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[Mnemnosyne]

Emperor Iaius I wrote...

Tarohne is only partially crazy. She actually has a focused, rational goal. She knows, for instance, that demons are not to be trusted and that they can be resisted. The thing is that she doesn't really have the capacity to resist them: and she allows them to possess others, which is really foolish. I would call her a failure more than anything else.

Why is that foolish?  It seems like a really good plan to sow chaos and discord among the templars, as well as public distrust of them.  If the public began to believe that the templars are as big a threat as the mages they claim to police, then I can see things going real bad for them.

Granted I agree that Tarohne is kind of crazy and her plan is woefully lacking, but what she was doing seems like an excellent part of a larger overall scheme to discredit the templars and turn the general population against them.  If, at the same time, they made mages look as safe and reasonable as possible to the general population, suddenly opinions would start shifting further.  It's the templars that are evil and the mages even more oppressed victims!

[darrylzero]

In Exile wrote...

IanPolaris wrote...

Just repeat after me: Do not kill people for a crime they didn't commit.

Follow that through to the very end, and you'll have no trouble siding with the mages.

-Polaris

The problem is that you can't side with no one, which is exactly what I would have done. Execute Anders publically, and then let Meredith sort the rest out.

Certainly you can't execute innocent mages... but Orsino made it possible for Hawke's mother to die and was practicing blood magic. Killing him would be entirely in accordance with your principle.

Now, killing people for crimes you haven't proven they committed is different.

But in DA2 the mages were not innocent.

Except the templars were abusers and rapists. And so there is the dillema.

To clarify, the problem is that Meredith's actions make siding with no one nonsensical, or that the game artificially limits your ability to stay out of the whole thing?  The former doesn't seem like such a problem -- that's the situation you confront someone so paranoid they will accept no middle ground -- and the latter seems a little odd given the level of crazy Meredith has sunk to. 

I mean, either the threat of blood magic and abominations is so hight that you can justify killing all the mages in the entire circle, some of whom almost certainly fit a reasonable approximation of the word innocent, or the threat isn't that high.  I'd have supported removing Orsino, but...

I agree with the comment that when it comes right down to it, we don't really know anything about "the mages."  We know some things about a few mages.  What the rest are up to is totally unspecified, and only crazy ol' Meredith seems particularly convinced that there are tons of shady things going on.  Given that, I trust my sister that they're not all abominations-in-waiting.

[Camenae]

Well I think it's very easy to side with either.

It's like that classic moral dilemma of what happens if a train is hurtling down the tracks, and there is 1 person on one track and 9 people on another track, or something. And you're the only one who can flip the switch and change which track the train follows. If you do nothing, it will crush the 1 person. If you flip the switch, it will change tracks and kill the 9 people instead. What do you do?

All that kind of goes out the window if you have a personal stake on either side though, like you (possibly) do in this game. If that one person is yourself, your brother, your sister, your child, whatever, then I think it would suddenly become not so much of a dilemma for a lot of people: of course you are going to save the one you love. I tell you right now that I will happily sit in jail for the rest of my life if I were to be held responsible for the other 9 people, if the one person I saved is my child.

So if you're a mage, or your sister is a mage, it's easy to side with the mages. If you don't want to kill your Templar brother, then without metagaming you will find it easy to side with the Templars. People want to save their families, and there's nothing wrong with that.

[In Exile]

darrylzero wrote...
To clarify, the problem is that Meredith's actions make siding with no one nonsensical, or that the game artificially limits your ability to stay out of the whole thing?  The former doesn't seem like such a problem -- that's the situation you confront someone so paranoid they will accept no middle ground -- and the latter seems a little odd given the level of crazy Meredith has sunk to. 

The game doesn't let you, because Hawke had to be at the centre of it all, and "To hell with you all, I'm going home!" is not apparently an option. Neither is helping Aveline keep order while the mages and templars kill each other.

Meredith demanded that you join her or die if you were an apostate mage, but I haven't seen the rationale for a non-mage Hawke yet (I suppose Bethany counts, if she's in the Circle at that point).

