But I do have to point out that people who kill are different from people who lie. If indeed your belief that the chantry people lie and trick people is true then I'm not exactly sure if they all deserve death. I don't know about you but for me attempted murder is a differenent crime from lying. Cause if that is not the case then everyone in the world should be dead, I'm pretty sure we all have lied and trick someone at one point or another, is it wrong? yes does it deserve death? I hope not.
As for the practicality of killing Anders, they way I see it is that its practical since I can't trust Anders any longer, he obviously have committed a crime and completely lost control of himself. Something you can't really take into battle since you need to be able to trust him. And I wouldn't let him go either since as I said, he is totally out of control at that point so....
The Loghain part for me has always been debatable, yes he is useful in the end but on the other hand you are essentially giving him a martyrs death and people would worship him, not necessariy a good thing considering he killed so many innocents.
Retour en haut
. Fenris goes to great lengths to explain what happens when mages rule. 
