230 réponses à ce sujet

[Mike3207]

They both broke the law. Seriously, do we think it is okay to poison a person because they don't share your views? A Templar is kidnapped and imprisoned without due process. Citizens are sold into slavery. This is how a tyrant thinks. He believes that anything is on the table. He stripped the rights of others for the greater good. It is a lesser crime if he could prove he didn't mean to kill the guy. Having said that he has established a pattern. Human trafficking being the worst in my mind. The nobles were more concern about their own kind but that doesn't excuse the laws.

There's probably some people out there who are disappointed that Loghain wasn't succesful killing Eamon. I would have liked a way to kill Eamon ingame, but unfortunately that wasn't a option.

 

Templars-well I can't see anything wrong with imprisoning templars, and we don't know that he didn't have due process. I can't say a lot for the system of justice under Loghain though. Still, i can't see a lot of people caring about this by the time DAI rolls around.

 

Selling the elves-that will likely still be remembered-both that and the retreat at Ostagar. One thing that will impact on it-what's the status of the city elves by that time? Have they become full fledged citizens, or are they still treated as second class citizens.

 

All of this was a big deal around the time of the Blight, but I'd be very surprised if anything beyond selling the elves and the retreat at Ostagar is still remembered.

[Cobra's_back]

Good point Mike. To be perfectly honest I didn't like Eamon at all. I don't like the Templars or the Chantry. I hate Eamon's wife but I can never do them harm. I am perfectly fine with giving them a piece of my mind or telling them where to go.

 

 

The only ending that made life easier for the city elf was Alistair king. 

 

Per possible ending:

 

Slave trade stopped

 

Alistair is king

“With the slavers shut down in the Alienage, the lot of the city-born elves improved for a time. The new king even named the local elder to his personal court--a scandal amongst the humans, but a sign of new hope to the elves.”

 

Alistair is not king

“With the slavers shut down in the Alienage, the lot of the city-born elves improved for a time. A food shortage years later forced Queen Anora to come down hard on elven rioters, an act not quickly forgiven and a sign that tensions between the elves and humans were far from resolved.”

 

It is better for the Elves if Alistair is king. I had both of these endings happen. My final pick was Alistair and I hope someday he finds his real mom.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

Petty revenge and gray. You have to be joking. Per in game there is no slavery in Ferelden. He sold per the game citizens of Ferelden. He also did the following:

 

attempted murder by poisoning

kidnapped and imprisoned a Templar

 

None of these are gray. He broke the law.

 

The question I ask you is how does a society function without laws? Is it a gray area if you or your children were taken from your home and sold into slavery. 

 

If David said that then I would have to say he has zero respect for laws or believes that some people are above the law. I don't agree with that thinking at all.

Well, Gaider didn't actually endorse any of this. I think the idea is to let the fans debate the morality, while Gaider just tells us what happened.

[Orian Tabris]

I neither hated nor loved Loghain. I can respect (well, respect may be a bit strong; perhaps liked is a better word) the way BioWare wrote his history/past and involvement in the main storyline of Origins. I always killed him at the Landsmeet, but that was because I prefer Alistair, or because my Warden had an ulterior motive.

 

To me, he was a misguided and ignorant fool whom had good intentions, if underhanded ones. He was corrupted by the past, that he would rather do everything himself, than receive help from Grey Wardens and Orlesians (also Grey Wardens). He felt that Grey Wardens were no longer needed, and that everyone from Orlais must be out to destroy/control Ferelden based on past events (Orlais' invasion, and the Grey Wardens' having no darkspawn to fight above ground for a long time).

[Monica21]

Nobody disputes that. The point is that a darkspawn horde so massive as to justify Loghain's turning tail at Ostagar - leaving his king and the rest of the forces gathered there to be slaughtered - must have been the most serious and immediate threat facing the country at that time. The reasoning being that such a horde would certainly be able to wipe out any single lord's forces, and that it would require the combined forces of several - or even many - lords to defeat. Which makes it a national, non-local problem and puts it squarely at the door of the regent.