I mean, either the threat of blood magic and abominations is so hight that you can justify killing all the mages in the entire circle, some of whom almost certainly fit a reasonable approximation of the word innocent, or the threat isn't that high.  I'd have supported removing Orsino, but...

I mean, I would have liked the options to not act. Whether or not these things are true... wanting to leave or keep order are valid options, and I think Aveline should have represented a "third way".

In fact, you can have the same progression too: rally the guard (instead of the mages or templars) to arrest both lunatics and make Kirkwall a free city. A rebellion by Hawke & Co. against Chantry authority following this insane firebombing would still count with the plot and fit with the 're-use all areas' mantra of Bioware.

I agree with the comment that when it comes right down to it, we don't really know anything about "the mages."  We know some things about a few mages.  What the rest are up to is totally unspecified, and only crazy ol' Meredith seems particularly convinced that there are tons of shady things going on.  Given that, I trust my sister that they're not all abominations-in-waiting.

And we don't know about the templars either, but they have a number of abusers. And we know the weight of what it means to Anull a Circle.

It isn't clean, but not wanting to be a part of it is as valid an option as any.

Modifié par In Exile, 11 avril 2011 - 06:38 .

[TheAwesomologist]

TobiTobsen wrote...

TheAwesomologist wrote...

TobiTobsen wrote...
They are nevertheless part of the plot, targets of quests and therefore part of the lore. They have even named leaders that are mostly blood mages, like Danzig, Jackson "The Bleeder" Hall and the guy from the Redwater Teeth. I don't think that you can just ignore them.

Even then they aren't enough of a reason to wipe out the ENTIRE CIRCLE OF KIRKWALL for. If the Templars did their job going after the real bad guys instead of using and abusing the ones they already had captured I'd be a bit more sympathetic to their call for help.

The main problem is the fact that some nutjob in the templar/chantry command chain thought it would be totally awesome to found a circle in Kirkwall, without reading the history books of the city. I think we should exhume that fool and slap him for it.

Ugh don't get me started that the most important information in the game is from 9 random codex entries that can be hard to find. I don't expect everything to be told to me but all this information could have made for a cool side quest or something.

Person I want to meet most is the Architect of Kirkwall. That guy made a killing selling the same 4 building plans to everyone.

[IanPolaris]

TheAwesomologist wrote...

Ugh don't get me started that the most important information in the game is from 9 random codex entries that can be hard to find. I don't expect everything to be told to me but all this information could have made for a cool side quest or something.

Person I want to meet most is the Architect of Kirkwall. That guy made a killing selling the same 4 building plans to everyone.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the reason they hide crucual information (i.e. Kirkwall is built on what amounts to a Hellmouth) is because if they showed you that in the game, you'd have game information that would help you sympathize with the mages, and the Devs apparently didn't want that.  The entire presentation is incredibly (and IMHO almost criminally) one-sided in favor of the Templars.

-Polaris

[TheAwesomologist]

In Exile wrote...

I mean, either the threat of blood magic and abominations is so hight that you can justify killing all the mages in the entire circle, some of whom almost certainly fit a reasonable approximation of the word innocent, or the threat isn't that high.  I'd have supported removing Orsino, but...

I mean, I would have liked the options to not act. Whether or not these things are true... wanting to leave or keep order are valid options, and I think Aveline should have represented a "third way".

In fact, you can have the same progression too: rally the guard (instead of the mages or templars) to arrest both lunatics and make Kirkwall a free city. A rebellion by Hawke & Co. against Chantry authority following this insane firebombing would still count with the plot and fit with the 're-use all areas' mantra of Bioware.

It isn't clean, but not wanting to be a part of it is as valid an option as any.

I would have loved a third option to help Aveline protect the people. That's how you should be able to become the Viscount of Kirkwall. As it is, it makes no sense whatsoever for the Templars to put an apostate mage in charge of the city just because he helped in their murder-fest.

[TheAwesomologist]

IanPolaris wrote...

TheAwesomologist wrote...

Ugh don't get me started that the most important information in the game is from 9 random codex entries that can be hard to find. I don't expect everything to be told to me but all this information could have made for a cool side quest or something.

