ckriley wrote...
AtreiyaN7 wrote...
ckriley wrote...
robertthebard wrote...
I lost my grandfather to cancer about 20 years ago, so I can relate to what you've gone through. His dying was a relief, much better than watching him suffer day after day. My uncle recently passed due to bone cancer, and it destroyed him before it finally killed him, at least he died in his sleep. However, I don't start out a conversation about the weather and end up with "xxx really liked sunrise" *cue self replenishing box of Kleenex*. In neither of these circumstances, however, was I expected to save the world.AtreiyaN7 wrote...
If you believe that Alistair is the child from The Calling (admittedly debatable), then maybe Duncan had a bigger impact/was closer to Alistair than is believed (if that was him - again, that's debatable with the timeline issue). As for death, if you want to bring that up and use it as an argument - I, myself, spent at least a year+ taking care of my mother while she was dying of cancer. I really didn't take it well, especially towards the end when it was seriously overwhelming, and I was the one with her for most of the g-------- day. I also didn't deal with it all that well afterwards, although now that it's a bit past eight months I'm pretty much over it, but it was unpleasant, painful, difficult & very, very terrible. I don't think anyone really has a right to judge someone else's grief based on some arbitrary standard of their own. Does the fact that I arguably suffered more than someone else in terms of watching a protracted, unpleasant death mean that my pain is more valid than someone else's? Do I get a free pass to be miserable longer? Who cares how long someone knew someone else. What gives anyone the right to judge a grieving person's sadness/inability to cope/reactions/whatever or when, exactly, they should be able to get it together?
In game, I'm expected to swallow my desire for vengence as a Human Noble to end the Blight. I am told that seeking out Howe is secondary to my responsibilities. The plot does, however, drop Howe in our laps, later in the game. While not written into the story as possible, Morrigan's suggestion at Lothering is actually the best idea. Go directly after Loghain, and then deal with the treaties. What's the best weapon to get rid of Loghain? Hey, you know, a person with the best claim on the throne would be able to depose him. Now, this is what happens once you finally get the Landsmeet started, but Alistair, instead of saying; Look, I'm the last surviving known son of Maric, we should go to Redcliffe, and get Eamon to call a Landsmeet so we can depose Loghain, decides that he doesn't trust you to not look at him differently, decides that it's better to keep his little secret. He also suggests that dealing with the treaties would be the best bet. I have treaties for dwarves, elves and mages. With those, and the general consensus that we should take care of them first, there is no compelling reason to go to Redcliffe first to have him spring his little secret on you.
As characters in a story, we can't site game mechanics as a defence. We have to take the characters at face value. However, Alistair could have just as easily stated, as Morrigan and Sten will at certain points, that we could spend our time better elsewhere. There are plenty of oppurtunities for this to happen. It never does. Again, we can't say; "the game's not written that way" as a defence for his inaction. We are characters in the story, and as such, we shouldn't know that there are story elements that prevent Alistair from leading, however, those same elements don't stop other characters from disapproving of your actions, or challenging you for leadership if they think you are wasting time. If Alistair truly believed that Eamon should have been our first stop, he could have pulled a Sten to force our hand. He won't. The only times he says anything to you about what you do is if you kill either Connor or Isolde, and when you spare Loghain, if you spare Loghain. In the dialog after killing Connor you can get a Cunning check to see that it's not about you, but about Alistair and Eamon when he gets mad about how you deal with it. Alistair owes him more than that. That's what he'll tell you. So now, you're a tool to make things better for him.
It's also curious that we can't throw our family's death, in Human Noble right back in his face to ruin his pity party. If you do, however, mention it, it's minimal compared to his loss. "Oh, I forgot"...Of course he forgot, he's too busy wallowing in self pity about Duncan's loss, and about the fact that whether he's told you yet or not, he might have to become King to effectively shut down Loghain. As players of the game, we know he doesn't, but as characters in the story, until we talk to Anora, we have no idea. So fear of having to live up to his responsibilities justifies his behavior?