 

Indeed. Which means that retreating and sparing what forces you can is a much better option than leading them into the valley. IF Loghain managed to win at Ostagar, and that's a very big if, the victory would have been pyrrhic at best and likely still left Cailan and the Wardens dead. And for what it's worth, the nobility had to be brought into line because Loghain needed their troops to fight the darkspawn.

[Xilizhra]

Indeed. Which means that retreating and sparing what forces you can is a much better option than leading them into the valley. IF Loghain managed to win at Ostagar, and that's a very big if, the victory would have been pyrrhic at best and likely still left Cailan and the Wardens dead. And for what it's worth, the nobility had to be brought into line because Loghain needed their troops to fight the darkspawn.

At what point did Loghain, of all people, forget that trying to bludgeon unwilling Fereldans into doing your bidding has a very low success rate?

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

At what point did Loghain, of all people, forget that trying to bludgeon unwilling Fereldans into doing your bidding has a very low success rate?

Nobody has ever claimed Loghain was a skilled politician. (Edit: I hope.)

[Mike3207]

At what point did Loghain, of all people, forget that trying to bludgeon unwilling Fereldans into doing your bidding has a very low success rate?

It might have worked had Teagan not spoken up, and the odds were against Teagan saying anything.All the leading political figures were out of the scene, and you don't really expect a backbencher like Teagan to take a active role in any rebellion.

[mousestalker]

The sad reality of Ostagar is that if King Cailan and the Grey Wardens hadn't kept Loghain awake the night before with their hijinks and shenanigans, he would have been awake and refreshed. An awake and refreshed Loghain could win the battle whereas a tired Loghain could not. He knew this, and so the battle was lost.

 

It really is the fault of the King and the Grey Wardens.

[DarthGizka]

Indeed. Which means that retreating and sparing what forces you can is a much better option than leading them into the valley. IF Loghain managed to win at Ostagar, and that's a very big if, the victory would have been pyrrhic at best and likely still left Cailan and the Wardens dead.

 

Perhaps. The point is that he says afterwards:

 

Anora: Enough! I would like to know what you intend to accomplish, Father. Should we not be fighting the darkspawn instead of each other?
Loghain: The nobility shall be brought into line and then the darkspawn defeated. This is no true blight, Anora. Only Cailan's vanity demanded it be so.

[Monica21]

Perhaps. The point is that he says afterwards:

 

Anora: Enough! I would like to know what you intend to accomplish, Father. Should we not be fighting the darkspawn instead of each other?
Loghain: The nobility shall be brought into line and then the darkspawn defeated. This is no true blight, Anora. Only Cailan's vanity demanded it be so.

 

And? He still doesn't know what your character or you, the player, knew. He can't be expected to. Even Cailan didn't believe it was a Blight.

[DarthGizka]

The king's forces get routed even though they were bolstered by those of some lords, yet the darkspawn can be safely ignored? Give me a break.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

The king's forces get routed even though they were bolstered by those of some lords, yet the darkspawn can be safely ignored? Give me a break.

He makes very clear putting them on the backburner isn't his plan A. Though this is in a scene the Warden isn't present for.

[MrRoc]

Well, there certainly are those who are pro-, anti-, and neutral-Logie isn't there? Some are oh so passionate about it too.

 

I'm about to replay Origins after a couple of years, but I had played it through a few times with different paths (Killed old Logie, turned him into a Warden, etc.), but in each I thought still thought he was a ******-bastard.

 

I don't own any books or comics/graphic novels and as a computer game player, nor should I have to. Everything I need to know about him I should be able to get from the game without having to delve into an area I'm not interested in delving. So saying if you've read the books you'd know blah blah blah is pretty irrelevant, they are not canon in my world. I do listen to the writers like Gaider of course, they give some insight that I enjoy know what the intent was.

