176 réponses à ce sujet

[Layn]

what loghain did was wrong. but i can understand him

he didn't want to fight the darspawn, because he thought there was still a bigger threat. but since cailan and duncan insisted he had to create a battle plan.

Loghain felt that the grey wardens were trying to wear down the ferelden army with fighting the darkspawn, so Orlais has it easier to take over Ferelden again. So he made this little plan where all grey wardens would die. then cailan wanted to fight at the forefront. loghain insisted to not take the battle lightly. bad for his plan, but then again Cailan wasn't fit for leading anyway.

Now the Battle is over and many are angry at him. He is no PR person. He can inspire people to fight, but he is incapable at getting people to like him. So he gets Howe. Howe however sucks at PR too and so Loghain started doing crazy things to silence any opposition. Then he found out that there actually is a blight. it kind of snowballed all up until the warden appears in front of him and does whatever the warden decides to do.



so yeah, i understand him, but it was wrong

[Alastrian]

Duck and Cover wrote...

I'm thinking maybe Loghain wasn't as bad as I first thought. 3rd run thru and I'm paying more attention to any dialogue I might have missed (or dialogue that is more relevant if you know the ending). In Ostagar it seems the King's forces aren't sufficient for the battle. Although the King does give him the option of waiting for the Orleisans which Loghain refuses.

Even though the King supports the Grey Wardens is he really in the right here? Is the battle of Ostagar really a wise battle plan given the state of their forces etc.?

Ostagar is far more winnable than any battle to the north of it. If Loghain really is this brilliant general he is made out to be, he'd recognize that the best place to hold the darkspawn at bay would be a bottleneck. It takes far fewer soldiers to hold territory at a bottleneck than it does to be trying to hold a village out in an open field (eg. Lothering). But despite quitting the field at Ostagar, Loghain does seem to recognize this given that he's basically abandoned Lothering to its fate.

The best thing Loghain could have done at Ostagar if he really feared the Orlesians was to win there without them... to prove to Fereldan and to Cailin that they don't need Orlesian help to defend themselves.

So if the king charges headfirst into a sure losing battle, wouldn't the best thing to do is retreat and build up more forces? I know the game portrays him as the bad guy. He is paranoid about the Orleisans for sure. But maybe he isn't as bad as we initially thought. Yes he backstabbed the King to get power, but is this any worse than the Dwarven politics?

The problem with how Loghain goes about securing power after Ostagar is that he hurries back to Denerim with his army, puts the Landsmeet in lockdown and basically bullies them. As you can see... Bann Teagan isn't one to take that kind of crap... even from a war hero of decades ago.

Loghain demonstrates his lack of understanding of Fereldan politics... the power and authority of the king comes up from the Freeholders. Loghain did not have enough Freeholder support for his regency to be legitimate.

It is strange recruiting this guy. I didn't use him as his talents are all messed up (who needs half a tank that late in the game?- it'd be nice if his talent trees were filled out). How could the Wardens trust him? He could backstab them again and try to regain power.

I doubt even he would backstab the Wardens after he's become one. I imagine the worst thing he might do after the Blight is over is try to turn the Wardens into his own private army like Sophia Dryden did... especially if you've reached an ending with a hardened Alistair taking the throne in response to Loghain being allowed to go through the Joining. Alistair would want him dead, and order his execution... his only chance of survival then would be rebellion.

[ellisDwilder]

This sounds like a good topic for my wife's sociology.

[kormesios]

It's hard to know how the battle at Ostagar would have gone--we, as players, don't have enough information. I personally got the impression, watching, that it would have been a victory. But even a defeat certainly wasn't going to be the annihilation it turned into thanks to Loghain.



But what really matters is what happened after that. The *only* argument you can make for Loghain was that he made the correct choice for the greater good, as it were. Since the kingdom crumbles after his move (civil war, torture, executions of nobles, half of Ferelden overrun by the blight) he showed pretty horrible judgment in addition to his lousy morals.



He was just a guy who betrayed and killed thousands of his countrymen in a gamble that didn't pay off.

[ExistsAlready]

Loghain suffered a fairly vicious and rapid descent into rabid paranoia, pushed on by Arl Howe and his own experiences with the Orlesians..