This is an excellent post. To me, there is nothing Alistair can do that justifies his behavior because what he showed my PC at the Landsmeet when confronting Loghain. The irony here is that were Duncan alive, he wouldn't have approved of Alistair's behavior either. For Duncan clearly states on more than one occasion that our duties as Grey Wardens and stopping the Blight comes above all else. He even chides Alistair in Ostagar for letting the Revered Mother talk him into harrassing that mage, because Alistair was a former templar.
Yet, Alistair,as I said before, throws a complete temper tantrum. He puts his own personal feelings above what's best for Ferelden and by extension, the Grey Wardens. Anyone who is to be king had to see not only the strategic value of having Loghain alive, but the political value for the noble houses of Ferelden as well, who he would be ruling over.
Again, that one event told me all I ever needed to know about Alistair. He's just a self-centered little child. Making matters worse, if you do choose Loghain, Alistair just goes off and I guess gets drunk or whatever. I mean, what happened to stopping the Blight? Are his own personal feeling so great that he can't do what's best for everyone else? Which would be stopping the Blight?
Sorry, but anyone in this thread or the other threads devoted to Alistair defending his actions are just not being realistic. There is NOTHING ANYONE CAN SAY to excuse his actions at the Landsmeet. All the other whining he does, though annoying and tiresome to me, can be ignored or overlooked, but his actions in front of Loghain speaks volumes. Flemeth had it right when she told him, "Grow up, boy." after Alistair professed shock that a king would take the throne by force.
As for having to "harden" him after his encounter with his sister to get him to understand the bigger picture of things, I shouldn't have to do that. He's supposed to be a Grey Warden. I would think going through the Joining and being under Duncan's tutelage should be enough to harden anyone.
Could Alistair have mentioned Redcliffe sooner? Could he have done x, y, z? Yes, he could have. We could all debate what he should have done based on what the most logical choice was. Personally, I would say that hitting Redcliffe initially doesn't seem particularly vital until later on, but that's just my personal viewpoint after evaluating the treaties. Purely from a gameplay standpoint, attempting to defened Redcliffe at a low level seems unwise to me at any rate, given that you'd only have Alistair, Morrigan, Dog, Sten & Leliana to choose from (if you actually went straight there from Lothering) with low-level abilities to defend Redcliffe.
Eamon himself says that directly attacking Loghain with your armies is a bad idea. I believe he mentions something about it making your character look like a usurper trying to steal the throne and that it would inflame the civil war, not end it (when you discuss your options with Eamon after healing him). Don't forget that the commonfolk apparently DO love Anora (God knows why). It would be a political mistake to try fighting a war with Loghain. Also, why call a Landsmeet before you actually have any armies to support you? I'm not sure Alistair actually even considered the Landsmeet issue, but eh, who knows.
A lot of the issues seem to stem from Alistair's response at the Landsmeet not being proper Warden behavior/not being in character. If you've read The Calling, then you know that Genevieve is not exactly behaving like a "proper Warden." Let's examine the actions of someone who is actually supposed to be a mature, seasoned Warden (and a Warden Commander at that). She is driven by her emotions on her quest to find her brother (which is made pretty clear, even though ostensibly she's doing this to prevent a Blight). Her judgment becomes quite suspect, and she puts the lives of other Wardens at risk because of what she wants and because of what she feels. Her only "evidence" is her visions.
What about the Warden who decides to stay in the Fade with the illusion of his dead lover...what's his name, Nicholas? The other Wardens don't try to stop him after he makes his decision to stay in the Fade. They allow him to put his love before his duty. Logically, you could argue that he should've sucked it up and left the Fade. He didn't, and again, the other Wardens allowed him to throw his life away with their blessing. Sidenote: Duncan in the book is about as immature as Alistair for the most part (constantly harping on the cold weather). I wonder if people would like him THAT much if all they knew of him was his depiction in the book.He obviously gained a lot of maturity after some years had passed. I think people should cut Alistair some slack on what they consider "whining."
Back on track: of course there's a duty that Wardens should do - they should (hypothetically) put stopping a Blight above any other concerns, but based on Genevieve & Nicholas, or even Bregan (might as well throw him into the mix), even seasoned Wardens have their moments of weakness and make bad judgment calls, etc. Those three undeniably let their emotions overrule any logical decision-making, with a potentially more serious/disastrous effects (on Genevieve's & Bregan's parts) than any desire of Alistair's to lop off Loghain's head (or leave the Wardens if Loghain joins the order). To give Genevieve and Bregan some credit, they do pull back from the abyss ultimately. They made bad choices, so did Alistair at Landsmeet. It doesn't mean that any of them weren't trying to carry out their duties (in the end) - they just let themselves be swayed by their emotional responses.
