Guest_StreetMagic_*
The one I never understood is the disapproval from letting Jowan out of his cage, especially since Leliana is in favor of letting him redeem himself. You have control of Jowan the whole time, and Alistair is there to smite him if things go wrong.
He also disapproves if you kill Jowan. Go figure. Probably the one time in the game that he and Morrigan disapprove at the same time.
Jowan is a blood mage, and Alistair doesn't have Mage Warden's knowledge of him. Leliana is the one with a big focus on redemption, given her past, hence why she's even supportive of letting the potential assassin in your ranks and never really tries to insult Loghain.
Guest_StreetMagic_*
Jowan is a blood mage, and Alistair doesn't have Mage Warden's knowledge of him. Leliana is the one with a big focus on redemption, given her past, hence why she's even supportive of letting the potential assassin in your ranks and never really tries to insult Loghain.
All of them have unique points of view here. Morrigan wants him freed. Alistair doesn't want him released, but doesn't want him killed either. He doesn't have it in him to actually execute a maleficar without question. So gives disapproval points if I stab Jowan.
I forgot who does approve.. maybe Sten.
Sten does because the Qun is so anti-blood magic (though I think he approves killing the elves to have Caladrius's health-boost?).
I believe hardened Alistair actually does approve of killing Jowan, if you actually go and harden him pre-Redcliffe. He's more sure in his beliefs, and so will call justice and want him punished without as much doubt.
Morrigan and Leliana are both against, the latter because she believes in redemption over justice and of course Morrigan because she's a practitioner of forbidden magic, so you know. Not going to want to travel with someone who executes people for it.
Guest_StreetMagic_*
Huh. i didn't realize hardening Alistair had that much of an effect through the game. Just thought it was a minor thing mostly applying to the last Denerim stage.
I only kill Jowan on a Dalish. I'm not a Templar or Qunari, but they can be similar (only in this respect).
This is why I'm sad that they didn't have an option to spare him and get to know him more, even have some great dialogue banter with Alistair and loghain. That would have been rich.
If I'm not mistaken, there was a written scene with Loghain but was never implemented. I'm pretty sure this is the scene but created by modders. Its a suggestion of what Loghain might have been in-game ...
Guest_StreetMagic_*
I annuled the tower on that same playthrough. No point in sending Jowan there. lol. He'll go straight to oblivion. Or the maker. Either/or.
If I'm not mistaken, there was a written scene with Loghain but was never implemented. I'm pretty sure this is the scene but created by modders. Its a suggestion of what Loghain might have been in-game ...
Other Return to Ostagar deleted conversations also suggest Loghain and Alistair could be in the party together: Here, here, and here.
I imagine it was removed because then the right answer becomes: get all companions, persuade Alistair to back off. Similarly to why most people will never really consider killing Sten (albeit indirectly) or Zevran, or turning down Leliana.
Guest_StreetMagic_*
Other Return to Ostagar deleted conversations also suggest Loghain and Alistair could be in the party together: Here, here, and here.
I imagine it was removed because then the right answer becomes: get all companions, persuade Alistair to back off. Similarly to why most people will never really consider killing Sten (albeit indirectly) or Zevran, or turning down Leliana.
Sten and Zevran are easy for me to reject. Zevran moreso. Sten is a little easier, as long as you don't mind child murderers. Murdered with bare hands, no less. I wonder if he ripped off some of their limbs. That must've hurt.
Anyways..The main thing the context has going for it is that you're just coming from Ostagar. You'd be at your most desperate state in Lothering.
Guest_StreetMagic_*
Classical example of the quote"killing a few makes you a murderer. Killing in masse makes you a hero" or in that context.
I never said he was just a murderer. I said child murderer. 
Don't get me wrong though. I like Sten. It just depends on the character. I don't have one rule for anyone. That would be boring if all of my playthroughs were identical. Sometimes he dies, sometimes not.
I'm not saying it isn't possible reject Sten/Zevran, but almost certainly people will let them on-board. Sten killed an entire family for no reason but blind rage, but we're not going to have a 45-page thread on whether to save him anytime soon.
Guest_StreetMagic_*
I'm not saying it isn't possible reject Sten/Zevran, but almost certainly people will let them on-board. Sten killed an entire family for no reason but blind rage, but we're not going to have a 45-page thread on whether to save him anytime soon.
I think anyone who roleplays considers their rationale for these situations. If you're just going through the motions or gaming for the sake of it, it's best to maximize all you can on content and bonuses (like saving Zevran nets you the rune of valiance in DA2). But if you just immerse in the story, it really depends. If you get into character, you can conjure dozens of reasons to not do something.
