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[Xilizhra]

Errr...about that...

 

Then I amend it to "Flemeth-tier skeleton, probably not dead." Because the wording on the in-game choice was quite ambiguous.

[Disgruntled Canadian]

So, how do you guys feel about the hardened vs softened topic?

 

Softened is the only way to go for me personally, I find it alot more rewarding and Leliana seems to have much more peace of mind that way. I like the Keep's way of saying it, inspired Leliana. Hardened Leliana is just depressing really, she feels like some kind of empty shell of a person at that point, with nothing but crazy in there. Softened Leliana just hits me as so much more lively, Cole mentions her singing again IIRC among other things

 

Hardening her after the Warden's romance letter about her would make me feel terrible too, I'm glad the stars aligned in my favor and I was able to soften her my first playthrough without getting spoiled about it

[AWTEW]

As long as it doesn't play out like a 90's high school chick flick...

Urrgh thanks for the bad memories...

I'm surprised that a romanced Leliana has zero comments if you exile the Wardens. You'd think she'd comment on the fact that you barred her lover from returning on penalty of death.

That was. bit off putting. I do like how if u pick an angry response about'i forget which plot point it was' the inquisitor comments on how the spymaster should have done there job. and cullen will comment that nobodys perfect, and leliana has a blind spot when it comes to wardens. wish I could remember when it was gah..

Errr...about that...

flemeth had a skeleton..and look how that turned out :/

So, how do you guys feel about the hardened vs softened topic?

i prefer hardened.
Actually it occured to me the other day that with the default storyline, leliana being so jaded makes a hell of a lot of sense. in the default world, Leliana considerd lyna a friend and even says ' i had the privledge of calling her friend before she died' (something along those lines) and with the divines death..thats twice she has lost a good friend in similar ways..

Actually, it brings up a plot hole. in that state she should be majorly jaded about the wardens?. :/

[AWTEW]

It can make sense on a lot of worldstates. I agree. Especially if you taint the Sacred Ashes. It's like she's reborn as some avenging angel.

Yeah, that kind of urked me tbh. they should have made it like, she used some rouge ability. Still, don't u think Leliana should be jaded about the wardens? This plothole is going to bug the **** out of me now..'grumbles'

[Qun00]

Softened is the only way to go for me personally, I find it alot more rewarding and Leliana seems to have much more peace of mind that way. I like the Keep's way of saying it, inspired Leliana. Hardened Leliana is just depressing really, she feels like some kind of empty shell of a person at that point, with nothing but crazy in there. Softened Leliana just hits me as so much more lively, Cole mentions her singing again IIRC among other things

Hardening her after the Warden's romance letter about her would make me feel terrible too, I'm glad the stars aligned in my favor and I was able to soften her my first playthrough without getting spoiled about it

Ha, that was a struck of luck to be sure.

That cutscene in Haven doesn't really give you a reason to spare the guy. You gotta be feeling extra merciful that day.

After that, I almost chose to support Leliana's decision to make her agents' safety a priority. But then she said "can we afford such sentimentality?" and I was like "Damn, she's right". A leader has to be more pragmatic. Soldiers die, it's inevitable. So I reloaded and chose to agree with her.

I do enjoy Leliana's ruthless personality when it's moderate, like how she'd rather handle the assassins threatening Josie directly instead of wasting time, or her intimidation tactics in the war table.

But I'll be honest, if the hardened version were the only one I would really hate her guts. We don't need a stupid loose cannon.

[AWTEW]

Jaded, if she was killed? Yeah.. because I think it'd spark flashbacks seeing Wardens take extreme measures.. just like the Warden who killed her.

I guess u could say she still had a soft spot because of Allistar..but :/

What bothers me is that in the default scenario, both of her close friends died because of warden related problems. So in theory she should not have been so concerned whe. it came to blackwall and stories about the warden.

[AWTEW]

I haven't given it a lot of thought, but yeah, some of this has passed my mind.
 
Personally, I prefer her either romanced or just leaving the DAO group. Which gives a whole different flavor too in how I'd want her to be in DAI.

My problem with the the living version of the romance. is that she has nothing at all to say when the inquisitor exiles the wardens. And then she gives the mission about contacting the hof. the inquisitor just exiled the wardens, leliana :/

[Fiery Phoenix]

My problem with the the living version of the romance. is that she has nothing at all to say when the inquisitor exiles the wardens. And then she gives the mission about contacting the hof. the inquisitor just exiled the wardens, leliana :/

That sort of inconsistency has always been in BW games, though. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that not every quest and subplot was written by the same person or at the same time. Still, I think they generally do a decent job of making sure things make sense in relation to one another.

[Disgruntled Canadian]

Leliana has so many variations, so it's kind of understandable.
 
I know some pointed out once how her dialogue if you romanced AND killed her has her offering both affectionate and hateful lines when talking of the Warden. And the writers admited they goofed.. that they didn't even consider that scenario.