He did the right thing in his head but nowhere else.

[MassEffect762]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm NOPE!

[TheRealIncarnal]

Loghain was wrong because he didn't understand that he actually needed the wardens to stop the Blight. So he was doomed to failure.



You as the character simply do what needs to be done so the Archdemon can be killed. Simple as that.

[SeanMurphy2]

I think it would be interesting if the threat from Orlais was actually real.



By immediately moving the army North and closing the border, Loghain discourages invasion from Orlais. But causes a civil war and allows the Darkspawn to attack Southern Ferelden.

[Mnemnosyne]

Alastrian wrote...

The best thing Loghain could have done at Ostagar if he really feared the Orlesians was to win there without them... to prove to Fereldan and to Cailin that they don't need Orlesian help to defend themselves.

The problem with this is that even if the battle at Ostagar was won, there would be a great deal of fighting still left to do, even if perhaps not in such large battles.  Cailan thinks the attack can be ended in one grand battle, but Loghain knows better.  Even if he doesn't believe it's a Blight, he still knows that militarily speaking, there will be many more smaller battles to come in the months after Ostagar, and he probably has good reason to believe that Cailan will accept Orlesian support anyway, because the Grey Wardens will continue to insist that it is a Blight, that it's not over, and that they still need the Orlesians, and since Cailan is "fascinated" by the Grey Warden legends, he'll listen to them.

If Cailan survived the battle (like Loghain planned, trying to get him not to be with the part of the army he planned on having defeated) and the Grey Wardens did not, Loghain assumes Cailan would then turn to him for support and advice, and listen to him about not letting the Orlesians in.  The logical assumption of Loghain's plan was that he would eventually proceed with the charge, after he is certain that the Grey Wardens are dead, thus still securing a victory at Ostagar, but eliminating what he sees as insidious Orlesian spies.

The problem with how Loghain goes about securing power after Ostagar is that he hurries back to Denerim with his army, puts the Landsmeet in lockdown and basically bullies them. As you can see... Bann Teagan isn't one to take that kind of crap... even from a war hero of decades ago.

Loghain demonstrates his lack of understanding of Fereldan politics... the power and authority of the king comes up from the Freeholders. Loghain did not have enough Freeholder support for his regency to be legitimate.

Well, this is because of the PC's actions which are wholly unexpected.  Had the signal never been lit, as Loghain intended, his excuse would have been 'I couldn't charge, there was never a signal!' and nobody would have second-guessed him because none of the thousands of soldiers would have seen the signal.  But when the soldiers see the signal and then are ordered to retreat, this sparks questions.  Some of them are convinced by the hastily thought up excuse that the Grey Wardens were drawing the King into a trap and Loghain could do nothing, but many of them don't buy it because it doesn't actually make any sense.  Combine that with the survivors from the main force that say 'the signal was lit, Loghain never charged, and we would have won the battle if he did', and you have half the country believing Loghain betrayed the King.  This is what sparks the lack of support for Loghain.

I doubt even he would backstab the Wardens after he's become one. I imagine the worst thing he might do after the Blight is over is try to turn the Wardens into his own private army like Sophia Dryden did... especially if you've reached an ending with a hardened Alistair taking the throne in response to Loghain being allowed to go through the Joining. Alistair would want him dead, and order his execution... his only chance of survival then would be rebellion.

I don't see him doing this.  He accepts his execution if you decide to execute him.  All he wants, all he ever wanted, was to be sure that Ferelden would not be conquered by Orlais again.  If he survives to the end of the game, that has pretty much been assured.  Even if Alistair ordered him executed (which would be an incredibly unpopular option and unless he's a fool he probably wouldn't do) I expect he would accept that, as long as he was confident the country would not wind up in Orlesian hands.

[Riot Inducer]

In the immortal words of Sten, "No."

[kevinwastaken]

Loghain is a misguided moron. He should have stuck to farming and let the adults handle politics.

[Malevolence65]

What gets me is the fact that he let Cailan die. Loghain loved Rowan, so the last thing I thought he would do is kill her son.

[Obliterati]

There's a difference between a villian and a nemesis.