Person I want to meet most is the Architect of Kirkwall. That guy made a killing selling the same 4 building plans to everyone.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the reason they hide crucual information (i.e. Kirkwall is built on what amounts to a Hellmouth) is because if they showed you that in the game, you'd have game information that would help you sympathize with the mages, and the Devs apparently didn't want that.  The entire presentation is incredibly (and IMHO almost criminally) one-sided in favor of the Templars.

-Polaris

Or, you know, they could have written a better endgame plot.

[IanPolaris]

TheAwesomologist wrote...

I would have loved a third option to help Aveline protect the people. That's how you should be able to become the Viscount of Kirkwall. As it is, it makes no sense whatsoever for the Templars to put an apostate mage in charge of the city just because he helped in their murder-fest.

Bingo.  The whole point of the Templars (supposedly) is to prevent magic from ruling others as it did in Tevinter (well among other things), yet the game would have us believe the Templars would endorse an open apostate to be Viscount?!

Ridiculous.  To be sure the Templars would highly regard your mage-Hawke as the "one excepion that proves the rule" but they'd never allow him or her to have a noble title. 

It would have been far better (and required minimal code) to add another achievement:  First-Enchanter of Kirkwall, becasue IMHO that's almost certainly what the Templars would ask of your mage-Hawke to try to put things back together.  "Surrender" to the circle and become the new First Enchanter.

-Polaris

[IanPolaris]

TheAwesomologist wrote...

IanPolaris wrote...

TheAwesomologist wrote...

Ugh don't get me started that the most important information in the game is from 9 random codex entries that can be hard to find. I don't expect everything to be told to me but all this information could have made for a cool side quest or something.

Person I want to meet most is the Architect of Kirkwall. That guy made a killing selling the same 4 building plans to everyone.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the reason they hide crucual information (i.e. Kirkwall is built on what amounts to a Hellmouth) is because if they showed you that in the game, you'd have game information that would help you sympathize with the mages, and the Devs apparently didn't want that.  The entire presentation is incredibly (and IMHO almost criminally) one-sided in favor of the Templars.

-Polaris

Or, you know, they could have written a better endgame plot.

That would be too much work apparently.

-Polaris

[TheAwesomologist]

IanPolaris wrote...

TheAwesomologist wrote...

I would have loved a third option to help Aveline protect the people. That's how you should be able to become the Viscount of Kirkwall. As it is, it makes no sense whatsoever for the Templars to put an apostate mage in charge of the city just because he helped in their murder-fest.

Bingo.  The whole point of the Templars (supposedly) is to prevent magic from ruling others as it did in Tevinter (well among other things), yet the game would have us believe the Templars would endorse an open apostate to be Viscount?!

Ridiculous.  To be sure the Templars would highly regard your mage-Hawke as the "one excepion that proves the rule" but they'd never allow him or her to have a noble title. 

It would have been far better (and required minimal code) to add another achievement:  First-Enchanter of Kirkwall, becasue IMHO that's almost certainly what the Templars would ask of your mage-Hawke to try to put things back together.  "Surrender" to the circle and become the new First Enchanter.

-Polaris

I would be totally fine with that as an optional ending.
The more I play this game and talk to people the more I realize it's just Act 3 where it all falls apart and feels rushed.

[Mnemnosyne]

Camenae wrote...

So if you're a mage, or your sister is a mage, it's easy to side with the mages. If you don't want to kill your Templar brother, then without metagaming you will find it easy to side with the Templars. People want to save their families, and there's nothing wrong with that.

To be honest, my first playthrough, when I hadn't read any spoilers or anything, Carver was a templar.  I still sided with the mages, not because I was OK with killing him, but because I felt really confident that when push came to shove, he wasn't gonna try to kill his sister.

[TobiTobsen]

IanPolaris wrote...

TheAwesomologist wrote...

I would have loved a third option to help Aveline protect the people. That's how you should be able to become the Viscount of Kirkwall. As it is, it makes no sense whatsoever for the Templars to put an apostate mage in charge of the city just because he helped in their murder-fest.

