Plaintiff wrote...
Hawke has extremely frequent interaction with every important person in the entire goddamn city. Everytime someone of significance in Kirkwall wants something, they go to Hawke. And they don't demand, they ask, politely, because he can (theoretically), turn them down and leave them, and the city to get ****ed up.
So a glorified errand boy. Why can't he assign tasks to others for a change for his own agenda?
The city gets f**cked up with or without him.
They go to Hawke. He gets instant access to the Viscount when other nobles have to wait (for a long time too, judging by their complaints).
Because Hawke is a neutral party that is not involved in Kirkwall politics and is pretty good at violence.
Even the Arishok, a completely alien being, respects him, which means Hawke is capable of going to him when other city leaders are not, or would not dare to.
Because Hawke is a neutral party not involved in Kirkwall's government.
How is that not power? Under what deinition of the term could Hawke be classified as 'useless'?
Other than the fact that he failed in all of the examples you provide, this is not power.
This is being (mostly wrongly) considered reliable.
Now I would agree that this could have been an avenue towards a rise to power, as establishing connections is vital. But those connections created in Act 2 are useless, as the Viscount dies and the Arishok either dies or leaves. Now had they added the ability to make connections with some nobles in Act 2, which would have had a bearing in Act 3, that I could consider as a form of accumulating power and tryign to use it. But for 3 years, Hawke apparently did not build any meangful network of alliances and connectons, while he had the ability to and the context was ripe for it. Merely acquaitances.
Power is the ability to shape and influence events, and not do that solely at others' bidding. Hawke does not proactively seek to change Kirkwall, and when he tries to do it for someone else, he usually fails.
Except you do. If you boot Keran from the templars, you get a mission involving a group of moneylenders he's in debt to. If you saved Feynriel, it affects a mission in act 3. If you made him an abomination, you see the results of that. Those are just off the top of my head, I bet there's more, but I probably need to replay.
These are very minor and not really tied to the city in a large sense. It's tied to specific individuals, who they themselves are not that relevent for the city of Kirkwall. You claimed that Hawke influences Kirkwall with his supposed power and if those are examples, then it's pretty meager.
Not saying that those differences aren't welcome. But they are not enough for me to seriously consider Hawke has have any real power in Kirkwall.
I would mention the companions, except you wrote them off as "minimal". Personally, I consider the fact that they apparently maintain contact and visit each other regularly for seven years is pretty remarkable in and of itself.
Which is not influencing them in any meaningful term. Which I don't find necessarily a flaw, except when it comes to Hawke's inability to deal with Anders, and who has to constantly tolerate him barging in his property without any permission and shoving his manifesto everywhere. If Hawke had the ability to report Anders and we see him escape, that would have alleviated what I see as a glaring flaw.
Retour en haut
) as well. (probably could've helped with the darktown fereldan refugees). 
