263 réponses à ce sujet

[jagabond]

For the first time, I turned it down. And went on to finish the fight with only Alistair, Leliana, and my dog. (Sten stayed behind and killed everyone.) My Warden ran a pretty, uh, minimal camp.

 

Part of me was trying to get my Ultimate Sacrifice achievement to pop in the DA Keep even though I'm sure I've done it before... but it was really interesting to be in a romance with Morrigan and to draw the line at demon-spawn baby. To be someone who said love was not a weakness, disagreed with her a lot, but still felt for her, and then she just ran off. So it felt quite dramatic to die killing the dragon afterward, and I hadn't seen the funeral scene at Redcliffe with Fergus. Very touching.

[Eldrid]

Ohhh I did accept it but it doesnt mean I liked it. My fem warden is romanced with Alistair and is destined to rule together. I was really on the dilemma of accepting it most especially when I reallllyyyy like Alistair. The ritual really wanted me to chop Morrigan's head off but at the same time I don't want to leave Alistair in such pain if my warden dies.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

The ritual really wanted me to chop Morrigan's head off but at the same time I don't want to leave Alistair in such pain if my warden dies.

Not to spoil anything, but that's less likely to be a problem than you might think.

[Merle McClure II]

For my Canon Warden, it basically boiled down to three points ...

 

(1) She didn't want to have to choose between dying or allowing her lover to die. (Yeah, Wynne called that one perfectly  ... the old bat.)  

 

(2) Although they had their disagreements she grew to like Morrigan and saw a lot of her callousness as a mask. (Some of that was wishful thinking on her part, but she just couldn't help but to be drawn towards Morrigan for reasons that she wouldn't have been able to fully explain. ... Maybe it was because Morrigan challenged her relatively pro-Circle beliefs as a fellow mage.)

 

(3) She never could quite except the concept of two souls utterly destroying one another so she wasn't totally convinced that the ritual really did what Morrigan thought it would. (This was largely due to her mage training about Spirit possession, the Grey Warden Death Blow concept just didn't make sense to her ... granted she also believed that she was probably more educated in magical theory than Morrigan was, there was a reason Irving summoned a Pride Demon to test her.) 

 

 

----

 

So basically she was human and made what objectively was the "wrong" choice for all of the "wrong" reasons. And if faced with the same choice she'd do it all over again.

Spoiler

Warden-Commander Amell trying her best to "cure" the Calling is probably pretty much in character, even after all those years she doesn't want to lose her Alistair.

[DinkyD]

....

 

Also, as a player who has only played a male PC once, I get tired of having to ask alistair to do it. I would rather just do it myself. That's another problem with the DR. I really would care a lot less if I could just do it myself. As a male PC I didn't the one time I was a male PC. I sent loghain in for the US. But if I could do it, I would do it without a second thought. It's that I have to go down the hall and even bother with bringing someone else in on it that I am annoyed about it, especially the goody two shoes virgin or newly minted non-virgin who HATES morrigan. The whole thing is such a drag... really. It feels like just one more sexist bit of BS thrown into this game. Right up there with the glory of being a mistress if you romance alistair and choose to let him be king or marry anora. The whole thing sickens me so either he is not king or king and never married because he is with me no matter what his dialogue says. There's just something so tasteless about the whole thing that AGAIN smacks of sexism. I don't care what era it was, what the lore was, or any of that. Gaider had a free for all with women in this game and it's rather insulting. You don't see any of that sort of nonsense in Skyrim... which is why I really do love skyrim so much more.

 

 

I short while ago I would have disagreed with this regarding the treatment of women. I've actually praised Bioware for its writing in respect of female characters/gamers, but now I've changed my mind. I had thought that the whole DR scenario was a well crafted moral/emotional dilemma, but now I just think it's the accidental side effect of not picking male on the character selection screen.

 

The fact that there's no even slightly fluffy, happy ending without serious compromise for female pcs romancing Alistair I could live with, if I thought that they were treated even handedly, but I now realise this not to be the case, and this has led me to my change of mind. Because the devs have called BS on their own "no happy endings" because they've shown that you can get the pretty much perfect fairy tale ending (confirmed by DA:I) if you romance Morrigan and follow her and raise the child together (thus alleviating any misgivings about how the child will be raised and for what purpose; at least the male pc will be there as a good influence, with the possibility of intervening if things start to go wrong) What moral or emotional compromises has a male pc in this scenario been asked to make?