Bingo.  The whole point of the Templars (supposedly) is to prevent magic from ruling others as it did in Tevinter (well among other things), yet the game would have us believe the Templars would endorse an open apostate to be Viscount?!

Ridiculous.  To be sure the Templars would highly regard your mage-Hawke as the "one excepion that proves the rule" but they'd never allow him or her to have a noble title. 

It would have been far better (and required minimal code) to add another achievement:  First-Enchanter of Kirkwall, becasue IMHO that's almost certainly what the Templars would ask of your mage-Hawke to try to put things back together.  "Surrender" to the circle and become the new First Enchanter.

-Polaris

That would be more of a punishment, wouldn't it?  
"Congratulations Hawke! You just got promoted to be the First Enchanter of the city with the biggest demon infestation and the thinnest veil in all of Thedas! What do you say about that?"
"Uhhh... eh... thanks?!"

[darrylzero]

IanPolaris wrote...

Brilhros wrote...

It felt like that for me too, OP. Playing as a mage, I wanted to prove the templars wrong. But every time I tried, they turned out to be right in their suspicions. Even in cases where I was not expecting mages to be "out of their minds" (Orsino), they turned up to be, for the worse.

This was done deliberately to make the mages look worse than they were and by extension make the Templars look better.  Why?  The Devs apparently feel that the stupid players "don't understand the deep moral question" posed in the game and are upset that too many people side with the mages (which to me is a crock... the moral question(s) aren't that deep, difficult, or grey).

As such we get a very one-sided and skewed protraryal of mages esp in Act III along with some of the worst abuses of mages in full technicolar.  We never see the Templars breaking in their new Tranquil love-dolls.  We never see you or the Templars slaughtering children to enforce the Rite of Annulment (yet we KNOW that had to have happened).  we never see Templars jailing, imprisoning, or even killing innocent bystandards because they might be shelting apostates.  We hear about some of these but never see it.

Shame on you bioware.

-Polaris

I don't disagree, exactly, but I think it was misplayed more than it was manipulative.  The idea that maybe magic is just too dangerous could have some some interesting dilemmas, but I think Bioware offers entirely too many crazy and/or evil mages whose actions make no sense, and not enough mages who either:

1)  Use blood magic in a super-creepy, manipulative, but not explicitly homicidal way.  Isn't mind control (and by extension sex-slavery, among other things) a big reason why blood magic is so taboo?  Why can't the villainous mages have motivations I understand?  Not saying I understand the desire for mind-control sex slavery, but I can at least imagine characters going down that path -- much more than a crazy, let's turn templars into abominations cult.  I mean, there's a kind of balance there, but they just seem like whack jobs.

2)  Can't control their talents.

You get more of the latter, but few of the former.  Grace makes sense, at least, but she's still full of murderous rage that's blackened her heart.  It would be nice if more of their evil was the kind of evil we actually encounter in the real world. 

That said, as I write this out, I am seeing more reasons why you don't see it.  Mages of type #1 justify the existence of the Circle and discrimination against mages in regular society.  Mages of type #2 justify the Harrowing and Tranquility.  What kind of mages justify Annulment?

I think Bioware's logic is that Huon, Evelina, and maybe Orsino (partially) justify annulment.  But where is the evidence that this is some kind of pattern?  I think what it would take for me is if Cullen or someone had evidence that Orsino had been teaching blood magic to the circle in order to prepare them for a confrontation with the Templars. 

I think this would be more interesting, if it were done right.  I would probably still end up siding with the mages, but I wouldn't be very sure I'd done the right thing (and I'd be less sure that's what I'd actually do in real life if a somehow somewhat equivalent situation ever came up).  As it is, all you really get is Orsino flipping out at particularly random seeming time... which does seem like a desperate effort to make the choice more even than it really is at the end.

[Rockpopple]

I don't get this notion that the Devs didn't want us to sympathize with Mages. We're talking about Dragon Age II, right? There were plenty of moments where you could - if you were so inclined - sympathize with Mages.

If anything I think it was harder to sympathize with the Templars in the game, not the Mages. The choice at the end especially was incredibly skewed towards picking the Mage side.

