So it's been said that Bioware wasn't happy with the number of people who sided with the mages "by default."
Assuming this is in fact the case, what could they have done to make the choice at the end better in this regard?
I don't believe there is some anti-mage conspiracy among the writers, but I also don't think the final decision was constructed very well if they wanted to make it a hard one.
I sided with the mages against Meredith very quickly and I'm generally a pro-templar person. I'm sympathetic to Anders' plight and generally helped him out whenever I could, but I also believe that the templars serve an important purpose and whenever the game forced me to choose an unfairly one-sided dialogue option one way or another I'd usually pick the pro-templar one.
And while I suspect there is a section of players who do side with the mages by default out of dislike of the Chantry or what not, if somebody like me who might otherwise support the Chantry or templars still sides with the mages then I don't think that alone can account for it.
Personally I could maybe see siding with the templars based on the belief that it will cause much less chaos and destruction to the city, but that still felt like an unlikely scenario to me and it isn't even really siding with Meredith on principle, just the hope of minimizing collateral deaths.
What do you think would have been a better way to construct the mage-templar conflict in order to make the final decision more "gray"?
The main thing for me was that while I thought Meredith was right about Anders terrorism not being tolerable, Orsino was also right that the Circle was totally uninvolved. There was no need to punish them any more than anyone else. So the decision to oppose the Right of Annulment was very straightforward for me. I thought Anders deserved to die for it but the rest of the mages were completely innocent of it. Hence Siding with Orsino was simply about defending the innocent. And if I helped them escape then I it seemed just as likely that I'd be able to try to lower civilian deaths from their side than if I'd tried to put them all down with the templars. The only difference in the end would be that innocent mages would have not been killed along with the civilians.
Second, I think Meredith maybe should have been reworked somewhat if they wanted us to support her plan. Her behaviour is that of an antagonist for virtually her entire run of screen time in the game. Even putting aside the fact that we only get to know her at the end of Act 2 and before that one of your companions has been constantly working to undermine her (thereby essentially making her your enemy by default even before you meet her), the
fact is that Meredith was basically the "big bad" of the game. She's even the final boss itself for Pete’s sake. I'd think the idea of getting the player to side with the closest thing the story has to a main villain is pretty shaky idea to begin with but even beyond that almost everything she does in Act 3 seems like the thing to turn the player against her.
I know she's nicer to you if you side with her at the start of Act 3 and that she helps you against the Qunari but very little in her attitude and situation strikes me as the type of thing that would encourage sympathy from the player, even despite having a tragic back-story that you may or may not get to hear.
I'm not one to blame her for the crimes of murderous blood mages, but I think her actions in Act 3 were the primary driving force for the escalating situation. She's seized political power in the city far beyond the intent of her station for reasons that aren't really explained beyond being power hungry. Nobody likes a tyrant, so I don't see why Bioware should be surprised that people didn't side with her in the end, even if her plan wasn't morally wrong to begin with. And beyond that, what we learn of her is that she's harsh, driven by a zealous hatred of mages, and usually disinclined to show mercy. On top of that[/i] many of her templars are even worse because the conditions in the Circle are worsened by a variety of her hateful, sadistic and corrupt subordinates. There are many good reasons templars might have to exist, but at this point the templars in general in Kirkwall don't even seem to be about an appeal to any of them.
Thrask appears to be the only important templar that actively stands out against all this, and his role isn't especially significant in the end. Right before Anders destroys the Chantry, Meredith softens for just a moment, and that was good because it felt like one of the few character developing moments for her. She revealed that she knew that there were innocent mages that were being treated unfairly but felt that her course of action was still necessary to protect Kirkwall. This didn't seem to quite match up with her apparent attitude beforehand, but let’s go with it for a moment. If they had wanted Meredith to be a more sympathetic villain or had wanted more players to side with her instead of Orsino, then I think we should have seen more of this. She never really felt like a character that was pushed too hard or doing what she thought was “unfortunate by necessary”. More often than not it just came across closer to a one dimensional power hungry mage hater. Orsino seemed more like an epitome of compassion, reason and selflessness compared to her. Most of his crimes were not made apparent until the end, after the decision had been made. And he’s usually much more agreeable to Hawke for most of his appearances.
If they had made Meredith (or even some of the other templars) more like someone who tried to be a better Knight-Commander or wanted to show mercy yet felt she couldn't, rather than someone who seemed to take a little too much glee in oppressing mages... I think that might have made the mages seem like less of a default choice. If they had done this, then they could have added more sane mages to the endless sea of crazy blood mage abominations and it still wouldn‘t have undermine the point of adding sane templars.
I feel like Bioware ran into this with Loghain to a lesser degree. While he was deeper than most Bioware antagonists, I got the impression maybe he was intended to be more complicated than he demonstrated. He showed a few times that he was pained by what he thought he had to do, but in the end his villainy seemed so pervasive that I thought that if his conscience was still bothering him, it didn't actually affect his actions very much.
And finally, regarding Anders and the Right itself: I think if they wanted to muddy the situation up, then they should have given the templars a more legitimate reason to contemplate enacting it. As it stands, even Hawke can only seem to justify participating on the basis that Meredith and Anders took the decision out of his hands. What if Anders had conspirators in the Circle? Or Orsino had revealed that he and the rest of them would use blood magic, demons and so forth to defend themselves? If I had more of a reason to think the Circle even may have been hopelessly corrupt, then deciding whether to support the Annulment might have been a harder choice. Perhaps even one that could have that hinged on how good a case Meredith or Orsino or the others had made for themselves.
Short Version: Meredith never seemed the most relatable character and her justification for the Right of Annulment was weak. It's no surprise that more players sided with the mages. They should have made her more sympathetic if they wanted a truly to make a very difficult decision at the end. What do you guys think?
Modifié par Jedi Master of Orion, 09 octobre 2011 - 07:55 .
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