1411 réponses à ce sujet

[DKJaigen]

In Exile wrote...

CrimsonZephyr wrote...
War is a dirty business, but it's the only way when the response to diplomacy or protest is violence.

But war isn't a stupid business unless you're in the business of losing wars, and what Anders did is a kind of epic stupid. Not only does he strike a blow against public opinion for the mages, but he's practically beggining for an Exalted March (if the mage rebellion isn't just about freedom, but about destorying the Chantry). 

That aside, I replayed DA2 recently, and when Anders orbital lazers the Chantry, the explosion sets fire to all of Kirkwall. Not just Hightown, but the flames reach as low as Lowtown. 

How many innocent people and peasants burned to death because of what he did? The fact that the revolution may well be justified has nothing to do with Anders doing the right thing. 

We dont know how the war is progressing their are simply to many factors to take into account. And if you know anything of military stratergy you will realise that a negative popular support is just as usefull as positive support. In fact as a mage you would find being reviled much more usefull then only being half hearted supported by the general populace

[Giggles_Manically]

DKJaigen wrote...

In Exile wrote...

CrimsonZephyr wrote...
War is a dirty business, but it's the only way when the response to diplomacy or protest is violence.

But war isn't a stupid business unless you're in the business of losing wars, and what Anders did is a kind of epic stupid. Not only does he strike a blow against public opinion for the mages, but he's practically beggining for an Exalted March (if the mage rebellion isn't just about freedom, but about destorying the Chantry). 

That aside, I replayed DA2 recently, and when Anders orbital lazers the Chantry, the explosion sets fire to all of Kirkwall. Not just Hightown, but the flames reach as low as Lowtown. 

How many innocent people and peasants burned to death because of what he did? The fact that the revolution may well be justified has nothing to do with Anders doing the right thing. 

We dont know how the war is progressing their are simply to many factors to take into account. And if you know anything of military stratergy you will realise that a negative popular support is just as usefull as positive support. In fact as a mage you would find being reviled much more usefull then only being half hearted supported by the general populace

Uhh.... what?
Without popular support the mages have zero allies to call on.
The Chantry can hurl mob after mob after them easily.
No one will want to aid them.

Mages are not Mary sues who can kick as much ass as Hawke or the Warden, and they will die fairly easily without aid.

Like where will they get more boots/food/housing?
No rebellion ever won without a boost of popular support, and even if it did take power the people over threw it in the long run.

[Sons of Horus]

CrimsonZephyr wrote...

Your point about Orsino is purely ad-hominem. The fact that he eventually used blood magic (which he used for the first time then) .

I think that’s incorrect dude, As its stated in his letter to Quentin that sounds like he had been practicing blood magic too but had made no headway.
“Your last letter was fascinating! You have proven me wrong, once again, by doing the impossible. I shouldn't have doubted your resolve,”

[CrimsonZephyr]

Sons of Horus wrote...

CrimsonZephyr wrote...

Your point about Orsino is purely ad-hominem. The fact that he eventually used blood magic (which he used for the first time then) .

I think that’s incorrect dude, As its stated in his letter to Quentin that sounds like he had been practicing blood magic too but had made no headway.
“Your last letter was fascinating! You have proven me wrong, once again, by doing the impossible. I shouldn't have doubted your resolve,”

Again, that could be mean anything. That letter is entirely without context. All that letter states is that they shared notes.

[TEWR]

DKJaigen wrote...

In Exile wrote...

CrimsonZephyr wrote...
War is a dirty business, but it's the only way when the response to diplomacy or protest is violence.

But war isn't a stupid business unless you're in the business of losing wars, and what Anders did is a kind of epic stupid. Not only does he strike a blow against public opinion for the mages, but he's practically beggining for an Exalted March (if the mage rebellion isn't just about freedom, but about destorying the Chantry). 

That aside, I replayed DA2 recently, and when Anders orbital lazers the Chantry, the explosion sets fire to all of Kirkwall. Not just Hightown, but the flames reach as low as Lowtown. 

How many innocent people and peasants burned to death because of what he did? The fact that the revolution may well be justified has nothing to do with Anders doing the right thing. 

