43 réponses à ce sujet

[frustratemyself]

I enjoyed the game overall (Act 3 wasn't as good) but Hawke was very much a victim of circumstance. If you end up in the wrong place at the wrong time that often you learn to duck eventually unless your stupid or extremely masochistic.

[jmbrosendo]

Only annoying part of the ending, was siding with templars go through the Right of Annulment, and Varric stating at the end the Champions defiance served as a rallying cry for mages in other circles.

I was like, are you serious? I just wiped out an entire Circle and I am best remembered for killing the Knight Commander after She betrayed me?

[jcp234]

Everwarden wrote...

Richard parrington wrote...

 Has no one else
noticed how many threads and comments have been spawned out of the Mage/Templar
choice? For an ending that so many people are criticizing a lot more people
seem to be getting into very passionate arguments about who was right and who
was wrong. Could it be that the because the ending lives far more in the grey
than the end of Act II people fail to realize how much it has made them think.

Think on it.

The problem with the ending isn't the moral difficulty of the choice (the right choice is siding with mages, no sane person punishes people for a crime they didn't commit), the problem is that the ending sucked. It's the same regardless of your choices throughout the game or at the end, and you get the same epilogue regardless.

A lot of people call it a cliffhanger, which I don't think is accurate; a cliffhanger leaves one wanting more. I don't want to know -any- more about Hawke, or his ridiculous button-awesome misadventures. I never want to see his ugly, bearded face again or deal with facepalm worthy "witty Hawke" spoke dialogue.

It's more accurate to call it an anticlimax and then a full stop. There is no closure and no real climax ("Oh, yay, I get to kill both the mage and templar leaders. So they aren't even pretending my choices matter now.").

It didn't even feel like the end to me, I thought "Okay, this is only year seven, there will be another act after I slog through this garbage. Maybe it will be better." Then the credits rolled. It's almost as though they just ran out of time and took a cleaver to the real ending.

I approve of this message. Agree with everything communicated. However, if I have to choose between having Hawke's story finished in DLC or the next chapter of Dragon Age...I prefer it finished in DLC. I really want nothing to do with Hawke in Dragon Age III.

[Emergent System]

The ending is stupid because everything in act 3 is stupid. The templars are executing and tranquilizing mages left and right, mages are turning to blood magic more frequently than not, and both meredith and the first enchanter are complete lunatics (though you don't discover this about the enchanter until the very end when he suddently loses his mind out of nowhere). Everyone is wrong, and it's not because the question is gray or because there's no possible right or wrong, everyone is wrong because EVERYONE IS COMPLETELY INSANE. You have a couple of underlings that aren't crazy, but that's about it. Even Anders goes out of his way to blow up a church and a bunch of innocent people rather than just assassinate meredith, which would've at leasty had a CHANCE of succeeding at solving the problem...

Basically the ending sucked because all of act 3 is idiotic (especially from the pov of a mage Hawke). If the situation was more plausible ,and every single conflict didn't rely on the antagonists being INSANE it'd have been more interesting.

Modifié par Emergent System, 19 avril 2011 - 07:10 .

[LobselVith8]

Richard parrington wrote...

Has no one else noticed how many threads and comments have been spawned out of the Mage/Templar choice?

To be fair, people have been debating the mage and templar situation since DA:O.

Richard parrington wrote...

For an ending that so many people are criticizing a lot more people seem to be getting into very passionate arguments about who was right and who was wrong.

People also address that the third act used a macguffin and completely removed Hawke from the dicotomy between the mages and templars by having an apostate blow up a building and the respresentatives of the mages and templars both being bad guys. We never actually meet the many mages living in the Gallows and encounter mage antagonists outside the Gallows, so we can't accurately assess who is right or wrong in the debate about the Kirkwall mages. The two mages in the Gallows we do meet - Orsino and Bethany - are very different from each other.

Richard parrington wrote...

Could it be that the because the ending lives far more in the grey than the end of Act II people fail to realize how much it has made them think.

Think on it.

It's not grey when you're killing people in the Circle of Magi for something an apostate did and turn Meredith and Orsino into villains.

[Torax]

Isn't it Grey if the First Enchanter himself was proudly looking into dark things. He just kind of mentions working with Quintan if you support the Mages. But he's proud of it if you support the Templars. It's Grey because the very same things Meredith was looking for was even in the First Enchanter that wouldn't work with her. He plays the innocent until you turn on him. If he don't he just loses hope for no good reason. It's Grey because both Orsino and Meredith were wrong. You may not accept that Orsino was a sick bastard that tried to charm himself out of things. He can try to claim he was doing it protect the mages, but I'd contend he was just trying to protect himself.