 

But then, to me, why I though Logie was an... bad person (must refrain from naughty-speak, it's a flaw) is because I see what was presented to me in the game I was playing.

 

For all intents and purposes, he abandoned his king (I typed kink... is my freudian slip showing?) and the warden allies in what appears to have been a certain cold bloodedness. Sure Gaider said that it was a spur of the moment decision, but in the game I didn't know that. I, nor my character or a friend of a friend's character was standing next to him when he said, "Hey, know what? I don't think it is prudent to go through with this you know. Fancy a drink down the pub? Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips!"

​To all intents and purposes, even to his own people from the gist I got in game, thought it was a winnable battle and he turned his back and ran like a traitorous curr. Then when the control of his daughter, the poisoning of an Arl, and general shittery all came to light what am I, an ordinary bloke (my character was the hero, I was just an advisor), supposed to think? History is full of heroes that turned into arrrrr...bad person and reviled for it afterwards no matter how noble an end they attempted to make for themselves (suicide/seppuku, death by police, death by storming the walls, etc.).

Lets say I am just a common Ferelden shall we. I have no access to a novel about the man, I don't know he suspects his son-in-law of running away to divorce his daughter for some foreign tart, I don't have that inner glimpse into his deeper id. All I know is that I'm happy covered in dirt, having a bath whenever I have time to jump into the stream, and feast on same offal and a nice big juicy turnip (tell kids that today and they won't believe you!). Why would I and my common Fereldens think of anything else? "Oh, so he sacrificed himself to make amends? Big whoop-dee bloody doo! That's the least he could have done after the damage he did! He fled the battlefield and got our best loved king killed because of his cowardice and nearly cost us our lands to the Blight because of it! The Blighlands may never be the same again if they ever recover at all." If he ever sacrifices himself, after that, I'd hope they burn his foul corpse and grind any remaining bones and scatter them in some desolate marsh somewhere, the errrm... the bumaperture!

Maybe, if I lived in his hometown and he once threw me a potato for now reason (I'm assuming he didn't throw it at me?) I might think, "E's a 'ero 'e is. 'E once gived me a 'taytoe." and then I might believe the stories are not true (I'm not listening! Lalalalalala...). But that is still a small minority in the scheme of things (how many of you still think Hitler was a great man? Dolf and Mussolini are both still adored by some ordinary non-Fascist/white supremacist types).
Sure, the epilogue tells us that if he dies killing the beastie that his statue is visited by tourists. I'm not a tourist. I'm the equivalent of a feudal farmer. I'm lucky to get further than one or two towns out along any given roads. If I live near the city and I bring the produce to market there, I might be lucky to get a visit to the pub, not wandering about with my iconograph box snapping pics of local landmarks. Maybe they are talking about the future after the internal combustion engine has been invented and Fereldens have won 2-4 working weeks off with pay? Other than that, I'm thinking in my medieval dark fantasy, only the rich and nobles will be doing the tourist thing. Everyone knows that even sailors in a medieval port city don't go sight seeing, they spend all their time in bars and brothels (presumably playing dragon bones if they don't drink or do wh...pros...sweet ladies that will give you a cuddle for a small fee).

 

But that's just the way I see it would be from the ground, not from some godly perspective where I have the Book of Worlds listing every little thing any given mortal is doing, has done, and is going to do.

You can look at it any way you want however, feel free, it's a free world (except for North Korea and other places). Twist it any way you like to view it. Lie to yourself for all I care. As for how players see him, mine is just like above but depending on the playthrough, I'll use him for political purposes, because he is a skilled warrior, or kill him for being a big spoon over what I witnessed being done. The question is like asking what's the best colour in the world (which is green by the way). Your answer will depend highly upon how you as a person see it, what you have heard about it, what background there is to it, and in some cases, not even know why, you just do. In the end, it makes no different to my game what you think about him, I'm still going to play my game the way I want to. I do however find the different outlooks and pointless arguments (no offence) of others interesting.

