1008 replies to this topic

[LobselVith8]

Aside from the dichotomy that exists between the mage and templar perspectives, I wonder if the creators wanted fans to side with the templars at the end of Dragon Age 2. In Dragon Age 2, we don't have a mage point of view as an apostate Hawke, we never really get the opportunity to see the dark side of the Circle of Kirkwall under the Templar Order in the same way we do with the mage antagonists we're forced to deal with, and no one ever mentions the children in the Gallows when the Right of Annulment comes up.

Even "All That Remains" seems geared toward giving having Hawke side with the templars because his mother is killed by a mage, and I notice some fans dismissing the information we get from Anders about life in the Circle as lies because of what happens at the end of the story. We know that the Head Writer has gone on record as stating that it was felt people with mages by default:

David Gaider wrote...

One need only glance at your average templar vs. mage thread (previous to DA2 coming out, in particular) to see that most people fall on the side of the mages almost by default.

As well as addressing the mages of the Circle of Kirkwall in a discussion where it was brought up that the Circle mages are innocent of the specific action that an apostate, Anders, had committed when he destroyed the Kirkwall Chantry with Grand Cleric Elthina inside:

David Gaider wrote...

"Innocent" in this case being the mages of the Circle, yes.

Who are innocent in the manner of, say, a kitten that CAN EXPLODE IN YOUR FACE AND TAKE OUT AN ENTIRE CITY BLOCK IF YOU TOUCH IT... and might also bite your nose just because. But relatively innocent nonetheless.

At any rate, yes. Legally the templars and the Chantry are required to protect the public (who are innocent in the maner of not being the explode-in-your-face sort of kitten) from the Circle's potential dangers... or that is the intention, anyhow.

And we have Ser Thrask killed by the cardboard cutout villain Grace in "Best Served Cold" and Orsino becoming a Harvester even when it makes no sense to the plot, but both quests serve to provide us with mage antagonists.  Did Gaider and the other PTB intend for fans to side with the templars as Hawke in Dragon Age 2?

[Wulfram]

They wanted siding with the Templars to be a reasonable choice, rather than having supporting the mages be a no brainer.

The problem is that they did this by having mages act randomly evil all the time, instead of having the Templars act with some semblance of rationality.

[Iosev]

I personally think that it's a test of your morality. I think most people will support freedom at first. What Bioware did was continually show you instances of magical corruption with the question, "Do you still support mage freedom?"

Some people will believe that the magical corruption that you see are only the extreme cases, and that there are many other magi who do not abuse their powers, so they will still support magi freedom to a certain extent. Others will be much more like Meredith, and will start to see each case of magical abuse as the rule, rather than the exception, which in turn will make them believe that things like the Rite of Annulment are justified.

In DA:O, despite many of the conflicts revolving around magical abuse, for some reason it was still easy to support magi freedom. DA 2 did a good job of making me think much harder on the subject.

Edited by arcelonious, 15 June 2011 - 04:47 PM.

[dragonflight288]

In Origins, we were among the Grey Wardens. We were dealing with darkspawn and Loghain's political maneuverings for the most part. We weren't seeing dangerous apostates killing indiscriminately. We mainly saw abominations in the tower, and it seemed fairly hard to justify that kind of revolt. In DA2, we see the templar/mage conflict much more openly. We can honestly see the damage a corrupt mage outside the circle can unleash.

I like to think of the end choice as "Which principle do we support? Security for the people at large? Or freedom and independence for people whose only crime was being born? Is the danger worth the risk of independence?" Security vs freedom.

[Rifneno]

IMO:  No, they just did a poor job of writing a grey moral choice.  They need to realize not everything has to be a grey moral area.  Sometimes some choices are just plain good and others are just plain evil.  If you come across an orphan on fire, you know they've set up some convoluted situation where 7 refugees die if you put the kid out.  And then we're supposed to ask ourselves, "is putting out a child on fire an evil deed?"  I presume this question is best asked under the influence of controlled substances.

And they REALLY could've done without the "freedom vs. security" story.  There's plenty of good types of stories that haven't been the main subject of our real world politics for a decade.  I don't care in the least whether they intended political subtext, the fact is that it's there. 

[White_Jedi]

It would seem that the dev's wanted people to side with the templars, at least on the surface. I just get the feeling that this kind of plot has been played out before in books and movies to the degree where it isn't particularly surprising anymore. From the LotR stories to the X-Men to Star Wars, the story of the dangers presented to people with more knowledge/powers/abilities that a general populace don't have access to seems to be a archetypical storyline that plays well, this one just leans heavily on trying to show us what the powerfull can do if they go bad. In every act mages try to kill you and/or your companions, rarely do they offer you or your companions any help/assistance. On the other hand, plenty of non-mages try to kill you as well, but the point get's lost that anyone can be good or bad as they chose. If all have freewill, they become what they chose to be. The only alternative, if you can call it that, is slavery. I just hope the next DA game does not also focus on the mage/templar conflict again. Been there, done that, time to move on.