Well, I haven't read the book but I can tell you a couple things. First, it doesn't matter what those other Wardens did, I'm focused on Alistair, though I understand why you mentioned them. Just because other, allegedly more seasoned Wardens made equally bad decisions does not excuse Alistair in the slightest. Second, were the other Wardens' decisions directly related to stopping the Blight? I mean, Alistair's decision to leave at a very critical point in the game could have, story wise, doomed Ferelden. At the time you confront Loghain, there are only three GWs left in Ferelden, you, Alistair, and Riordan. Were things quite that dire for the other GWs you mentioned that also made bad judgement calls?
To put that in perspective, it would be like if in Empire Strikes Back, Luke decides not to be a Jedi after he finds out Vader is his father because Obi-Wan lied to him. Knowing full well that by abandoning the Rebellion, with only two known Jedi left in the galaxy, he has doomed the resistance to darkness. This would mean that it would have been all on Leia's shoulders to go through the training, gather the army, hold what few allies they have together, and defeat Vader and the Emperor and save the galaxy single-handedly.
And that's exactly what happens in DAO. A human noble PC in DAO has much in common with Leia. They both have their families killed, (in Leia's case, not just her family, but her entire planet), have noble backgrounds, and both must put their personal feelings aside for the greater good and their duty to the Republic.
Meanwhile, Alistair just leaves if he doesn't agree with you. It's just not excusable. At all.
You miss the point: what I'm getting at is the fact that Wardens don't stop being flawed human beings just because they're suddenly Grey Wardens. They don't become perfect Blight-stopping machines. They have emotions and their own motivations, and any of them are capable of making stupid mistakes. BTW, trust me, the characters mentioned were not "allegedly" seasoned. Bregan was the Commander in his chapter before his sister, and she was finally promoted to Commander after he left on his Calling. Bregan was well-loved by his men based on what I read. However, he apparently hated being a Warden and had lingering resentments over joining, which he did only because Genevieve had dreams of being a heroic Grey Warden. They would never have accepted her without him, so he made the sacrifice and joined for her sake, so that she could fulfill her dream.
The reason I mentioned them is that people seem to have this kneejerk reaction to a character's behavior, and I don't mean just Alistair, I mean all of them. You see a bunch of I-hate-whoever threads in which someone fixates on one or two things they don't like/agree with, and they just totally ignore the character's psychological motivations and history. As for me, I try to take a character's past and his or her story into account before jumping on the I-hate-whoever bandwagon. This is why I eventually grew to like Morrigan after exploring her past, talking to her and developing a friendship with her despite her extreme prickliness and lack of social graces. I talked to Sten, tried to see things from his point of view and have been rather fond of him, despite the fact that a some people just call him a d--- because they can't be bothered to try to converse and get a handle on the Qunari philosophy, etc. As for Alistair at he Landsmeet, my opinion was this: yeah, he's angry, and I understand that. Would it be smarter and better to keep Loghain alive? Certainly, because the reasons Riordan listed were valid. However, I could forgive Alistair for wanting Loghain dead and for feeling so betrayed if you let Loghain join that he ups and leaves in disgust.
Even for someone like me who generally takes the redemption route when it comes to a fallen character/hero, in combination with Arl Howe and the human noble background on my rogue, I was really inclined to execute Loghain despite the wisdom of keeping him alive. Although I can respect Loghain's abilities as a general and even see some humanity in him despite what he did, he did have to answer for his crimes one way or another - it's not as if executing him wasn't justice (in addition to being revenge, yes). I tend to take the view that the original Wardens were more along the lines of noble, heroic types and that later on they started to accept anyone they thought could survive the Joining when their numbers started dropping (just my view, since nobody knows exactly how/when/if things changed). Based on my personal beliefs about the founding Wardens, I must admit thinking it would dishonor the order by allowing Loghain to join up, no matter how pragmatic it would've been to do so.
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