We dont know how the war is progressing their are simply to many factors to take into account. And if you know anything of military stratergy you will realise that a negative popular support is just as usefull as positive support. In fact as a mage you would find being reviled much more usefull then only being half hearted supported by the general populace

uhhh..... what?

[LobselVith8]

Giggles_Manically wrote...

Uhh.... what?
Without popular support the mages have zero allies to call on.
The Chantry can hurl mob after mob after them easily.
No one will want to aid them.

Mages are not Mary sues who can kick as much ass as Hawke or the Warden, and they will die fairly easily without aid.

Like where will they get more boots/food/housing?
No rebellion ever won without a boost of popular support, and even if it did take power the people over threw it in the long run.

Do the templars have popular support, though? The templars rebelled against the Chantry as well in order to hunt down the mages. We really have little information about the context of the schism, besides the fact that the Circles of Magi and the Order of Templars have defected, and Varric said the Chantry was "in pieces."

[Ryzaki]

It doesn't matter if the templars have popular support.

It's not templars vs mages.

It's mages (and their allies which are 99.99% likely to be very few) vs everyone else. 

Modifié par Ryzaki, 25 juillet 2011 - 04:12 .

[GavrielKay]

Ryzaki wrote...

It doesn't matter if the templars have popular support.

It's not templars vs mages.

It's mages (and their allies which are 99.99% likely to be very few) vs everyone else. 

We have little idea what happens in the 3 years between defeating Meredith and Varric's interrogation.  We know the war is still going on, so the mages obviously weren't wiped out or recaptured to a man.  This is game fact.  The mages haven't lost. 

The Templars could well be rampaging in lyrium withdrawal fueled rages and killing more villagers than the mages ever dreamed of.  The governments could have decided the Chantry is finally weak enough to be put in their place.  The Divine could have been assassinated by the Grand Enchanter for all we know.

But we do know that the mages have somehow kept up the fight.  So all the pronouncements of how unlikely that would be are useless.  We can either imagine ways that would lead to the story dictated state of affairs or rail against the writing.

[Ryzaki]

Ah nevermind. We'll see in DA3. 

Frankly I'm tired of mages vs templars. It was great as background noise but as the main focuse it lost a lot of its charm to me.

Modifié par Ryzaki, 25 juillet 2011 - 05:59 .

[Huntress]

I love the mages vs templars vs chantry conflict! But yeah.. bioware might, I said MIGHT make a main character as a seeker for DA3.. to show the "good side" of the templars i suppose, but they are missing the bad side! since DAO we only meet 2 or 3 nasty templars, the rest that have been shown has been nuts blood-mages and what ever they said about the templars is lable as not true, a lie.. whatever..
 
Not one have a wieght to messure templars for the pass 700 years, everyone has something to say or point for mages.

The balance is way off and all this... is making me crazy and... bored..

If da3 is about a seeker running around doing chantry stuff.. I won't buy it, am not interested on playing someone who wants to keep tyrannts on power.

[Sealy]

I hate that people always say that they support the chantry blowing up because the chantry is flawed. Everytime you enter that building people are in it, praying, donating, helping others or just visiting. Anders didn't bring the hammer down on just the Grand Clerics head, he decimated whoever may have decided to visit the chantry that day and unfortunatly that is up to the viewer to decide, but you can't say just bad folk were in there to ease your consciense just because you like Anders. The most likely scenario is that he ended as many innocents as people set o crushing mages, on the basis of changeing the world for mages.

I happily killed Huon when he killed his wife for the "revelution" of mages, Anders action are on a far greater scale and he doesn't deserve immunity just because the people he killed were annoying, or may have been unkind to mages. If someone Hawke loved had been in that building, his mother or sister or companion his fan base would be decimated, the only defense people have for him is that the Chantry deserved it, which works great if the only people in it were chanters or the building was empty. He can not say he destroyed any chance at peace because there was no peace, my Hawke wanted to hit him cause "there was no peace" because he destroyed it. In the end he is not a martry, or a revelutionist, Hawke is the one that has to give things up and stand for people, Hawke is the one who has to either show mages they can fight or show mages that fighing is futile. Hawke is the revelutionist, Anders ends the game as nothing more than a zealot and a terrorist who makes the path to mage rights even harder.