[Ryzaki]

Wulfram wrote...

They wanted siding with the Templars to be a reasonable choice, rather than having supporting the mages be a no brainer.

The problem is that they did this by having mages act randomly evil all the time, instead of having the Templars act with some semblance of rationality.

This pretty much. 

There was so many crazies on both sides I kind of wanted to nuke them all and be done with it. 

[Forst1999]

Wulfram wrote...

They wanted siding with the Templars to be a reasonable choice, rather than having supporting the mages be a no brainer.

The problem is that they did this by having mages act randomly evil all the time, instead of having the Templars act with some semblance of rationality.

I agree. If you want to make a setting "gray" it is better to make both sides somewhat right and not both sides wrong.
The many bat**** insane mages weren't necessary, and Meredith's insanity wasn't either. I still like it, but it could have been handled better.

[GavrielKay]

I would rather have seen something like the Connor story where a mage inflicts lots of damage because they can't control their gift. Then a group of very rational and dedicated Templars come in and help you save the village. Make the Templars and circle a "good thing."

The way DA2 plays out for me, is that if both sides are bat**** crazy, then I might as well support freedom. Why support oppression if the end result is still bat**** crazed people running amok?

[GavrielKay]

Another thought:

They couldn't even use someone like Huon as a good example because

1) The circle made Huon into the crazed mage that he was by taking him away from his wife and locking him up for 10 years
2) Then somehow let him escape even though it's supposed to be their only real job keeping mages away from civilians
3) And they don't go after him themselves or even help Hawke in the quest

So, they caused a problem and then proved themselves unnecessary by showing that a talented individual could in fact go kill the nasty raving nuclear bomb style blood mage without any Templar help.

[CrimsonZephyr]

The problem is that the negatives of the mages are always thrown in your face, while the negatives of the Templars are always alluded to. Where are the mages being abused? Where are the Templars acting like tinpot totalitarians? Show, don't tell! Also, Orsino gets very little character development, yet goes completely nuts, even if Hawke just helped him curbstomp an entire platoon of Templars, simply because the writers needed a cheap way to make the ending Grey/Grey and Grim Dark.

[Rifneno]

GavrielKay wrote...

Another thought:

They couldn't even use someone like Huon as a good example because

1) The circle made Huon into the crazed mage that he was by taking him away from his wife and locking him up for 10 years
2) Then somehow let him escape even though it's supposed to be their only real job keeping mages away from civilians
3) And they don't go after him themselves or even help Hawke in the quest

So, they caused a problem and then proved themselves unnecessary by showing that a talented individual could in fact go kill the nasty raving nuclear bomb style blood mage without any Templar help.

I completely agree. That's another reason the whole "grey area" thing fails horribly. This is basic cause and effect. They want us to see the danger of mages out of the Circle and they do it by showing us mages that are psycho because of the Circle. They took a few thousand of the kid from Sixth Sense and locked them in the house from Poltergeist. All that show us is that the Circle doesn't work.

Nuclear bomb analogy makes baby Andraste cry though.

CrimsonZephyr wrote...

The problem is that the negatives of the mages are always thrown in your face, while the negatives of the Templars are always alluded to. Where are the mages being abused?

I agree with this also. In fact I think I said something very similar a month or so ago. We have to see it when mages do their evil, but the templars evil is not only unshown most of the time, it's often left room for doubt. For example, depending on your dialogue choice in Act of Mercy, Karras may say to "capture the pretty one for questioning and kill the rest." After hearing that Karras is a rapist from Alain if he's left alive (in an optional dialogue I might add) and the fact he refers to the one he wants alive as "the pretty one" it's reasonable to assume Karras was planning to rape Hawke. But it's left lots of room for interpretation, and only looks really damning when optional dialogues from the opposite path are taken into account. To be honest, when I first got into the DA2 debates I was hesitant to bring up Alrik's remarks to Ella because I figured a pro-templar poster would just tell me I'm reading too much into it and he might have meant she'd be working the mailroom or some crap.

Then again, given how much of the templars' evil deeds revolved around sex crimes I'm not sure I want them to get as much air time as the evil mages. =/

[ddv.rsa]

Wulfram wrote...

They wanted siding with the Templars to be a reasonable choice, rather than having supporting the mages be a no brainer.