Can't say I blame them, whoever did that is a dink who doesn't even deserve a consistent storyline

[ThePhoenixKing]

Well, I suppose you could not exile the Wardens. Then the inconsistancy doesn't come up, and the world doesn't get devoured by slavering, mindless, flesh-eating subterranean nightmares. Simple

[GenericEnemy]

Softened Leliana is my preference by a mile, hardened just doesn't sit right with me at all. I accidentally had her hardened AND Divine with the Warden romanced on my first playthrough, two things I was really trying to avoid. My luck was terrible, sad playthrough. 

 

I did too much disagreeing with people today. 

 

Here, have a warm and fuzzy thing I found.

 

X

 

Now, I'm going to sleep. 

 

Aww. I like it how they did the hood half fallen off. 

[Nightingale]

I prefer softened Leliana, too. I've hardened her exactly once, intentionally, after having done everything to soften her and...well, it's heartbreaking to say the least (I reloaded after the last conversation with her in Skyhold). Still, I think both work for her and it's as good a place as any to leave her character.

 

Can't say I blame them, whoever did that is a dink who doesn't even deserve a consistent storyline

 

Agreed. I've never done it and have absolutely no intention of doing so, but I must admit it'd be an...interesting world state. If it were actually addressed, of course. Very...Marjolaine-like betrayal, could've been some interesting dialogue there. Especially if they're both still alive and you harden Leliana...

[Aimi]

But then she said "can we afford such sentimentality?" and I was like "Damn, she's right". A leader has to be more pragmatic. Soldiers die, it's inevitable.

BioWare writing often associates military decisions with ethical or moral choices that are kind of shoe-horned in instead of making sense. This is partly because the writers do not particularly care about military logic, and rightly so, because most players don't know anything about military logic either. And it's partly because a lot of video game choices are associated with an ethical dilemma to give them more emotional or dramatic weight, even if that dilemma doesn't necessarily exist - it's not restricted to military issues.

Spoilered: a verbose comment on the Haven situation as presented in the story.

Spoiler

The situation at Haven was strange, anyway. For one thing, using spies and agents as battlefield reconnaissance is bizarre. Recon detachments are supposed to be able to gather intelligence, prevent the enemy from gathering its own intelligence, and fight any engagements necessary to fulfill these function. They're fundamentally military units. (Interestingly, BioWare's writers got this right in ME2 with the Urdnot scout commander, who correctly pointed out that scouting involves an awful lot of fighting.) Why they would be under Leliana's command is beyond me.

For another thing, Leliana's conversation makes things more confusing. She states that when the first of her lookouts went missing, she pulled the rest back to await further information. Where would that information come from, if not other lookouts? But more importantly, if that was cause for her to order a withdrawal, why not muster the main army? If it was a severe enough threat to warrant retreating reconnaissance elements, then it was a severe enough threat to put the field army on alert. Did this happen anyway? Who the hell knows?

The military logic behind Leliana's decision is also not unequivocal. Ordering the reconnaissance units to stand and fight could make tactical sense - it might gain the main army more time to muster and to prepare. Or it could make sense to order them to withdraw, on the grounds that concentrating all available forces is the most important thing, and that letting the recon units get destroyed to gain a little bit more time would not be a good trade - a risk of defeat in detail. Both of those orders are militarily valid and "pragmatic".

Side note: ideally, a reconnaissance detachment would maintain a screen in front of the enemy, skirmishing, maintaining range, forcing the enemy to deploy (slowing the enemy down) while not risking an actual engagement that might get the scouts killed, while relaying information back to command - but that requires a great deal of "fingertip feel" on the part of the reconnaissance unit leader, and also relies on an understanding of the reconnaissance unit as an actual military force rather than as a collection of secret agents.

I discussed something similar in the quoted post below. The conversation happened before Inquisition's release, and related to the Crestwood decision from the demo (the one that was not implemented in the final game).
 

Your example isn't about "good" and "evil", or even about "pragmatic" and "idealistic". Your example ties into a fundamentally amoral military debate on operational art: when to avoid battle and when to seek it. On the one side, there's the ideal of conserving forces for a decisive battle by not risking them in lower-priority engagements. On the other side, there's the ideal of "not one step back" and fighting for every yard of ground that the enemy contests.

Neither of those scenarios is reached in practice. There are always legitimate theoretical arguments in favor of conserving forces for a "decisive battle" or "decisive moment", and there are always legitimate theoretical arguments in favor of actually using troops where they appear to be needed.