[In Exile]

DKJaigen wrote...
We dont know how the war is progressing their are simply to many factors to take into account. And if you know anything of military stratergy you will realise that a negative popular support is just as usefull as positive support. In fact as a mage you would find being reviled much more usefull then only being half hearted supported by the general populace

Mages don't have supply lines. They need food, water, homes. They can't forage in forests, and if they forage in the military sense, that essentially means looting and pillaging. Which means fresh recruits for the templars, and giving every non-mage in Thedas a reason to believe the mage rebellion means they'll re-establish the imperium. 

So being revivled is useless, unless you think that somehow inspires terror and cowers people. 

[In Exile]

GavrielKay wrote...
The Templars could well be rampaging in lyrium withdrawal fueled rages and killing more villagers than the mages ever dreamed of.  The governments could have decided the Chantry is finally weak enough to be put in their place.  The Divine could have been assassinated by the Grand Enchanter for all we know.

That just means people might want to eliminate both templars and mages. It doesn't mean that  mages will be independent.

But we do know that the mages have somehow kept up the fight.  So all the pronouncements of how unlikely that would be are useless.  We can either imagine ways that would lead to the story dictated state of affairs or rail against the writing.

Given what we see, it's very likely it will be explained by more unrealistic writing. 

[LobselVith8]

Huntress wrote...

I love the mages vs templars vs chantry conflict! But yeah.. bioware might, I said MIGHT make a main character as a seeker for DA3.. to show the "good side" of the templars i suppose, but they are missing the bad side!

If they want to show the good side of the templars, they shouldn't have killed Ser Thrask. He could have been used to show the good side of the templars as someone who was a templar who didn't think mages were weapons who could never be treated like people (Cullen) or ordered the mass murder of hundreds of men, women, and children simply to appease a theoretical mob (Meredith).

Also, forcing players to be part of an organization that some clearly disagree with simply means that those players will be saving money, especially when they've failed spectacularly at handling the mage and templar dichotomy by having insane mages, sadistic templars, and ridiculous end game antagonists as their talking points. I don't think I'm the only one who has no interest in purchasing a game where the protagonist is a member of the Chantry. I'm already tired of the lack of choices presented in Dragon Age 2 and the linear storytelling of Hawke's tale.

Huntress wrote...

since DAO we only meet 2 or 3 nasty templars, the rest that have been shown has been nuts blood-mages and what ever they said about the templars is lable as not true, a lie.. whatever..

I agree that the presentation was lacking, especially when mages were turning into abominations in two seconds despite being in the real world when we see that mages need to be in the Fade to deal with demons (and Aeonar's Tevinter mages were wiped out by the Chantry precisely because they were in the Fade and unaware of what was happening in the real world), but the problem is we have a number of mage antagonists from the Chantry controlled Circles: Decimus, Quentin (who is implied to be from Starkhaven with Gascard's note), and Grace are from Starkhaven, which Alain said was bad (although not as bad as Kirkwall).

The writers may have intended to present it as more balanced, but they failed. Instead of engaging antagonists, the villains are ridiculous. They all exist to serve the plot, which was vitally clear in Best Served Cold. As for templars, we've seen more than two or three: We have rapist templars like Alrik and Kerras, we have Alain inferring that he'd been raped by templars, we have two mages who lost their minds after they were imprisoned in Kirkwall (Huon and Evelina) which implies the enviornment of the Kirkwall Circle is monstrous (especially when Evelina was from the Ferelden Circle) and Hawke can blame Meredith for Huon's insanity and Evelina being an abomination, and we have an enivornment where mages were being made tranquil against Chantry law and beaten if they speak to civilians that concluded with the mass murder of an entire population of hundreds of people because of an act none of them were responsible for.

Huntress wrote...
 
If da3 is about a seeker running around doing chantry stuff.. I won't buy it, am not interested on playing someone who wants to keep tyrannts on power.

If Dragon Age 3 is similar to Dragon Age 2, especially with the insignificance of choice and the problematic narrative, I can imagine many people won't be buying it.