I think Bio-Ware were shooting for the latter for Loghain, but due to some ham-fisted writing and fridge logic they accidently turned him into a snarling and incompetent Generic Bad Guy.



In other words, they were going for Saren, but ended up with Bowser.

[DariusKalera]

SeanMurphy2 wrote...

I think it would be interesting if the threat from Orlais was actually real.

By immediately moving the army North and closing the border, Loghain discourages invasion from Orlais. But causes a civil war and allows the Darkspawn to attack Southern Ferelden.

Well, the threat could have been real, we just aren't given any information on it.

Here's something to consider though.  30 years have passed since the Orlesians were thrown out of Fereldan.  How many people in Fereldan still hold grudges against them besides Loghain?

The king, Couslans, and Guerriens did not, but what of the rest of the nobles, the merchants, and the commoners?  How many of the latter would have stood around while Orlesian chevaliers, 16,000 to 20,000 stong (4 legions worth, the numbers given that were turned away), rode thru the country?  More than likely, most of the country still harbored bad feelings towards them.

In all likelihood, it would have caused another civil war.  If Cailan did not, or could not, understand this, then he was indeed a bad ruler.

Can't really say that they would have united behind the king till the Blight was over because, as we have seen, the Blight is a secondary concern in the country, while it was a primary concern for the PC.  If it had been a primary concern for the country, they Bannorn would have united behind Loghain until it was over. 

BTW, for those that say Ostagar was winnable because it was in a defensive position, and or, it was a bottle neck, need to take a look at the fight again.  Cailan and his troops charged out from behind the defenses.  Simply put, if you are infront of your defenses fighting, they lose their effectiveness as defenses.  Besides, their defenses had already been breached and the tower taken.  On top of all this, a bottleneck only works if the enemy is not already behind you, which they were.  There were darkspawn in the tower and in the wilds north of Ostagar. 

[Alastrian]

Koyasha wrote...

The problem with this is that even if the battle at Ostagar was won, there would be a great deal of fighting still left to do, even if perhaps not in such large battles.  Cailan thinks the attack can be ended in one grand battle, but Loghain knows better.  Even if he doesn't believe it's a Blight, he still knows that militarily speaking, there will be many more smaller battles to come in the months after Ostagar, and he probably has good reason to believe that Cailan will accept Orlesian support anyway, because the Grey Wardens will continue to insist that it is a Blight, that it's not over, and that they still need the Orlesians, and since Cailan is "fascinated" by the Grey Warden legends, he'll listen to them.

He could still manage to convince Cailin not to rely on the Orlesians for support. Don't forget that Eamon hadn't even arrived at Ostagar and still had all of his troops afterwards... those troops would have been plenty to bolster their number. After Ostagar, also, Loghain could be shown the Grey Warden treaties... I doubt he'd  be terribly paranoid about Dalish elves or dwarves wanting to conquer Fereldan, and there were already mages supporting the king. But of course, Eamon was already poisoned... so much for that.

The fact that Eamon was poisoned before Ostagar demonstrates that Loghain was out to remove Cailin... the good Arl of Redcliffe is popular enough among the Landsmeet to be a thorn in his side when the time comes for him to steal the throne.

I also imagine that Arl Howe's attack at Highever Castle was part of Loghain's plan to remove political rivals... Bryce Cousland was, after all, the only other Teyrn, who from what it appears was also popular and most likely wouldn't have bowed to Loghain.

If Cailan survived the battle (like Loghain planned, trying to get him not to be with the part of the army he planned on having defeated) and the Grey Wardens did not, Loghain assumes Cailan would then turn to him for support and advice, and listen to him about not letting the Orlesians in.  The logical assumption of Loghain's plan was that he would eventually proceed with the charge, after he is certain that the Grey Wardens are dead, thus still securing a victory at Ostagar, but eliminating what he sees as insidious Orlesian spies.

From what I see, Loghain trying to convince the king to stay away from the Grey Wardens is weaksauce evidence that Loghain planned for Cailin to survive, given that Loghain already had Arl Eamon poisoned, and Arl Howe had overrun Highever Castlewhen Highever's troops had already left with Fergus for Ostagar. I get the impression that Loghain was planning to seize the throne for a long time.

