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[nikki-tikki]

This is actually a big reason why I very much wanted race options back (way back when the DA:I protag was going to be human only again), because I knew we were going to be in the Dales, and even way back then I suspected there might be very important content relating to the elves as a result.  The concept of elves only achieving something for themselves if humans were there to help or guide them has ugly real world parallels, and I didn't want to see that happen again.  Which is why I was very pleased to have race options back for this game, and a Dalish option at that.  I know people tend to focus on the negatives, but at least from my perspective, I thought the Dalish were a bit more well-rounded this time around.  (Not that I personally thought they were all that bad in the past, even with my Cousland the DA:O Dalish were polite, and lot of it depends on gaining their trust through approval.  I always thought it was funny that the Warden who didn't get a warm response was my Mahariel, and I saw that as being one part because he had a little too much familiarity with them and because he was kinda whiney.  Zathrian told him to get his act together, lol.) 

 

I especially liked that a Dalish Inquisitor wasn't forced to dwell in the "my people are all backwards but I'm a special cupcake" thing and weren't portrayed as rude and closeminded if they weren't negative about their own people.  Open-mindedness is one thing, but I really dislike the concept that "otherness" is negative, and goodness conforms to the majority culture.  Even Andrastian culture is clearly in the dark about most of the truth of their religion and whether or not Andraste was what they think she was, but they are still given a fair amount of positive portrayal, even when faced with being wrong about some things.  I don't see why the Dalish should be seen any differently.  The only thing is that Andrastian culture more closely resembles a widely held human religion in the real world, and because it's more relateable, it's generally portrayed as the good one.  Again, those real world parallels that can be disquieting.  Personally, I thought it was a little more even-handed in DA:I (nope, that isn't Andraste in the Fade, but that *was* Mythal in the Fade...  But is there really a difference?)  but how you view it will still be colored by personal bias. 

My lavellan went full Andrastian. Dunno why, thought it would be interesting. Didn't make much of a difference though. The clan still contacted me and said they were proud and stuff.

[BoscoBread]

It is enough to me. but I don't know, I'm desperate for more Solas, so...

Don't worry.  There will be more. The character is incredibly popular. Frankly they probably could have made him the fuggliest, fuggo that ever fugged and people still would have loved him. That voice and the broken fairly-tale romance.  People eat that **** up.

[nikki-tikki]

Don't worry.  There will be more. The character is incredibly popular. Frankly they probably could have made him the fuggliest, fuggo that ever fugged and people still would have loved him. That voice and the broken fairly-tale romance.  People eat that **** up.

When he was first revealed as being bald, I was so skeptical because....wtf he's bald...but then...he won me over of course....

[The Oracle]

You are listening to this to write the rest of your fanfic, right? Right?
Good.

 

Ah yeah! Right...I err *cough*. I'm totally not procrastinating from that by watching youtube videos and guzzling down pepsi max and aspirin for my hangover. XD

 

*is caught out and goes back to writing*

[Elessara]

Don't worry.  There will be more. The character is incredibly popular. Frankly they probably could have made him the fuggliest, fuggo that ever fugged and people still would have loved him. That voice and the broken fairly-tale romance.  People eat that **** up.

 

I'm kind of an oddball I guess.  I prefer happy endings.  Or as happy as I can get them.  I really don't like broken fairy-tale.  Must have happy-ish ending!  Which is why I'm surprised at how much I enjoy the Solas romance because ... gah!!  My only hope now is that there's more closure with a happy-ish ending in a DLC.  Cause otherwise ... gah!!!

[dragondreamer]

My lavellan went full Andrastian. Dunno why, thought it would be interesting. Didn't make much of a difference though. The clan still contacted me and said they were proud and stuff.

 

Clan Lavellan appears to be a very liberal sort of Dalish clan, so maybe they just love you anyway.    I was open to my own Lavellan shedding her faith depending on what she found during the course of the game (dramas), but actually most of her beliefs were confirmed, if inaccurate.  She wasn't so much "my life is a lieeeeeeee" as much as "there's truth to that!? I want to know more!"