Supporting the Templars stops being a reasonable choice the moment Meredith invokes the Right of Annulment. The Circle isn't shown to be involved, and she does nothing to Anders standing in front of her bragging he did it. 

I want to support the Templars. I really do. But unless I'm roleplaying an evil / emotionally messed up Hawke I can't follow that order. The choice would have been so much easier if only Anders showed up with some Circle mages.

Edited by ddv.rsa, 15 June 2011 - 07:55 PM.

[Dave of Canada]

ddv.rsa wrote...

I want to support the Templars. I really do. But unless I'm roleplaying an evil / emotionally messed up Hawke I can't follow that order.

You can easily play a Hawke who decides that:

• (S)He has no chance to fight the Templar armies in Kirkwall with the handful of mages in the Circle, so (s)he doesn't want to place his/her life at risk for nothing.
• (S)He wants to keep the peace in the city, where supporting the mages would only lead to more fighting and such.
• (S)He truly believes the Circle is too corrupt at that point, regardless of what triggered the Right, and feels it's their duty to assist in purging the Circle.
• (S)He wants to advance themselves politically, (s)he is constantly told before hand that (s)he needs the support of the Templar to rule Kirkwall.
• ect

You don't need to be evil or emotionally messed up.

Edited by Dave of Canada, 15 June 2011 - 08:01 PM.

[GavrielKay]

Rifneno wrote...
Nuclear bomb analogy makes baby Andraste cry though.

I meant it entirely tongue in cheek.  The Chantry and a number of forum posters want us to believe that the damage a single mage can do is so horrific that it rivals a nuclear weapon.  That mages are so hugely dangerous that even after they are trained and have passed their Harrowing they still cannot be trusted out in the world living their own lives.  And then they utterly fail to make that point by not even sending Templars with Hawke to help recapture the escaped mages. 

How exactly do you convince the player that Templars are necessary to counteract the dangers posed by mages by failing to send some along to accompany Hawke on a mission to recapture them?  This is bad story telling.  Nothing in the gameplay would have been wrecked by having a few non-controlled Templars come with you to the battle.

Dave of Canada
You don't need to be evil or emotionally messed up.

Some of those points lean towards either cowardly or greedy or gullible to my mind.  Not that Hawke can't be RPed that way just fine, but calling them not "messed up" is a matter of opinion.

[draken-heart]

 i would like to bring up a few points from the game

• Blood magic: though i agree with merrill that blood magic is not "inherently" evil it is still dangerous in the fact that not only can you get possesed by using it, but also you can easily kill youself if something goes wrong. this is what samson meant in best served cold when he said: Given the hint of freedom, mages go bad. i however do not see it as mages going bad but mages proving the templars right by doing whatever it takes to maintain their freedom if they are given/they earned it.
• Orsino: the only problem here is that Orsino was desperate to get rid of Meredith and that is why he went nouts and turned HArvester Blood Mage
• Meredith: she seemed pretty reasonable to me when she is first encountered, but her Souledge wannabe lyrium sword is what made her paranoia meter hit...wait for it...OVER 9000!!!!!

this all stems from the fact that mages when they get a hint of freedom, they want to keep, by whatever means necessary, and that blasted idol making meredith crazy. had anders realized what mages would do to keep their freedom he never would have tried to free them from the circle.

[Micon2]

People rise up against the Chantry regardless of which side you take! The difference is you become the Champion and stick around a few years or take off into the sunset. I have only played thru twice . Can't say I am enthralled by the the moral choices but I was surprised to have Ferris come back to fight on my side (I was a rogue).
I also think that Meredith's demonic transformation should have made all the templars move against her.
Not enough on the idol was made known or elaborated on. Also I found that the high moral tone used by Petrice and Meredith left me with no option other than to gut them at my first opportunity. Talk about raise the ire.

[GavrielKay]

draken-heart wrote...
this all stems from the fact that mages when they get a hint of freedom, they want to keep, by whatever means necessary, and that blasted idol making meredith crazy. had anders realized what mages would do to keep their freedom he never would have tried to free them from the circle.

The bigger problem here is that wanting to be free is a very strong part of the human (or elf) psyche and ignoring that when setting up your system is just insane.  By maintaining the circles as prisons and the mages as inmates, the Chantry helped to create the problem.  Mages who don't have to fight or hide to be free have less reason to jump into the arms of demons.

[EmperorSahlertz]

I don't think they tried to make the situation gray at all. They made both cases black, and then left it to us, the players, to decide for ourselves, which of the two were the lesser evil.

[draken-heart]

GavrielKay wrote...

draken-heart wrote...
this all stems from the fact that mages when they get a hint of freedom, they want to keep, by whatever means necessary, and that blasted idol making meredith crazy. had anders realized what mages would do to keep their freedom he never would have tried to free them from the circle.