Well, this is because of the PC's actions which are wholly unexpected.  Had the signal never been lit, as Loghain intended, his excuse would have been 'I couldn't charge, there was never a signal!' and nobody would have second-guessed him because none of the thousands of soldiers would have seen the signal.  But when the soldiers see the signal and then are ordered to retreat, this sparks questions.  Some of them are convinced by the hastily thought up excuse that the Grey Wardens were drawing the King into a trap and Loghain could do nothing, but many of them don't buy it because it doesn't actually make any sense.  Combine that with the survivors from the main force that say 'the signal was lit, Loghain never charged, and we would have won the battle if he did', and you have half the country believing Loghain betrayed the King.  This is what sparks the lack of support for Loghain.

Which is exactly why his regency isn't legitimate. The authority of the king/queen/regent comes up from the Freeholders. It would have probably been a better idea for Loghain to support Anora as the Queen Regent, and to serve her as her general... she was much more popular... much more likely to garner support, and was innocent of what Loghain did at Ostagar. Furthermore, she was the brains behind the throne when Cailin was king, so its not like she'd be a weak ruler.

Then again, it would be folly of her to trust the man who escalated the crisis of the Blight with the task of ending it.

I don't see him doing this.  He accepts his execution if you decide to execute him.  All he wants, all he ever wanted, was to be sure that Ferelden would not be conquered by Orlais again.  If he survives to the end of the game, that has pretty much been assured.  Even if Alistair ordered him executed (which would be an incredibly unpopular option and unless he's a fool he probably wouldn't do) I expect he would accept that, as long as he was confident the country would not wind up in Orlesian hands.

By this point, I doubt Loghain's execution would be quite so unpopular. His support had already been diminished by his previous actions.

And how can Loghain be confident of Alistair keeping Fereldan out of Orlesian hands? As far as Loghain is concerned, Alistair is just an unproven royal bastard. Who's to say that Loghain wouldn't fear that Alistair would end up losing Fereldan to a second Orlesian invasion?

If anything, I'd say that Loghain has major delusions of grandeur, thinking that the only men who could ever keep Fereldan safe from Orlais were the late King Maric and himself.

[soteria]

@Koyasha:



I think getting the Grey Wardens and Cailan killed was his hope, if not his plan. Sure, he would have preferred the beacon never to be lit. Yes, he suggested that Cailan not fight on the front lines, but staying back farther probably wouldn't have saved him since the entire force was left to be annihilated.



Also, I agree he should have simply ensured a crushing victory over the darkspawn--a clean victory would be more evidence it wasn't a true blight, and less reason for the Orleisians to enter Ferelden. Additionally, if he didn't want to weaken Ferelden fighting against the Darkspawn, abandoning a large force to be wiped out wasn't a good way to go about it.

[Alastrian]

DariusKalera wrote...

Here's something to consider though.  30 years have passed since the Orlesians were thrown out of Fereldan.  How many people in Fereldan still hold grudges against them besides Loghain?

It would depend on what percentage of the population of Fereldan are younger than thirty. Then again, I get the impression that Cauthrien is younger than thirty and she's Loghain's most loyal lapdog.

The king, Couslans, and Guerriens did not, but what of the rest of the nobles, the merchants, and the commoners?  How many of the latter would have stood around while Orlesian chevaliers, 16,000 to 20,000 stong (4 legions worth, the numbers given that were turned away), rode thru the country?  More than likely, most of the country still harbored bad feelings towards them.

In all likelihood, it would have caused another civil war.  If Cailan did not, or could not, understand this, then he was indeed a bad ruler.

I was under the impression that the Orlesian reinforcements were predominantly Grey Wardens... and with the exception of Sophia Dryden and her rebellion more than a century ago, Grey Wardens are for the most part apolitical and concerned only with keeping the darkspawn at bay and ending any Blight that comes about. Cailin clearly understood the Grey Wardens better than Loghain... hell he even trusted them with his own life.

Can't really say that they would have united behind the king till the Blight was over because, as we have seen, the Blight is a secondary concern in the country, while it was a primary concern for the PC.  If it had been a primary concern for the country, they Bannorn would have united behind Loghain until it was over. 