[KaiserShep]

That's one of the things I feel DA:O goofed up with. By making the player privy to private conversations between Howe, Loghain and Anora, and even the events at Denerim that lead to the civil war, it messed with our ability to make a decision based solely on our PC's perspective. From the Warden's point of view, Cailan, the Wardens and the rest of the King's army were simply abandoned at Ostagar, and the Wardens now have a bounty on their heads for some reason and the person who put it there is now suddenly the Regent, in league with someone who may have also murdered your entire family. In that position, I'd see no choice but to assume the very worst, and be dead set on neutralizing him permanently. This is also compounded by the Wardens keeping their secret about the true purpose of contracting the taint, at which point I can't even consider just having Loghain toss his life at the archdemon. I'm really curious as to how Alistair would have considered the option to make Loghain a Grey Warden if he knew this beforehand.

[sylvanaerie]

This thread alone is a prime example of why people will never agree on the character.  For his die-hard supporters the selling of innocent civilians into slavery, kidnapping, torture, conspiring to poison a man in his own home, the hiring of assassins to murder someone all because they are in the way of your own plans is just a 'gray area', not heinous crimes.  Others see these as capitol offenses and act accordingly.

 

His fans point out how he's 'suffering' from his decisions (something the Warden never sees, these are all scenes where the player NOT the Warden is present).  Seriously, I couldn't care less about Loghain's 'suffering'.  He could have spared himself a lot of that and left Anora in charge since she is far more capable at ruling and making the tough choices involved in that than he is--when it comes to politics he's a bloody idiot.  Or, and I find this even more ludicrous, they blame his victims "Cailan was an idiot" (I can't really argue that one because he was an idiot but I don't think he deserved to die stabbed in the back that way), "Eamon was an ambitious bastard" (doesn't matter that he's committed no crimes, Loghain just wanted him 'out of the way' while he did whatever he wanted unopposed) "Those slaves would have died anyway" (they did better than the humans when Denerim was overwhelmed--and they weren't given a choice, they just became 'another asset to be exploited'), "those nobles started the civil war" (I can only assume his supporters are just ignoring the fact the nobles were opposing a tyrant who had just gotten their king--who was well liked, even if he was an idiot, his army and the Gray Wardens--traditionally the only ones recognized as capable of ending a Blight--killed in a 'pointless battle'), "Duncan should have said how an Archdemon is killed, or should have said how he knew about this being a Blight" (but because of plot reasons, he can't say anything or all the later shockers in the game won't happen in their appointed time), or toss out arbitrary excuses like "Ostagar was unwinnable" (which I won't debate because we will never truly know if it was, can only speculate--and even if it was, I think Cailan would have gone home, thinking it was over since no AD had been sighted) or "It was all Howe's doing" (when in game it is clear it is Loghain not Howe doing the crimes he is accused of later--or that he is at least privy to them, and because he's the guy in charge, accountable for these crimes) and gloss over the atrocities committed by their (anti)hero as 'necessary' or 'grey'.  At the very least I would think a general would have tried to use all the assets available to him, not try to get them killed in pointless battling, or be so afraid of an old enemy he turns down their assistance, trying to do it all himself. Out of what? Pride? Fear?  The darkspawn were clearly a much greater threat, but he ignores them sweeping across his nation while he wastes resources on a civil war his own actions sparked.  Orlais would have made Fereldans miserable had they exploited the Blight and taken over a weakened nation, but they aren't the 'anathema to all life' that darkspawn quite clearly are, even as early as Ostagar in the game.

 

Like I said, he should have left Anora in charge.  At the very least he wouldn't have had to fight a war on 2 different fronts and would have had the nobles' assets to add to his own making his 'necessary' selling of innocent civilians unnecessary.  His excuse of "Ostagar was unwinnable" would have been a lot more palatable if the very first thing he did in Denerim hadn't been taking the throne from his daughter.  Bad PR that.