I'm not even a Templar supporter and I still put the blame on Orsino and Meredith for why the Annulment went down. If Orsino had helped Meredith before when she had asked then it never would have gone that far. But obviously Orsino was hiding many evil things for a long time. Things that could be tied to him. So yes it's a big f'n GREY ending.

Modifié par Torax, 19 avril 2011 - 07:39 .

[LobselVith8]

Torax wrote...

Isn't it Grey if the First Enchanter himself was proudly looking into dark things. He just kind of mentions working with Quintan if you support the Mages.

First Enchanter Orsino is one man, he isn't the Circle of Magi, so it's not morally grey because Hawke never meets the many mages of the Gallows. We're denied an opportunity to make any accurate assessment about them. Also, in both versions he admits to corresponding with Quentin, and addresses it as "evil" in the mage version.

Torax wrote...

But he's proud of it if you support the Templars.

He's more mentally unbalanced in the templar version. It doesn't change that he's an antagonist, of course, and as insane as Meredith is.

Torax wrote...

It's Grey because the very same things Meredith was looking for was even in the First Enchanter that wouldn't work with her.

No, it's not morally grey when we're looking at one single man as opposed to the many mages who reside in the Gallows.

Torax wrote...

He plays the innocent until you turn on him. If he don't he just loses hope for no good reason. It's Grey because both Orsino and Meredith were wrong.

It's not morally grey when Orsino becomes a Harvester for no sensible reason in the mage ending and Meredith is taken over by a macguffin.

Torax wrote...

You may not accept that Orsino was a sick bastard that tried to charm himself out of things. He can try to claim he was doing it protect the mages, but I'd contend he was just trying to protect himself.

Orsino is an idiot at the end. So is Meredith. Their actions seem very artifical and forced. Bad storytelling doesn't make their turn as villains morally grey, though. Instead of making any choice as the protagonist about the murky situation with the templars and the mages, we have an artifical choice made because an apostate attacked the Kirkwall Chantry. It's no longer about the templars and the mages, but dealing with the fallout of what Anders did as an apostate. Orsino and Meredith becoming insane because of the plot doesn't make this morally grey.

Torax wrote...

I'm not even a Templar supporter and I still put the blame on Orsino and Meredith for why the Annulment went down. If Orsino had helped Meredith before when she had asked then it never would have gone that far.

If Anders didn't blow up a building and Orsino and Meredith weren't complete idiots, we might have had a good story that was morally grey. Instead, we have a recycled Harvester from GoA and Meredith's Macguffin Sword of Insanity.

Torax wrote...

But obviously Orsino was hiding many evil things for a long time. Things that could be tied to him. So yes it's a big f'n GREY ending.

No, it's a character that does something stupid, followed by another character who also does something stupid. That isn't morally grey.

[tek427]

For me, DAII seemed to be a bridge between DA:O and DAIII (or whatever DA installment comes next). DAII didn't add much to the overall DA story. Yeah, Hawke sparks a war between mages and templars all over Thedas but that's about it. What bugs me about the ending is that Hawke's fate is too "up in the air," shall we say. I don't mind a little ambiguity, but DAII's ending was a little too much. The fact that both the Warden and Hawke have dissapeared at the same time does pique my curiousity over what comes next. But if it came down to either playing as my Warden or Hawke, I'd play as my Warden.

[Addai]

The ending with the Arishok is limited and contained. Once he's dead, especially if Isabela came back with the relic, that's all there is to it.

My problem with the act 3 ending is from playing a mage yet not wanting to sign on to an anti-Chantry rebellion. It feels very futile, because even defending the Kirkwall Circle, you are just a cog in a war that will take lots of innocent lives and nothing you do matters for that at all. It's also very dissatisfying that your only two choices in this case are to kill Anders or to have him believe you support his cause. I would have liked the opportunity to make him defend the Kirkwall Circle and then to kill him. As it was, I didn't even have the chance to raise a stern eyebrow at him in that final dialogue. And who knows what the hell else Justice has planned.

Modifié par Addai67, 19 avril 2011 - 08:12 .

[Maria13]

Torax wrote...