So you're saying that the Bannorn would be stupid enough to trust the effort to end the Blight to the man who escalated it?

BTW, for those that say Ostagar was winnable because it was in a defensive position, and or, it was a bottle neck, need to take a look at the fight again.  Cailan and his troops charged out from behind the defenses.  Simply put, if you are infront of your defenses fighting, they lose their effectiveness as defenses.  Besides, their defenses had already been breached and the tower taken.  On top of all this, a bottleneck only works if the enemy is not already behind you, which they were.  There were darkspawn in the tower and in the wilds north of Ostagar.

The cinematic might not have shown it... but if you look down from the bridge above the battle when you're on your way to the Tower of Ishal, much of the fighting is taking place within the bottleneck. And I doubt the darkspawn north of Ostagar were anything more than small bands of raiders... hardly a second horde.

And the corridors in the passage beneath the Tower of Ishal make another bottleneck... one that could have been held had Loghain wanted to deploy a sufficient rear guard in the tower.

[DreGregoire]

Was he right in quitting the field?  I think not!  Do you see all those torches representing the size of his force?  As large as the dark spawn forces I would say. And he planned it all along too did you hear his evil tone of voice when he 'agrees' with the king about 'glory for all.'  Heh just my opinion not an attack on your post. I wondered that for a while after my first couple of play throughs but then I watched him closely and he's definately decided it's Glory for him alone. LOL.  And the scene where he nods his head when Howe tells him Grey Wardens survived.  He knows who did and he immediately sets out to kill who..... our hero... sure because I know the truth.... but don't you think he's more out to eliminate the cutest... er I mean Alistair the strong manly warden.  *smirks*  I am not paranoid! LOL

[Nokhor]

One thing I have not yet really seen in these discussions of Loghain is the Tower of Ishal. When the player gets to Ostagar during the day, the tower is off limits and is being secured by Logain's troops. When the player gets to the Tower of Ishal that night, the darkspawn are swarming all over that tower. How, pray tell did Logain's men manage to miss them? Do a walkthrough of the Tower of Ishal again. On the first floor, you will see the gigantic hole that the darkspawn obviously came out of. As you move through the tower, you see various indicators from their totems and firepits and structures or what have you, that there is no wa, no way, the darkspawn could have come into that tower that same night. They have been interior decorating the place and obviously have been camping in the Tower of Ishal for quite a while. But Loghain had made the tower off limits to the rest of the Ferelden army. I don't care how great or how crappy a commander Loghain is, no way the darkspawn in the tower could be missed and no way they just showed up. I am of course speaking of collusion. While the Fereldan war council was planning a flank attack against the darkspawn horde, Loghain was planning his own flanking attack, using the darkspawn to outflank the Ferelden army. Before someone objects and says there is no way a normal person in Ferelden would manipulate or collaborate with the darkspawn in any kind of manner, let me just remind everyone that Branka also did this. As for whether Loghain actually was able to communicate with high level darkspawn and actually form an alliance with them, or whether he knew the darkspawn were in the tower and he just contained them until the night batlle and then just let them burst out at the right moment is unclear from the story, but there is no doubt there was collusion of some kind. It is just too much to be coincidence.

[DreGregoire]

Nokhor wrote...

One thing I have not yet really seen in these discussions of Loghain is the Tower of Ishal. When the player gets to Ostagar during the day, the tower is off limits and is being secured by Logain's troops. When the player gets to the Tower of Ishal that night, the darkspawn are swarming all over that tower. How, pray tell did Logain's men manage to miss them?

 

hmmm did you talk to the guard outside the tower?  I cleary remember him stating that there was a problem.   but maybe I was just reading into it a different way than you

[ExistsAlready]

Ask the guard on duty why the Tower is offlimits. It's because they've just found some catacombs that weren't there before and they're checking them out.



Also? You don't get to question The Big Bad's decorating team. Ever. You need to run through an area and have it look disfigured and evil and spikey? Then by the Maker it's going to look that way, no matter how improbable.

[Mnemnosyne]

Alastrian wrote...

From what I see, Loghain trying to convince the king to stay away from the Grey Wardens is weaksauce evidence that Loghain planned for Cailin to survive, given that Loghain already had Arl Eamon poisoned, and Arl Howe had overrun Highever Castlewhen Highever's troops had already left with Fergus for Ostagar. I get the impression that Loghain was planning to seize the throne for a long time.