[Patchwork]

I would think you have to be extremely powerful to be thought as a god in a society that's made up of mages. 

[drake2511]

Ah yeah! Right...I err *cough*. I'm totally not procrastinating from that by watching youtube videos and guzzling down pepsi max and aspirin for my hangover. XD

 

*is caught out and goes back to writing*

Aww no, stay with us! I can hold on some more days before I start hitting f5 all day

[BoscoBread]

I was commenting on my annoyance at how the Dalish are depicted at Inquisition; it wasn't intended as a slight at you. Given how we're surrounded by advisers, companions, and even minor characters who will extol the virtues and importance of the Andrastian faith and the Chantry, while constantly dealing with upfront negativity about the Dalish, where only the main character is permitted to say anything positive about the Dalish, and even then the lines often get interrupted to continue the anti-Dalish spiel (as with Minaeve and Vivienne). There's also a tonal shift in how the storyline treats the Andrastian faith in comparison to the Dalish faith, and overall I'm left quite dissatisfied with how it feels incredibly one-sided. I would have preferred much more balance.

I do agree with you there.  Even the dwarves get better treatment - I mean you have Varric who clearly thinks they are too stuck in their ways and are beyond saving but then again - if you do that Hissing Wastes quest - he does recognize how wonderfully rich their history and what it means when a Paragon crafts something truly amazing. I was a bit teary eyed for him there -- though I have always loved the dwarves.  The writing in the last three games has done the Dalish a disservice. 

[nikki-tikki]

 "my life is a lieeeeeeee"

 

That made me laugh. Well I guess we shall see which "faith" is the truth, hopefully in the next game/DLC. It's looking more like the Maker is false and the elves were sort of right all along. Which reminds me...poor Sebastian...

[kalasaurus]

My lavellan went full Andrastian. Dunno why, thought it would be interesting. Didn't make much of a difference though. The clan still contacted me and said they were proud and stuff.

My last Lavellan converted too to the Andrastian faith and ended up with an ex-templar human, ha.

[Colonelkillabee]

When he was first revealed as being bald, I was so skeptical because....wtf he's bald...but then...he won me over of course....

Never underestimate the potential of the avatar Aang looking professor X apostate hobo characters.

[RynJ]

That's a really good observation. I hadn't thought of it like that.

 

The problem is, BioWare doesn't present it like that. I'm not necessarily bothered that the Dalish don't know that much about their history; I'm bothered with how it's framed. If BioWare framed the Dalish's lack of knowledge as an inevitable result of a thousand years of slavery, imperialism, diaspora, cultural appropriation, etc. I could understand. If they made it clear humans know more about them from stealing their knowledge over the centuries, I could understand it.

 

But they don't. BioWare chooses to present the Dalish as unlikable and haughty toward the PC as possible (kind and open-minded Dalish exist are usually background characters and codex entries that are optional to encounter, while the jerky ones are front and center and required for the player to talk to to advance the story), have them talk endlessly about discovering the past, and then have human characters easily out-Dalish the Dalish in order to make the Dalish look stupid and incompetent, so the player can have a laugh at their expense.

 

BioWare presents the Dalish' limited knowledge of their past as a failing on the Dalish's part; not as a natural and understandable result of their lot in life. "Oh, they're a culture that dedicates their entire existence to learning about their past. That's backwards and counterproductive of them, and we'll have several every sympathetic characters say so so the player will adopt that opinion too. Oh, they dedicate their existence to learning about their elven past, so we'll throw in a human character who isn't even invested in recovering elven history learn more about one little detail of elven history/language/technology than they have after centuries of study, to show just how inept they are."

 

And I'm not impressed by that.

