155 réponses à ce sujet

[EmperorShepard]

The Mage vs Chantry issue of the DA universe is the reason i like the series. Without it, its just another boring fantasy game without that much fantasy in it.

You could easily fix the mage issue if you did not want to make more games. You could cut mages off from the fade without making them tranquil some how.

You could let the mages take over but without showing them as evil like the Empire.

So many possibilities

[Reidbynature]

It was interesting enough in Origins when it wasn't in the foreground as much (along with other heavy handed stand-ins for discrimination and such). The story wasn't perfect in Origins, but it was entertaining for the most part, but DA2 felt suffocating and it got irritating very quickly. I think part could be attributed to you as Hawke feeling so useless in the forced narrative (which only direction was a downwards spiral).

Hopefully DA3 settles on a more personal narrative and the templar/mages issue is told in the background.

[SpunkyMonkey]

PinkysPain wrote...

To me it seems every side of the equation has been explored ... it's a huge unsatisfying mess with no real solutions which I'd rather be put into the background. In my opinion the issue was visited enough in DA:O to begin with
and it was in the background there ... DA2 was a step too far, I hope it gets put in the background again in DA3.

What an excellent post. The whole Mage Vs Templar aspect of DA:2 was just that - an unsatisfying mess. It worked great in DA:O - a perfect background and reasoning for why mages are so powerful, but why they remain isololated from everyday tasks and why the everyday world functions like it does without constant mage interaction.

If this is to be a finale the only way I could see it working is to have mass chaos ensuing from the mage uprising. Mages go rampant, demons come into the world as a result, the elite mages try to enter the Black City again to (in their eues) "right wrongs", and the game finishes with an epic confrontation with "the maker", who it actually turns out isn't the maker, but a Tevinter olde God who imprisoned the maker when the Tevinter Imperium 1st entered the Fade.

[furryrage59]

I hope they don't do the mage thing anymore, so much more story they could do than that.

[NasreddinHodja]

CaptainBlackGold wrote...

Personally, I think the way the conflict was handled in DA2 muddied the waters so that it is difficult to get a handle on the situation. Both sides were insane - Meredith, literally, and then that completely bizarre decision by the writers to have Orsinio turn into an abomination, immediately after my party had thoroughly defeated the Templars... "Oh, no, there is no hope, let me turn into a disgusting monster composed of dead body guards..." But I just killed all those people, dimwad!

By having him do that (as well as him supporting and encouraging the research into creating Franken-Mommie), made all the mages look like dangerous idiots. Throughout the game, he is presented as the voice or reason and justice for the mages, and then he involves himself in the worst kind of disgusting magic. He didn't just learn how to turn into an abomination in a moment of crises - clearly he had studied such things for quite some while.

So if this was intentional on the part of the writers (as opposed to some goofy plot decision on the part of someone higher up - "Hey, let's have TWO boss battles"), then it shows that they want us to see that there is no such thing as a "good" mage - that even the best can and will turn themselves into abominations whenever it suits their purposes to do so.

In effect, as presented, from the information we have, EVERY mage is a potential suicide bomber. If they do not get their way, they will either use blood magic to control minds, or blow themselves up by becoming an abomination.

Yeah, I know people are going to say, "But the mean, nasty Templars in Kirkwall forced them into it..." and I respond, what about the circle tower in Feralden? No oppression there, a lot of nice, civilized mages and concerned Templars working peacefully together and yet, just one insane mage was enough to bring numerous demons in to almost destroy the entire tower?

So as presented, mages either get what they want, when the want it and how they want it, or they do a Samson in the Temple and destroy everything.

And it all goes back to Orsinio where the game shows that the most reasonable mage is inherently unstable. I refused to allow the circle to be annulled by Meredith because killing mages for things Anders had done was gross injustice. But after Orsinio turned into an abomination, I was left thinking, "Maybe the old battle-axe was right after all..." That should not have happened, unless the writers want us to see that every mage is inherently dangerous.

What the writers wanted us to see, I believe, is that mages are as much humans as mundanes.  That is, even the most reasonable ones can descent into madness.  The fact that Orosino's actions disgust us is not because he's a mage, but because he's human.  

I believe that "those nasty Templars in Kirkwall" is a justified enough motivation.  You have to remember that the mages in Kirkwall had not seen the "nice Circles" in Ferelden (of course, I'd have to disagree about the Ferelden Circle being fine... even the Mage Origin story mentions that the Circle is a gilded cage).  Over the course of the game, they've become out of control and have metaphorically corner the mages.  And you know what happens when an animal is cornered.  This does not mean every *mage* is a suicide bomber, but that every *human* can be if pushed too far.

The conflict between the Templars and the Mages is supposed to be all gray and messy and confusing, just like most sociopolitical issue in real life.  True, not everyone would enjoy this realism; part of the reason we like fantasy genre is escapism, after all, but I think it's built into the concept of the setting itself that Dragon Age is fantasy, but grittier.

Modifié par NasreddinHodja, 04 décembre 2012 - 07:44 .

[ImperatorMortis]

This damn forum has run the Mage debate into the ground. I'm far less interested than I was before.