39 réponses à ce sujet

[Korva]

There is something about the whole setup Branka has going on that I don't understand.

Branka wants to find the Anvil because she hates darkspawn and sees her people going down the drain. She takes all ~200 members of her House into the Deep Roads. After many months and probably not insignificant losses they do find the Anvil area, but can't pass the puzzle-traps. Instead of applying her alleged genius or the golem control rod she has, Branka decides to use her own people as sacrificial guinea pigs for the traps. They refuse. As a result, Branka goes all "I am your Paragon, I can do everything I want!" like a snot-nosed five-year-old, and throws her house, including her lover, to the same darkspawn she hates so much.

So far so bad. But, even allowing for the fact that she is obviously insane, what was that supposed to accomplish? She can't control the darkspawn. Darkspawn don't care about puzzles or anvils or Paragons. So what has she gained? And how did she survive there all alone? How did she manage to avoid the fate she threw her house into, and why didn't her people escape? Were they trapped somehow?

I was really hoping Branka would be a good ally, one of the few sensible dwarves who care more about fighting the darkspawn than playing politics, but that hope sure was turned inside out when I found out what she did to her own people ...

(Also, is it ever explained why Branka left Oghren behind? If so, I missed it. I find it hard to imagine that she only left him so she could fool around with Hespith in peace, the Deep Roads are hardly a place for that, especially given how obsessed Branka was.)

Modifié par Korva, 25 novembre 2009 - 12:46 .

[interesting03]

The voices of the anvil have turned her brain to mush.

Edit: She leaves Oghren behind, because he drove her away.Hell, he was so bad he drove her to her own sex(Hespith). He moans about it later on when you have his appreciation high enough.

Modifié par interesting03, 25 novembre 2009 - 12:52 .

[Skellimancer]

Its funny that 4 adventurers can go into the deep roads and survive but 100+ dwarf soldiers go in and get butchered.

[Korva]

Heh, yes. That is a problem I have with that part of the game -- you get zero sense for how HUGE and confusing and flat-out lethal the Deep Roads are. Travelling on the Deep Roads map is safer than travelling aboveground, I've never had a random encounter there. You can't get lost because the area maps are small and always have exactly one path to follow. And since the game doesn't keep track of passing time, an expedition that should take weeks is over in just a few seconds.



And yes, I know Branka is insane. But she's not a gibbering madwoman. So why did she do what she did? What did she hope to gain by betraying her house? How did she survive alone among the darkspawn? She doesn't look or sound like she ate their flesh to make them ignore her, IMO. Compared to Ruck and Hespith she looks, sounds and moves like a normal healthy dwarf.

[Count Viceroy]

She's not exactly betraying her house per se. It's her house, she can do with it as she pleases, even more so as a paragon.

[Unbroken Lineage]

Well, she built those labyrinths (scrap-metal shield walls) down there to direct the relatively mindless darkspawn into the traps. She probably figured since there's be an infinite number of darkspawn, there's some chance that they might stumble through the traps properly or even work together on a solution somehow. But she didn't even bother to discover the nature of the traps, because you're right, should could have activated the golems to smash the midboss and so on.

How she survived untainted and unchanged, I wondered that myself. Maybe her houses's stores would last for a long time now that she was the only one consuming the food. Or maybe she had been ingesting Lyrium and gone Lyrium-mad, which might explain a bit of her behavior.

But given Loghain's clear-headed pragmatism (I had hoped he was an abomination or at least Lyrium-mad, but no, he's just a dick), I will assume Branka too is a clear-headed pragmatist, eschewing ethics for expediency in terms of meeting the present threats to her identity.

Modifié par Unbroken Lineage, 25 novembre 2009 - 01:28 .

[Chalenheri]

It's really simple:

She's so focused on her goal, that she's lost sight of everything else.

The same with not using her brain: Once she had an idea of how to deal with the traps she went with her plan, never stepping back to rethink, wether there were simpler options or not.



It dit not help, that she had to defend her reasons for going into the deep roads. The more someone complained, the more stubborn she defended her point of view.

[Bali_of_Terenas]

I think what Unbroken Lineage said is right. Brankas only goal was to get the anvil. In the end it became so important to her that it didn't matter what it would take and any sacrifice was acceptable. Once she realized she didn't have the people in her house to get through the traps (and more so once they refused to keep getting killed in there) she figured where quality failed perhaps quantity could succeed. I'm sure she found a sense of poetic justice in the fact that the darkspawn would be the ones to provide the dwarves with their means to defeating them.



As with other situations in the game you see the reoccurring theme of "any means necessary" and the question of how far is to far.

[Tony_Knightcrawler]

And her lover (or was it her lover's friend?) was turned into a Brood Queen to make Darkspawn. She let this (or even caused this to) happen! She's supposed to be fighting the darkspawn at any cost, but she's just CREATING more darkspawn and putting her home in even worse danger. Hell, how was she supposed to even make golems if all her people were dead? She couldn't have known there were a few more surviving deeper in. Without protection, even she couldn't have made it back home with her secret.



No, she's not just a bad person, she's also not as much of a genius as they said she was.