 

I wish we could have met Clan Lavellan. From what we heard about them, they're an example of chill Dalish that could have helped to turn around some opinions about the Dalish. I think the problem is that BioWare overestimated how much sympathy would come from just telling us about the tragedy of a faction and how much they suffer. Sure we know that about the Dalish, but when they present more of their xenophobia and jerkiness to the PC in the actual game and in the books, that's what people are going to focus on. That's what happened in both DAO and DA2. They can say all they want that not all Dalish are the same but when all you continuously show is less than kind Dalish, people just come to the conclusion that they're annoying and unsympathetic. Not everybody will sit there and think about everything the Dalish have gone through and how they got to be this way and thus be more sympathetic to them. Heck, even if you do it's still sort of annoying.

 

Meeting a clan that's more open-minded and less harsh (through more than just letters) would be a really good way to soothe some harsh feelings towards the Dalish. I can only hope that we get a little of that in the next game.

[Colonelkillabee]

My last Lavellan converted too to the Andrastian faith and ended up with an ex-templar human, ha.

Omg I'm not even an elf, and the level of blasphemy in this post makes me cringe for your people

[nikki-tikki]

Never underestimate the potential of the avatar Aang looking professor X apostate hobo characters.

For me it went:  

 

Zevran: sexy spanish accent, long blonde hair, ready to jump into bed. So that was great. Then it was Fenris (hhhnnnnnnnn~): Dark skinned, scarred, the hair was a bit more on the anime side but it was great, thaaaaaaaaat voiceee, abusive past. Wonderful. Then Solas. Bald. But it wasn't until I talked to him in Haven that I was like...yep, got me.

[Avejajed]

I would think you have to be extremely powerful to be thought as a god in a society that's made up of mages.

****, he lights veilfire with a flick of his wrist and I look like a lunatic trying to wave someone down a mile away when I light it.

Thats power.

[zambixi]

I do agree with you there.  Even the dwarves get better treatment - I mean you have Varric who clearly thinks they are too stuck in their ways and are beyond saving but then again - if you do that Hissing Wastes quest - he does recognize how wonderfully rich their history and what it means when a Paragon crafts something truly amazing. I was a bit teary eyed for him there -- though I have always loved the dwarves.  The writing in the last three games has done the Dalish a disservice. 

 

I'm always confused by this because while I know there's a pretty strong group of anti-Dalish people on the BSN, I never disliked the Dalish or knew anyone who did until coming to the forums. I don't really find them to be written as more or less sympathetic than the dwarves or the humans, and there are certainly more bad dwarves and humans. The Dalish are rude and prickly, but they don't kill your entire family, torture random nobles, perpetuate an antiquated caste system that keeps a large portion of their population in poverty... I guess what I'm saying is that I always found people to complain about the Dalish to be a bit self-centered for being mad that someone didn't like them, while they were usually 100% on-board with people that had actually done bad things like the Architect, Howe, or Bhelen.

 

FWIW, dwarf-supporters complain all the time about the lack of dwarven content and the poor depiction of the dwarves so... it seems to be that everyone feels their favorite sub-group is unfairly targeted >.>

[dragondreamer]

That made me laugh. Well I guess we shall see which "faith" is the truth, hopefully in the next game/DLC. It's looking more like the Maker is false and the elves were sort of right all along. Which reminds me...poor Sebastian...

 

We already know that we'll never have confirmation on whether or not the Maker is real, but I'm hoping we'll learn more about the elven pantheon and maybe Andraste.  To tell the truth, I don't think it's so much a matter of one being true and the other false, because they don't seem to be mutually exclusive as beliefs.  I think Cass wasn't that off the mark, even if her "room for one more" was unintentionally insensitive.  The Maker is mostly portrayed as distant progenitor of known reality, while the elven pantheon, whatever they are, have never been portrayed as the makers of the world (Elgar'nan and Mythal are born of Sun and Earth that already existed), they just created a lot of things within it.  So... Creators. 

[Lyxiss]

I'll leave this right here
 

http://ninjapoupon.d...s=1&ga_recent=1

[RynJ]

For me it went:  

 

Zevran: sexy spanish accent, long blonde hair, ready to jump into bed. So that was great. Then it was Fenris (hhhnnnnnnnn~): Dark skinned, scarred, the hair was a bit more on the anime side but it was great, thaaaaaaaaat voiceee, abusive past. Wonderful. Then Solas. Bald. But it wasn't until I talked to him in Haven that I was like...yep, got me.