These are the major arguments I buy for Loghain being planning to take over all along, and they're pretty strong, but they can be explained otherwise.  Both Arl Eamon and Bryce Cousland are said to have become relatively friendly with the Orlesians in the years after the war, Eamon having married an Orlesian woman especially.  I do not see it as particularly unlikely that Howe managed to convince Loghain that they were "in on it" and intending to betray Ferelden to the Orlesians, thus making it necessary for Loghain to eliminate the other two people who Cailan may take advice from (or who may simply directly revolt, their imagined plan to get Orlesian forces into the country having failed).  If Cailan had lived and no one at Highever had survived the massacre, Howe would have, as Duncan said, told Cailan any story he wished, and Cailan would have bought it without any evidence or testimony to the contrary.

As far as Loghain convincing Cailan to deny the Orlesians entry if the Grey Wardens were still around, it may have been possible, but it's also made pretty clear that ever since this whole thing started, Cailan has been listening to the Wardens almost entirely.  Loghain believes the Wardens are essentially an Orlesian front to get significant numbers of troops into Ferelden, and he knows that Duncan will continue to press Cailan to allow the reinforcements to come regardless of the situation on the ground, and he has good reason to believe that Cailan will allow himself to be swayed by the arguments of the legendary Wardens.  The only reasonable way to convince Cailan not to let the Orlesians in is if the Grey Wardens are no longer around to counter his arguments.

I think it's clear Loghain made some questionable and bad decisions even if all the information he had was actually correct at the time.  Even if everything he believed had been true, some of his decisions would still have been poor ones or suboptimal, but they would likely have been better than the alternative.

I think one of the most interesting factors to this is that we do not and never really will know whether the Orlesian forces actually planned on invading Ferelden or not.  We really get absolutely no hint on this whatsoever.  The Grey Wardens don't seem to believe they would have, and neither does Cailan, but that's not conclusive at all.  The Grey Wardens would have let Ferelden be conquered if it meant stopping the Blight, that much we can be pretty sure of.  And Cailan is made out to be a good but not particularly wise or politically savvy King, so his confidence that the arguments with Orlais are over is hard to take as a certainty.  It's entirely possible that despite the death and destruction it caused, Loghain's actions actually did prevent the Orlesians from launching a full invasion of Ferelden, and we will never know the truth.

[SeanMurphy2]

I can see things from Loghain's perspective.

I don't think anyone apart from the Grey Wardens knew it was a Blight or took it seriously. Or even thought that the whole army should be sent to Ostager.

It must be worrying to allow thousands of Orlesian troops to march through Ferelden. The war of independence was destructive and not easy to win. Why risk your nation's freedom for what seemed like a trivial darkspawn problem in the Korcari wilds.

Modifié par SeanMurphy2, 08 décembre 2009 - 03:27 .

[Statulos]

Logain is the clear example of what happens when paranoia and hatred overcome rationality and good judgement.



Sure, Cailan was a fool living on a permanent self-lsd-inducted life of fairytales, but even in that case, Logain could have used Anora´s influence on him (even more considering the serious case of Elektra´s complex of this woman) to convince Cailan of allowing Logain full control of the troops.



Basicaly Logain had quite tough odds in Ostagar, true, but still he hold a fairly well defendable position (the fortess itself), a nice number of well skilled troops (ok Wardens do not art miracles, but still, they kick serious ass) and reinfocements on its way in case of siege.



He could have perfecly defeated tons of darkspawn whith what he currently had and even more, considering the capacity of the Wardens on bringing more non-Orlesian allies. Ultimately, he could have archived a victory giving him even more prestige and power than he already had.



Then again, when rationality fades away, stupid decisions come hand in hand.

[AntiChri5]

All the Darkspawn furniture and whatnot was likely added for atmosphere and ambiance, Not a plot device. My reading of the situation was that Loghain had isolated the tower so that only those loyal to him would be there. Which means they follow his secret orders and dont light the beacons/backstab the wardens sent to do so so he could use that as his excuse for pulling out.