 

What scraps from the table does the fem pc who romances Alistair risk? A Queen that can't give him heirs, a mistress on the side while he has the children you can't conceive with someone else?

 

And for you to both survive, morrigan gets to have the child of your own LI, and to get to that point you have to coerce faithful, idealistic Alistair to do a blood magic sex ritual with a woman he hates and is hardly going to consider mother material for his child. He's not going to freely choose it to save his own life, he's doing it to save the pc/Riorden. It's so close to the worst emotional blackmail. And down the road, this is the man that has a strong belief in family, is he just going to forget he has a child? And yes, he hates Morrigan, but now she's the mother of his child. How is all this going to play out for Alistair/pc?

 

And your pc can't even be sure to escape this by doing the US, because Alistair does it instead. So now you have the guilt of knowing you could have saved him, if you'd been prepared to talk him into something distasteful. Perhaps you could have told a whopper of a lie to someone who trusts you so he didn't have to live with the knowledge that he fathered a bastard-prince-dragon-old-god-thing.

 

On top of it all, I strongly suspect the the ogb isn't going to have any profound morally ambiguous consequences that DA:O fore-shadowed (because the devs won't want to upset all the male players whose pc fathered the ogb; can't have them troubled by these kind of dilemmas eh?). So my pc/Alistair probably sacrificed themselves for nothing at all.

 

So no happy ending for fem pc, and this is the kicker, not even a peace of mind ending I could live with comfortably. So yeah sod you Bioware, I think I'll go buy Elder Scrolls or whatever.

 

Sorry for venting.

 

[Aren]

NO, trust Morrigan and Flemeth is a dangerous path.

Evil Archedemon vs Evil Loghain=your warden wins

[blahblahblah]

YES, I trust Morrigan, killing the Archdemon and living as a hero is a great achievement. My warden also became a good father to Kieran and on a quest to cure the Calling.

[DinkyD]

I think I've managed to articulate why I found trying to talk Alistair into doing the dark ritual just felt so wrong. It's not the coercing him to do a sex ritual with Morrigan, although of course that gives me pause. It's that I am asking him to perform some weird, blood magic, soul experiment of uncertain outcome on his own child.  Plus, I find myself using his relationship with the warden, whether one of love/trust/friendship to get him to do it - it's asking him to put their welfare over another's - his child's. It's just a horrible, awful, thing to ask. That's what I can't get past - besides what releasing the old god means.

[springacres]

My canon Warden talked Alistair into it, although he was very conflicted over it himself.  It was either one of them doing the ritual, or Al making the ultimate sacrifice.  There was no way he was making the sacrifice himself; he's in love with Zevran and couldn't stand the thought of Zev having to lose yet another person he cared about.  (Wynne was spot on about that.)

 

Furthermore, as a mage, he was concerned about having an Old God child with another mage.  Although he would have done it himself, had Alistair refused, it would have been a "wham-bam-thank you ma'am" situation, with the rest of the night spent either bawling on Zev's shoulder or in a drinking contest with Oghren.

 

He still feels bad about having talked Alistair into what amounts to hate sex with Morrigan, though, and if there had been an option to have Zev join them, he would have had fewer reservations about doing it himself.

[rosey1579]

I prefer to keep things as they have always been.

Plus, you can't kill old Loghead if you reject the ritual.

[Xetykins]

 
He still feels bad about having talked Alistair into what amounts to hate sex with Morrigan, though, and if there had been an option to have Zev join them, he would have had fewer reservations about doing it himself.

Antivan milk sandwich? :'p

[Andrew Lucas]

Hell yeah, My Warden is in love with Morrigan, it can still be early to have a child, but it feels natural for him to accept Morrigan's proposal to save his life. There's no reason to refuse and then die, he trusts Morrigan and he knows that she wouldn't anything bad with the child while he searches for them. His family.

[springacres]

Antivan milk sandwich? :'p

Exactly!

[BSpud]

For my Canon Warden, it basically boiled down to three points ...