So... I really don't get how the notion that the Devs tried really hard to get us to hate Mages got around. I think they tried hard for us to see the ugly side of both sides of the conflict.

My .02

[TheAwesomologist]

TobiTobsen wrote...

IanPolaris wrote...

TheAwesomologist wrote...

I would have loved a third option to help Aveline protect the people. That's how you should be able to become the Viscount of Kirkwall. As it is, it makes no sense whatsoever for the Templars to put an apostate mage in charge of the city just because he helped in their murder-fest.

Bingo.  The whole point of the Templars (supposedly) is to prevent magic from ruling others as it did in Tevinter (well among other things), yet the game would have us believe the Templars would endorse an open apostate to be Viscount?!

Ridiculous.  To be sure the Templars would highly regard your mage-Hawke as the "one excepion that proves the rule" but they'd never allow him or her to have a noble title. 

It would have been far better (and required minimal code) to add another achievement:  First-Enchanter of Kirkwall, becasue IMHO that's almost certainly what the Templars would ask of your mage-Hawke to try to put things back together.  "Surrender" to the circle and become the new First Enchanter.

-Polaris

That would be more of a punishment, wouldn't it?  
"Congratulations Hawke! You just got promoted to be the First Enchanter of the city with the biggest demon infestation and the thinnest veil in all of Thedas! What do you say about that?"
"Uhhh... eh... thanks?!"

Well yes it would, but it makes it easier to "Disappear just like the Warden" 3 years later.
"This job sucks, I'm outa here. C'mon Merrill/Isabella/Fenris/Zombie Anders"

[darrylzero]

IanPolaris wrote...

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the reason they hide crucual information (i.e. Kirkwall is built on what amounts to a Hellmouth) is because if they showed you that in the game, you'd have game information that would help you sympathize with the mages, and the Devs apparently didn't want that.  The entire presentation is incredibly (and IMHO almost criminally) one-sided in favor of the Templars.

-Polaris

I think that this would actually help justify annulment.  It would help convince me that more mages were going to keep turning into abominations and that maybe, though deeply unsettling, there is no other way.

It's not clear to me whether you're annoyed that mages are so inherently dangerous in Thedas or whether you're annoyed that we're supposed to consider them dangerous enough in Kirkwall that maybe they have to be taken out of the equation.  It makes it hard for me to follow what exactly you're arguing for.

IanPolaris wrote...

TheAwesomologist wrote...

I would have loved a third option to help Aveline protect the people. That's how you should be able to become the Viscount of Kirkwall. As it is, it makes no sense whatsoever for the Templars to put an apostate mage in charge of the city just because he helped in their murder-fest.

Bingo.  The whole point of the Templars (supposedly) is to prevent magic from ruling others as it did in Tevinter (well among other things), yet the game would have us believe the Templars would endorse an open apostate to be Viscount?!

Ridiculous.  To be sure the Templars would highly regard your mage-Hawke as the "one excepion that proves the rule" but they'd never allow him or her to have a noble title. 

It would have been far better (and required minimal code) to add another achievement:  First-Enchanter of Kirkwall, becasue IMHO that's almost certainly what the Templars would ask of your mage-Hawke to try to put things back together.  "Surrender" to the circle and become the new First Enchanter.

-Polaris

This I agree with, on all counts.

Rockpopple wrote...

I don't get this notion that the Devs didn't want us to sympathize with Mages. We're talking about Dragon Age II, right? There were plenty of moments where you could - if you were so inclined - sympathize with Mages.

If anything I think it was harder to sympathize with the Templars in the game, not the Mages. The choice at the end especially was incredibly skewed towards picking the Mage side.

So... I really don't get how the notion that the Devs tried really hard to get us to hate Mages got around. I think they tried hard for us to see the ugly side of both sides of the conflict.

My .02

I think you're right.  Polaris' issue, if I understand it, is that he thinks that the moral issues (genocide) are so obviously in his favor that any attempt to paint annulment as a morally grey issue in the game is essentially cheating.

I agree with him it was done poorly, but I don't understand why he thinks the devs don't want us to sympathize with the mages.  I think they do.