Isn't it Grey if the First Enchanter himself was proudly looking into dark things. He just kind of mentions working with Quintan if you support the Mages. But he's proud of it if you support the Templars. It's Grey because the very same things Meredith was looking for was even in the First Enchanter that wouldn't work with her. He plays the innocent until you turn on him. If he don't he just loses hope for no good reason. It's Grey because both Orsino and Meredith were wrong. You may not accept that Orsino was a sick bastard that tried to charm himself out of things. He can try to claim he was doing it protect the mages, but I'd contend he was just trying to protect himself.

I'm not even a Templar supporter and I still put the blame on Orsino and Meredith for why the Annulment went down. If Orsino had helped Meredith before when she had asked then it never would have gone that far. But obviously Orsino was hiding many evil things for a long time. Things that could be tied to him. So yes it's a big f'n GREY ending.

I'm not surprised that the first enchanter was looking into dark things as you say.  That can be justifiable even if he is a white hat, he needs an intimate knowledge of the enemy's weaponry... Let's not forget that the chief enchanter of Ferelden mysteriously has Flemeth's dark grimoire. And I do think Orsino is a white hat, he just breaks down when Meredith is about to kill him and all his colleagues, all his protegees, who wouldn't break down in such circumstances especially if you have tried your utmost to be reasonable? How can you say he loses all hope 'for no good reason'?

The mages are the weaker party here, the underdogs. They are the victims as even Cullen acknowledges. And by saying this I am not seeking to justify Anders' action which was beyond the pall and for which even Orsino berates him.

I doubt Meredith would have backed down even if Orsino had bowed down to her latest whim; another even more demanding request would have almost certainly been forthcoming.  My view is Mere is the baddie and was looking for his breaking point.  Also, Orsino cannot give in indefinitely to such requests without ultimately sacrificing all credibility and his leadership of the circle anybody reasonable would have seen that.

[Torax]

Lob, you have to realize that Meredith was calling for the Annulment on the Circle within Kirkwall. The same very Circle whose First Enchanter was aiding and conspiring with a mass murderer. The same one that sends you off to hunt down Blood Mages he knew about and was just afraid they would make the Circle look more corrupt than obviously he already was. This wasn't some damnation of every Circle in existence by Meredith. It was Meredith wanting to root out the evil through blood. The Evil that was obviously there to me, especially within the First Enchanter that would NOT work with Meredith in the past. Hide or ignore what you want. I am not even a Templar supporter. I just won't sit and trump up or try to cast aside that evils were within that Circle. Enough to warrant Meredith's Paranoia. I am not close minded like some would like to be. I also just think of Anders as giving her the ability to enact what she couldn't before. But regardless most of her fears about the Circle did exist. Even if you won't admit it.

[Emergent System]

Torax wrote...

It's Grey because both Orsino and Meredith were wrong. You may not accept that Orsino was a sick bastard that tried to charm himself out of things. He can try to claim he was doing it protect the mages, but I'd contend he was just trying to protect himself.

So yes it's a big f'n GREY ending.

That just means the leaders of both factions were crazy, not that the choices we were presented with were in any way gray. Either all the mage have turned crazy and you kill them all, or they haven't and you don't kill the ones that haven't gone crazy. There's no gray here, it's pretty simple. Your only choice is support one crazy luantic or support another crazy lunatic and which one you supported doesn't matter because nothing you did changed anything anyway.

Would've made more sense if we could just flip them all off and go sit on top of a spire, watching the conflict unfold. Abom-Orsino would've just fought Powered-Meredith and they'd have destroyed each other and everything would've been as if the champion  was in his room masturbating the whole time.

[Joy Divison]

I don't have a problem role-playing a protagonist who is not very heroic.

I don't have a problem with being faced with two distinctly bad choices.

I don't even have much of a problem with an ending which isn't fully resolved.

I do have a problem that my choices do not matter and the game proceed ends more or less the same way regardless of what you do.

[Droma]

for all the people who thing the ending scuked because of the lack of impact depending of your choices, i ask you, where were they in dragon age origins?

don't get me wrong i think both games are great in so many different ways (it's like final fantasys you can't really compare them) but the ending was exact the same in origins no matter what you choose to do. you fight the archdemon on the roof and if loghain, alistair or you kill the demon don't really make a difference (especially if you die and reappear in daa magically). also if you do the pact with morrigan --> no really difference in the end.

so i don't get it what exactly was wrong with the da2 ending. the only thing i have to agree is that it kinda sucked that orsino went crazy even if you sided with the mages. it didn't really make sense. would be better if they made the orsino fight more awesome and then forced you to only fight one boss, depending on which side you choose. if you sided with the templars your epic orsino would be the final boss and if you sided with the mages it would be meredith.