I only started posting in this section recently, but I've already seen a good share of people who make their cases against those two. I can't really say if there's a majority in favor of them. Not a large one at least.
I think anyone who roleplays considers their rationale for these situations. If you're just going through the motions or gaming for the sake of it, it's best to maximize all you can on content and bonuses (like saving Zevran nets you the rune of valiance in DA2). But if you just immerse in the story, it really depends. If you get into character, you can conjure dozens of reasons to not do something.
I only started posting in this section recently, but I've already seen a good share of people who make their cases against those two. I can't really say if there's a majority in favor of them. Not a large one at least.
Sten-the case against him is that he is in effect spying against Ferelden. He won't tell you that unless you have very high approval with him, but killing him will deny the Qunari an intelligence resource. They might get the intelligence sooner rather than later however. You have to balance the potential good he does fighting the Blight with the evil he'll do giving that intelligence to the Qunari.
Zevran-he tried to kill the only two Wardens left in Ferelden-an act that could have doomed Ferelden. You have to balance that with the good he can do fighting the blight.
Guest_starlitegirlx_*
Other Return to Ostagar deleted conversations also suggest Loghain and Alistair could be in the party together: Here, here, and here.
I imagine it was removed because then the right answer becomes: get all companions, persuade Alistair to back off. Similarly to why most people will never really consider killing Sten (albeit indirectly) or Zevran, or turning down Leliana.
I think the just wanted to force you to make choices that had ramifications. They are oh so big on that. Romance Alistair and you see how what a royal PITA their ideas of choices and outcomes are. Limited world view I say. Narrowing options. Cutting out what could have been some of the best options available. But they like to do this. They like to force players into corners. Very much so with Alistair.
I've killed Zevran many times and I haven't bothered getting sten in more games than I can remember. Only got him in the first few then found I just didn't like him. After DA2 hated the quinari and let him die - same as killing him. I've read posts from a fair amount of people that they don't recruit Zevran or Sten. You don't have to. You get Oghren and Morrigan and Alistair. You can pick from the others. You don't need all of them. They just wanted to make it an either or with ramifications that don't makes sense when you get to the 'you get to die for killing the archdemon' reveal. Biggest problem there is that it is some really terrible writing. I mean really terrible. I mean there are no words for just how bad it is because of all the opportunities had to make it clear that Loghain should not be killed... because of how daft they are about the whole secrecy of the joining when in fact once Riordan shows up it seems like the cat is out of the bag. Anora knows it could kill. We wonder if maybe the woman at the chantry who didn't want to let Alistair goes might have known. Even in awakening you have dialogue that makes the secret far less secret. Oghren wants to gargle and spit. That suggest he has a damn good clue about it. And that is really bad writing... to have this rule about the secrecy of the joining that is the very thing that so many twists and turns in your personal story hinge on only to then become quite lazy about the secrecy later on as the game progresses and even in follow up DLC. Anora should not know it is often fatal. How does she know? And Riordan discusses all of this in the open at the landsmeet but manages to keep out the very most important detail... the very detail that might have kept loghain from retreating at ostagar.... the whole story hinges on this and yet, it is done so poorly that one has to wonder if the writers just never sat back and examined the idea they were putting forth because it does not hold up under scrutiny. The justification makes sense but only so far which is really not that far at all. Simply put, their secret cost them the death of a king, civil war, death of all the wardens, probably death of a general, and oh yeah, most of the country blighted. They needed a catch. I get it. But they did a poor job with it. It was easy for them to make this joining secret but it fails in the long haul and epically so looking far more like so stupid uber secret club initiation than anything else.
Then they cover up the whole death by killing the archdemon bit with some more bad writing later when Riordan finally thinks to mention the death consequence where you just happen to get an offer from morrigan... oh what perfect timing. All of that is horrible writing. Or maybe lazy... I can't tell anymore. And yes, I guess it boils down to them not wanting you to have too many options but again, it's really done very poorly considering we can magically persuade the landsmeet to put us on the throne if we are nobles and we can choose who rules, but we cannot persuade Alistair so we get one last warden and have a happy ending if we want without having to screw the shrew.
Riordan's taint apparently made him dumb as a rock to not pull the warden and alistair aside at the landsmeet. I guess brain damage is one of the side effects of the joining....
Sten-the case against him is that he is in effect spying against Ferelden. He won't tell you that unless you have very high approval with him, but killing him will deny the Qunari an intelligence resource. They might get the intelligence sooner rather than later however. You have to balance the potential good he does fighting the Blight with the evil he'll do giving that intelligence to the Qunari.