Modifié par darrylzero, 11 avril 2011 - 07:36 .

[Mikeuicus]

I'm inclined to agree with the OP. Mages in DA are one of its big stumbling points: We're asked to sympathize with their pseudo-slavery and empathize with their longing for freedom. Then every single mage we meet snaps their fingers and becomes an abomination at the drop of a hat. Even Anders, for all his pretense, commits a terrorist act--and I only sided with the mages because trying to beat Nightmare without a healer is impossible (thanks Bioware for not giving Merrill a healing spell!)

[darrylzero]

In Exile wrote...

The game doesn't let you, because Hawke had to be at the centre of it all, and "To hell with you all, I'm going home!" is not apparently an option. Neither is helping Aveline keep order while the mages and templars kill each other.

Meredith demanded that you join her or die if you were an apostate mage, but I haven't seen the rationale for a non-mage Hawke yet (I suppose Bethany counts, if she's in the Circle at that point).

I mean, I would have liked the options to not act. Whether or not these things are true... wanting to leave or keep order are valid options, and I think Aveline should have represented a "third way".

In fact, you can have the same progression too: rally the guard (instead of the mages or templars) to arrest both lunatics and make Kirkwall a free city. A rebellion by Hawke & Co. against Chantry authority following this insane firebombing would still count with the plot and fit with the 're-use all areas' mantra of Bioware.

I agree with all of this actually.  Personally, I still feel like there are probably a majority of the mages at risk that are innocent (or at least not meaningfully guilty), given, as you put it, "the weight of what it means to anull a Circle."  And I think that even if they were all blood mages I'd probably choose to act to try to save them (particularly with Bethany in the circle). 

But I can see why this would have been much more satisfying for many players.  And it's not a cheap third way; it's still a meaningful choice with real consequences.  And that's a great point about just how threatening the Chantry would still have found Hawke's actions.  It would cause Bioware no problems going forward.

In Exile wrote...

And we don't know about the templars either, but they have a number of abusers. And we know the weight of what it means to Anull a Circle.

It isn't clean, but not wanting to be a part of it is as valid an option as any.

What don't we really know about the templars?  Anyway, the obvious difference is that the templars in question could always refuse to fight and go home.  They're the ones embarking on a (possibly justified) murderous rampage.  So, I don't see the actions of Tarohne & Co (or anyone else) making me feel any worse about killing templars under those circumstances. 

That said, I always feel bad about killing footsoldiers.  I hate it in games when, after wading through a dungeon full of slavers or whatever, you're offered some kind of moral test about whether or not to kill the boss slaver.  Please!  I want to kill the boss slaver!  I just wish I didn't have to kill all his minions. 

That might not be the best example, but the point is that I do feel bad about how many templars I kill there.  I just don't really seem them as giving me much choice.  If they can't see that Meredith is off her rocker, well, maybe they've just been itching to kill them some mages anyway.

[Peer of the Empire]

IanPolaris wrote...

Just repeat after me: Do not kill people for a crime they didn't commit.

Follow that through to the very end, and you'll have no trouble siding with the mages.

-Polaris

Except for the whole mage revolution thing.  Since Meredith is going ahead with the Right of Annulment, it would be very bad if by killing her and the Templars the blood mages are loosed and we inspire magically inclined ne'er-do-wells elsewhere.

The revolt must be suppressed!  The Circles must survive.  We must think of the greater good.


Too bad the canon ending has revolution either way.

Modifié par Peer of the Empire, 11 avril 2011 - 08:00 .

[DrFumb1ezX]

I love people. I love the way we can argue with each other while keeping cool heads.
Just support who you think is right. If anyone disagrees, well, they do.
Nothing more to it.

[LobselVith8]

darrylzero wrote...

It's not clear to me whether you're annoyed that mages are so inherently dangerous in Thedas or whether you're annoyed that we're supposed to consider them dangerous enough in Kirkwall that maybe they have to be taken out of the equation.  It makes it hard for me to follow what exactly you're arguing for.