[Addai]

Maria13 wrote...
How can you say he loses all hope 'for no good reason'?

Because he flips right as they're winning.  He's not only crazy, he's ungrateful, the little vampire bastard.

The mages are the weaker party here, the underdogs. They are the victims as even Cullen acknowledges. And by saying this I am not seeking to justify Anders' action which was beyond the pall and for which even Orsino berates him.

I have a hard time seeing that as the case.

Modifié par Addai67, 19 avril 2011 - 09:08 .

[zeejay21]

Short version: It just doesn't feel epic.

Long version: Players expected an even better final battle than DA:O. They're disappointed when it's only against two crazies. Players want big, massive, challenging final confrontation like the ones in DA:O. Waves after waves of enemies, your NPC allies joins the fight, everyone's fighting left and right and then... the final blow. DA:O delivered that, DA2 didn't... really. It wasn't satisfying and the then ending is a cliffhanger. Anyone ever feel satisfied with cliffhangers? I don't think so. This is why it's understandable people are yearning for any upcoming DLC. They wanna know what's next. They don't to be left questioning themselves. To players, DA2 feels unfinished storywise.

[Wulfram]

Addai67 wrote...

Because he flips right as they're winning.  He's not only crazy, he's ungrateful, the little vampire bastard.

The large number of Templars with Cullen and Meredith when you meet them later suggests that he was right in his assessment of your chances.  And there are dead bodies of mages on the floor in the cutscene, even though you probably won the battle beforehand easily.

[TheRealJayDee]

Wulfram wrote...

Hawke is a hero, not a sane person.

My Hawke was neither a hero nor a sane person at the end. He had already lost pretty much everything he cared about and fought for at the end of Act 2. But he was forced to stay. One of the last things he did before he didn't prevent Anders from blowing up the chantry and starting a war was slaughtering his girlfriend's entire foster family. When he sided with the mages Fenris turned against him and he had to kill him. The Orsino incident. Mededith and Soul Edge.

If there's ever a DLC or an expansion that continues Hawke's story I won't be playing it with my canon Hawke. Because at the point when Cassandra interrogates Varric my Hawke is defininetly either an alcoholic, a madman or dead already. Quite probably all of it.

It was actually quite interesting playing a game in which the protagonist who wass supposed to rise to power more or less does nothing - except becoming emotionally crippled.

[LobselVith8]

Torax wrote...

Lob, you have to realize that Meredith was calling for the Annulment on the Circle within Kirkwall. The same very Circle whose First Enchanter was aiding and conspiring with a mass murderer.

I don't think anyone contests the stupidity of what Orsino did, but the problem is both Orsino and Meredith do incredibly stupid things because The Plot Dictates. There's no moral ambiguity when Orsino turns into a GoA Harvester because the developers weren't content with recycling backgrounds and bad guys. There's no moral ambiguity when Meredith orders the Right of Annulment because Anders blew up the Chantry and we hardly encounter any mages inside the Gallows.

Torax wrote...

The same one that sends you off to hunt down Blood Mages he knew about and was just afraid they would make the Circle look more corrupt than obviously he already was.

I realize Meredith called for the Right of Annulment on the Circle of Kirkwall. Because an apostate blew up the Kirkwall Chantry. Where Orsino and Meredith followed to go insane because the developers needed to recycle GoA's Harvester and Meredith needed to be taken over by a magical Macguffin. This doesn't make the storyline morally grey.

Torax wrote...

This wasn't some damnation of every Circle in existence by Meredith. It was Meredith wanting to root out the evil through blood. The Evil that was obviously there to me, especially within the First Enchanter that would NOT work with Meredith in the past.

Speculation on your part doesn't equal obvious.

Torax wrote...

Hide or ignore what you want. 

Feel free to provide something besides your speculation.

Torax wrote...

I am not even a Templar supporter. I just won't sit and trump up or try to cast aside that evils were within that Circle. Enough to warrant Meredith's Paranoia.

Your speculation on the many mages we never actually meet in the Gallows doesn't constitute fact, though, which is the problem.

Torax wrote...

I am not close minded like some would like to be. I also just think of Anders as giving her the ability to enact what she couldn't before. But regardless most of her fears about the Circle did exist. Even if you won't admit it.

Most of her fears are unsubstantiated because we never meet the many mages inside the Gallows, we meet mages outside of the Gallows. This is a point you continually fail to address.