 

(1) She didn't want to have to choose between dying or allowing her lover to die. (Yeah, Wynne called that one perfectly  ... the old bat.)  

 

(2) Although they had their disagreements she grew to like Morrigan and saw a lot of her callousness as a mask. (Some of that was wishful thinking on her part, but she just couldn't help but to be drawn towards Morrigan for reasons that she wouldn't have been able to fully explain. ... Maybe it was because Morrigan challenged her relatively pro-Circle beliefs as a fellow mage.)

 

(3) She never could quite except the concept of two souls utterly destroying one another so she wasn't totally convinced that the ritual really did what Morrigan thought it would. (This was largely due to her mage training about Spirit possession, the Grey Warden Death Blow concept just didn't make sense to her ... granted she also believed that she was probably more educated in magical theory than Morrigan was, there was a reason Irving summoned a Pride Demon to test her.) 

 

 

----

 

So basically she was human and made what objectively was the "wrong" choice for all of the "wrong" reasons. And if faced with the same choice she'd do it all over again.

Spoiler

Warden-Commander Amell trying her best to "cure" the Calling is probably pretty much in character, even after all those years she doesn't want to lose her Alistair.

 

Same here, except my elf mage's being intriqued by Morrigan was due to her own (moderately) anti-Circle sentiment.

[Althix]

yes and yes.

 

killing the Archy without DR is a suicide. People do commit suicides for different reasons, but i don't believe that a fighter, such as Warden, would just throw his life away.

I did however US with my only and one Arcane Warrior. And that was pointless.

 

Why yes - because if there is a way out i take it. Besides HoF as WCommander is the most dangerous living being in Thedas.

Why not - because of the achievement.

[Spooky81]

I think it makes for a better story later on in Inquisition and for future DA releases if Morrigan gives birth to a son with the soul of the Old God.

[Xetykins]

Ferelden milk sandwich? Gosh get that female dwarf out of my head! Bloody legionaire!

[springacres]

Faerunner, that's exactly how my canon Warden felt about talking Alistair into the ritual.  But he wasn't planning on doing it himself, or making the Ultimate Sacrifice, and asking his friend to kill himself would have amounted to murder in my Warden's view.  Getting Al to do the DR seemed like the lesser of multiple evils.

Ferelden milk sandwich? Gosh get that female dwarf out of my head! Bloody legionaire!

XD!

[Yulia]

I mix it up once in a while, most of the time I do the ritual and let Allistar be the man to do the deed.

[DinkyD]

 

Again though, i believe one can be selfish even when thinking of others. Wynne once said, correctly so, that love is inherently selfish. That conversation with her is actually some serious Forshadowing to this decision. If you place your loved ones above the well-being of ferelden or even Thedas itself (potentially), that is selfish. Understandable, but selfish. You're acknowledging the huge, inherent risk of allowing Morrigan untempered control over the soul of the very beast you intend to kill dominating over the body of your or alistairs child with maker knows what consequences, in order to either save yourself or the ones you love. Both can be selfish, that doesnt make it evil of course. But if you are a more duty bound or honorable character, imo it's a step too far.

 

As for your comment on women being "selfish" for forcing a male to do it; i haven't seen anyone in this thread say that (though i may have missed a post). What i have seen is people point out, rightfully so, that usually the only way you can get alistair to do it is manipulate him. If you just ask him flat up without coercian, he refuses to do it. So it enters morally questionable territory when you manipulate him to do it. With that said, i do believe you can actually flat out tell him the whole truth about what the ritual intails with then just a single pursuade check of "trust me" at the end which doesn't seem particularly manipulating to me, especially when he asks you what your opinion is. I see manipulating Loghain as totally legit though. Bastard.

 

At the end of the day though it doesn't matter if you're male or female, the DR is choosing yourself or the people you loved in the short term over ferelden and perhaps thedas itself in the long term. Allowing the very thing you seek to destroy to loom over creation from the shadows raised by the daughter of flemeth (whom is also still out there most likely even after slaying her) which was their plan the entire time (having used you and lied to you up til this point). We don't know everything about the Old Gods, but we know they were sealed away for a reason and may have likely been involved in the fall of the golden city and rise of the darkspawn themselves. Too many risks and unknowns, when you can just take one for all of thedas yourself (again, only applies to honorbound/dutiful characters). Now obviously you can get into the weeds with things like witch hunt and epilogues and sequels but really, that's metagaming. You have to decide then and there based on what the Warden knows and believes is right.