Zevran-he tried to kill the only two Wardens left in Ferelden-an act that could have doomed Ferelden. You have to balance that with the good he can do fighting the blight.
Where did you get that part where Sten is spying against ferelden? Cuz he has always been very high rep on my playthroughs. The only thing he was set out to do was investigate what the blight is all about. Unless Mary Kirby said something I missed?
It's a dialogue option you have with Sten when his approval is very high-95 or so. I don't recall the exact conversation, but it ends with him saying that the Warden should be on guard against a Qunari invasion force in the future.
@stargirl-one fanfiction story i read theorized that Anora knew about the Joining because there were books about the wardens in the palace library that may have held knowledge about warden secrets. We know that the leading countries are aware about the Warden secrets, so it's definitely possible there are books about it that held that information.
I think the just wanted to force you to make choices that had ramifications. They are oh so big on that. Romance Alistair and you see how what a royal PITA their ideas of choices and outcomes are. Limited world view I say. Narrowing options. Cutting out what could have been some of the best options available. But they like to do this. They like to force players into corners. Very much so with Alistair.
I've killed Zevran many times and I haven't bothered getting sten in more games than I can remember. Only got him in the first few then found I just didn't like him. After DA2 hated the quinari and let him die - same as killing him. I've read posts from a fair amount of people that they don't recruit Zevran or Sten. You don't have to. You get Oghren and Morrigan and Alistair. You can pick from the others. You don't need all of them. They just wanted to make it an either or with ramifications that don't makes sense when you get to the 'you get to die for killing the archdemon' reveal. Biggest problem there is that it is some really terrible writing. I mean really terrible. I mean there are no words for just how bad it is because of all the opportunities had to make it clear that Loghain should not be killed... because of how daft they are about the whole secrecy of the joining when in fact once Riordan shows up it seems like the cat is out of the bag. Anora knows it could kill. We wonder if maybe the woman at the chantry who didn't want to let Alistair goes might have known. Even in awakening you have dialogue that makes the secret far less secret. Oghren wants to gargle and spit. That suggest he has a damn good clue about it. And that is really bad writing... to have this rule about the secrecy of the joining that is the very thing that so many twists and turns in your personal story hinge on only to then become quite lazy about the secrecy later on as the game progresses and even in follow up DLC. Anora should not know it is often fatal. How does she know? And Riordan discusses all of this in the open at the landsmeet but manages to keep out the very most important detail... the very detail that might have kept loghain from retreating at ostagar.... the whole story hinges on this and yet, it is done so poorly that one has to wonder if the writers just never sat back and examined the idea they were putting forth because it does not hold up under scrutiny. The justification makes sense but only so far which is really not that far at all. Simply put, their secret cost them the death of a king, civil war, death of all the wardens, probably death of a general, and oh yeah, most of the country blighted. They needed a catch. I get it. But they did a poor job with it. It was easy for them to make this joining secret but it fails in the long haul and epically so looking far more like so stupid uber secret club initiation than anything else.
Then they cover up the whole death by killing the archdemon bit with some more bad writing later when Riordan finally thinks to mention the death consequence where you just happen to get an offer from morrigan... oh what perfect timing. All of that is horrible writing. Or maybe lazy... I can't tell anymore. And yes, I guess it boils down to them not wanting you to have too many options but again, it's really done very poorly considering we can magically persuade the landsmeet to put us on the throne if we are nobles and we can choose who rules, but we cannot persuade Alistair so we get one last warden and have a happy ending if we want without having to screw the shrew.
Riordan's taint apparently made him dumb as a rock to not pull the warden and alistair aside at the landsmeet. I guess brain damage is one of the side effects of the joining....
Loghain yields after the duel, and would be probably willing to help even without the Joining at that point. I don't even think you know Alistair will leave until after you've locked in on sparing Loghain -- it's not a trade unless you metagame.
Doubly so if you've made him king, since King Alistair will always have to leave the Wardens eventually -- it's just a matter of whether he joins your party for this final assault.
Eh even without metagaming it's kinda easy to see him not accepting Loghain to me.
The one I never understood is the disapproval from letting Jowan out of his cage, especially since Leliana is in favor of letting him redeem himself. You have control of Jowan the whole time, and Alistair is there to smite him if things go wrong.
Uh no the only way Jowan will leave his cage is if the Warden agrees to let him go on his own which is an irresponsible and frankly stupid thing to do.
