JaegerBane wrote...
You'll have to forgive me but from what you've just written there, it sounds like you're making a self-contradictory point. On the one hand you claim that the Warden is not important to the plot, and that it would have gone on without him.... and on the other hand, concede that things worked out differently without him there and therefore the plot ends in a very different fashion.
If you want to say that the Warden is important because only the Warden (or someone with identical traits to the Warden, i.e. an effectively identical Warden substitute) could have killed the archdemon, I will agree with you. If you want to say that this is the only thing that makes the Warden important, and having an enemy only you can kill makes you important, I'll also agree with you there.
But what I am saying is that this is the same as arguing that only Hawke could have killed the more epic enemies in DA2 (i.e. the DLC boss, the Act III boss, the Act I boss) and that even though anyone could have followed up on everything Hawke did in Kirkwall, Hawke is still important to the plot and succesful because otherwise things would have been even worse.
The whole situation with Grey Warden treaties and the various problems hitting the different groups existed independantly of the Warden's success at the Joining, so I don't really understand why you think it such a significant issue that Alistair ended up carrying out the same course of action
I don't think it's significant at all. But other people do, and that's the point I was addressing. Keep in mind, I was the one that made the original point about the Warden not being as unique as some would think in a very different content.
... i mean, to put it bluntly, how else would you have expected him to go about replacing the king's army?
But he did replace the King's army. That's an important point, and that was my point - that it was not some special thing to gather the army.
Of course there's going to be some similarities to how Alistair would have went about his task, but whatever he did, he didn't do it as well. You're making a blind assumption that his only reason for failure was that he choked at the final hurdle... in a story where the improvement of the character, from zero to hero, is a major aspect of it. You have no idea why he failed. Given how the story works, however, it's likely that he wasn't as experienced or developed as the Warden was at the end - which is a question of the character's capability that has developed over the course of the story, not simple chance. As you said yourself, the armies themselves didn't actually make that much of a difference.
You criticize me for making wild assumptions about why Alistair failed... and then you go on to make wild assumptions about why Alistair failed.
DA:O is not about growth. It is, in fact, about the opposite. The Warden (from whatever background) is chosen because of pre-existing abilities. DA:O is not about someone weak becoming strong - it's about someone strong
using that strength.
At any rate, using what you think the thematic meaning of DA:O is to justify how Alistair might have failed is the exact sort of wild speculation you frowned on.
The main issue I have with what you're saying seems to centre on the Archdemon being a binary value that was 1 for the Warden and 0 for Alistair.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that broadly speaking, aside from the archdemon, there's no evidence there was any difference between what Alistair achieved and what the Warden achieved.
And my original point was that what the Warden did in DA:O (gather the armies, unite Ferelden under a King, march to Denerim) wasn't particularly special, in that it could all have been done by someone else. That was my only point. You're trying to prove something I never argued against.
This is nothing like the situation for Hawke, because, unlike the Warden, No matter what experiences he went through, the game world is left in disarray and both sides are in ruins. His experience and his capability did not matter one jot to the conclusion of the plot, whereas the same for the Warden was the difference between the end of Ferelden and it's survival. No matter how many assumptions you make, this final point can't be simply ignored. And that is precisely why people were dissatisfied with DA2's conclusion in comparison to DA:O's.
If you think the Warden is special because things turned out right for the Warden, that's your right. But we don't know what it means for Hawke to have failed, for the Act II Boss to raise Kirkwall to the ground (maybe there would never have been a mage rebellion with a Kirkwall in ashes) or for the Act III Boss to win and survive.
You try to make the point that the battle against the archdemon can't be reduced to a binary calculus - but then you don't look at the battles Hawke fights as to determine how relatively important Hawke is (or isn't).
This is all I have to say on the matter to be honest, as I said, you argument is coming across that you're arguing that black is white but also black, and it's getting a little frustrating to comprehend.
I'm arguing that the majority of what the Warden does is replaceable, just like Hawke. Which was a side point, until someone felt the need to affirm that the Warden was an ubermensch.
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...an RPG by Bioware. What else?
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