In the Franco-German War, French and German artillery doctrines were quite dissimilar. The Germans tended to favor immediate use of their guns: as soon as infantry made contact with an enemy force, corps commanders would push forward their artillery reserve, form a gun line, and blast the French out of their positions by firing in direct support. By contrast, the French army favored a Napoleonic tactic for their artillery: keep it concentrated instead of dispersing it among the corps, so that the army commander could mass it at the decisive point in the battle and win there by sheer weight of metal. The problem with the French approach is that battles don't really have obvious decisive points. At Spicheren, Vionville, Gravelotte, and Sedan, there was no general crisis on the lines: just steady pressure. The French artillery was never decisively massed; the German artillery wiped it the hell out. The united German armies went on to win that war, and their victory created the modern German state.

The point there is to illustrate that saving troops and resources for the big important fights is not always a good choice; a series of steady, unspectacular victories all across the board is often (but not always) the correct solution. Saving your resources for a fight that will 'eventually' happen doesn't help anybody if 'eventually' never comes, if that fight doesn't end up being decisive enough, or if you overestimate the requirements for that eventual battle. Fighting for that village is a useful morale booster (especially if you win, which seems likely), it saves that village for your forces, and it probably hampers the enemy's plans.

Conversely, of course, it can also be smarter to concentrate instead of disperse, and to save up for the important fights rather than take everything that comes at you. There are historical examples in favor of this viewpoint as well. In 1940, Allied armies in France and Belgium famously parceled out tanks to all their units and spread them out along the lines. The Wehrmacht, on the other hand, concentrated its armored strength into Kleist's panzer group, hammered its way through the Ardennes, and drove a wedge between the Allied armies in France and Belgium, winning the campaign.

Saving up for the decisive fight, or stringing together a series of little victories that add up to something greater: both approaches can be valid in certain circumstances. But again, the difference between the two is not generally a moral one. (It depends, I suppose, on your conception of morality...)

Anyway. Framing the discussion in terms of military logic is pointless, because the game itself doesn't really deal with military logic.

To return to the Leliana example, it's worth pointing out that commanders who "get the job done" are lauded, and rightly so, but one of the oldest and most enduring criticisms of commanders are of those who are profligate spenders of lives. Generals who get lots of troops killed, even if they accomplish their objectives, are often reviled as butchers, and it is one of the most indelible stains on any soldier's reputation. The Soviet Marshal G.K. Zhukov, for example, is widely regarded as an unimaginative commander who successfully purchased eventual victory over the Hitlerites in the Great Patriotic War at the cost of millions of his soldiers' lives. Douglas Haig, a British commander in the First World War, and his French and German contemporaries Ferdinand Foch and Erich von Falkenhayn all gained a similar reputation. Commanders have objectives to meet in every battle, but "avoid high casualties if at all possible" is usually one of those objectives.

[GrinningRogue]

But then she said "can we afford such sentimentality?" and I was like "Damn, she's right". A leader has to be more pragmatic. Soldiers die, it's inevitable.

It reminds me of the tavern scene in DA:O, with Loghain's men. I ended up sparing them, stupid as that may be.

[vertigomez]

I prefer softened Leliana, with the caveat that she's jaded!Leli for a while... makes for some very interesting character development. I guess what it comes down to is: "Evil doesn't worry about not being good."

That convo. My heart.

[AresKeith]

I did too much disagreeing with people today. 

 

Here, have a warm and fuzzy thing I found.

 

X

 

Now, I'm going to sleep. 

 

I disagree

 

That looks like Lara Croft

[TheKomandorShepard]

Then I amend it to "Flemeth-tier skeleton, probably not dead." Because the wording on the in-game choice was quite ambiguous.

Flemeth was killed and dead so i don't see that as an argument.

[thats1evildude]

When Leliana refers to pulling agents back, I assume she is referring to lookouts in the passes surrounding Haven. What I assume happened is that Corypheus sent ahead advance parties of Red Templars or Venatori assassins to eliminate any lookouts so that his forces could advance on Haven without sufficient warning. Once it was discovered these lookouts were disappearing, Leliana ordered the rest of them to fall back.

 

Of course, that left Haven totally unprepared for Corypheus' attack. But the Inquisitor can make the argument that the lookouts would probably have died anyway and the outcome would have been the same.

 

And that is what I truly believe what would have happened. What would the Inquisition have been able to do even if they had more advance warning? As far as I can tell, they were based out of Haven primarily because they didn't have an alternate site to re-locate. They could have fortified more, but there's a limit to how effective fortifications are against a high dragon, especially one infected by red lyrium.

[Wulfram]

Well, they could have stopped getting drunk, that might have helped.  They could have got the civilians somewhere safer so you don't have to go round them up.  The Inquisition is really caught on the hop there.

 

Pulling in those scouts is just really stupid.  Even if they wouldn't have made a difference in this case.  What's the point of having your scouts hide whenever there might be something for them to see? 

 

And if Leliana really thought it was a dangerous enough situation for the Scouts to warrant leaving the Inquisition blind, she should have at least made sure everyone was on highest alert.