[miraclemight]

CrimsonZephyr wrote...

Again, that could be mean anything. That letter is entirely without context. All that letter states is that they shared notes.

He tells something along the lines of "Quentin's research was too dangerous, so I set it aside." to Hawke before slitting his wrist, hinting that he also was practicing blood magic.

[Harid]

In Exile wrote...

GavrielKay wrote...
But we do know that the mages have somehow kept up the fight.  So all the pronouncements of how unlikely that would be are useless.  We can either imagine ways that would lead to the story dictated state of affairs or rail against the writing.

Given what we see, it's very likely it will be explained by more unrealistic writing. 

This is what concerns me.  We'll get something akin to God of War 3, where the writers will have the unfortunate task of trying to realistically cobble something together based on the poor writing of the prior game.  Because of this, I am not really looking forward to DA:3, if this conflict persists.

The other issue is that we really won't have a choice in the resolution of this conflict either; Bioware is not going to create a world state where the mages can win and lose, as that would lead to two entirely different Thedases, so they would be better off resoilving this and letting us make a choice that they can move future on in the first place.

Modifié par Harid, 25 juillet 2011 - 08:39 .

[miraclemight]

There's one sure way to cut this mage/Templar conflict before they shape two different Thedases: another Blight. Didn't we already have a hint that it's going to happen strangely soon again?

And if that doesn't, this disaster that Morrigan and Flemeth were talking about would.

[GavrielKay]

In Exile wrote...

GavrielKay wrote...
The Templars could well be rampaging in lyrium withdrawal fueled rages and killing more villagers than the mages ever dreamed of.  The governments could have decided the Chantry is finally weak enough to be put in their place.  The Divine could have been assassinated by the Grand Enchanter for all we know.

That just means people might want to eliminate both templars and mages. It doesn't mean that  mages will be independent.

But we do know that the mages have somehow kept up the fight.  So all the pronouncements of how unlikely that would be are useless.  We can either imagine ways that would lead to the story dictated state of affairs or rail against the writing.

Given what we see, it's very likely it will be explained by more unrealistic writing. 

Indeed, it doesn't mean anything except that proclamations of doom and gloom and a quick defeat for the mages has already been written out of the game.  So we're left with trying to cobble together some explanation for why something that would have been doomed using real world mechanics is somehow working in the game world.  So...  who knows. 

I thought the writing for the mage v. Templar conflict was pretty bad.  And I felt even as I was playing the game that crazy mages were being hurled at Hawke willy nilly in an effort to say "see, mages are evil!"  There was no immersion, no suspension of disbelief.  It was all in my face plot railroad.  I remember in DAO actually stopping to think about which dwarf I should make king.  DA2 never had a stop and think moment for me.

And on that note, I'm not sure how they resurrect the story for DA3 and explain it all away.  I hope they do something, because  DAO was an awesome game and deserves a proper sequel.

[Sepewrath]

Ryzaki wrote...

Ah nevermind. We'll see in DA3. 

Frankly I'm tired of mages vs templars. It was great as background noise but as the main focuse it lost a lot of its charm to me.

I enjoy it because it has potential for far reaching consequence, basically like how the first Blight in Tevinter led to a complete restructing of Thedas, the collapse of the Chantry would also lead to a total upheaval throughout the whole continent.

[Wulfram]

At some point between the end of the game and Varric's narration the Chantry and the Templars seem to have split. That's big news and gives the Mages something of a chance - fighting the Chantry means fighting pretty much everyone, but the Templars will have limited resources without Chantry backing.

[Sepewrath]

GavrielKay wrote...
Indeed, it doesn't mean anything except that proclamations of doom and gloom and a quick defeat for the mages has already been written out of the game.  So we're left with trying to cobble together some explanation for why something that would have been doomed using real world mechanics is somehow working in the game world.  So...  who knows. 

I thought the writing for the mage v. Templar conflict was pretty bad.  And I felt even as I was playing the game that crazy mages were being hurled at Hawke willy nilly in an effort to say "see, mages are evil!"  There was no immersion, no suspension of disbelief.  It was all in my face plot railroad.  I remember in DAO actually stopping to think about which dwarf I should make king.  DA2 never had a stop and think moment for me.