 

That morrigan tries to use your loved ones to push you into doing it (3 times in a row before she gives up) makes wynne\s forshadowing all the more sweet. Such good writing here.

 

 

You know, this pretty much encapsulates everything I initially thought about the DR. 

 

One of the themes of the game revolves around asking how much you are willing to "sacrifice the few to the save the many"

 

The DR is about potentially sacrificing the many to save a single life.

 

My pc who romanced Alistair refused the ritual, determined to do the sacrifice herself, as she felt it so crazily reckless with the lives and security of countless others. She tended to share his sense of honour and duty. And it seemed so unethical - not only incarnating this power but doing this unknown thing to a child that isn't in a position to consent. It's so morally icky on many levels, whether you father the child yourself or get another to do it.

 

And even if you love and/or trust Morrigan and believe her ultimate intent is benign, at some point this child/god being will develop a will of its own and could go its own way.

 

 

Whatever you say to Alistair can feel like coercion - "trust me" can be "I know better than you but I'm not explaining" or "If you refuse you don't trust me". His tone of voice is practically begging you to let it go. (Visually the DR talk is telling - have you noticed how in much of the scene Alistair is sat down and the pc is stood up? At the end, the pc is actually almost stood over him - and Alistair looks small and very uncomfortable). It's so, so understandable to try to talk a loved one into saving their lives, but on the other hand you've ought to respect a loved one's values and autonomy.

 

Morrigan arguing that it'll save Alistair's grief from losing his beloved one didn't sway me, as him having to live with knowing what he might have unleashed on the world and wondering what it was he did to his own child is potentially be far, far worse. (Morrigan tries a series of low tricks - appealing first to your desire to survive, then your regard for your LI, then your LI regard for you, then trying an appeal to your vanity of all things)

[Aren]

Roleplaying reason: Save the life of a single mortal who is even Tainted is pointless , the warden can die at any time (s/he is protected only by the plot shield) most clever choice is to kill Loghain, and he will pay with his soul for his mistakes and no one of your companions will care about him, even Wynne will be happy for his death, even ANora, (Loghain who has enslaved others people vs Urthemiel worshipped by an empire of Slaves) poetic justice, hands down best moment of the game to see the two morons who have ruined Ferelden  die at the same time  .

Beside i'm not someone who work for Morrigan, where is the temptation of her offer if i can save my life without her  help? (An year spent to build an army for her purpose, ah don't make my laugh please! Like in DAI , efforts to reach the temple of Mythal, to give the well to her? NO thanks) my warden does not need any help especially because a good Archedemon is a dead one ( soul included especially the soul).

 

Metagaming reasons: saving the life of a protagonist who can live only into the 1st chapter of the franchise is useless, the only way to end the warden's story is the US, the result of save the warden is pointless, not even a cameo,only stupid codexes entry and little mention and i'm not a fan of Dead plot line (yea stupid nullification of the DR in DAI due to the fact that is not mandatory) and Headcanon.

Bioware default choices are the only ones who cannot be nullified in that stupid way since there are less variables who help the story to maintain a certain level of Integrity, in this regard i cannot see any good explanation on how Flemeth took that soul from Kieren (only for the sake of the nullification) the best way to handle that scene imho was that Flemeth would took by force Kieran with her by proving that sometimes legends are true, which means that sometimes Witches steal childrens.

[Uccio]

In a hearbeat, my Warden loves Morrigan and wants to live with her, and their child (goes through the Eluvian with her). He has no interest in dying nor he wants to get his buddy Alistair killed.

[luna1124]

I have done this all possible ways. My first play-thru, no I could not convince Alistair to do it. so, he died killing Archy. then another play, my Dalish elf char did not choose the DR, or take Al to the final battle (left him at the gate), so she died a hero.

 

After that, I always did the ritual, either myself (male char) or talked Al or Loghain into it. It depends on what type of character you are playing, and how important living is to them. My fem Dalish elf was still in love with Tamlen, so she really didn't care at that point.