The bigger problem here is that wanting to be free is a very strong part of the human (or elf) psyche and ignoring that when setting up your system is just insane.  By maintaining the circles as prisons and the mages as inmates, the Chantry helped to create the problem.  Mages who don't have to fight or hide to be free have less reason to jump into the arms of demons.

thats another thing, Kirkwall was built on blood magic and slavery, what did the chantry think was going to happen?

[Nightdragon8]

Yea the circle is corrupt because Anders blew up the chantry

The last reveal is that the first enchanter was doing reaserch with the mass murderer that killed your mother. Honestly there was no good choice to be had. And even if you picked the mage side alot of there mages turned to bloodmagic anyway.

Gameplay wise templars are very weak and can be killed easy with magic. But Templars are sposed to be all but immune to magic. So in reality mage hawke should not have been able to do anything.

Also you are all thinking that the first enchanter is a fighting man. There is a good reason why Meredith allowed them time to "prepare" for battle. Its becus she knew they would be scared to death and forced into a corner. Phycology in battle is a big thing. Seiges can be more stressful without anything happening. I mean picture an army outside of a city doing nothing but waiting. Maybe even having the seige weapons up but they aren't firing. The whole mental aspet of them just being there is going to stress people out. This is the exact same senario. Meredith has announced we are coming, but we are going to "give you time" Being given time to a bunch of non combatants is a very good tactic. Beucase there fears will end up getting the better of them.

Hake and crew are seasoned vets of combat so they will be all fine in that situation, while the rest wont be. The Templars are an army so they would also be fine.

[GavrielKay]

draken-heart wrote...
thats another thing, Kirkwall was built on blood magic and slavery, what did the chantry think was going to happen?

I could be cynical and say they weren't thinking, or I could be really really cynical and say they were thinking Kirkwall mages would go bonkers and reinforce the Chantry position that mages couldn't be trusted

[TJPags]

Wulfram wrote...

They wanted siding with the Templars to be a reasonable choice, rather than having supporting the mages be a no brainer.

The problem is that they did this by having mages act randomly evil all the time, instead of having the Templars act with some semblance of rationality.

I'll go with this as well.

I'll also add, I never saw Broken Circle (the Origins quest) as "mage v templar".  You had to go into the Tower one way or another, no reason not to spare people if you can.  Also, you (probably) went there for help dealing with Connor - you needed mages.  So there's a specific reason TO spare the mages there.  We don't see much about the Circle before that quest - or at all in Origins, for that matter - so we really have no basis to make a decision about "mages v templars".  We really only know there may be mages in there, we need mages to help Connor, and we have to go into the Tower anyway, either to kill them or to save them.  Makes perfect sense to spare them (which I suppose is the poorly termed "siding with the mages" choice) and little to no sense at all to kill them all (the apparent "pro-templar" choice).

So really, if BW intended to set up "mages v templars" in Origins, to me, they failed epicly.  That said, if they did intend that, it makes sense that they went so overboard in DA2, since they really made it almost a no-brainer to "side with the mages" in Origins.

[Ryzaki]

Dave of Canada wrote...

ddv.rsa wrote...

I want to support the Templars. I really do. But unless I'm roleplaying an evil / emotionally messed up Hawke I can't follow that order.

You can easily play a Hawke who decides that:

• (S)He has no chance to fight the Templar armies in Kirkwall with the handful of mages in the Circle, so (s)he doesn't want to place his/her life at risk for nothing.
• (S)He wants to keep the peace in the city, where supporting the mages would only lead to more fighting and such.
• (S)He truly believes the Circle is too corrupt at that point, regardless of what triggered the Right, and feels it's their duty to assist in purging the Circle.
• (S)He wants to advance themselves politically, (s)he is constantly told before hand that (s)he needs the support of the Templar to rule Kirkwall.
• ect

You don't need to be evil or emotionally messed up.

  You really don't. There is no good and evil in DA2. Just dumb and dumber.

[David Gaider]

Did Gaider and the other PTB intend for fans to side with the templars as Hawke in Dragon Age 2?

Those quotes were in response to a poster who was determined to paint the templars as evil oppressors-- when my position has always been there are no easy answers to this particular question. It's very easy for us comfortable western folk to take the attitude that anything which isn't democratic and fair is clearly wrong-- which is a pat answer to a complex problem, especially in a world where the situation is simply not the same as in our own.

You may believe we pushed too hard in the other direction, and that's fair, but if we had intended for there to be one solution there would be no argument about it at all, would there? What you see, after all, is there because we chose for it to be there.