I think that's part of the problem. The Right of Annulment is called forth because of what Anders does, and we're never privy to anyone in the Circle of Magi to get an idea of whether there's an actual problem with blood magic or if it's simply the antagonists who we run across. The mages of the Circle of Magi are imprisoned in the Gallows, and we never really meet them. We can speculate on what the mages are like, but that's really all it is. The fact that Meredith is losing her mind because of a Lyrium idol doesn't really her the most objective person to evaluate the mages of the Circle, either, especially when she thinks that the templars turning against her are doing so because of blood magic as opposed to her mental deterioration.

darrylzero wrote...

I think you're right.  Polaris' issue, if I understand it, is that he thinks that the moral issues (genocide) are so obviously in his favor that any attempt to paint annulment as a morally grey issue in the game is essentially cheating.

I agree with him it was done poorly, but I don't understand why he thinks the devs don't want us to sympathize with the mages.  I think they do.

When the Right of Annulment happens against the Circle of Magi for an act Anders - a known apostate who is protected only be the Champion's reputation - commits, and furthermore is left alone by Meredith while she then orders the execution of an entire population of mages who aren't responsible for the actions of an ex-Grey Warden, there's no ambiguity. Act III is full of mage antagonists outside of the Circle, but we never actually meet the denizens of the Gallows who are being condemned for Anders' actions.

As for the comment about thinking the devs don't want us to sympathize with the mages, I think it's based on comments David Gaider in some threads where he said people choose mages almost by default and another thread where he countered the statement that the Right of Annulment was happening against the Circle mages who were innocent of what Anders had done with the statement that the mages are only innocent of being Circle mages and that they can explode. Some people took issue with that.

[stobie]

When you click on Alain, if you turned the mages in to Kerras, he says something about being 'abused' - meaning, in the worst way possible. (the dialogue is something like, 'Ser Kerras says if I tell anyone he's been in my chambers, he'll make me tranquil.') I don't see how *anyone* can justify that - and how you could justify sending Feynriel in. Yes, one crazy mage dismembers people - the Chantry's force seems a lot worse. Being able to cast a fireball just doesn't stack up to using your position to abuse kids. While you can get away with saying Alrik is an exception - this is a guy *you* side with. You'd have to be awfully beholden to 'the law,' however corrupt, to overlook what they do. What they do is by choice, not by nature, and that's the real evil.

Weird to see those 'little details' overlooked.

[Camenae]

Siding with the Templars doesn't necessarily mean I agree with the Templars in all things and death to all mages omg.

For me, I thought if Hawke at least made it look like she is siding with the Templars, then she could exert a certain level of control from WITHIN, using her power and influence as the Champion of Kirkwall. I thought this even before I found out I could tell Meredith to spare the three mages.

Otherwise Hawke would just be another rebel and all possible influence she could have had on Meredith and Cullen would be lost. It would not have been as powerful of a symbol for other mages later on, but I thought siding with the Templars would have accomplished more damage control for the mages of Kirkwall.

Modifié par Camenae, 11 avril 2011 - 09:24 .

[stobie]

I can see that - it's just *really* disturbing to see the 'mages are bad' without the accompanying understanding of what these particular mages (in Kirkwall) have endured, and what it may mean to side with them. (I sent Feynriel to the circle and turned in Grace, who I do loathe, when first buttering up Fenris - and saw that horrific result. I win the cute elf over in other ways now.) Why, say, the Ferelden circle would rebel, I'm not sure (especially if it's my mage-warden's origin) - except that where one group of people has that much power over others, these things will happen. (and this goes equally for mage-rule in Tevinter.) I don't think that's 'modern world' logic - that's just humanity.

I also think the mage rebellion can *only* end badly. Either they win, & become like Tevinter, or they lose, and are worse off than they were - not to mention that war shouldn't be the solution in the first place.   (Even assuming the mage-rebellion leaders are great people who don't want to hold all the power, I do not consider it likely to last, but that is a politcal assumption, granted.)


eta question:  Which 3 mages does she spare?  The quest ones, or the 3 Meredith has executed as examples?  Can you stop that?  

Modifié par stobie, 11 avril 2011 - 09:14 .