 

Funny enough, when I went back and looked at DAO after playing DAI, I now find Solas to be more attractive than Zevran. I love Zev but.....he's actually not all that pretty. I don't think Fenris really is either, though. They're all kind of strange looking.

 

It's hilarious because I remembered them as so much prettier when I'd been away from the game for a while.  My love for them transformed them in my mind. 

[Avejajed]

I know like, zero about the Dalish and didn't care to until I met Solas and rolled my first elf. Revas is sort of..eh..when it comes to the Dalish.

[nikki-tikki]

****, he lights veilfire with a flick of his wrist and I look like a lunatic trying to wave someone down a mile away when I light it.

Thats power.

mmmmmmmmmmmmm........

[BoscoBread]

If I recall correctly Cassandra asks him a few very direct questions at the beginning of the game, so much so that I began to suspect that he might be a second Anders... And Leliana sends an agent to interpret his paintings.  

 

However, the lack of curiosity about him overall is a little suspicious no? Perhaps he is using some low level mind control to simply divert any suspicions... And he does do this overtly several times as with Cole when he gently suggests he narrate an event from his point of view or with Blackwell giving him an out on Val Royeaux market "So you saw that in the Fade?"

I don't think so. He would abhor the idea of mind-controlling someone against their will.  If he felt that his evasive back-story was not going to be enough, he would have fled.  He did tell the truth, just not all of it. They were also desperate - Leliana says so in her final "Solas" codex entry. They needed help so badly and he was so willing and clearly knowledgeable they didn't push the issue.  The "agent" she sends to interpret his paints is an art history scholar.  So not like an assassin. 

 

The event you are referencing with Cole - he asks Cole as a friend in his grief - one last time to narrate as Wisdom. See Solas as Wisdom saw Solas, so Solas can grieve.  It's supposed to be a touching moment.  And "saw that in the Fade" is his catch all excuse  to mask " I remember it because I was there".  THOUGH he could have actually seen it in the Fade.  He can do that. That's why it works as an excuse.

[nikki-tikki]

Funny enough, when I went back and looked at DAO after playing DAI, I now find Solas to be more attractive than Zevran. I love Zev but.....he's actually not all that pretty. I don't think Fenris really is either, though. They're all kind of strange looking.

 

It's hilarious because I remembered them as so much prettier when I'd been away from the game for a while.  My love for them transformed them in my mind. 

I blame the graphical abilities of the game, poor Zevran. But the elves in general are always on the better looking side.

[Elessara]

So after playing DAI ... here's what I feel happened.  And yes there are holes in this theory I know so this isn't probably what happened just how it feels to me:

 

Fen'Harel sees how the "lower class" elves are being treated and doesn't like it.  Also sees how his brethren (the other gods) are treating the elves in general.  And decides to do something about it.  Possibly the betrayal and murder of Mythal was a part of his reasoning.  But, he stages a revolt against the other gods and the upper class.  Manages to lock the other gods away.  At this point, with the gods gone and the upper class overthrown he then removes himself from the picture thinking ok now the elves can manage themselves without "godly" interference and goes to sleep/uthenera.  When he's gone, Tevinter rises and without their gods and their most powerful mages (who would have been killed in the uprising) the elves can't fight off Tevinter and become slaves.  Couple thousand years pass (give or take a few centuries) and Fen'Harel wakes up (or gets woken up) and travels around and finds out oh crap this wasn't what he had intended for the elves - they're even worse off than before.  Now he has to fix it.  Enter Corypheus ... except things go wrong there too.

 

Unfortunately, "It wasn't supposed to be that way!" is kind of turning into poor Solas' catchphrase.

 

And as I said, obviously there are holes in this theory and it's not very fleshed out but this was the general gist of what I got.  Especially after his banters with Sera.