 

I used to wonder just how on earth anyone could excuse all these crimes and trivialize the pain and suffering of the people Loghain harms, but then, I've read some really whopping excuses for the man on these boards.  And I've come to the conclusions that:

 

1)  He's too polarizing for people to ever agree on his actions

 

2) That the most memorable character in DAO is Loghain.  Love him or hate him, people still can't stop arguing about him years later.

[Aurelet]

I do think Loghain had always planned to abandon the armies at Ostagar. I don't think his goal was to kill Cailan (he did try to back him out of the battle).  I do think he was planning to kill the Wardens due to his paranoia about them

[Aurelet]

I can't even wrap my head around this logic....

 

That's like saying every tactical retreat made in the history of mankind was a betrayal.

 

 

It's a betrayal because he sent them out there to draw the Darkspawn into his trap then didn't follow through with his part of the plan.

 

 

[Monica21]

I do think Loghain had always planned to abandon the armies at Ostagar. I don't think his goal was to kill Cailan (he did try to back him out of the battle).  I do think he was planning to kill the Wardens due to his paranoia about them

 

There is no in-game evidence to support that. The only thing you hear about Ostagar is the horde was much bigger than anticipated, and you can get that just from listening to soldiers in camp.

 

 

I can't even wrap my head around this logic....

 

That's like saying every tactical retreat made in the history of mankind was a betrayal.

 

 

It's a betrayal because he sent them out there to draw the Darkspawn into his trap then didn't follow through with his part of the plan.

 

 

 

 

And this is, yet again, a complete failure to understand what a tactical retreat is. Not every plan works. If the only thing you can do is save the rest of your army, then that's what you do.

[Mike3207]

I think there's some evidence that Loghain was at least thinking about the possibility of retreat before the battle. The Tortured Noble says when you meet him that his friend was at the battle, and was told to turn his shield before the retreat was ordered, or words to that effect.It's secondhand information and you never meet his friend, but still.

[Aurelet]

There is no in-game evidence to support that. The only thing you hear about Ostagar is the horde was much bigger than anticipated, and you can get that just from listening to soldiers in camp.

 

 

And this is, yet again, a complete failure to understand what a tactical retreat is. Not every plan works. If the only thing you can do is save the rest of your army, then that's what you do.

 

That fact that the retreat MAY have been the right tactical call doesn't make it any less of a betrayal to the people who he placed on the battlefield to draw the Darkspawn in.

[TEWR]

I think there's some evidence that Loghain was at least thinking about the possibility of retreat before the battle. The Tortured Noble says when you meet him that his friend was at the battle, and was told to turn his shield before the retreat was ordered, or words to that effect.It's secondhand information and you never meet his friend, but still.

 

You'll find that any decent general always considers a means of retreat before going into battle. It's just common sense, really.

 

A general has to account for thousands of lives. Not just the lives of soldiers, but of a nation as well.

 

As for the tortured noble, I believe what he said was "before King Cailan died". Which honestly lines up with everything Loghain did anyway, because Loghain sounded the retreat a minute or two before Cailan got crushed after he saw the delayed signal fire.

[Shadow Fox]

That fact that the retreat MAY have been the right tactical call doesn't make it any less of a betrayal to the people who he placed on the battlefield to draw the Darkspawn in.

Varric,Aveline and non-Mage Hawke definitely thought it was a betrayal.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

That fact that the retreat MAY have been the right tactical call doesn't make it any less of a betrayal to the people who he placed on the battlefield to draw the Darkspawn in.

Most of them knew the risks. And Loghain did try to keep the one guy who I'm not sure about off of the frontlines.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

That's one of the things I feel DA:O goofed up with. By making the player privy to private conversations between Howe, Loghain and Anora, and even the events at Denerim that lead to the civil war, it messed with our ability to make a decision based solely on our PC's perspective.

In which context you might be surprised that I usually execute Loghain despite the fact that I'm defending him on this forum.