[FlintlockJazz]

I dunno how she survived, but regarding how dangerous it is for 200+ dwarves yet a group of four being fine, I think the reason was that when Branka entered the Deep Roads the current Blight had not yet started, so the Deep Roads were still full of Darkspawn. Remember, during a Blight the Deep Roads ironically become safer to traverse...

[Lucy Glitter]

When I think about it, it would have been pretty cool if we had something saying, "X days have passed" when travelling. It was hard to imagine my adventure spanning over 1-2 years.

[Bali_of_Terenas]

I would imagine she figured that once she got to the Anvil she could fortify there, figure out how it worked and then make some golems to clean out the darkspawn. As far as I know no one knew what was involved in making golems beyond that the Anvil was needed.

[Count Viceroy]

Lucy_Glitter wrote...

When I think about it, it would
have been pretty cool if we had something saying, "X days have passed"
when travelling. It was hard to imagine my adventure spanning over 1-2
years.

There's a few instances where time is mentioned in passing which caught me offguard. I can't remember specifics but an indicator of time passed would've be welcome. We know Red cliffe -> denerim is atleast 3 days.

Modifié par Count Viceroy, 25 novembre 2009 - 02:21 .

[Lucy Glitter]

I agree, Count. I remember Redcliffe is about a day from Calenhad, but that's it. If I knew how to mod, I would add it in.

[Loki330]

Count Viceroy wrote...

Lucy_Glitter wrote...

When I think about it, it would
have been pretty cool if we had something saying, "X days have passed"
when travelling. It was hard to imagine my adventure spanning over 1-2
years.

There's a few instances where time is mentioned in passing which caught me offguard. I can't remember specifics but an indicator of time passed would've be welcome. We know Red cliffe -> denerim is atleast 3 days.

If you play the mage origin Wynne mentions it's been a year since you were last in the tower when you return. I agree it seems... compressed or at least not well explained. Hell, just a 'You have travelled for X days' when you map to a new area or 'Days passed' value for the save game (a la Baldur's Gate) would help.

Modifié par Loki330, 25 novembre 2009 - 02:44 .

[Korva]

Again, there is no question that Branka is both insane and utterly ruthless. I'm not questioning why she had her whole house butchered (as horrible and gut-wrenching the situation is), but rather what she was trying to accomplish. Cannon fodder for traps, sure, but she has no way to control them. No way, I supppse, to observe what they do in the trap gauntlet. No way to be sure they're all dead when she goes in to check on what "progress" has been made without risk of being killed or dragged off herself. Also, even if she would have reached the Anvil that way, she would have been stuck there because she would have no golem-fodder left (unless she somehow managed to capture some darkspawn and was able to turn them into golems -- but with the grip the archdemon has on them, I'm dubious).

Good point about the food supply for her house, it would explain what she had to eat down there. I still have a hard time imagining how she managed to pull the whole thing off, though. Maybe she drugged her people and hid in a tightly locked part of the area while they were overrun?

[Vansen Elamber]

The thing is the enemy in this game fails to use their health poltices at the correct time because after a battle there are always a few of them on corpses for you to pick up, and one thing I notice is the higher rank the enemy is the more likely it is that they forgot to use that last health poltice.

Also I think the deep roads erodes the mind the longer you remain there and Branka had been there for going on 2 years I think so she was by then completely insane and totally obsessed with the anvil to the point where she did not even know why she wanted it any more she just didn't want anyone to stop her from getting it.

Modifié par Vansen Elamber, 25 novembre 2009 - 03:14 .

[Herr Uhl]

It is a whole house of dwarves, they should be able to survive for a while. The Legion of the dead does decently well.

[Dark83]

I think they have to keep the time vague, or my shopping trips will make a year pass and the Blight still wouldn't have taken Lothering.

[Tankenminnet]

She's not crazy, I think, but VERY the end justifies the means.

[JHorwath]

Branka became obsessed with the anvil and in the end her obsession consumed her.  She was acting like a junkie doing anything to get their fix.

Modifié par JHorwath, 25 novembre 2009 - 05:00 .

[Hurkaleez]

Skellimancer wrote...

Its funny that 4 adventurers can go into the deep roads and survive but 100+ dwarf soldiers go in and get butchered.

 Small parties are not noticed as easily so draw less attention

[Count Viceroy]

And since there's a blight, the deep roads are pretty much void of the dark spawn that'd been present when branka set out.

[Invalidcode]

She is not insane, she is more like super narrow minded & anvil became all she cared, reasoning be damned. Her house? A fine price to pay if the anvil could save the would Dwarf kingdom in her POV.



As an option, you & Oghern could reason with get she to do the 'right' thing, that's pretty evident that she is not insane.

[Korva]

I replayed the scene siding with Branka just to see what happens (given Hespith's tale, all my characters will off Braka without hesitation) and yes you can reason with her, to my surprise. Which makes the whole mess even more strange. She won't listen to her people, she doesn't care about their suffering, even her lover's, but a random yahoo can talk her down? Meh. I don't like when the PC can affect NPCs in such massive ways even when no one else can.