I'm not saying it isn't possible reject Sten/Zevran, but almost certainly people will let them on-board. Sten killed an entire family for no reason but blind rage, but we're not going to have a 45-page thread on whether to save him anytime soon.
I don't. 
Guest_starlitegirlx_*
It's a dialogue option you have with Sten when his approval is very high-95 or so. I don't recall the exact conversation, but it ends with him saying that the Warden should be on guard against a Qunari invasion force in the future.
@stargirl-one fanfiction story i read theorized that Anora knew about the Joining because there were books about the wardens in the palace library that may have held knowledge about warden secrets. We know that the leading countries are aware about the Warden secrets, so it's definitely possible there are books about it that held that information.
Doesn't matter if it was theorized, it was bad story design. You cannot have so very many things hinge so crucially on a 'secret' and then change the rules of the secret (who knows what, what parts of the secret are unknown, revealing them in illogical places when more logical places presented themselves earlier....). It's perhaps not even the secret in general because their 'rule' for why it is a secret has a *certain amount* of sense. However, we see at ostagar how little sense it made in the grand scheme of things. And this secret comes up with regards to conversation you have with Alistair and then at the landsmeet around loghain and later when it comes up in redcliffe (but strangely such an important detail was never brought up while Riordan was standing in the Arl's estate - a room you were in and out of - or better yet, in your conversation with him). It's got a life of it's own and is manipulated as a tool the writers use. Now this in and of itself is not a bad thing. Writers do it all the time. It is simply the way it was done particularly because it was done in a game and used as a tool to manipulate outcomes and variable. In that case, the writing needs to be superior rather than inferior. It needs to make some kind of logical sense. All the elements of how this secret is used and when aspects of it are revealed need to work and feel like they have a sensible and logical flow rather than you look at it and see it for the mechanism it is. That is what makes this very bad writing. There are so many places where it could have worked very well if they hadn't decided to use it as a tool to force you to make certain choices and box yourself into certain outcomes where there is a 'price to pay.' Because of how they designed the choices, the writing really needed to be superior rather than barely average or even flawed at least with regards to this secret.
Guest_starlitegirlx_*
In fairness to the writers, if they are going to put every pros and cons into an already huge game, then the game would not fit into a disc. There has to be a stopper there somewhere but I agree the landsmeet is a little wonked though not concerning Loghain but riordan's timing. The Loghain part is all bout the players moral choices same with sten and zev and caladius, alistair etc.
Anyway even if the landsmeet was flawless, there will always be people who would still want more. Like me.
It would not be a huge game. It's simply a matter of writing something well enough so that it doesn't smack you in the head with glaring absurdities. They failed at the landsmeet and all around the loghain live/die issue as well as most of the variable that have Alistair changing his behavior dependent on what course of action is taken. He's a chess piece rather than a character. If you are going to make a character a chess piece, at least give it some sort of logic or sense. Make it look intelligently done rather than like you are trying to give a whole lot of different outcomes that don't follow any logical sense or reason.... or if you are trying to manipulate the player into creating a old god baby then don't be so absurd about it as they did. You find out you will die and then morrigan just happens to be in your room exactly after that conversation? It would not require many discs to have simply had Riordan pull the wardens aside at the landsmeet and then given you a persuade or two persuade options to convince Alistair to let him live. It is simply an option. That is all it is. You can still lose Alistair if you wish. Kill loghain if you wish. Or take the other option which is let loghain become a warden. Then if you really don't want loghain to die do the ritual. Make him do it with Morrigan. Frankly that would be a nice added touch because you now are making him have sex with a witch (something he really did not seem to want to do) to keep everyone alive and make him live as a warden - no longer a proud general or hero and with no redemption. Or make alistair have sex with her. Or you as a male character have sex with her. Doesn't matter. You have a variety of options. Very little disc space required and no bad writing.
Guest_starlitegirlx_*
Sten and Zevran are easy for me to reject. Zevran moreso. Sten is a little easier, as long as you don't mind child murderers. Murdered with bare hands, no less. I wonder if he ripped off some of their limbs. That must've hurt.
Anyways..The main thing the context has going for it is that you're just coming from Ostagar. You'd be at your most desperate state in Lothering.
I think most people would probably get anyone they could in the first game as they don't know what is to come. I missed leliana on my fist game. Never went into the tavern. Didn't even realize that I could.
Any game with many options though was designed specifically for metagaming and so later you have the options to play to your ideal for whatever character you are playing. First game, you don't know anything about it. You can make the best decisions for that character but it might not be till much later where you discover the consequences. In some cased it seem games later. But this game is very much about metagaming, isn't it?
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