Why would the mages be quickly defeated? Even if the Chantry had the Templar's there is no gaurantee of that, they have never had to fight a war against mages. they send 10 guys to catch one scared mage, not an army to face perhaps, another army. It would be far less believable that the Templar's could defeat the mages so easily.

And come on, you had to think about the Dwarf king? Really? The guy who killed his brother and blamed the other one was an option, for reasons other than to see what happens or roleplaying an evil character. They gave you no reason to pick the evil, selfish Bhelen over the benevolent Harrowmont, outside of him being related to Endrin by blood. You want to talk about something being railroaded, there is example one.

[GavrielKay]

Sepewrath wrote...

GavrielKay wrote...
Indeed, it doesn't mean anything except that proclamations of doom and gloom and a quick defeat for the mages has already been written out of the game.  So we're left with trying to cobble together some explanation for why something that would have been doomed using real world mechanics is somehow working in the game world.  So...  who knows. 

I thought the writing for the mage v. Templar conflict was pretty bad.  And I felt even as I was playing the game that crazy mages were being hurled at Hawke willy nilly in an effort to say "see, mages are evil!"  There was no immersion, no suspension of disbelief.  It was all in my face plot railroad.  I remember in DAO actually stopping to think about which dwarf I should make king.  DA2 never had a stop and think moment for me.

Why would the mages be quickly defeated? Even if the Chantry had the Templar's there is no gaurantee of that, they have never had to fight a war against mages. they send 10 guys to catch one scared mage, not an army to face perhaps, another army. It would be far less believable that the Templar's could defeat the mages so easily.

And come on, you had to think about the Dwarf king? Really? The guy who killed his brother and blamed the other one was an option, for reasons other than to see what happens or roleplaying an evil character. They gave you no reason to pick the evil, selfish Bhelen over the benevolent Harrowmont, outside of him being related to Endrin by blood. You want to talk about something being railroaded, there is example one.

I was actually arguing against all the posters who said that the mages would be quickly defeated.  I was saying, it was already written as not the case, so we just have to make up reasons why.  The mages power, hidden allies and Templar's drug addiction are all possible explanations.

Yes, I thought about Bhelen vs. Harrowmont, but only because of the casteless.  Talk about people who have it bad.  And Harrowmont wanted to keep the dwarves in the moral stone ages for as long as possible.  I hated Bhelen, but at least he didn't think of a whole group of dwarves as barely worth scuffing your shoe against.

[Sepewrath]

Someone who would kill their own family, because of a lust for power is hardly someone I would put my trust him to make the place better. Yeah it sucked for casteless, no question about that, but if their rise was solely dependent upon doing Bhelen's dirty work, that's nothing to look forward. Might as well just stay in the Carta.

[GavrielKay]

Sepewrath wrote...

Someone who would kill their own family, because of a lust for power is hardly someone I would put my trust him to make the place better. Yeah it sucked for casteless, no question about that, but if their rise was solely dependent upon doing Bhelen's dirty work, that's nothing to look forward. Might as well just stay in the Carta.

I generally put Harrowmont on the throne for that reason.  But I did think about it.  And then in the epilogue, well, that made me think even more.

Still, as far as DA2 goes, I never even had to think that much.  The RoA never seemed to be anything more than Meredith's revenge plot against her long dead sister.  There was never a chance I'd stab Anders in the back or hand Fenris over to Danarius.  The closest I got was wondering about Isabella and the Arishok, but even that was pretty much a no brainer.  He represents a culture even more oppressive than the Chantry.

That's just me of course, but I never really had a head scratcher in DA2.

[CrimsonZephyr]

Sepewrath wrote...

Someone who would kill their own family, because of a lust for power is hardly someone I would put my trust him to make the place better. Yeah it sucked for casteless, no question about that, but if their rise was solely dependent upon doing Bhelen's dirty work, that's nothing to look forward. Might as well just stay in the Carta.

This is Dragon Age. Being a good person and being a good leader are considered mutually exclusive states of being. Therefore, you should trust your country to a complete monster.